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Home , John Colet, Lactantius, Thomas Chaundler, Thomas More

The of Sir and the influence of Lorenzo Valla's On pleasure

a thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Department of History, University of Toronto

by Brendan Cook 2009

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Abstract The Utopia of and the influence of Lorenzo Valla's On Pleasure Brendan Cook Ph.D. Department of History University of Toronto, 2009

The subject of this dissertation is the influence of the fifteenth-century Italian humanist, Lorenzo Valla, upon the sixteenth-century English humanist, Sir Thomas More.

Specifically, it explores how a single work of Valla's, the dialogue on ethics, On pleasure, influenced More's classic Utopia. Through a close reading of the relevant texts, it is established for the first time that More read On pleasure and that he made it one of the chief models for Utopia. The likelihood that More studied and imitated Valla's book is demonstrated through an examination of crucial terms such asprudentia, delectatio, and voluptas, as well as the critique of Aristotelian ethics common to both authors. Utopia and On pleasure are each studied carefully, as are other relevant works: More's Latin poetry and his History of Richard III, Valla's New foundation of dialectic and philosophy and his correspondence, translated in English for the first time. The dissertation places the original argument for the relationship between Utopia and On pleasure within the familiar context of English intellectual culture in the age of the first Tudors. Valla's influence upon

More's writing is an illustrative example of a time and place in which Italian literature and scholarship were exercising unprecedented influence both in and across Europe generally. The fate of Valla's books in Tudor England is also explored in broader terms, notably in a presentation of the legacy of Valla's classical scholarship. Valla and More are also contrasted with other Italian and English authors of the period, notably and

Marsilio Ficino. The use of On pleasure in the pages of Utopia demonstrates how material developed in Italy during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries became an essential part of the literary in the first decades of the sixteenth century. in

Acknowledgments

This dissertation could not have been completely without the insight, patience, goodwill, and unstinting moral support of my dissertation committee. Professor Olga Pugliese deserves thanks for her outstanding familiarity with the works of Lorenzo Valla, and also for her attention to detail and her genuine concern for my improvement as a scholar. I have benefited enormously from both her practical advice and from the encouragement which she has provided since joining my committee. I would like to thank Professor Paul

Cohen for his extremely helpful suggestions concerning the place of my dissertation within the larger subject of European . His insights will continue to bear fruit long after this dissertation is finished. And of course great thanks are due to Professor

Ken Bartlett for having spent longer than anyone in discussing this thesis with me in the various stages of its development. From my first conceptions of the topic through the introduction of every new line of argument, he found time from an incredibly busy schedule to help me in too many ways to enumerate. In terms of the valuable advice and direction he has afforded me, he has proved as much a collaborator as a supervisor. And

I would also be remiss if I did not thank Professor Donald Kelley and Professor Will

Robins for reading such a lengthy dissertation with the care and attention necessary to evaluate it properly. Finally, I would like to thank my mother, Lois Cook. Apart from providing me with the only formal education that I received before entering university, she has spent many hours on the present dissertation, helping me to lend some degree of beauty and clarity to nearly three hundred pages of academic prose. iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TITLE i.

ABSTRACT ii.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ii.

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv.

DATES AND TRANSLATIONS v.

INTRODUCTION 1

CHAPTER ONE 10

CHAPTER TWO 59

CHAPTER THREE 115

CHAPTER FOUR 150

CHAPTER FIVE 202

CHAPTER SIX 232

CONCLUSIONS 279

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 298

BIBLIOGRAPHY 300 V

CONCERNING TRANSLATIONS

The many translations from Latin in this dissertation are, almost entirely, mine. There are a few exceptions where I have relied entirely or in part upon the translations of others, and they have been noted as such in the accompanying footnotes. The translations from the correspondence of Lorenzo Valla are drawn from an edition which I am preparing for the / Tatti Library and which is projected to be published by Harvard University Press in the fall of 2011. The much smaller number of translations from Italian and the single instance of translation from the French are also mine.

CONCERNING DATES

To whatever extent they can be ascertained, dates of birth and death are supplied at the first mention of any individual born after the year 1000. Where no precise dates exist, the approximate period in which an individual was alive and active will be indicated by means of the notation 'fl.'. Dates of birth and death are not provided for individuals who died before the year 1000. All dates provided are from the Common Era (CE). 1

INTRODUCTION

The subject of this dissertation is an intellectual tradition: not only a particular tradition but the nature of intellectual tradition as such. It is about how ideas change as they pass from one set of hands to another and from one mind to the next. It is about how an earlier writer can influence a later writer and how a book that is written at one time can leave its mark on a book that is written afterwards. More specifically, this dissertation deals with the historical dimensions of a literary tradition. It sets out to explain how two very different men who lived at different times and in different places could participate in a common discussion of shared ideas. It is a story of how the intellectual tradition known as humanism expanded and diversified as it developed from a relatively localized Italian movement into something truly European. This study describes a specific part of that larger story, an important episode in the expansion of

Italian humanism during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It illustrates a specific example of what happened as humanist books written in Italy were read and imitated in other parts of Europe, and as words and ideas conceived in one historical situation were adapted to fit other needs. In the simplest terms, this is a study of continuity and change in the culture of Renaissance Europe.

The subjects of this dissertation have long been accounted two of the most influential representatives of humanist traditions in Italy and in Northern Europe respectively. The first is the Roman philologist Lorenzo Valla (1407-57). Valla has been studied as often as any other writer in a time and place which have received a disproportionate share of scholarly attention. A glance at the number of publications on 2

Valla's life, work, and influence during the last half-century is enough to dispel any doubt that Valla has been underappreciated by recent scholarship. Not only has Valla's place among his contemporaries been well documented, but his lasting impact upon later generations of Italian and European humanists has been a perennial subject of academic interest as well. By this measure, Valla has long been recognized as an important figure in the intellectual history both of Italy and of Europe as a whole.1

But if Valla has been over-analyzed in the past fifty years, what about the second subject of this book? It is hard to think of any historical figure less neglected than the

English humanist, statesman, Catholic polemicist, , and as of the twentieth century even , Sir Thomas More (1478-1531). If Valla has received his share of recent attention from academics, More has been the object of unmatched scrutiny both from professional scholars and from readers of nearly every stripe. For close to five centuries,

More has maintained a hold on the popular imagination of the West. Even apart from his public career, which began in the service of King Henry VIII (1509-47) and which ended with his death at the hands of that same monarch, More was also a famous writer. And even apart from his other books, against (1483-1546) and the reformed Christian , an influential account of the turbulent reign of King Richard

III (1483-85), outstanding classical scholarship and poetry, More is famous for a single book. More is famous above and beyond any of his other achievements as the author of a book which he admits that he nearly did not write.2 More's other accomplishments are

Among recent assessments of Valla's influence upon both the Renaissance the , Salvatore Camporeale's series of essays, the fruit of thirty years of scholarship, deserves mention. Salvatore Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla: umanesimo, riforma e controriforma (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2002). 2 That More nearly did not write Utopia, that the book was the product of a moment of unexpected leisure, is a least what More claims in the Letter to Petrus Aegidius which serves as a preface to the dialogue. 3 eclipsed by his achievement as the author of the satirical dialogue On the best political constitution and the newly discovered island of Utopia.

Since its first publication in 1516, More's Utopia has been subject of more comment, wise and foolish by turn, than nearly any book from the same age. Few works have surpassed it in the imagination of the literate or half-literate public. It has entered the select company of books, books like Don Quixote, the Odyssey, certain plays of

Shakespeare, the Four . It has become a byword for men and women who have never so much as opened its covers: one of those books that are 'known of even better than they are 'known'. The words Utopia and Utopian are every bit as rich in association as Quixotic, Odyssey, Dickensian, even Shakespearean and Christian. And Utopia has combined this place of honor in the popular mind with an unrivalled position as the subject of academic studies, some bad, some good, and some very good indeed. Here too, Utopia's only rivals are the works that challenge it in popular estimation:

Shakespeare, Cervantes, Homer, and the various books of Jewish and Christian scripture.

Almost any book has been studied less than Utopia and only a few have been studied more.

It may seem like arrogance, or even folly beyond arrogance, to dream of saying something new about two writers who have been discussed as often as Lorenzo Valla and

Thomas More. There is no question that entering such a crowded field involves great risk. But subjects as rich and fascinating as More and Valla also promise a corresponding reward. More and Valla have been studied so often and so well because they matter so much to the history of humanism. They are both important representatives of the literary

Thomas More, Complete Works, Vol IV: Utopia, ed. Edward Surtz and J.H. Hexter (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965). 4 and philological approach to classical literature which originated in Italy during the fourteenth century and which spread across Europe during the course of the fifteenth.

And this is why something still remains to be said, despite the number of publications on

Valla or the leagues of print concerning More and Utopia. More and Valla have been discussed so often because they are each worth discussing, individually and together.

And it is by discussing More and Valla together rather than separately that the present study will provide new insight. It will open up fresh ground by examining More and Valla as self-conscious representatives of the same intellectual tradition. Studied separately so many times, the two men will be presented here at the juncture of their lives and careers, at the point where Valla's legacy intersects with More's contribution to humanism in England. The result will be an account of what Valla represented to More and what More took from Valla's example.

And such an approach must prove original. Much has been written about Valla and More individually, but the relationship between these two crucial figures in the history of European humanism is still largely unexamined Few studies have asked how

Valla's writing affected More. Valla's influence upon later generations of humanists has been discussed many times, but there is next to nothing on his specific influence upon

More. Perhaps the only example is Salvatore Camporeale's article "Da Lorenzo Valla a

Tommaso Moro." Camporeale is very narrowly concerned with the similar manner in which both men defend the use of philology, notably the study of ancient Greek, to advance Christian piety. As a consequence the implications of Camporeale's argument 5 are relatively limited.3 Camporeale does not even try to prove that Valla directly influenced More: he considers it sufficient to argue that More continues upon the same path marked out by Valla. Nor have any of the practically innumerable studies of Utopia done more than hint at the real extent of More's debt to Valla. Specifically, no scholar has every seriously developed the idea that Valla's books exercised an important influence upon Utopia. No scholar has argued that to understand Utopia, it is necessary to understand Valla.4

And this is precisely what the present study will demonstrate. It is not merely that

More knew and admired Valla's work, although this claim is important and in itself has few precedents. The coming pages will unfold an argument at once more specific and truly without precedent: that Utopia reflects Valla's direct influence. It will be argued that More's masterpiece is modeled specifically upon a particular book, Valla's ethical treatise On pleasure (written and revised 1434-41). As no other book that Valla wrote, indeed as none of the influential productions of fifteenth-century Italy, On pleasure furnishes a model for Utopia. Thomas More consciously and deliberately builds Utopia around themes developed from Lorenzo Valla's book, repeating, revising, and even reversing the earlier author's arguments. In respects which no scholar has ever adequately acknowledged and that only a few have guessed, On pleasure provides the key to Utopia. An important example of the Italian Renaissance in its own right, Valla's ethical dialogue furnishes one of the principal models for More's most celebrated book.

3 Umanesimo, riforma e controriforma. Even here, Camporeale seems more concerned with demonstrating how More and Valla each say many of the same things than with arguing that Valla had directly influenced More in any way. Only George Logan, it will be seen, has suggested Valla as a major influence on Utopia, and he spends only a few pages of his study exploring this idea. And so while a discussion of among the people of Utopia is common enough, the notion that Valla might have provided a model for this philosophy is limited to the handful of pages in Logan's book. 6

Like the rest of Valla's literary output, On pleasure has hardly been neglected. It has been studied in isolation and also as part of Valla's brilliant and controversial career.

From Valla's own lifetime, when he significantly revised the book not once but twice, it has been obvious that On pleasure is one of Valla's most important books. And recognition has never been wanting for its central place in the history of humanism. The

last few decades have seen a number of significant publications. Maristella Lorch has written perceptively on the ethical and philological themes of Valla's dialogue.5 And

Peter Bietenholz has noted the influence which On pleasure may have exercised upon the thought and expression of another Northern humanist, More's friend and contemporary

Erasmus of (14677-1534).6 And since On pleasure deals explicitly with the

ancient philosophical sects of and Epicureanism, it is a natural subject for any

scholar examining the response of Renaissance thinkers to classical literature and philosophy. But while much has been written about the intellectual legacy of On pleasure, next to nothing has been written connecting Valla's book with Utopia. On pleasure has long been recognized as an important book, but its influence upon Utopia must only magnify its significance.

And this is precisely what the following pages will set out to demonstrate. The

specific relationship between Utopia and On pleasure will be used to explore the place that More and Valla each hold in the common tradition of .

Beginning with the historical conditions that made it possible for More to encounter

5 Maristella di Panizza Lorch, A defense of life: Lorenzo Valla's theory of pleasure (Munich: W. Fink, 1985). 6 Peter Bietenholz, "Felicitas (eudaemonia) ou les promenades d'Erasme dans les jardins d'Epicure," Renaissance and Reformation, 30.1 (winter 2006): 37-86. In one sense, Bietenholz's examination of Valla can be seen as part of the more common tendency to look at Valla's role in re-evaluating Stoicism and Epicureanism. Bietenholz is concerned, specifically, with how Valla may have influenced ' caricature of Stoic teachings and his favorable references to an equally caricatured variety of Epicureanism. 7

Valla's books generally and On true good specifically, this study will proceed to the evidence within More's book itself. A comparison of arguments and above all of language will demonstrate the relationship between these two classic dialogues. This demonstration is necessary, it will be seen, in order to establish the fact of Valla's influence. With More's debt to Valla demonstrated, the later chapters will explore the consequences of a relationship which has escaped notice so many times before. In short, the coming pages will answer three related questions, each requiring a lengthier response than the previous one. First, what historical circumstances make the connection between

Utopia and On pleasure possible? Second, how can this connection be demonstrated?

And finally, what does More's relationship with Valla mean?

And so what follows might seem less the story of two men than the story of two books; not an account of Thomas More and Lorenzo Valla but of Utopia and On pleasure. And to some extent this is true. This is largely a study of influence in action: the account of how an earlier work can inform, define, and challenge a later one. But this is not the same as saying that this will be a purely literary study or that the content of the two books will mark the outmost limits of inquiry. Understanding the relationship between Utopia and On pleasure is important, but the coming pages must accomplish something else as well. They will explore these two books in terms of the intentions of their authors and in terms of the historical situation in which they were conceived.

Utopia and On pleasure will not be presented in isolation but in context. The two books will be read as part of a tradition and as responses to the needs and the problems of a particular time and place, even to particular moments in the life of an individual. With this in mind, the case of Utopia and On pleasure will be approached from both individual and historical perspectives. The account of two men and two books will be placed within the larger story of the adaptation of Italian humanism to the intellectual milieu of early Tudor England. The influence of Valla's book upon Utopia will provide a specific example of a historical process usually understood only in generalities. As one of the brightest lights of Quattrocento humanism, Valla represents personally the sort of literary achievements that in More's day had become Italy's chief intellectual import to

Northern Europe. In revisiting On pleasure in the pages of Utopia, More is an example of the larger tendency of English writers in his generation to turn to Italian books and

Italian authors.7 This means that Valla's specific influence in Utopia can illuminate the general impact of Italian writers upon the English culture of More's time.

The following chapter will begin by addressing this larger question of Italian scholarship in More's England. This will provide a historical foundation for a detailed discussion of what More and Valla have written. Before describing More's response to

Valla's book or even before proving that he actually knew it, it is first necessary to show how More had the opportunity to read On pleasure or any other Italian book. And this involves discussing events that largely preceded More's lifetime. Because it was in the century of More's birth, during his childhood and the childhood of his father, that the

Italian tradition of humanism became established in England. The arrival of Italian books, Italian teachers, and Italian scholarship in England made More's relationship with

Valla possible. This new Italian influence transformed the intellectual culture of England

7 The influence of the writers of Quattrocento Italy upon certain authors in early Tudor England, it will be seen, has been as closely scrutinized as the specific case of the place of On pleasure in the development of Utopia has been ignored. If Valla's influence on More has been neglected, the influence of Valla's culture upon More's culture has been well-documented. 9 in a way that created the conditions for the kind of influence seen in Utopia and On pleasure. And so it will be this process, a necessary prelude to what follows, that the first chapter of this study will explore. 10

CHAPTER 1: LORENZO VALLA AND TUDOR ENGLAND

By some measure every age can be characterized as 'a time of change'. never stand still, and rarely have they seemed to. But it would still be difficult to deny that some periods have seen faster and more sweeping change than others. This is certainly the case in Thomas More's England. More's life straddles a period remarkable

o for the pace and extent of change, whether social, political, intellectual, or religious.

Born in 1478 at the beginning of the , More died in 1531 at the dawn of the . The events of those fifty odd years have few analogies. The words 'Renaissance' and 'Reformation', coined to describe the revolutionary developments of More's lifetime, are often made to serve as metaphors for other transformative periods.9 More witnessed developments in the life of his nation, some subtle, others obvious, that rivaled even the most eventful chapters in England's past and future.

And More was hardly passive amid the of his time. Like or , More experienced the crucial passages of his life not merely as a witness but as a participant. The final drama of his life was only the last act in a lifetime at the center of events. It is true that More earned lasting fame as a martyr for the , executed by the king he once served, but his career would still have been notable had it ended peacefully. There was his time as a religious apologist who turned his eloquence and erudition against the newly-minted Lutheran ; before that three years as lord

8 And in one sense, dividing the change that took place in More's time into political, social, economic, religious, and intellectual categories is something of an anachronism. For More and his contemporaries, it can be argued that everything was perceived in religious terms. 9 This is especially true of 'Renaissance', a word used in so many contexts, popular and scholarly, that its primary application is often in danger of being forgotten altogether. 11 chancellor of England; and before that a record of distinguished royal service extending over a decade. And all of this was preceded by a distinguished start to public life as a promising young and parliamentarian. And then there was his parallel career as a scholar, a translator of the Greek , author of original works in English and in

Latin. More earned a European reputation as a defender of the biblical scholarship of his friend, Erasmus of Rotterdam. And he was well regarded for his correspondence with many of the most celebrated names in the international community of scholars.10 More not only lived in a time of unprecedented change, he was one of the foremost agents of that change, always a participant if not a leader. In the various aspects of his own achievement, in the different roles that he enacted in his own life, More can be said to have embodied the dynamism and conflict of the age.

The same can be said of Lorenzo Valla as well. Although he died decades before

More was born and never set foot in England himself, Valla was in some sense a participant in the eventful period of More's life. This might sound strange to modern ears, but to Valla and indeed to More it would have come as no surprise. The notion of literary immortality was a commonplace which Valla's age had borrowed from the poets of antiquity. The reading and copying of their books by future generations would enable authors to escape the obscurity that is the normal companion of death. Valla loved to boast about the longevity of his writing, and while he was by no means the most famous writer of his generation, his prediction proved substantially true.11 Valla was successful

10 There are several good books that touch on More's relationship with Erasmus, but E.E. Reynolds makes it his principal subject. E.E. Reynolds, Thomas More and Erasmus (New York: Fordham University Press, 1965). 11 For an example of Valla's forecasts of literary immortality, see the conclusion of one of his apologetic letters, where he makes the following statement regarding contemporary critics. "And I hope that they will heed my warning: their chatter and clamor will not last, but unless prophecy deceives me, my words against them will outlive us all." "Quos meisquoque consiliis admonitos volo: verba ipsorum et convicia in me 12 enough that his most important books and letters remained in readers' hands long after his body's decay. Valla wrote some of the finest prose of his generation, he was an accomplished scholar, and as a philosopher he was always original. It is no wonder that he cast a very long shadow.

And this is why Valla can be said to have played a part in both the Renaissance and the Reformation in England. Through several of his better-known books, Valla achieved, if not immortality, at least sufficient longevity to outlive the immediate context of his own life and times. Apart from his indirect influence through More's Utopia, to be explored in the coming chapters, Valla had a more obvious impact upon the England of . The most successful of Valla's books survived their author and even brought his words and thoughts to regions he had never visited in life. They crossed the Alps and the English Channel, and were swiftly recast in roles appropriate to the unfolding drama of More's age.

It may be objected here that the larger story of Valla's reception in England has little relevance to the real subject of this study. This is a study before all else of the response of a single Englishman, Thomas More, to a single work, On pleasure. It is a study of two people and two books, and so it seems reasonable to ask why More and

Utopia must be connected to the larger issue of Valla's influence on the intellectual culture of early Tudor England. Why not begin with More and Valla and their two books at once?

Ultimately, the reception of Italian learning in England, Valla's books and those of others, matters for two reasons. First, it is necessary to understand how the non duratura; mea in se etiam ultra eorum meamque mortalitatem, nisi augurio fallor, perduratura." Valla, Laurentii Vallae epistolae / Correspondence, eds. Mariangela Regoliosi and Ottavio Besomi (Pavia: Thesaurus Mundi, 1984) 209. 13 relationship between More and Valla is possible in the first place. It is necessary to understand how More came to read a book written nearly a century earlier in a part of

Europe so distant from the country of his birth. Something must be said about the historical circumstances that provided the conditions for the tale of literary influence to follow. Second, a summary of the larger picture makes it easier to understand why the connection between Utopia and On pleasure matters. At the very least, it is helpful to see how More's debt to Valla figures within the larger historical picture of Italian influence on English culture. The fact that More read Valla's books and took so much from them matters because it is not entirely unique. Though exceptional in some respects, More's interest is a specific manifestation of something more general. It is one example, albeit an outstanding one, of a larger phenomenon: the dissemination of Italian culture across

Europe during the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. To some extent, the question of Valla's appeal for More and his contemporaries is tied up with the question of

Italian influence during one of the most eventful periods in the history of Northern

Europe.

And this question deserves some comment. Starting in Valla's own lifetime and increasing steadily in the decades after his death, the movement of ideas increased dramatically. Italian books and Italian scholarship became steadily more prevalent in the curricula of English universities and on the shelves of English libraries. Italian scholars visited England more often and aspiring English scholars traveled more frequently to

Italy. For the historians who have devoted themselves to this question, a favorite for generations, the years from the later fifteenth through to the early sixteenth century constitute an important period in the intellectual history of the two regions. This was a 14 period when literary traditions which had their origins in Italy became firmly rooted in the English cultural context. It might even be considered a 'golden age' of Italian

1 o influence in England.

It should be emphasized at the start that this is not to suggest that England and

Italy were ever completely separate, least of all during the later Middle Ages. Medieval traditions of grammar and dialectic - more of this in later chapters - were not the exclusive possession of any one nation or region. The prevailing intellectual culture was truly international in scope. Books written in Italy found their way to England and

English books and English authors were known across Italy. In terms of the shape of their career or their influence upon later generations, theologians like John

(1266-1308) and (1288-1388) were not merely English but

European. Their lives as international scholars led them away from the British Isles to the international community of university and court - Scotus was buried in Cologne,

Ockham in Munich - and their books could be found on shelves in Paris and Rome as surely as in London.13 And at least during the first part of the fourteenth century,

England was tied to the continent not only by Latin but also by French, at that time still a favored vehicle for vernacular literature.14

12 Several titles could be mentioned. Some will be discussed later, but it should be noted here that this tradition goes back more than a century. See, for example, Lewis Einstein, The Italian Renaissance in England, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1903). Like the most recent students of the period, Einstein begins with Duke Humphrey's patronage of Italian scholarship in the second quarter of the fifteenth century. 13 Thomas Harris, The place of Duns Scotus in medieval thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927). Harris' book may be nearly a century old, but he still demonstrates, through attention to Scotus' influences and legacy, that he belongs to a truly international intellectual tradition. Takashi Shogimen's Ockham and political discourse in the (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) focuses on the political implications of Ockham's thought and demonstrates how Ockham's whole career was based around European issues. 14 Douglas Kibbee, For to speak French trewely: the French language in England, 1000-1600 (Philadelphia: J. Benjamins, 1991). W. Rothwell, "English and French in England after 1362," English studies, 82.6 (2001): 539-559. 15

And even in terms of the newer developments in Italian culture, developments associated with authors one day described as 'humanists', English writers were not entirely ignorant. The English poet (1343-1400?) displays a familiarity with the poetry of Petrarch (1304-74), who was celebrated in his own lifetime as one of the first of the new Italian scholars. Chaucer's translation certain Petrarchan verses is a famous and outstanding example of the continuing contact between the two cultures in the later fourteenth century.15 And of course it is also true that Petrarch's sonnets, written in his native Tuscan, were less important to the development of Italian humanism than his Latin prose. But the fact that Chaucer could have read the sonnets means that Petrarch's Latin works might also have been available in England at this time.

But if England was never perfectly isolated, the case can still be made that the first part of the fifteenth century marked the beginning of something different. This was the period when humanism, whose roots arguably reach back into the thirteenth century, had become firmly established in Italian courts and universities. A case can be made that this period, coinciding with the first decades of Valla's life, saw the emergence of a different order of influence and a new balance in the exchange of ideas. Whereas

England had contributed and received in equal measure during the Middle Ages, new ideas and disciplines began to move increasingly in one direction. From the beginning of the fifteenth century onward, it was Italian writers who came to England and Italian books that were acquired in English collections. The desire for Italian learning in

England, particularly the new disciplines associated with humanism, began to exceed any

15 In addition to his familiarity with Petrarch, Chaucer also seems to have known Boccaccio, on whose authority he often relies in reconstructing the mythology of Troy. George L. Hamilton, The indebtedness of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde to Guido delta Colonne's Historia Troiana (New York: Columbia University Press, 1903) 104 and 134. 16

corresponding interest on the part of Italians in English culture. At least in retrospect, the

first signs of the 'golden age' of Italian influence mentioned above are evident.

One of the first indications of the new situation can be seen in the number of

Italian humanists invited to England during Valla's lifetime. Never a static discipline, humanism was still developing rapidly. Among other things, the rediscovery of ancient

Greek that would characterize humanism for Valla and More was still in its first stages.

But the prestige of humanism was already sufficient to attract the attention of English

elites. Even at what would prove an early stage in the rise of Italian influence, England's political and cultural leaders were eager to employ any humanist willing to make the journey from Italy. This was the period when scholars both distinguished, such as

Valla's great rival Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1459), and undistinguished, including Piero

da Monte (1404-57), Lapo di Castiglionchio (1406-38), Tito Livio Frulovisi (fl. 1430-

50), and Antonio Beccaria (1400-1474), offered their literary services to English patrons.16 Italian scholars and Italian scholarship arrived in England in the form both of papal functionaries like Monte and Castiglionchio, and professional humanists such as

Bracciolini, Frulovisi, and Beccaria. They served some of the most influential political

figures of the day, including Duke Humphrey of Gloucester (1391-1447) and Cardinal

Henry Beaufort (1375-1447).17

16 For a study devoted explicitly to English patronage of Italian scholarship at this time, see Susan Saygin, Humphrey Duke of Gloucester and the English humanists (Leiden: Brill, 2002). Especially in these early cases, it was often the Catholic Church, an international institution, which brought Italians to England. 17 Poggio came at the bidding of Cardinal Beaufort and stayed in England from 1419 to 1422. His visit seems to have left little impression, either upon Poggio or upon English literary culture. Roberto Weiss, Humanism in England during the fifteenth century (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1967) 16. Sergio Rossi, Ricerche suU'umanesimo e sul rinascimento in Inghilterra (Milan: Societa editrice vita e pensiero, 1969) 7- 8. A papal collector and nuncio, Monte stayed in England for five years, from 1435-40. The Latin title of his treatise is De virtutum et vitiorum inter se . Saygin, 88-93, 177, and 190. Beccaria served Duke Humphrey for six years, handling Latin correspondence and composing orations in the service of his patron's diplomacy. Saygin, 259-261. 17

It was also at this time that the first Italian renderings of Greek literature found their way into English libraries. These included Leonardo Brum's (1369-1444) remarkably popular Latinized , Pier Candido Decembrio's (1399-1477) inferior translation of 's Republic, and Castiglionchio's version of 's popular Lives of the noble Greeks and Romans.18 The knowledge of Greek had been lost in England as it had been almost everywhere in Western Europe, but the prestige of the Greek classics was still great. Writers like Aristotle, Plato, Aesop and Homer had never been forgotten in the Latin West and so new translations were always welcome. Duke Humphrey provides a good example of this interest: among other things he served as a patron for

Decembrio's Republic. Duke Humphrey would have preferred to have been known as the patron of Brum's Politics, but this superior specimen of classical scholarship was ultimately dedicated to Eugenius IV (1431-47).19

And Duke Humphrey did not simply support the art of translation. He was also a patron for original productions such as Monte's The internal distinctions of virtue and vice, and Frulovisi's poem, celebrating the Duke's own life, the Humphroidos. And

Humphrey collected Italian humanist productions of every kind, whether translations from the Greek, new editions of Roman classics, and more recent books. On three occasions, 1439, 1441, and 1444, Duke Humphrey donated a total of 230 codices similar in their content to those that he had commissioned to Oxford University. These

Castiglionchio had used translations of the lives both to build his reputation in Italy and as his calling card among potential English patrons, ibid, 233. 19 Bruni had originally planned to dedicate his translation of Aristotle's Politics to Duke Humphrey, but he rededicated the work to Pope Eugenius IV. Decembrio perceived this as an opportunity to dedicate his Republic to Humphrey, ibid, 222-227. 18 donations would prove especially significant in light of later developments at that

20 institution.

The activity of patrons like Duke Humphrey is worth noting because it demonstrates an appreciation for the two features of Italian humanism that best account for increasing English interest over the following century. Whether in terms of the books that they purchased or the original works that they commissioned, English patrons set the pattern for the years to come. First, and this was probably most important at the beginning, Italian scholarship offered an accomplished Latin style, especially in prose, that could be applied to the needs either of diplomacy or of domestic politics. Second, and this became more important over time, familiarity with the Greek language offered access to both the pagan classics and the Christian scriptures. These were the two principal applications, it will be argued, of Italian scholarship in England.

And there can be no better example of these two applications than the English career of Tito Livio Frulovisi. Frulovisi was hardly the most accomplished Italian scholar to visit England. Susanne Saygin has argued that he left Italy at least in part to escape a market overcrowded with young humanists seeking employment.21 And yet it is

Frulovisi, oddly enough, who made the most distinctive contribution to English culture at this time. Although there is reason to doubt the success of the Humphroidos in political and artistic terms, it set an important precedent.22 Just as Frulovisi was succeeded by

Beccaria in handling Duke Humphrey's Latin correspondence, many other Italians followed Frulovisi's example in courting the favor of the English nobility through Latin

20 Saygin, 222-227, 88, 83, and 231. 21 ibid. 22 Saygin, 257-259. Saygin is uncertain about the circumstances of Frulovisi's resignation, but she thinks it is possible that Duke Humphrey was unhappy because the ineptly versified Humphroidos had not won him the kind of distinction he expected. 19 poetry. There were the papal functionaries Giovanni Gigli (1434-98) and Andrea

Ammonio (1478-1517), who each used their talents to compete in the praise of Henry

VII. And then there was Filippo Alberici, who offered the first Tudor monarch not an original poem but something even more precious: a translation of a much admired Greek classic.24 Very little is known about the anonymous "Italian poet" who received £20 from King Henry in 1496 and the all but anonymous Giovanni Opizio who presented his poems to the English monarch the following year, but it is clear that they also seem to have followed the path of English patronage blazed by Frulovisi.25

But Frulovisi's most notable achievement was probably his contribution to the great English tradition of royal biography. Even if it was occasioned by Duke

Humphrey's immediate political need to eulogize his late brother, Frulovisi's Life of

Henry Fhad a lasting legacy. Not only did it influence the historical dramas of

Shakespeare, but it also provides an important precedent for More's own History of

Richard III. Frulovisi created the tradition, memorably dramatized by Shakespeare, that

King Henry used his eloquence to inspire his soldiers before the battle of Agincourt.

Frulovisi's monarch is a royal humanist who finds power in persuasive speech. In addition, Frulovisi foreshadows More's account of a historic kingship in his self- conscious application of the techniques of the Roman historians to an English subject.

If nothing else, Frulovisi's Henry Fis an early example of the interest in Italian humanism as something more than a path to the Greek classics. Cast in a pure, classical idiom beyond the reach of any contemporary English writer, the Life of Henry V

23 ibid, 259-261. 24 R. Carlson, English humanist books: writers and patrons, manuscript and print, 1475-1525 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993) 20-22 and 25-26. 25 Carlson, 20-22. 26 Rossi, 20-24. 20 demonstrated the potential of humanist prose for advancing the specific political ends of the House of Lancaster. It is an early example of the only feature of Italian humanism that proved as sought after as the knowledge of Greek: Latin prose as a tool for diplomacy, propaganda, and education.

But if Italian influence was hardly negligible in those first decades, the middle of the fifteenth century saw a more certain sign of things to come. This was the period when the newer varieties of Italian scholarship began to seem valuable enough to pursue beyond England's boundaries. It was at this time that English humanists and would-be humanists began to study in Italy to cultivate the skills that had brought scholars like

Frulovisi and Beccaria to England. Moleyns (c. 1400-50), later bishop of Chicester and secretary to King Henry VI, made one of the earliest visits of this sort, perfecting a

97 fashionable prose style with the papal in Rome. Not long afterwards, Robert

Flemmyng (d. 1483) and John Free (c. 1430-65) pursued humanist learning more deliberately, joining Italians studying at Padua with the celebrated teacher Guarino da

Verona (1370-1460). The result was that Free and Flemmyng became first-rate Latinists according to contemporary Italian standards, an education they owed in part to the work of Lorenzo Valla. Free knew Valla well enough to praise his Latinity and Flemmyng owned a copy of Valla's On Latin style. And the two Englishmen acquired something still out of reach in their homeland: familiarity with ancient Greek. And so by this •jo measure their time in Italy can be accounted a success.

And elite patronage was hardly wanting for such visits either. It was Italian scholarship that was desired, regardless of whether the scholars were Italian or English. 27 A. Hicks, Who's who in late medieval England (London: Shepheard-Walwyn, 1991) 263. 28 Roberto Weiss, The spread of Italian Humanism (Tiptree, Essex: The Anchor Press, 1964) 98-102 and 106-111. For Free's interest in Valla, see Einstein, 22. 21

And many of the same patrons who invited humanists from Italy were just as ready to support English humanists prepared to acquire the new learning at its source. The most notable of these patrons was probably John Tiptoft, the first earl of Worcester (1427-70).

Tiptoft was such an enthusiastic patron of humanist studies because he was something of a humanist himself. Like Flemming and Free, Tiptoft had studied with Guarino, and so he appreciated scholarship of the new pattern. Tiptoft used his considerable wealth to offer financial support both to Italians and to those Englishmen willing to pursue an education at the best Italian schools.29 And while Tiptoft was not politically successful, he provided the pattern of future patronage: by the time More's father was born many other patrons had followed Tiptoft's example. The knowledge of Greek and the perfection of Latin prose were now widely considered worth the expense of sending students to acquire them in Italy.

But even this was probably less significant than what was taking place at roughly the same time on English soil. The decades immediately preceding More's birth saw the arrival of Greek scholars from the former , drawn by the promise of

English patronage that had long attracted Italians. The extent of their activities is uncertain: the were not a good time for such visits, and only the

Spartan Georgios Hermonymos (fl. 1475) seems to have stayed for any length of time.

But what matters is that the engagement of Byzantine scholars, either as teachers, translators or transcribers of Greek texts, can be understood as a step towards making the journeys of Flemmyng and Free unnecessary. It was one of several ways to bring the

29 Weiss, 109,114-116. J.B. Trapp, Erasmus, Colet, and More: the early Tudor humanists and their books (Dorchester: The , 1991) 3. 31 Weiss, 146-147. 22 sort of studies associated with Italy to England. If the Greek language is valuable enough to pursue in Italy, why not study it closer to home?

This motive can be seen at work with greater effect in the changes that took place in England's universities, changes designed to bring the kind of learning provided by

Guarino within reach of English students. This began at Oxford as early as the middle of the century. The study of the Latin classics was encouraged under the chancellorships of

Thomas Chaundler (1418-90) and (d. 1476). Among other things this involved engaging Italian scholars, notably the Milanese Stefano Surigone (fl. c.1475), to teach the deliberately anachronistic prose style that Italian humanists preferred to the

'impure' idioms of .32 There is little question that these reforms were successful, at least if success is measured by the efforts of Oxford's great rival

Cambridge to match them. By the turn of the century Cambridge was competing fiercely to attract foreign scholars. Cambridge students seeking fluency in humanist Latin could learn from Italian teachers like Lorenzo Traversagni da Savona and Gaio Auberino (both fl. c.1500).33

And Cambridge lagged only slightly behind Oxford in another area as well, namely the printing of Italian books. The collection of humanist literary productions had begun much earlier, with Duke Humphrey's acquisition of several recent titles, including some that he commissioned personally.34 But it fell to the universities, Oxford before any of her rivals, to begin not only to acquire Italian books but to use the new technology of printing to produce them. The Brescian poet Pietro Carmeliano (1451 -1527), later Latin

32 Weiss, 92. Rossi, 9. 33 Weiss, 92. 34 Saygin, 83, 280. Several of the books which Humphrey commissioned have already been mentioned here. 23

secretary to King Henry VII, was involved in the printing of books at Oxford for several

years. Carmeliano started as an editor for William Caxton (1422-92), who introduced printing to England. And in 1484 Carmeliano offered his services to Theodore Rood (fl.

1480's) and Thomas Hunt (fl.l480's), both printers in the university city.35 Only so

much is known about the books composed with an eye to the university presses, but those

titles that have been recorded confirm what has been said earlier about the two principal

applications of Italian scholarship in Italy. Among the few original works, there is

Surigone's On moral education (date uncertain), an elegant but hardly innovative

collection of ethical truisms.36 For the most part, the books sold at Oxford and somewhat

later at Cambridge reflect both of the interests mentioned above. They include

translations from the Greek, including Brum's ever popular Latinized Aristotle, works of

the noted educator Pier Paolo Vergerio the Elder (1370-1444), and recent Italian books

on Latin grammar and style.37

Valla's works are represented in the latter category, not only his classic Six books

on Latin style (1444), but a text that presents the former book in a mutilated and

adulterated form. Printed at Oxford in 1483, the Compendium of universal grammar

seems to have plagiarized not only Valla but another Italian, the grammarian Niccolo

Perotti (1429-80): progress for humanist scholarship in England if not for intellectual

property rights. And from one perspective the really remarkable thing about the

Compendium is not the plagiarism of Valla but of Perotti: his Fundamentals of grammar

5 Gilbert Tournoy, "Petrus Carmelianus" in Contemporaries of Erasmus, a biographical register of the Renaisance and Reformation, eds. Peter Bietenholz and Thomas B. Deutscher (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003) 1:270. 36 The Latin title of Surigone's book is De institucionibus boni viri libellus. Rossi has examined the still unedited manuscript, ms. 330 in Trinity College, and finds little original content, either in terms of Italian or English ethical treatises. Rossi, 9. 37 Weiss, 168, 175. 38 Valla's original title is Elegantiarum linguae Latinae libri sex. 24

(1473) had been published in Rome less than a decade earlier.39 The presence of Perotti's student Cornelio Vitelli (c. 1440-1500) in Oxford, possibly as a reader at New College from 1482-86, offers one explanation of how such recent Italian scholarship found its way to the university.40 But wherever the source of Perotti's Fundamentals, there could hardly be a better indication of how closely English institutions were keeping pace with the newest Italian texts and authors. By the end of the century even continental presses were working to meet English demand. One example is the production at Louvain in

1486 of a version of Perotti's Fundamentals that substitutes English passages for Italian in clarifying Latin words and expressions. l

If it was the goal of patrons and universities during the fifteenth century to establish a viable alternative to an Italian education on English soil, it is safe to argue, as many historians have, that this had been achieved by 1488. It was in this year that

More's older contemporary (1446?-1519) left for Italy already having learned something not only of prose but even of Greek.42 Schooling in

Italy was still desirable, hence Grocyn's decision to advance his education in ,

Rome, and Padua, but it was no longer essential. And Grocyn himself made a considerable contribution to rendering such a journey unnecessary in the future. Apart from amassing an outstanding library of more than one hundred printed books and helping to disseminate the work of younger humanists, including Erasmus, Grocyn made

Weiss, 169. The Oxford compendium, the Compendium totius grammaticae is not completely forward- looking: it also contains elements of the classic thirteenth-century grammar of Alexandre de Vildieu. See also Anthony Grafton, "Niccolo Perotti" in Contemporaries of Erasmus, 2:67. Weiss refers to Perotti's book as the Regula grammatices, but Grafton says that it was published in Rome as the Rudimenta grammaticae. 40 Gilbert Tournoy, "Cornelio Vitelli" in Contemporaries of Erasmus, 2:404. 41 Weiss, 1486. 42 Fritz Caspari, Humanism and the social order in Tudor England (New York: Teachers College Press, 1968)35-36. 25 his mark as a teacher. Shortly after returning from Italy in 1491, Grocyn established himself in Exeter College at Oxford, where he commenced regular lectures in Greek, the first at Oxford and the first in England.43

But while Grocyn's career is certainly significant, it is not the high water mark.

The interest in humanism, understood in the most literal sense as the emphasis upon a humanities curriculum founded on the two ancient languages, only increased in More's lifetime. This can be seen not only in the changes to long-established institutions, but in the foundation of new schools. There was Corpus Christi, a college founded at Oxford during the second decade of the sixteenth century, which gave priority from its inception to the sort of studies that in earlier generations had only been available in Italy. Of the three public lecturers attached to Corpus by its founder Bishop (c.1448-

1528), no less than two taught subjects associated with the new Italian learning:

Humanity, i.e. classical Latin, and Greek.44 According to the original design of Bishop

Foxe, the twenty fellows of Corpus Christi should all receive the full measure of humanist training. They should be familiar with "the works of the Latin poets, orators, and historians" to the point that they are "able readily to compose verse and write epistles in classical Latin." Lectures at Corpus Christi were to cover Greek authors such as

Lucian, Aristophanes, Theocritus, Euripides, Sophocles, Pindar, Hesiod, Demosthenes, and Thucydides. Among the Romans, students would study , , , ,

Terence, , Cicero, , , and . As for more recent Italian

J.B. Trapp, "Richard Foxe" in Contemporaries of Erasmus, 1:48. authors, the charter of Corpus Christi explicitly names both the classicist and poet

Politian (1454-94) and Valla himself.45

And although the lavish new college which Cardinal (1473?-

1530) had built at his old school, Oxford, between 1524 and 1529 was never so grand as its founder's dreams, this is true of many of Wolsey's unfulfilled designs. What matters is that Cardinal College, later Christ Church, also emphasized a classicizing humanities curriculum derived from Italian models. It is true that Wolsey's college, whose first purpose was the defense of religious orthodoxy, also made room for more traditional studies as well. Among other things, there would be lectures on the philosophy of Duns

Scotus. But any study of the ideas that had preceded the period of increased Italian influence took place side by side with education of the newer mold: lectures on Cicero,

Quintilian, and Plato, lectures on the oratory and poetry of ancient Greece and Rome.

And so the defense of orthodoxy would take place not by ignoring these disciplines, but by understanding them.46 And as for the first scholars to teach at his new college,

Wolsey observed the same rule in choosing professors that he followed in his recruitment of architects and artists to adorn his lavish palaces. In the former case as surely as the latter, Wolsey's desire to employ only the best meant employing either Italians or those educated in Italy.47

Joan Simon, Education and in Tudor England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966) 82-83. Einstein, 34. 46Simon, 138. 47 For an example of Wolsey's Italophilia, see the magnificent palace he constructed at Hampton Court. Not only the style, but even the subject matter of the art Wolsey commissioned was often Italianate, for example a tapestry derived from the imagery of Petrarch's Trionfi. Peter Gwyn, The king's cardinal: the rise and fall of Thomas Wolsey (London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1990) plates between pages 202 and 203. Simon Thurley, Hampton Court: a social and architectural history (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003). 27

And then there was the most famous new school of More's day, at least in the retrospective appreciation of modern historians: St. Paul's School in London. Founded in

1512 by More's friend John Colet (1467-1519), St. Paul's was significant in several respects. And while not everything can be discussed here, it is important to say something about Colet's tone in the school's constitution. Colet was perhaps the foremost English student of the Italian neo-Platonists, and this makes him an exceptional figure in his own right. But what matters here is how little he departs from the fashionable academic model in describing the purpose of his new school. Colet says that the moral and religious education at St. Paul's will be founded upon "good literature both

Latin and Greek." The boys will become masters of the pure, Italianate idiom which

Colet calls "the speech and the very Roman tongue which in the time of Tully and Sallust and Virgil and was used." The end of this fashionably classical curriculum, at once Christian in content and pagan in elegance of expression, is summed up in Colet's description of the authors the boys will read: "such as have the very Roman eloquence joined with wisdom specially Christian, authors that wrote their wisdom with clear and chaste Latin."49

Colet's words could be analyzed from many perspectives, but what is essential is that they confirm the impression created by the preceding paragraphs. Like many of his contemporaries, Colet emphasizes the practical academic disciplines derived from

Renaissance Italy. He talks about the boys acquiring a grasp of Greek and mastering "the very Roman eloquence," which is to say classical rhetoric and a 'correct' Latin style.

And in this sense what is most interesting is what Colet does not say. The most notable

John Colet, Statutes, MS Additional 6274 in the British Library, f.6. 28 thing here involves the aspects of Italian learning and thought which he does not mention.

As the preceding pages have demonstrated, Colet's praise of classical philology is hardly revolutionary. And yet it may still be the most aspect of his program.

For the most part, Colet's program is resolutely traditional, not simply in the context of the last hundred years, but of the last two or three hundred. Most of the pious platitudes could have been written, in fact had been written, long before the rise of interest in the 'new learning' of Italy. They reflect the ideals expressed by medieval educators for centuries. "For my intent," explains Colet, "is by this school specially to increase knowledge and worshipping of God and Our Lord Christ Jesus and good

Christian life and manners in the children."50 Although he proposes fashionable means,

Colet's stated aims could not be more traditional. This is especially evident in the final sentences of Colet's statutes. Here Colet reserves his strongest criticism not for the content but the expression of earlier curricula, the debased medieval Latin taught before the arrival of Italian texts and teachers. "All barbary and corruption, all Latin adulterate which ignorant blind fools brought into this world I utterly abbanish and exclude out of this school."51 It is not what past generations of schoolboys have learned that Colet proposes to reform so much as the crude and graceless language in which that learning has been presented.

This is not to say that Colet was himself concerned only with the traditional ends of medieval education, however those might be defined. As later chapters will show,

Colet was deeply engaged in the content of recent Italian thought. In fact he was arguably more concerned with this than with the mastery of Greek, which he never

51 ibid: 29 achieved, let alone with elegant Latin prose. Colet's study of (1433-99), the most celebrated of the Italian Neoplatonists, is well-documented, and it makes an interesting contrast with More's reading of Valla. In many ways, Colet bears the same relationship to Ficino that More does to Valla. Like More, Colet is an example of an

English writer who admired not simply the language or erudition of the latest Italian authors but also their original and challenging ideas.52

But whatever else may be said about Colet's interest in Italian philosophy - and more will be said in time - he betrays no sign of this in the constitution of his new school.

The Colet who writes the statutes of St. Paul's is not the Colet who in his youth traveled to Italy and corresponded with Ficino as a writing to his master. Colet never proposes introducing his boys to any of the original and challenging ideas associated with recent generations of Italian authors, whether Ficino's Florentine circle or any other. In promoting St. Paul's, Colet prefers to focus upon the most popular aspects of Italian culture. He emphasizes the studies that brought English students to Guarino's school in

Padua and that led Italians across the Alps and the English Channel to teach at Oxford and Cambridge. Only one Italian is even included on the school's reading list: Baptista

Mantuanus (1447-1516), a poet and Carmelite whose piety and criticism of ecclesiastical corruption rivaled Colet's own.53 Erasmus also makes an appearance on

Colet's booklist, but his two featured works, On the twofold abundance of words and matter and The education of a Christian, both serve to reinforce Colet's emphasis on

For a study built specifically around the relationship between Colet and Ficino see Sears Reynolds Jayne, John Colet and Marsilio Ficino (Westport Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1980). Gleason is especially interested in the correspondence between Ficino and Colet, although he does not think that the personal relationship between the two men went beyond the admiring letters Colet sent Ficino during his time in Italy. 53Colet, Statutes. 30 sophisticated Latin and simple piety.54 In short, St. Paul's School promises to nurture

Christian devotion through the perfection of Latin rhetoric: it does not offer an introduction to the philosophy of the Italian Renaissance.

And it is for this reason that Colet's statutes are a good place to end this brief survey of English flirtation with Italian culture. They would seem to confirm the impression created by the students who traveled to Italy, the Italian teachers invited to schools new and old, or the books of the academic presses. The statutes are all the more convincing since they were penned by a man like Colet, who was personally very interested in the original ideas associated with Renaissance Italy. The principal end of the various English explorations of Italian learning was the one spelled out in the constitution of St. Paul's: to apply the unrivaled classical scholarship of Italy to traditional moral, religious, and political ends. Italian scholarship was desired as a means to empower England's intellectual elite to express "wisdom specially Christian" in the idiom of the later . And there is no denying that there was a certain degree of interest in the content of recent Italian literature: Colet's youthful correspondence with Ficino is one example and More's as yet undiscussed interest in

Valla is another. But it is also clear that this is the exception and not the rule. As Colet understands in his framing of St. Paul's statutes, such concern with new Italian thought seems to have been limited, at least compared with the more widespread hunger for the practical applications of Latin eloquence.

For most educated Englishmen, then, the appeal of humanism may be easily characterized. Italian scholarship offered innovative means to traditional ends. The new

54 ibid. The Latin titles of these two works are, De duplici copia rerum et verborum and De institutione Christiani hominis. 31 learning of Italy was desired less for ideas than for reading and writing: reading the New

Testament and the Greek classics, and writing in polished classical Latin. In some cases, notably those of Carmeliano and Surigone, it was not even a new style of writing that was sought after but a new style of hand-writing. Sergio Rossi has observed that the two

Italian humanists left a lasting mark on the scripts employed in Oxford. It was in part through their work that the elegant humanist hand of Italy became the standard for both manuscripts and printed works in the university city.55 And while this may be an extreme case, it is a good example of the apparently superficial character of so much Italian influence. The perfection of a new script is a matter of form rather than content. It reflects an interest in Italian style and elegance over anything more substantial.

* * *

It goes without saying that the above account is a generalization; real life is rarely so tidy. But what matters is that this generalized picture is consistent with the specific details of the reception of Valla's work. It describes the individual situation of Valla's books in Tudor England very well. Valla was principally exploited by More's contemporaries for two things: a 'classical' Latin style and access to the meaning of

Greek literature, both pagan and sacred. The case of More and Utopia represents an obvious exception and will be discussed as such in the coming chapters. But apart from this notable example of direct and significant intellectual influence, Valla's reception in

More's England follows the familiar pattern. Outside of More and Utopia, it is difficult to discover much interest in On pleasure. And the same is true of Valla's other

55 Rossi, 10. 32 philosophical works, On free will, On the calling of the religious, the Encomium of St.

Thomas Aquinas. None of these attracted much interest, certainly not compared to

Valla's linguistic scholarship.

There is one conspicuous exception to this argument, a case in which Valla's words were used to advance a contemporary political and religious position. This exception will be addressed in a moment, but in general the rule seems to hold. It was to write better Latin and better to understand Greek authors, from St. Paul and the

Evangelists to Homer, Thucydides, and Aesop, that English readers turned to Valla. Like so much fifteenth-century Italian literature, Valla's books were employed as a means to the union of classical eloquence and Christian wisdom. They were very rarely desired as an introduction to his radical and original philosophical vision.

This pattern can already be seen in the case, mentioned briefly above, of the

Compendium of universal grammar printed at Oxford. To the extent that it was partly his, the Compendium is an example of how Valla's grammatical works fed the demand for instruction in humanist Latin. But neither is the Compendium the most important indication of such interest. In terms of English enthusiasm for Valla's grammatical learning, one book overshadows every other. Perhaps more than anything else, Valla owes his lasting fame in England and in Europe generally to the work which the Oxford

Compendium plagiarizes: Six books on Latin style (1435-44). On Latin style cut a conspicuous figure even in the crowded marketplace of Italian grammars. Printed in

England as early 1471 and in all likelihood copied long before then, On Latin style proved "enormously popular... and enormously accessible" in the England of More's 33 youth.56 In another somewhat earlier assessment, Valla's book "dominated grammatical and rhetorical studies" not only in England but across Western Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.57 By almost any standard, Valla's book proved successful over several generations and in several countries. It was the ideal text for an educated public eager to 'perfect' their prose according to the canons of classical usage.

And it is easy to understand the reasons for this success. On Latin style is a sprawling, encyclopedic, fiercely original work composed of brief entries on various linguistic problems. Taken as a whole, these entries offer the would-be humanist a wealth of very specific suggestions. This focus distinguishes On Latin style from so many of its competitors. Valla does not dwell on the broad outlines of grammar and syntax - which readers are expected to know - but instead explores the finer points of linguistic usage. On Latin style does not pretend to the function of a lexicon: there were enough of these already. Instead of defining individual words, the text explores the relationship between closely related terms: it clarifies, distinguishes, and organizes the classical Latin vocabulary. Valla observes minute semantic distinctions that even those with a basic training in classical Latin might overlook: which makes On Latin style the perfect text for any student, English or otherwise, aspiring to the heights of classical elegance.

And Valla's distinctions are often very subtle: in many cases he deals with points that would escape even an advanced Latinist. Sometimes Valla engages in a lengthy discussion of a crucial point of Latin usage. He weighs the small but significant variations in the verbs uti, fungi, and frui, three words related to using or benefiting from

56 Trapp, 4-5. Trapp further remarks, of On Latin style, that "even in English libraries and English booksellers' lists it is frequently met with." 57 Roberto Weiss, The spread of Italian Humanism (London: Hutchinson, 1964) 43. 34 a person or a thing. At other times he is admirably brief. His statement that perfidus characterizes "someone who betrays a trust, infidus someone who is unworthy of trust" is the best part of the entry on the two adjectives.59 Another of the more detailed entries explains the circular relationship of three verbs pertaining to wisdom: having it, losing it, and regaining it. Sapere, the principal term, means 'to be wise' or even 'to be in one's right mind', desipere means to 'to be out of one's right mind', and resipiscere completes the cycle meaning 'to regain one's right mind'.60 And so it is easy to see why English readers would appreciate On Latin style, whether read directly or through the Oxford

Compendium. Points like the ones above were just what aspiring Latinists would need: they are subtle, illuminating, and eminently practical. Valla's advice would only be more valuable in a country where qualified humanists were hard to come by and a book would often have to take the place of a living instructor.

And it is also worth noting that On Latin style conforms to the established pattern in the negative sense as well. What it does not contain is as revealing as what it does. If it is the perfect book for someone interested in the minutiae of Latin style, it would be less appealing to anyone trying to understand the original and challenging ideas that made Valla one of the most radical thinkers of his age. On Latin style contains little that is overtly religious or philosophical, something that distinguishes it from many of Valla's major works. For the most part it is what it appears at first glance: an insightful, accessible approach to reading and above all to writing classical Latin. That this was the most consistently popular of Valla's books says a great deal about the priorities of

58 Lorenzo Valla, Elegantiarum linguae Latinae libri sex in Opera omnia, reprint of the Basel edition of 1540 with an introduction by Eugenio Garin (Turin: Bottega D'Erasmo, 1962) 162. 59 ibid, 155. "Perfidus qui fidem violat: infidus qui non est fidendus." 60 ibid, 161-162. 35

English readers. Unlike a philosophical dialogue such as On pleasure or On free will, On

Latin style is not about ideas, at least not explicitly. It is the perfect book to approach

Italian humanism primarily or even exclusively as a method of reading and writing

classical Latin prose. It would make a good textbook for the more advanced of Colet's

students at St. Paul's, but it is hardly the most explicit guide to Valla's thought.

And while it is a slightly different case, another of Valla's more popular publications can be understood as having a similar appeal. Like On Latin style, it is a book for readers less interested in Valla's original ideas than his insight into the thoughts of others. This is Valla's monument of religious scholarship, the Annotations to the New

Testament (1444). In the years before 1516, when Erasmus offered England and Europe

an entirely revised Latin , Valla's 'corrections' were a valuable

improvement upon the accepted translation, the . They represented the best tool

available to readers literate in Latin and no other ancient language to investigate

Christianity's central text. Apart from providing Valla's usual philological insight into

the Greek and Latin languages, the Annotations help clarify many difficult biblical passages. It is an achievement which More acknowledged and praised as an important precedent for Erasmus' more thorough revision.61

And while it is also true that no attempt to clarify the established Latin translation

could have been free from philosophical or theological significance, Valla prefers to minimize this. He is never so explicit as Erasmus would later be in spelling out the

historical and doctrinal implications of his amendments to the version attributed to St.

Jerome. Valla never courts controversy so directly. For example, Valla never questions

61 "Adnotavit Valla utiliter quaedam..." Thomas More, Selected letters, ed. Elizabeth Rogers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961) 176. 36 the Vulgate's reading of Matthew 4:15 and Mark 1:15, two similar accounts of the preaching of Jesus as He prepares men and women for the coming Kingdom of God.

Valla surely knew that the traditional "poenitentiam agite" or 'do penance' was not a good rendering of the word attributed to Jesus in the Greek original. Valla would have seen that Jesus addresses the first audience of His preaching with an imperative verb,

"|o,sxavosixs," which is closer to 'repent' than 'do penance'. But he must also have understood that to criticize the Vulgate's reading of Matthew 4:15 and Mark 1:15 would seem an attack on the sacrament of penance which those passages were taken to support.

In fact later critics of the church would do just this: Erasmus and Martin Luther (1483-

1546) would point to the Vulgate's rendering of "usxavoeiTe" to question the prevailing understanding of penance.62 And so Valla says nothing about the fitness of the Vulgate here. He leaves the grossly inadequate translation of this crucial passage as it stands, leaving this crucial support for penance intact.

Without claiming that Valla's Annotations are perfectly innocuous, the book can still be understood in the same terms as On Latin style. It can still be read as a technical work that features Valla as a scholar rather than a philosopher or theologian. He offers up his knowledge of Greek in the service of Christian learning, but not where it might interfere too obviously with traditional piety or the needs of the institutional church. The

Annotations were read and copied in England, it may be argued, for the same reason that universities and wealthy patrons invited Italian and Byzantine scholars to teach Greek to

English students. If personal knowledge of the original language of St. Paul and the

62 The author of the present dissertation has published an article concerning the translation of Matthew 4:15 and Mark 1:15 by Erasmus. This article deals specifically with the influence exercised by On Latin style upon Erasmus' understanding of resipiscere. Brendan Cook, "The uses of respiscere in the Latin of Erasmus: the Gospels and Beyond" in Canadian Journal of History XLII (winter 2007): 397-410. 37

Gospels was the ideal, Valla's Annotations was the next best thing: a portable Hellenist.

For all the radical potential of such a project, realized more fully by Erasmus, the

Annotations are still relatively safe. They are still less of an introduction to Valla's revolutionary than an instrument of devotion, a shortcut to the Italian scholarship so eagerly desired.

And the same can be said about the third example of Valla's legacy in Tudor

England, his classical translations and commentaries. These are often overlooked in modern assessments of Valla's work in England or elsewhere, probably as a result of a general tendency to underestimate the sixteenth century's hunger for this particular type of learning. And it is true that interest in such translations waned very quickly during the latter half of the sixteenth century. As knowledge of Greek became more widespread, interest in Valla's Latin renderings of Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, and Aesop can only have declined. Those with a first-rate education would have preferred the Greek originals, and vernacular translations soon proliferated to satisfy those without Greek or

Latin learning of their own.

But this is not to overlook the role of Valla's translations during the intervening period when Latin was still far more prevalent than Greek and relatively few vernacular renderings existed. This was a period that extended well beyond More's own lifetime, and it is hard to overestimate the prestige the Greek classics held with even moderately educated readers. The popularity of Brum's Aristotle and Frulovisi's Plato in England has already been mentioned, and it is easy to see why Valla's work would have met the same demand. All four of Valla's principal translations were copied during the later fifteenth century and then printed in Venice during the sixteenth century. Valla's 38 translation of Thucydides had reached Oxford, side by side with Brum's Politics, by the third quarter of the fifteenth century. If anything the superiority of Valla's prose would have made his translations even more desirable. Unlike so many lesser writers, Valla could also offer a model of Latin elegance in the very words he chose for his translation.

This is especially true in the case of Valla's Iliad, which is written not in verse but in a prose style modeled on the oratory of Cicero and Quintilian. On the one hand, Valla does not strive for accuracy, nor even to reproduce the spirit of the original. He replaces the dramatic opening invocation "ai8s, Osa," or 'sing, goddess', with the prosaic statement "ego scripturus," T will write'. 64 The result is an Iliad as unlike the Iliad attributed to Homer as the professional orator of Quattrocento Italy and the half- legendary poet of Greek prehistory. On the other hand, these may have increased the appeal of Valla's adaptation. Few readers in England or Italy aspired to write Greek poetry, but interest in Latin prose never diminished. And in this sense,

Valla's Iliad is important not only as a translation from Greek into Latin but as a translation from poetry to prose. At the very least it can be said that Valla gives his contemporaries the Homer they want and deserve.

Weiss discovers Valla's Thucydides in the collection of William Grey (1415-1478), among other things the chancellor of Oxford and bishop of Ely. Sixteenth-century printings of Valla's classical translations and commentaries can be found in the , notably st. Dl 1138, an edition discussed further below. 64 A deluxe manuscript edition of Valla's translation can be found in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana in Vat. Lat. 3297. Ott. Lat. 1874 in the same collection is earlier, with a less elegant script and unfinished - among other things, the large decorative capitals have not been finished. In terms of accuracy, both manuscripts are imperfect. Ott. Lat. 1874 contains several obvious errors: e.g. vocabant for necabant in describing the fighting around the corpse of Patroclus in book XVII. Vat. Lat. 3297 seems to have been based upon marginal emendations in Ott. Lat. 1874: whenever a correction is written in the margins of the latter, the passage is emended in the former. But while Vat. Lat. 3297 is free from certain errors, including the one mentioned above, it is the work of a scribe without either the time or the ability to consult the Greek original. And so sometimes the 'corrections' to Ott. Lat. 1874 actually corrupt the text: e.g. the reading oi erinibus for crinibus suggests that the shield of Apollo in book XIV is decorated with images of the furies rather than with hairs, i.e. fringed with tassels. If the scribe had consulted even a debased Greek Iliad, he would almost certainly have known the latter reading was correct. 39

And while it may be true that Valla's renderings of the Greek classics would have seemed less relevant with the advent of regular Greek instruction and vernacular translations, the value of his single classical commentary would never have declined.

This is chiefly because the reading of Latin remained an essential element of English education long after the sixteenth century, ensuring that insight into difficult Roman authors was always welcome. Unlike the work of Thucydides and Herodotus, the

Catiline conspiracy of the Roman historian Sallust continued to be read in the original

Latin. And so Valla's extended discussion of Sallust's often elliptical language - Valla's commentary is lengthier than the text itself- remained a valuable tool. Like On Latin style and the Annotations, Valla's commentary distills the sort of learning that made living Italian scholars so sought after within the pages of a book.

But even apart from this, Valla's Sallust commentary (date unknown) became more relevant in the age of vernacular translations because it actually influenced those translations.65 To a lesser extent, this is true of Valla's translations from the Greek. His

Latin Iliad, for example, was consulted by George Chapman (c.1559-1634) when he rendered the Homeric epics into English heptameter (completed 1611). And while it is also true that Chapman uses Valla chiefly to provide a precedent for his own license with

Homer's literal meaning, this is still worth noting since it demonstrates the respect in which Valla continues to be held as a Hellenist.66 It bears remembering that Chapman is

The actual authorship of the Sallust commentary is still disputed and so the date of composition, presuming Valla really wrote it, is uncertain. Patricia J. Osmond, "The Valla Commentary on Sallust's Bellum Catilinae: Questions of Authenticity and Reception" in Renaissance commentaries, nodes neolatinae, Neolatin texts and studies, band 4 (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 2005). 66 Homer, The Iliad, trans. George Chapman, ed. Allardyce Nicoll (London: Routledge & Keegan Paul) 16- 17. In order to illustrate his argument that earlier translators have taken as much license, or more, with the original Greek, Chapman cites a passage from Valla's Latin version which he then discusses. "Wherein note if there be any such thing as most of this in Homer; yet only to express - as he thinks — Homer's 40 writing nearly one hundred years after the publication of Utopia, and so it is significant that Valla's prestige remains so high.

But if Valla's Greek translations are worth notice, his Sallust commentary represents something special. Here Valla's influence upon the English translation of a classical text is deep rather than superficial: it is deep enough that it must be accounted a significant part of his legacy in England. And because it is an aspect of Valla's influence that has never been discussed in any previous study, some detail is demanded here.

Valla's classical scholarship never reached a wider audience than when it was adapted in the work of the playwright and scholar, Thomas Heywood (c.1570-1641). Heywood's

English version of Sallust's history, The conspiracy of Catiline, was published in 1608 as part of a complete edition of the Roman historian's two extant works. Heywood's

Catiline is remarkable because it is more than a straight translation. It is a sort of hybrid of translation and commentary, a work of literary imitation. And it owes a great deal to

Valla and his commentary.

In one respect, Heywood's Sallust is typical of its time. In straying so often from the precise sense of the original, Heywood is only following the example of his contemporaries. He is using the same freedom invoked by Chapman in his translation of

Homer. What is more unusual is that when Heywood strays, he often travels in a direction indicated by Valla. Valla's commentary guides Heywood, leading him beyond

conceit for the more pleasure of the reader he uses this overplus: 'dum illi aedes, dum illi studes, dum pro illo satagis, dum ilium observas atque custodis, deorum commercium reliquisti.'" 67 Sallust, The two most worthy and notable histories which remaine unmained to posterity: the conspiracie of Cateline, undertaken against the of the Senate of Rome, and the warre which Iugurthfor manyyeares maintained against the same state, trans. Thomas Heywood, digital version of the 1608 edition produced for Early English Books Online (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan, Digital Library Production Service, 2001). This source will be referred to hereafter as 'Heywood'. http://quod.lib.umich.edu.mvaccess.librarv.utoronto.ca/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=eebo;idno=A11366 Sallust, Catilina: Iugurtha: Fragmenta Ampliora, ed. A. Kurfess (Zwickau: F. Ullman, 1957). 41 the literal meaning of Sallust's text to the point that his translation might better be described as a paraphrase. While it is normal for an English translation to employ more words than the Latin original, Heywood often expands Sallust's original expressions in a way that can only be explained in terms of the influence of Valla's commentary. Valla makes it possible for Heywood to write a translation, perhaps paraphrase would be the better description, in which a single word in the original can be turned into three, or four, or even six words. It is an act of interpretation which expands and elaborates single phrases out of all proportion to their original significance.

And expansion and elaboration, often based upon the very words of Valla's glosses, is a defining characteristic of Heywood's Catiline. Take the example of the single word armis, 'arms' or 'weapons'. Valla glosses this as armorum virtute, 'through the virtue (or courage) of arms', which allows Heywood to move from Sallust's original, solitary noun to the phrase "in the valor of their arms."69 And then there is one notable example of an entire phrase being expanded through Valla's commentary. The original here is "vita hominum sine cupiditate agebatur," 'human life was free from desire', a phrase which Valla leads Heywood to elaborate in two different ways. First Heywood reads the unadorned noun cupiditas, 'desire', in the light of Valla's gloss that the 'desire' in question concerns regnum or 'kingship'. This lets him make "ambitious desire of sovereignty." Next Heywood enriches Sallust's original expression with two words taken from Valla's gloss, the verb "invaserat," 'conquered', and the noun "animas,"

68 Of Valla's Sallust commentary, more than one manuscript is extant, but for the purposes of the present study, one was principally consulted, Dl 1138 in the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice. It includes not only Valla's commentary but also those of five other scholars. It was printed in Venice in 1565. Itwillbe referred to in future citations as Valla's Commentary and since there are two columns on each page, will be referred to not only in terms of recto and verso pages, but of columns 'a' and 'b'. This chapter represents the first time that the influence of Valla's commentary upon Heywood's translation has ever been adequately acknowledged. 69 Heywood, 17, Sallust 7, Valla's Commentary 7ra. 42

'spirits' or 'minds'. The result is a phrase far more expansive than the Roman historian's characteristically terse original: "the ambitious desire of sovereignty had not yet

70 enthralled men's minds to covetize."

Heywood does not always borrow so much from Valla, or indeed from any other source: he often confines himself to the bare bones of Sallust's expression. In the famous comparison of the contrasting characters of Julius and Cato the Younger,

Heywood takes nothing from Valla. He strives to be still terser and still more concise than Sallust, who is notorious even among Roman historians for this quality. But considering the translation as a whole, it would still be accurate to say that Heywood's

Catiline is as often an English expression of what Valla says that Sallust means as a simple translation of what Sallust actually says.

And so apart from its literary significance - it is an outstanding example of

English prose - Heywood's Sallust demonstrates the longevity and reach of Valla's classical scholarship. By uniting Sallust's text with Valla's commentary, Heywood helps brings Valla's interpretation of an important classical text to a new reading public. And so it may be said that Heywood provides one of the latest and also one of the most outstanding examples of the purely technical use of the scholarship associated with

Italian humanism. The fact that Heywood lived and wrote a full century after More is proof of the duration of Valla's influence. It demonstrates how long England's educated elite relied upon Italian classical scholarship to understand the legacy of the ancient world. Efforts might be made to import Italian scholars or to study at Italian schools, or

Heywood, 12. Sallust, 3. Valla's Commentary, lvb. 71Heywood, 54. Sallust, 46. Valla's Commentary, 37ra. 43 even to raise English institutions to Italian standards, but in some respects the achievements of Valla and his contemporaries had no substitute.

So far the pattern is clear. Valla seems to have been appreciated less for anything he says himself than for his ability to illuminate the words of other writers. English readers turned to Valla for a better grasp of Homer, Sallust, and even St. Paul. They read his books for challenging and practical advice on perfecting their own Latin expression.

In this sense, Valla's story mirrors the account of Italian humanist literature presented previously. The only difference is that the conclusion, that English audiences were concerned with form and not content, is even less equivocal. Few readers seem to have been as interested in Valla's ideas as in his eloquence. If they had been, a different set of books would have been printed, read and, as it will be seen in a moment, even translated.

On pleasure was never widely distributed and little appreciated because it did not meet the same need. English readers did not look to Valla for his philosophy, and so the preferred his more practical works.

And while the fourth example of Valla's role in More's England might seem an exception to this rule, a genuine case of Valla's ideas inspiring interest, this would be a mistake. Valla's arguments are important here, but only when they are wrenched violently from their original context. This fourth and final example is the crowning demonstration of the prevailing indifference to the content of Valla's thought. It is not a contradiction but an affirmation of what has been said before.

But this is premature. First something must be said about why the attention to

Valla's ideas might seem genuine. No survey of Valla's books in Tudor England could be complete without a mention of the printing, in English inl534, of the Declamation on 44 the fraudulent and falsely trusted donation of Constantine (1440). The 1534 edition of the Declamation is obviously important as an instance of the actual translation of Valla's books. This is very different from the use of Valla's scholarship by Heywood, Chapman, and others in translating or paraphrasing an ancient author. And as such, the

Declamation furnishes an important test of the argument presented in this chapter. It challenges the claim that the majority of English readers were not interested in what

Valla had to say. The only reason to translate the Declamation, let alone to distribute it widely, would seem to be an appreciation of Valla's own ideas.

Context is important here. Considered outside of any specific political situation, the Declamation might not seem like an exception. Someone who knew nothing about the politics of Henrican England might place the Declamation in same category as

Valla's other successes: one more scholarly exercise. And it is certainly an exceptional piece of scholarship. Like the Greek translations, the Sallust commentary, the

Annotations, and On Latin style, the Declamation presents Valla at his erudite best.

Although Valla did not silence the defenders of the 'Donation' as decisively as some historians have suggested, the Declamation was still an important blow against a famous support for papal claims of temporal power. Valla managed to increase already established doubts about the document in which the fourth-century Emperor Constantine allegedly laid the entire Western in the hands of . A few of the more stubborn apologists of papal power continued their appeal to the 'Donation of

Constantine' for at least another century, but Valla's arguments seemed decisive for

72 many.

72 Giovanni Antonazzi, Lorenzo Valla e lapolemica sulla donazione di Costantino (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1985) 123-125 and 127-128. Antonio Cortesi's incomplete Antivalla, published 45

And so it is easy to see why Valla's readers might have appreciated the

Declamation as scholarship alone. Valla used all of the skills that More's contemporaries valued most in the new Italian learning to demonstrate that the fabled 'Donation' was a forgery. Valla applies his familiarity with ancient history and the intricacies of Latin usage, even down to the most minute observations regarding individual verbal anachronisms. Valla takes issue with the term describing the paper on which the

'Donation' was written: he notes that pagina is a word associated with the leaves of a medieval codex rather than a proclamation from the dying days of the Roman Empire.

He questions the apparently anachronistic reference to "the churches of the blessed

Apostles Peter and Paul," observing that these churches could hardly have existed while

Rome was still officially pagan.

O Devil! Were there churches, that is to say temples, dedicated to Peter and Paul [at the dawn of the fourth century] in Rome? Who built them? Who would have dared construct them? 74

And even apart from this combination of historical erudition and simple common sense, Valla also deploys the power of his rhetoric. He uses the art of persuasive speech to make his case. This is why Valla would later rank the Declamation as his finest example of sustained oratory. Valla has Pope Sylvester, the Roman senators, and the

posthumously in 1464, mixes admiration for Valla with attacks on his ingratitude in attacking the Roman papacy which ultimately gave him employment. Not long after, Cardinal Giovanni Antonio Sangiorgi defended the 'Donation' more openly while attacking the "falsis dogmatibus," or 'deceptive notions' that underlie Valla's argument. 73 Valla, Defalso credita et ementita constantini donatione, ed. Wolfram Setz (Weimar: Herman Bohlaus Nachfolger, 1976) 135. "Chartane an membrana fuit pagina, in qua scripta haec sunt? Tametsi paginam vocamus alteram faciem ut dicunt folii, veluti quinternio habet folia dena, paginas vicenas. O rem inauditam et incredibilem!" 74 ibid, 110-111. "Ofurcifer! Ecclesiaene, id est templa Romae erant Petro et Paulo dicatae? Quiseas extruxerat? Quis aedificare ausus fuisset?" 46 heirs of Constantine all speak with their own voices. He imagines how each would respond to the hypothetical situation in which the emperor would consider 'donating' half of his territory to the Roman church. Valla adopts the perspective of each of the principal characters to build his argument that the papacy would never have wanted any part in the

Western Empire.75 And there can be no doubt that this would have added to the

Declamation's appeal among English readers interested in the practical disciplines of

Italian humanism. They would have found it ideal either in terms of understanding the historical development of the Latin language or in sharpening the persuasive edge of their own arguments.

The only difficulty with setting Valla's Declamation within the familiar pattern involves the circumstance mentioned above: the printing of an English translation in

1534. The problem runs deeper than the self-evident fact that those who read the

Declamation in English would not benefit from Valla's stylistic refinement or his efforts to illuminate the historical development of the Latin language. This is enough to indicate that not all of Valla's readers were would-be humanists, but it is only a start. The real problem begins with the context of the translation. The English rendering was printed under the supervision of More's successor as , (c.1485-

1540), with a mind to its utility as Reformation propaganda. Valla's Declamation was one of several works that Cromwell had printed and translated at this time because it seemed that they could assist King Henry VIII in his efforts to abolish the pope's authority over the English church.76

75 Valla speaks of the work as "my oration on the 'donation' of Constantine, the most truly oratorical or all my writings." "Orationem meam de donatione Constantini, qua nihil magis oratorium scripsi. " Valla, Correspondence, 252. 76 R.W. Beckingsale, Thomas Cromwell: Tudor Minister (Hong Kong: MacMillan Press, 1978) 128. 47

This supposition seems more likely taking into account what is known of the translator of the Declamation, one William Marshall (fl. 1530's). Marshall is an obscure figure in some respects, but it is known that Cromwell also commissioned him to translate Marsilio of Padua's (C.1280-C.1343) Defender of the (1324). In terms of style, the Defender of the peace has very little in common with Valla's Declamation. It is not an example of Italian humanism in the sense that it owes more to late-medieval dialectic than to classical oratory. On the other hand, Marsilio's book can be placed in the same category as Valla's in its potential to embarrass the Roman papacy. Marsilio argues on philosophical grounds that the have exceeded their legitimate authority within the Catholic Church.77 And Marshall was definitely thinking about embarrassing the papacy: that much is clear. There is his statement in a letter regarding the potential of

Valla's Declamation for antipapal propaganda. "Surely I think there was never better book made and set forth for the defacing of the pope of Rome than this."78

It seems obvious that Cromwell wanted the Declamation translated from the sort of considerations that Marshall mentions. As in the case oi Defender of the peace,

Cromwell was thinking of the immediate political benefit for his sovereign of making the book available in English. What better way to embarrass the papacy at a time when the

English church was becoming a royal possession? And so it can be argued that Cromwell did not have Marshall's translation published for Valla's outstanding scholarship or rhetoric. The essential thing for Cromwell, Marshall, and King Henry was the implication of Valla's scholarship: they were genuinely interested in the argument that so

77 Marsilus of Padua, Defensor pads (Cambridge, Mass: University of Toronto Press, 1980). 78 Olga Zorzi Pugliese, "English translations from the Italian humanists," Italica, 50.3 (autumn 1973): 408- 434. James McConica, English humanists and Reformation politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965). 48 much skillful rhetoric served to advance. It was for the conclusion that papal claims to temporal authority were founded on fraud that Valla's Declamation was translated, printed, and read. Translation into English would obscure Valla's eloquence, but then no one interested chiefly in the finer points of Latin style would read the Declamation in

English. And this is why the English Declamation seems to present an exception. Here if nowhere else, is a book that English readers valued more for what Valla had to say than how he said it.

But this may also be misleading. The publication of the English Declamation is not so damaging to the argument that has been presented here. In some respects it even supports it. Because while it may not have been intended to meet the demand for Valla's classical scholarship, except perhaps if scholarship is understood in a very crude sense, neither is it an expression of interest in Valla's ideas. In fact the English Declamation is an example of an almost willful indifference to the political and religious opinions that

Valla expresses. If anything, the translation and printing of the Declamation provide one more demonstration, if it were needed, of how little attention was paid to what Valla and other Italian humanists had to say. Understood in the historical context of the early

English Reformation, there is no reason to conclude that either Cromwell or the readers of the Declamation were concerned with what Valla said or believed. The printing and presumably the reading of the Declamation as anti-papal propaganda both suggest an indifference to authorial intentions. The Declamation can only be read in the spirit in which Marshall translated it and Cromwell had it printed by ignoring what Valla actually says. 49

The problem is simple: everyone who read the Declamation in 1534, from King

Henry on down, would have read Valla's book in terms of the burning question of the day. Is the pope the legitimate ruler of the universal church in Europe? Or is he the

Antichrist, the usurper of the rightful place of secular authorities and the princes of the church? With so many European and English reformers painting the pope and the entire institutional church in the blackest possible hues, such questions would have been difficult to avoid. Whether the alternative was royal authority, which King Henry obviously favored, or a church council, the issue of the day was not the power of the pope but whether the papacy as an institution should even exist. And if the context of the publication were not enough, Marshall encourages this reading through his introduction and marginal notes. Apart from translating Valla's text, Marshall includes the introduction from an earlier Latin edition by Ulrich von Hutten (1488-1523), a German humanist known as a radical enemy of both the institution of the papacy and the entire

70

Roman Catholic Church. And so while it would be natural for an English reader in

1534 to take Valla's Declamation as an attack on the papacy, Hutten's introduction makes this inevitable. Hutten uses the introduction to Valla's decades-old book as a platform for more recent themes. He contrasts the characters of Jesus and the popes in a manner that would have been familiar for his contemporaries.

[The popes] did not follow Christ, who gave peace to his disciples and left the same as inheritance unto them, saying these words: "my peace I do give to you, my peace I do leave to you." And thereby also they were not His vicars Whose stead and office they did not keep or fulfill, for the Kingdom of God is to keep peace, but rather they were clean contrary and enemies to Christ, Whose studies and works they have despised, and have followed a contrary kind or manner of

79 Hutten's printing of the Declamation in 1517 is thought to have been the first printing of a work that Valla, who entered the service of the papacy not long after writing it, would have gladly forgot. Barbara Konneker, "Ulrich von Hutten," Contemporaries of Erasmus, 1:217-218. Trapp, 5. 50

living. For peace belongeth to Him and they desired and followed wars and battles. He studied to save men by His doctrine and teaching, and they labored busily to kill and destroy men with weapons of war. He showed His kingdom to be heavenly and they first of all and most chiefly sought the empires of the world. Therefore neither they were blessed because they were not peaceable or on maintainers of peace. Neither were they the sons of God.

This is classic Lutheran rhetoric, or perhaps it could be called militant Erasmian rhetoric. It is the standard argument of papal critics across Europe, and certainly many

English reformers had said similar things. And in one sense this is the point. Even without Marshall's inclusion of Hutten's introduction, many English readers would still have understood the Declamation in the same sense. The very similar criticisms being raised in other pamphlets and books would have conditioned their reading in the same

fashion that Hutten's words did. In Thomas Cromwell's England it was almost inevitable

that Valla's treatise be taken as one more argument to diminish the role of the papacy or

even abolish it altogether. Like every book that outlasts its author, the Declamation was

contemporized. It was treated as if it had been written with the historical situation of its

sixteenth-century readers in mind rather than the concerns of its fifteenth-century author.

The problem with this reading, which is to say the problem with reading the

Declamation 'against' the papacy in the simplest sense, is one that Valla identifies

himself. This is neither Valla's purpose nor his argument. Like Hutten before him,

Cromwell was eager to distribute any book that could be read as an attack upon the

institution of the papacy or even the spiritual legitimacy of the Catholic Church as a

whole. But Valla did not write the Declamation to meet the needs of Henry VIII or his

Valla, A Treatise of the donation given unto Sylvester Pope of Rome by Constantine, ed. with an introduction by Ulrich von Hutten and trans. William Marshall, facsimile of the 1534 London edition (Norwood, NJ: Walter J. Johnson Inc, 1979) 9V. Marshall also includes helpful marginal notes such as the following: "popes not shepherds but wolves, not keepers of Christ's flock but betrayers of them." 13r. 51 chancellor. It bears remembering that Valla wrote the Declamation for another patron,

Alfonso the Magnificent, who among his other titles had laid claim to the title of king of

Naples. Alfonso's conflict with Pope Eugenius IV involved what the pope considered his traditional right to award the kingdom as a papal fief. Pope Eugenius had decided to bestow Naples upon another claimant, Rene of Anjou (1409-80).81 And so while Alfonso was also at odds with the papacy, his conflict was of a very different order from the

English Reformation of Henry VIII. Alfonso was not struggling against the religious authority of the pope but against the pope's secular power. Where Henry was trying to establish his own church, Alfonso was merely looking for a plausible rebuttal to the argument that Naples was the pope's to dispose as a fief of the papal empire.

The fact that Valla's patron was only concerned with papal claims to secular lordship is important because it explains the limited scope of Valla's argument. As Valla observes himself some years after writing the Declamation, the book is not an attack on the papacy as a purely religious institution. Valla affirms throughout the Declamation that the pope, rather than a council or an emperor, is the legitimate head of the Catholic

Church. He takes the legitimacy of both the office and the institution as a whole for granted. And Valla had certainly heard the contrary argument. The Conciliarist movement, which made the members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy the real authority in the Catholic Church, reached its peak during Valla's lifetime. Valla lived in a period when the Council of Constance, which ran from 1414-18, had temporarily imposed unprecedented limits upon papal authority. Between them, the decrees Haec sancta and

Frequens had mandated both that the pope was subject to the authority of a church

81 Gill, Eugenius IV: pope of Christian union (Westminster, Maryland: Newman Press, 1961) 87-88 and 149-150. 52 council and that the popes were bound to call regular councils for the governance of church affairs.82

And Valla would certainly have known Marsilio of Padua's Defender of the peace, the work that was also translated by Marshall and published by Cromwell at about the same time as the Declamation. He would have been familiar with Marsilio's even more sweeping charges. Like the Conciliarists, Marsilio maintains that the popes have abused their power within the church itself: he says that they have wielded excessive authority not merely over secular affairs but over religion. Unlike the Conciliarists,

Marsilio argues that the popes should be stripped of practically all authority: priests and bishops should be answerable to secular and religious orthodoxy should be enforced by the state.83 But while Valla was aware of Marsilio's arguments and the claims of the Conciliarists - he actually boasts that he could have made the case against papal power with greater eloquence - he ignores them in the Declamation. He never so much as mentions such claims since they are irrelevant to his patron's needs. It does not matter to Alfonso whether a council rules the church, or indeed whether he should control the appointment of bishops and the persecution of heretics within his own territory. All that matters for Alfonso's immediate interests is that the pope has no right to award

Naples to Rene of Anjou. And so Valla makes the attack on the pope's political power the central thrust of his argument and leaves papal authority over religion intact.

82 Thomas M. Izbicki, "Councils of the Catholic Reformation: a historical survey" in The church, the councils, and reform: the legacy of the fifteenth century, eds. Gerald Christanson, Thomas M. Izbicki, and Christopher M. Bellitto (Dexter, Michigan: Catholic University of America Press, 2008) 7-11. 83 Defensor pads. 84 Valla's boast is as follows. "I have not written against the pope, although in learning and the eloquence of my pen I could do as much, I will openly declare, as anyone who now or in the past attended the Council of Basel." "Neque adversus papam scripsi, cum in scribendo atque in omni doctrina tantum possem quantum, ut apertissime dicam, quivis unus potuit illorum qui Basileae aut sunt aut fuerunt." Valla, Correspondence, 247. 53

But while Valla declines to challenge the belief that the pope is the head of the

Catholic Church, he does not ignore it either. On the contrary, Valla wields the notion of the pope's spiritual dignity as his central argument. He presses it to the point that it even overshadows his philological evidence. Perhaps with a mind to possible future employment in the papal curia - sought and accepted only a few years later - Valla is careful to argue against the 'Donation' in a way that does not insult the occupant of St.

Peter's chair. Instead he makes a case that is arguably flattering to the papacy. Valla drives this argument home in the oration that he places in the mouth of Pope Sylvester I.

In responding to a hypothetical offer of political power from the Emperor Constantine,

Sylvester declines on the ground that as pope he has better things to worry about. It is not that the papacy is unworthy of an earthly empire, Valla has Pope Sylvester explain, but that an earthly empire is unworthy of the papacy. It is because the pope is Christ's representative on earth and charged with a responsibility beyond any temporal sovereign that it is absurd to imagine Sylvester I accepting Constantine's 'Donation'. Even assuming such an offer had been made, it would have been beneath the pope's spiritual dignity to accept it: not if it meant involvement in the quotidian distractions of secular politics. The successor of Peter has a church to direct, the whole body of the Christian faithful. How could he manage an empire as well?

And this is why it is so hard to argue that Cromwell's printing of the Declamation reflects a genuine interest in what Valla is saying. The Declamation is only valuable to

Cromwell and his sovereign if it is read in a very different spirit from the one which its author and his current patron intended. Valla writes against the pope's political power, it is true, but he uses arguments that actually contradict the thrust of so much Reformation

5 De Constantini donatione, 155-158. 54 propaganda. Valla undermines the papacy's claim to the Western Empire without denying within the Western Church: in fact he even emphasizes the pope's religious authority. To read this according to Cromwell's intention as an argument for the policies of Henry VIII requires more than a little imagination. It involves a leap from Valla's position, that the pope is too spiritual for an earthly kingdom, to the position of so much Reformation propaganda, that the pope is the

Antichrist. The Declamation is only useful if it is read not in the spirit of its author but in the spirit of Martin Luther or another equally radical reformer. At the very least,

Cromwell must hope that readers will confuse Valla's Declamation with the challenge to the pope's religious authority in Marsilio's Defender of the peace.

It is for this reason that the translation and printing of the Declamation does not contradict the argument proposed in this chapter. It is an important element in the story of the Henri can Reformation, but it has little to do with the English Renaissance. The relative popularity of the English Declamation during the 1530's is still consistent with widespread indifference to the intellectual content of Valla's work. If anything, it might actually reinforce the notion that the Valla who mattered in More's England was Valla the classical scholar. At best, Cromwell's use of the Declamation to embarrass the papacy of Clement VII (1523-34) and Paul III (1534-49) demonstrates an appreciation for the practical applications of Valla's Latinity and for whatever rhetorical flair could survive translation. At worst, the casual way that the Declamation was twisted to serve a contemporary political agenda suggests an attitude far removed from a sincere appreciation of Valla's ideas. The sixteenth-century reader who takes the Declamation as a confirmation of the policies of Henry VIII or even the teachings of Martin Luther is not 55 really interested in what Valla has to say. He is no different in this respect from the classicist who confines his reading to On Latin style, the Sallust commentary, or the translations from the Greek. In both cases, Valla is being used as a means towards a set of narrow philological ends, with little appearance of interest in his loftier philosophical goals.

And this is what makes the Declamation the exception that proves the rule, the example that confirms what has been observed before. The one book that is not widely read either to illuminate an ancient text or to improve Latin prose style is only considered interesting when it receives an interpretation that is foreign or perhaps even contrary to authorial intentions. What better proof could there be that the appeal of Valla's work, and of Italian humanism generally, was primarily technical? What better confirmation of the thesis that like most Italian authors, Valla was read less for what he said than for how he said it?

So far then, it would not seem difficult to explain Valla's influence in England in the terms set out above. Each of the works mentioned here can be read as a confirmation of the thesis presented in this chapter. But is the matter really that simple? Hardly. The coming chapters are built around perhaps the single most notable exception to the rule that Valla, like so many Italians, was appreciated as a scholar and not as an original thinker. These chapters deal with an outstanding example of an English reader approaching Valla for more than compelling rhetoric or subtle tricks of philology, or even the knowledge of Greek literature. It is a case of genuine interest in Valla's challenging, radical ideas. The coming chapters will demonstrate that Thomas More knew and read

On pleasure, and they will show that More's reading of this book influenced Utopia. 56

They will also explore how More makes Utopia a vehicle for his response to Valla's ideas. And so the remainder of this study will involve a detailed discussion of the case that at the very least modifies and perhaps even outright contradicts the pattern that has been presented in the preceding pages.

And there should be little question as to why On pleasure breaks the established pattern. On pleasure is precisely the sort of book that it has been argued was rarely or never read in More's England. It is a book that has its greatest appeal for the reader interested in more than polished Latin prose or access to Greek literature. It is a book for someone who actually wants to learn what Valla, and not Sallust, Homer, or the

Evangelists have to say. Unlike so many of Valla's books, On pleasure is not simply about language, although linguistic concerns are hardly absent. On pleasure is also about ethics. It deals with happiness and virtue, with wisdom human and divine, with life and death and the ultimate end of the human condition. Valla does not write merely as a scholar illuminating the meaning of other writers, although he invokes many names,

Christian and pagan, in support of his argument. Instead Valla assumes his favorite role.

He presents himself as the champion of truth, the man who exposes and overturns long- established falsehoods and who reaffirms the half-forgotten foundations of Christian belief. That More not only read a book like On pleasure, but that he even made it a model for Utopia represents a significant exception in the story of Valla's reception in

England.

And this is part of what the present chapter was intended to establish. In order to appreciate More's relationship with Valla, it is necessary to emphasize its exceptional character. More's reading of On pleasure matters because it has so few parallels. It is 57

precisely because scarcely any of his contemporaries showed an interest in this aspect of

Valla's work, or in this aspect of Italian humanism generally, that More's response to On pleasure deserves closer scrutiny. Without the general rule that English readers saw

Italian learning as little more than a passport to eloquence and the meaning of ancient

books, it would be harder to justify the attention that will be given to the story of On pleasure and Utopia. More's reading of Valla is not only one of the most outstanding

examples of English engagement with Italian ideas, it is one of the only examples. The

exception often provides insight into the rule, and a closer look at More's relationship

with Valla offers an opportunity to test what has been said in the present chapter. It is an

opportunity to ask why More responds to Valla's ideas, to ask why On pleasure appeals

to More when its virtues were lost on so many of More's contemporaries. It is an

opportunity to ask why More might seem different from the majority of his

contemporaries.

But this may be looking too far ahead. Before anything else, it is necessary to

demonstrate the essentially unprecedented claim upon which all of this is based. Before

speculating regarding the relationship between Utopia and On pleasure, it is necessary to

prove that a relationship exists. It is with this in mind that the following chapter will

approach some of the issues explored in On pleasure. It should be obvious that the very

scale of On pleasure precludes any complete or definitive examination, but it is necessary

to discuss the arguments that are most relevant to Utopia. And in fact the coming

analysis actually has two purposes: first to demonstrate that the connection between the

two books is real, and second to understand its consequences. 58

This will involve a close reading of many passages and an attention to the details of Valla's language and ideas. Unlike so many of his contemporaries, More was deeply concerned with the content of On pleasure: its themes, arguments, and even individual words all matter to him. This makes it inevitable that this study must display an equal concern with Valla's expression, an equal attention to linguistic details. A literary reading of On pleasure is essential because More's reading was a literary reading. Only a careful examination of what Valla is trying to say can explain why More found his work so important and so urgent. And so it falls to the next chapter to explore On pleasure and to set out the book's relevant themes. 59

CHAPTER TWO: ON PLEASURE AND MEDIEVAL ETHICS

Nothing in this study is arguably so novel as the claim that Thomas More read On pleasure. If it is not entirely unprecedented, and a few precedents will be discussed in the

next chapter, it is nearly so. Although Utopia has rarely been neglected during the last

five hundred years, there have been few hints that Lorenzo Valla influenced More's

book: certainly no one has ever built a systematic argument. And so the principal

question that this chapter and the next must answer is complicated by a second. Before

asking how it can be proven that More read On pleasure, it is natural to inquire why no

one has offered such a proof before. In fact the two questions are intimately related.

Understanding why no previous scholar has demonstrated the relationship between

Utopia and On pleasure makes it easier to understand how it will be proven now. A

brief answer to the question of 'why?' will help justify the solution to the question of

'how?' that will follow.

The short answer for anyone wondering why Valla's influence on Utopia has

been neglected so long is this: Valla has not received the attention he deserves. Valla's

influence upon More and his books has been underestimated because the relevant aspects

of Valla's ideas have been too little explored. Utopia has certainly been studied often

enough, but to understand two writers and two books each requires scrutiny. And this is

why the present chapter will explore the relevant arguments of On pleasure. Neglect of

Valla's book has obscured his influence upon More, and so only careful attention to what

Valla says can bring their relationship to light. 60

And what does Valla say? What is his purpose in writing On pleasure? To start with, it is worth mentioning that as a professional writer, Valla's first purpose with every book was to advance his career. After finding casual employment at several Italian universities, he settled at the court of King Alfonso of Naples in 1433. Valla eventually found his way back to his native city of Rome, where he ended his life as an apostolic secretary to (1447-55) and Calixtus III (1455-58).86 So it is worth pointing out from the start that when Valla is not attending to the needs of his present patron - see the Declamation written for Alfonso - he is writing with a mind to the possibility of future patronage. Valla needed powerful patrons not only to provide him with a livelihood but sometimes even to protect his life.

But having said this, it is also true that Valla chose his career over something safer or more lucrative in part because he really had something to say. And nearly all of

Valla's books have been written with a larger purpose in mind. Valla is one of those authors who locates each individual book within the larger context of his life's work. In discussing his literary output, Valla often refers to its ratio, by which he means the systematic reasoning that assigns various individual works their place in the larger whole.87 In letters intended not only for his individual correspondents but also the larger reading public, Valla lists the works that matter to him. His list includes exercises in philology like On Latin style and the Annotations, his critique of contemporary logic, A new foundation for dialectic and philosophy, an essay in contemporary history, the

86 For a summary of the basic facts of Valla's career see Mario Fois, II pensiero Cristiano di Lorenzo Valla ne quadro storico-culturale del suo ambiente (Rome: Libreria Editrice dell' Universita Gregoriana, 1969). 87 For examples of this use oi ratio, see the characteristic phrases "...cum me ad rationem refero atque ad mea quae condidi opera... " - "...when I reconsider the principles upon which my works have been founded..." and "...nihil mihi tanti esse potest ut rationem quam habeo cum studiis vel paululum intermittam..." - "...nothing could matter enough to me that it could interrupt the program of my studies even briefly..." Valla, Correspondence, 214-215 and 216. 61

History of King Ferdinand ofAragon, a dialogue on theology, On free will, and of course

On pleasure. In each of his major works, Valla writes as a man who knows what he wants his life to mean and who understands how everything he has written contributes to his final purpose.

And while this purpose might be easy to describe, it is certainly difficult to believe. Valla's goal in all but his most ephemeral writing is nothing less than a complete reinvention of the humanities. As he declares in one of the apologetic letters conceived to defend his program, Valla is trying "[to] overturn every branch of ancient wisdom." To borrow the title from his book on the branch of philosophy known as dialectic, it was Valla's intention to place every recognized division of the humanities upon 'a new foundation'. Logic, grammar, history, theology, poetry, ethics: Valla is prepared to revise everything. In the same letter quoted above, Valla actually boasts about this. He says that he is ready to contradict every recognized authority and every element of conventional wisdom.

You have seen how I disagree with everyone in my books which deal with ethics, On the true good. I also do this in my books On a new foundation of philosophy... Meanwhile I have mocked , among others, concerning dialectic, in physics I expose countless fantasies of the philosophers. I have demonstrated that the whole of metaphysics consists in a few words, that it trades not in reality but names, names which Aristotle, in his astounding idiocy, did not know. I have shown that all those terms, concrete, abstract, substance, essence, existence, being, are nothing but airy delusions, and that if Aristotle had understood this, he would never have planted the seeds of madness in so many minds... Add to this my books On Latin style, where I reproach Priscian, Severus, Donatus, Macrobius, , Marcellus, the legal scholars, , - who escapes reproach? Nor could I have done otherwise without compromising

Valla lists these works in Letter 13 and 17 of his Correspondence. A new foundation of dialectic and philosophy is a translation of Valla's title Repastinatio dialedicae et philosophiae, a work which he also refers to as his Dialedicae disputationes, 'arguments concerning dialectic'. 89Valla, Correspondence, 215. "Qui omnem veterum sapientiam meis operibus everto, qui possum in minoribus rebus et, ut sic dicam, extraordinariis opinionibus non libere loqui?" 62

the integrity of the work. I have.... composed commentaries on Cicero and Quintilian that exalted Quintilian above Cicero, Demosthenes, and Homer himself. And this is why I consider those who are not devoted to Quintilian bereft of eloquence, which includes nearly all of our modern manhood.90

As the above passage demonstrates, Valla does little to conceal his radicalism. As a result the scale of his intentions is widely acknowledged by Valla scholars, even those who agree on little else. Few modern students of Valla's life and works would contest the statement of Mario Fois in his great study II pensiero Cristiano di Lorenzo Valla.

"Valla did not merely break with the Middle Ages in terms of literature and language... the roots of his rebellion go deeper... and he stands in opposition to the entire ruling philosophy."91 Nor were Valla's contemporaries slow to note this deliberate and systematic iconoclasm. Insufficient respect for tradition is first among the charges that

Valla's many enemies among Italian men of letters make against him. Valla's great rival

Francesco Filelfo (1398-1481) indicates something in his very criticism of the overwhelming scale of Valla's ambitions. Apart from his obvious hostility, Filelfo's characterization is remarkably similar to Valla's own. Like Valla himself, and like Fois

ibid 215-216. "Vidisti in libns De vero bono, quod ad mores pertmet, me ab omnibus dissentire, quod etiam in libns De institutwne philosophic feci, in quibus unam feci virtutem, quae est fortitudo, mhilque differre a prudentia mahtiam, nee ullam differentiam inter cardinales theologicasque virtutes, et multa huiusmodi. Preterea de dialectica, ita ut Boetium, nedum alios, dendeam, de naturalibus somniare philosophos in plensque ostendo. Metaphysicam totam constare m paucuhs verbis, nee in rebus versari, sed in vocibus, easque voces ab Aristotele per miram hebetudinem ignoran; omniaque ilia vocabula, 'concretum', 'abstractum', 'quiditas', 'essentia', 'esse', 'ens', frenetica plane esse nulliusque pondens quae si llle intellexisset, nunquam tantam alns insaniendi matenam prebuisset Haec ergo cum senpsenm, quid senbere verebor"7 Adde hue hbros De elegantia linguae latinae, in quibus Pnscianum, Servium, Donatum, Macrobium, Aulum Gellium, Marcellum, rurisconsultos, Lactantium, Hieronymum - quos novP - reprehendi, neque aliter, salva fide opens, facere potui Nunquid retexam lam quod tanto labore detexui? Idem ego sum qui preposui in Commentarus quod in Ciceronem et Quintihanum composui Quintihanum Cicerom, Demosthem atque ipsi Homero Ideoque qui non studiosissimi fuerunt Qumtiliam eos nequaquam eloquentes existimo, quorum fere omnes sunt horum temporum hommes, quos abesse a perfecta vi dicendi, si una tu ego essemus, ostenderem " 91 "La rottura con ii Medio Evo non la operava ii Valla unicamente nel campo letterano-hnguistico . la sua rottura e piu radicale La sua opposizione si estende a tutta la filosofia imperante .." Fois, 634-635 63 more recently, Filelfo suggests that there is no writer and no subject that Valla fears to address.

[Valla] says that the old legal writers were ignorant of the meaning of many words... He refuses to open the Holy Bible and yet he constantly reproves its translators for writing without grace or Latinity... He has published a book of dialectic affirming that the Vallan system is the only legitimate one... In natural science he has shrieked I know not what, condemning Aristotle... He has attempted to write a history in which he degrades the deeds of the outstanding and distinguished prince ofAragon... He wages a burdensome and wicked war against learned men, appointing himself the master of every art.

Like Butler in the nineteenth century, Valla might well have declared that

"I never write on any subject unless I believe the opinion of those who have the ear of the public to be mistaken." In fact Valla implies precisely this when he justifies his body of work by listing the shortcomings of the established authorities in every field. If Valla writes on so many topics, it is because he thinks that those respected by the contemporary learned public are wrong almost everywhere. It is true as well that a certain amount of controversy may also have benefited Valla's career, but it is hard to doubt that Valla's iconoclasm is sincere. It is what unites the very different books that make up his body of work. It will soon be seen that On pleasure is not a simple book: it could even be argued that Valla's radical intentions provide the only organizing principle. It is best understood

ibid. 89r-89v. "Priscos iurisconsultos plurium verborum significationem ignorasse affirmat." 92v. "Nam scripturam sacram aperire contempnit et eius traductores saepissime culpat tamquam male et non Latine locutos." 104v. "Edidit librum in dialecticis afferens non esse dialecticam praeter Laurentianam. In physicis nescio quid latravit damnans Aristotelem atque asserens tria tantum esse predicamenta ut qui a philosophiae habitaculo longe aberrare velit habeat itineris. Hystorias est egressus in quibus gesta principis ad omnia egregii regis Aragonum stilo insulsissimo denigravit ut non inmerito vir doctissimus Bartholomeus Fatius innumeros etiam in grammaticis defectus unico libro fuerit complexus." 106r. "Non serpens sed torpens importunum ac nefarium viris doctis bellum induxit sibi palmam scientiarum omnium ascribens." 93 This phrase, attributed to a letter of Butler's from 1899 can be found in R. V. Sampson, The psychology of power (New York: Pantheon, 1966) 110. 64 in terms of Valla's desire to challenge what he perceives to be the consensus of his contemporaries, to demonstrate the fallacy of their most cherished assumptions. There are four departures from the accepted wisdom of Valla's time which can explain On pleasure's appeal for More. Each of them shows up with only slight modifications in the pages of Utopia.

1) The notion that voluptas, or 'pleasure', is the supreme goal of human existence.

Valla deliberately contradicts the consensus of contemporary moral philosophers

that honestas and , with approximate meanings of'morality' and 'virtue',

are the "true good" of his title. Valla endorses the teaching of , at that

time one of the most despised Greek philosophers, that pleasure and not virtue is

the highest good.

2) The radical revision and elevation of the traditional virtue of prudentia, or

'foresight'. Valla revises the widely-accepted medieval understanding of

prudentia, formerly one of the 'seven .' He argues that prudentia

is not a virtue at all, but that it is nevertheless essential for the achievement of the

highest good.

3) The argument against dividing pleasure by calling some kinds of pleasure good

and others bad and so destroying the fundamental unity of all pleasure. This is

expressed in Valla's assertion that delectatio, 'delight', is fundamentally the same

as voluptas.

4) The attack on the Aristotelian concept of 'the Golden Mean'. Valla proposes

replacing the widely accepted notion of virtue as a middle point between 65

contradictory vices with a binary arrangement where each virtue is opposed by a

corresponding vice. Valla is at his most radical in that he revises the Aristotelian

theory according to the usage established by poetry, history, oratory, and

everyday speech.

In terms of their purely intellectual arrangement, only the first three ideas are actually connected. These all deal with Valla's theory that pleasure is the highest good.

The fourth and last idea is somewhat separate: in many respects it is a unique theory. But there is another sense in which all four arguments listed here sit naturally together. Each is an example of a tendency that can be seen throughout Valla's work. Valla is always trying to revise or even "to overturn" the traditions of late-medieval thought, and all four points can be understood in this sense. In every case, Valla is challenging what he perceives as the contemporary consensus on ethics and language. In every case, the ideas that appear in Valla's book will turn up later in the pages of More's Utopia.

•k * *

On pleasure was Valla's first title for his dialogue, and this has a good deal to recommend itself even as the title of later versions. Many smaller arguments run through the book, but Valla's keynote, to which he always returns, is pleasure. Even the later titles On the true good and On the true and false good are both references to this. The

"true good" in question is nothing less than pleasure itself.94 This is at once the most

94 Lorenzo Valla, On pleasure, ed. Maristella Lorch (New York: Abaris Books, 1977) 21. XV [1] and 110. X[l]. 66 famous and the most controversial argument in Valla's book. It is an argument that unites the very different orations of the three principal speakers who together carry the substance of the dialogue.

The dialogue begins with a gathering of friends, sitting out of doors and having eaten dinner together a moment before.95 Valla is there himself, and so are many of his most distinguished contemporaries. In the latest version the gathering includes a doctor, a poet, a humanist, a theologian, and a papal functionary.96 As a fitting amusement, they decide to discuss philosophy, ethics specifically. They agree to a debate, as much in sport as in earnest, concerning the central questions of the human condition. In the course of the evening, the three principal speakers represent three different philosophies.

One speaks for the classical teachings of the Stoics, one as a follower of Epicurus, and the last speaker defends what he calls a Christian perspective. This final speaker argues against both of the two pagan philosophies previously mentioned and he also attacks certain teachings associated with Aristotle.98 Not everything that the three speakers advocate in their orations represents what they actually think. As it will be seen later, the second speaker is especially clear that he does not believe most of what he says.

Valla's three speakers make their different arguments as part of an elaborate game: "not

ibid, 3.1 [1]. Like the characters, the location of the dialogue changes with each version. A defense of life, 5. 96 On pleasure, 3,1 [I]. 97 ibid, 4.1 [3]. 98 Lorch points out that the characters are deliberately chosen because they are not associated with the kind of ideas Valla has them champion. He wants to make it as clear as possible that they are speaking out of character. A defense of life, 5. 99 On pleasure, 3-4.1 [1-5]. 67 seriously, but in jest... in the manner of which the Greeks called irony."100 It is in the course of this Socratic exercise that the primary theme of On pleasure emerges.

The theme is not announced immediately, but it emerges after the first speaker, the 'Stoic', has finished lamenting the failure of human beings to live morally. The

'Stoic's' oration is by far the shortest of the three, but it serves as an important foil for the two later speakers. People should follow virtue, the 'Stoic' has explained, but they never want to, and they almost never do the right thing. They fail to see that only what is moral is desirable and that only right action for its own sake can bring lasting satisfaction.

After the 'Stoic' has concluded his brief speech, the 'Epicurean' rises to answer him with a truly surprising idea. Valla's second speaker announces that morality, in Latin honestas, is not the highest good. Despite what the 'Stoic' has just said, morality is not the supreme goal of the human condition. The 'Epicurean' explains that the end of our existence is not to be virtuous but to be happy and that the highest good is not morality but pleasure - Valla's Latin is voluptas. The 'Epicurean' presents a series of examples drawn from history, poetry, and the experience of everyday life to show that the morality which the 'Stoic' praises is not really the highest good. He argues that it is not a legitimate end for our actions. The only real good, the only meaningful goal of human striving, is pleasure: vivid, tangible, physical pleasure.

In pursuing this idea to its conclusion, the 'Epicurean' makes a number of shocking assertions. He does not pretend to believe what he says himself, but even taken

100 "Proinde suspicor non serio te fecisse sed ioco, quae tua consuetudo est, more Socratis quem eipcova Graeci appellabant" ibid. 106. VII [3]. Later in the dialogue, the 'Christian' plainly tells the 'Epicurean' that "you have spoken deceptively" - "simulate locutus es." For a discussion of Valla's use of irony in another of his works, the Declamatio defalso credita et ementita donatione Constantini (1440), see Richard Waswo's Language and meaning in the Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987). 68 as purely facetious provocations, some of his claims are appalling. The 'Epicurean' defends adultery, provided it is possible to avoid getting caught; he declares dying for cause or country worthless; and he denies that a good action has value in itself.101 All talk of virtue, right, or morality is simply a play on words. "I have heard nothing," he

1 09 says, "more absurd."

What does it mean to say [virtue] is its own reward? I will act bravely. And why? For the sake of morality. And what is morality? To act bravely. This a game, not a precept, a joke, not an instruction. I will act bravely in order to act bravely, I will go to my death so that I may die. Is this my reward, this my return? Why not openly admit that morality is illusory, and has no purpose? By Hercules, if someone were to say in jest "run in order that you may run, walk that you may walk," everyone would laugh him down. What do you say to the man who persuades us to face hardship, danger, and death by declaring these very things the prizes to be won?

It is here, with the statement that virtue and morality are empty prizes, that we first encounter a recurring question for the student of Valla's thought. Does he really mean what his characters say? The difficulty of understanding Valla's intention is only compounded in a dialogue in which the various characters often contradict one another.

Even when a second character refutes the first, or a third speaker refutes the second, the question of what Valla really believes is far from settled. Does he agree with the speaker who wins the argument? Or is the second or third opinion just a means of disguising what has come before? And so it becomes easy to dispute Valla's meaning, particularly m ibid, 54. IX [1], 73-74. XXVI [11-15], and 46-47.1 [9]. 102 ibid, 46.1 [9]. "Ego isto consilio nullum unquam audivi absurdius." 103 "Quid hoc sibi vult se sibi praemium esse? Fortiter faciam. Cur? Propter honestatem. Quid est honestas? Fortiter facere. Ludus videtur hie esse non praeceptum, iocus non admonitio. Fortiter faciam ut fortiter faciam, ad mortem ibo ut moriar. Hoccine est praemium, haccine remuneratio? Nonne liquido fateris honestatem imaginariam rem esse quae nullum exitum potest invenire? Mehercule, si quis in levioribus rebus sic loqueretur: 'curre ut curras, deambula ut deambules', in hunc omnes cachinnum tollerent. Nunc quid illi facias qui adeundos labores, pericula, mortem suadet et haec ipsa in premio ponit?" ibid, 46-47.1 [9-10]. 69 in the case of controversial statements like the one above. Which of Valla's characters, if any, should we believe?

There can be no doubt that if Valla truly agrees with some of the opinions expressed by the 'Epicurean', it would be a significant challenge to the contemporary consensus. Even to associate himself with the name of Epicurus constitutes a provocative act. Of all the ancient philosophers, none was probably more despised during the later middle ages than Epicurus. Even those ancient writers considered his disciples, e.g. the poet , were all but banished from European collections at this time. In a society where religion and morality were intimatedly associated, the outright of

Epicurus and his followers was especially appalling. It was considered far more threatening than the theistic paganism of Plato and Zeno, or the Muslim faith of the Arab

Aristotelians. If Christianity was the ideal, those thinkers who professed a belief in some sort of God and in the human soul were still more acceptable than those who denied these important theological concepts altogether.

And Valla's enemies were certainly more than happy to associate him with such unforgivable attitudes. In published attacks and whispered criticism alike, they perpetuated the notion that Valla embraced the most controversial Epicurean beliefs, even that he denied the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. Valla naturally denied this charge: he never claimed to be anything but a Christian of perfect orthodoxy.

And yet accusations of heresy followed him his whole life. The fact that Valla had expressed his most incendiary ideas through the potentially convenient disguise of a

104 For an excellent study of the relative prestige of the different classical authors in the centuries leading up to Valla's lifetime, see Robert Black's Humanism and education in medieval and Renaissance Italy: tradition and innovation in Latin schools from the twelfth to the fifteenth century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Among other things, Black discusses how close the works of Lucretius came to being lost altogether because of his dangerous Epicureanism. 70 character within a dialogue only compounded his crime in the eyes of his critics. It added cowardice and duplicity to his other failings: Valla was not only an atheist but an atheist bound on escaping the consequences of his convictions. And this view has its advocates even in the present day. Peter Bietenholz has made a similar argument in his article on

Valla's possible influence on Erasmus. Like many contemporary critics, Bietenholz finds

Valla's professions of Christian piety less than sincere. He is especially skeptical of the vivid and graphic religious imagery that concludes On pleasure when the 'Christian' describes the promised delights of heaven. Valla makes his 'Christian' conclusion so ridiculous, Bietenholz implies, that a discerning reader can see that his real sympathies lie with the atheistical arguments of the 'Epicurean'.

The tone of [the 'Christian's'] panegyric on heavenly joys comes suspiciously close to irony, even cynicism. How otherwise should we be expected to interpret such choice excerpts as these? "Our Lord and King Jesus Christ will administer to us His body and blood with his own hands in that most glorious and distinguished and truly divine banquet." Or again. "[The Mary] will embrace you in that virgin breast which nourished God and cover you with kisses." Small wonder that the 'Epicurean' advocate for the mortality of the soul mocks the Christian "Elysium" as "a place full of good cheer, of sports, music, dances, banquets, and other diversions."105

But it is not necessary to join Valla's bitterest contemporary detractors, or even a modern skeptic like Bietenholz, in order to argue that Valla is in significant agreeement with the 'Epicurean' speaker in his dialogue. The question here is not whether Valla

105 Peter Bietenholz, "Felicitas (eudaemonia) ou les promenades d'Erasme dans les jardins d'Epicure" in Renaissance and Reformation, 30.1 (winter 2006) 51-52. "...son panegyrique des joies du Paradis adopte un ton suspicieusement proche de l'ironie, voir du cynisme. Comment devons nous, en effet, interpreter autrement des fleurs telles: 'le corps et le sang de notre Seigneur et Roi, Jesus Christ, nous seront administres de ses propres mains, en ce banquet tres honorable, tres renomme, et en verite, tres sainte', ou encore: 'la Vierge Marie vous entreindra contra son sein virginal, avec lequel elle allaita Dieu; et elle vous donnera un baiser'? II n'est pas surprenant que le defenseur epicurien de la mortalite de l'ame raille l'Elysee chretien en tant que 'lieu de grand bonheur, plein de sports, de danses, de musique, de banquets et d'autres divertissements'." 71 denies the existence of God or approves of immorality or even if he believes that the soul lives on after the body. At issue is whether Valla agrees with one particular notion expressed by the 'Epicurean': that pleasure and not virtue is the 'true good' and that morality has no intrinsic worth. This is the thrust of the 'Epicurean' argument, and it is actually very easy to prove that Valla believes it. Valla freely associates himself with this particular teaching when he speaks in propria persona, without the disguise offered by the characters of his dialogue. Those who would argue that Valla uses the dialogue form to distance himself from Epicurean ideas should consider Valla's letter to Pope Eugenius

IV. Writing in his own name to the spiritual head of European , Valla repeats the two 'Epicurean' arguments at stake in On pleasure: that pleasure is the highest good and that virtue is not its own reward.106 Rather than pretend that he rejects these controversial ideas, Valla tries instead to convince the pope that they are perfectly consistent with Christian orthodoxy.

Those qualities that the philosophers with the exception of the Epicureans call virtues are not to be desired for their own sake. I ask you, Holy Father, how is this heresy? Or is following or rejecting certain philosophers the test that reveals a heretic?.. .Do I ever think differently of the Christian religion than I should?

It is worth adding here that Valla does not so much defend Epicurus as the principle of pleasure itself. In order to make the notion that voluptas is the highest good seem more acceptable, Valla tells the pope that all great authors affirm this. It is not only

If nothing else, Valla's own defensiveness on this count reveals something of the contemporary opinion of Epicurus. Even that 'Epicurean' could be made into an insult, as 'Aristotelian' or 'Platonist' could not, says a great deal. 107 "Quas dixerunt philosophi virtutes, exceptis Epicureis, non fuisse propter se expetendas. Quid hoc quaeso, sanctissime pater, ad haeresum facit? Numquid sequi insequive philosophos haereticum tegit aut retegit? .. .Numquid de religione non sentio ut debeo?" Lorenzo Valla, Lorenzo Valla de falsa in eundem haeresis obiectione ad summum pontificem libellus, ms. Vat. Ott. Lat. 2075 in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Rome, 240r. 72 the teaching of Epicurus, but of Aristotle, , Plato, and Cicero. But while

Valla is at pains to argue that he is not exclusively a disciple of Epicurus, he also does not distance himself from the materialistic atheist that so many of his contemporaries held in horror. Valla defends Epicurus as a person, an example of moral integrity in his life as well as his teachings. His doctrine of pleasure does not make him a reckless hedonist and his followers were also outstanding individuals.

Was Epicurus a wicked man? A glutton or a slave to his appetites? On the contrary, who was more frugal? Who more restrained? More modest? Indeed I find no one of all the philosophers who had fewer vices: and many, many upright men, both Greek and Roman, were Epicureans.109

But even within the pages of On pleasure, there is plenty to confirm that Valla is serious about the argument he assigns to the 'Epicurean'. In one sense, On pleasure is actually clearer because it is cast as a dialogue. The format which might seem to obscure

Valla's opinions actually helps to clarify them. It allows Valla to underline his central argument by having the two later speakers agree on the points he wants to emphasize.

Valla's 'Christian' refutes the 'Epicurean' on some matters, most notably the merits of selfishness and cruelty, but he also develops the earlier notion that pleasure and not virtue is to be desired for its own sake. With certain reservations, the 'Christian' speaker agrees that pleasure is the goal of human life, the end to which the virtues are only means.11

Even the 'Stoic' speaker contributes to this argument indirectly. While the 'Stoic' insists that people ought to do good for the sake of the action itself, he also admits to his disgust

"Malusne vir Epicurus fuit? Gulae, ventrique deditus? Immo vero quis eius parcior? Quis continentior? Quis modestior? Equidem in nullo philosophorum omnium minus invenio vitiorum, plurimique honestissimi viri rum Graecorum turn Romanorum Epicurei fuerunt." ibid. no On pleasure, 108. V [2]. 73 that hardly a single person does.111 The 'Stoic' is frankly something of a 'straw man', but his oration still serves an essential purpose in the larger structure of the dialogue. By conceding that almost no one is attracted by the beauty of virtue and right, the 'Stoic' opens the way for the two later speakers to establish that only pleasure can motivate people. And so in their own way, all three speakers help frame Valla's argument that the end of moral action must be pleasure.

The structure of Valla's argument becomes clearer with the oration of the

'Christian', who speaks longer than either of the two previous speakers. From the beginning of his oration, the 'Christian' embraces one of the 'Epicurean's' most important arguments. He confesses that morality requires some kind of reward to have real value. This had been the chief point in the 'Epicurean's' case against virtue for its own sake. Why do what is right, the 'Epicurean has said, when you get nothing from it?

Several examples are given, but the most compelling is the most extreme: the finality of death. Why give your life for others if all you get is the dark sleep of the grave? The

'Stoic' had complained that human beings were too weak to die for what is right, but the

'Epicurean' says that they make the correct choice. The only remotely plausible motive for selfless actions is that people will be grateful and celebrate your deeds: but this has no application for those who sacrifice their life.113 "Because if in sleep, which is just like death, we are not conscious of glory, will it be otherwise in death, which is an everlasting sleep?"114 People may acclaim you, but you will never know it.

111 ibid, 4. II [2]. 112ibid„ 56. IX [7]. "Ut enim nihil molestiae capiunt sepulti ita nee voluptatis." 113 ibid, 52. VIII [1] 114 "Quod si in somno, qui simillimus est morti, sensum gloriae non habemus, in morte habebimus qui somnus eternus est? Quod qui sentiunt dormire plane aut mortui esse dicendi sunt." ibid, 56. IX [8]. 74

You sing of my struggle, my achievements, you hail my passing with lyre and lute, but my ears are deaf to you. My name is on the lips of the people but my limbs decay. Their words cannot reach me any more than the lilies and roses scattered on my tomb. They cannot quicken my still form, they cannot delight or help me. For such praise is meaningless to a body whose soul has departed: it brings joy only to the living, not the dead.115

The 'Epicurean' uses these arguments to answer the 'Stoic' and to demolish the claim that virtue is its own reward. How can anything matter, he asks, but real pleasure here and now?116 What good is virtuous behavior if it ends up killing you? "I had rather save myself than a hundred thousand others: my own life matters more to me than the

117 lives of everyone else."

This is the essence of the 'Epicurean's' oration. And in terms of the emergence of

Valla's argument, the revealing moment comes when the 'Christian' begins his speech by accepting this premise. When Valla's 'Christian' rises to speak, he casts his vote with the

'Epicurean' and against the 'Stoic'. The former is right and the latter wrong: men and women should not do anything without hope of reward. "Without saying more, what kind of virtue is it, or what kind of madness, when you expect no profit from your pains, and you work away and cheat yourself of present good?"118 This is how Valla underlines his central thesis: there is no question of which speaker the author favors here since both agree. The 'Christian' confirms what the 'Epicurean' has already said. And even when the 'Christian' disagrees with the 'Epicurean', the telling thing is that he builds on the 115 "Tu labores, tu industriam, tu obitum meum supra sepulchrum ad lyram aut ad citharam cantas, et aures meae non audiunt. In ore sum omnis populi, et membra mea assidue dissolvuntur. Non magis ad me ista perveniunt quam ilia liliorum, rosarum, florumque in busta conspersio. Non resupinum corpus erigunt, non delectant, non iuvant. Ita hae laudes ad animam solutam corpore non pertinent, omnino viventium oblectatio potius quam defunctorum." ibid, 54. IX [1]. 116 ibid, 15-16. XII [3]. ll7"Sed me potius debeo quam centum milia salvare; maius bonum est vita mea quam universorum hominum mihi ipsi." ibid, 46.1 [7]. 118 "Nam ut alia taceam, cuius virtutis est aut cuius potius dementiae, cum nullum pro laboribus fructum speres, tamen elaborare et bonis presentibus te fraudare?" ibid, 108 V [2]. 75 earlier speaker's argument rather that simply contradicting it. Unlike the 'Epicurean', the

Christian does not endorse immoral behavior, but he also maintains that virtue is worthless of itself. Instead of denying what the 'Epicurean' has said, Valla's 'Christian' adds a new consideration that keeps the original premise intact but that leads to a new conclusion.

Of course the 'Epicurean' is wrong to reject morality, the 'Christian' explains, but not for the reason that the 'Stoic' might suggest. It is not that we should be good without a reward: according to Valla's 'Christian' that would be madness.1 But we are rewarded, and richly so. This is because there is another life after this one: a resurrection and a divine paradise that God has prepared for us.120 This alone makes sacrificing one's life worthwhile. If we really did sleep forever as the 'Epicurean' says, he would be correct in concluding that there is no reason to do what is right. The 'Christian' affirms this by appealing to a source which Valla seems to consider the locus classicus of

Christian doctrine, the letters of the Apostle Paul. He points to Paul's famous declaration

177 that "if we have hoped in Christ in this life alone, we are the most wretched of men."

That virtue requires a fitting reward, Valla has his final speaker argue, is an eminently

'Christian' proposition. The important thing is to understand that certain actions will have a very great reward, an incalculable one. Which is precisely what Valla says in his letter to the pope. Here Valla repeats the quotation from First Corinthians 15:19 that he had assigned to his 'Christian' speaker, and he uses it to drive home the same conclusion.

ibid, 125-136. XXIV [1-26]. ibid, 108. VIII [2]. "Si in hac vita tantum in Christo sperantes sumus, miserabiliores sumus omnibus hominibus." ibid. 76

And will we suffer hunger, nakedness, ridicule, poverty, blows, and wounds for the love of virtue itself? Or rather for the achievement of eternal life? .. .But it is one thing to love God, another to love virtue, which is hard and whose hardships we are said not to love, but to bear for love of God. .. .And so Paul says "if we 171 have hoped in Christ in this life alone, we are the most wretched of men."

The implication of this scriptural citation would have been obvious to Valla's contemporaries. It was all but universally understood that Paul is referring here to the importance of the new life promised by the risen Christ. If Jesus is only an earthly savior, whatever else He teaches is meaningless. And this consideration distinguishes the

'Christian' speaker from the 'Epicurean'. To the arguments the 'Epicurean' has already made, the 'Christian' adds the resurrection of the dead. In the balance of worldly pleasure, he sets the promise of the life of the world to come. "For there are two kinds of pleasure," he explains, "one now on earth, the other after in heaven."124 All that the

'Epicurean' has said is still correct. It is still true that no one should do right for its own sake and that virtue is not its own reward. Each argument fits perfectly in this new,

'Christian' context. If anything, the 'Epicurean' position seems even more compelling in the light of promised compensation for good deeds in heaven. "And we can see that it is pleasure and not virtue which is to be desired for its own sake, as much by those who

17S wish to be happy in another life as in this one." Paul only reaffirms Epicurus.

Where are they who say virtue has value in itself? It is wrong to serve even God without hope of reward. After faith and hope comes charity, the mother of all virtues, the love of God and neighbor. And whoever has not charity, though he

"Numquid nos ieiunia, nuditatem, contemptum, egestatem, verbera, vulnera patiamur: num pericula et quod summam putatur mortem subimus ipsarum dumtaxat amore virtutum? An ad finem vitae aeternae? ...Sed aliud est amare Deum, aliud amare virtutem, quae laboriosa est: quos labores ferre propter amorem Dei dicimur, non amare. ...Unde Paulus: 'si in hac vita tantum in Christo sperantes sumus, miserabiliores sumus omnibus hominibus.'" De falsa obiectione, 240v. 124 "Nam [voluptas] duplex est: altera nunc in terris, altera postea in caelis." On pleasure, 110. X [1]. 125 "Ex quo debet intelligi non honestatem sed voluptatem propter se ipsam esse expetendam tam ab iis qui in hac vita quam ab iis qui in futurum oblectari volunt." ibid, 110. IX [3]. 77

bestow all his goods to feed the poor, and though he give his body to be burned, it profits him nothing. .. .Our morality, the morality of those of us who are Christians, is as I said it was before and after. It is not to be desired in itself, as it is hard, bitter, and difficult; nor is it to be sought for earthly advantage but as a passage towards that happiness which the soul will enjoy freed from earthly members, in the presence of the One from whence it came, the Father of all things.126

This last statement represents Valla's real departure from the conventional wisdom of his contemporaries. In terms of its radical implications, it has no parallel in the deliberately outrageous suggestions of the 'Epicurean'. Valla may never have endorsed the atheism of Epicurus as his critics allege, but he says something nearly as shocking here. Though he is careful to cast it in the language of conventional piety, the substance of Valla's thought could hardly be more radical. He is attacking an assumption that was all but universal during the later Middle Ages. He is questioning whether the teachings of Epicurus regarding pleasure and morality are actually inseparable from his materialism. This is the first of the four challenges mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. This is the first of the four occasions where Valla contradicts the consensus of contemporary ethics, each crucial to understanding Valla's influence upon Utopia. Valla argues here that Epicurean teachings regarding voluptas and honestas, pleasure and morality, are not only compatible but even inseparable from Christian orthodoxy.

Christians not only can but must believe that virtue is intrinsically worthless and that

"Ubi sunt qui virtutes propter se dicunt expetendas? Ne Deo quidem sine spe remunerationis servire fas est. Post fidem et spem tertius est locus caritatis, magistrae omnium virtutum, id est amoris in Deum et proximum. Quam qui non habet, et si omnem substantiam suam distribuerit in pauperes et si tradiderit corpus suum ut ardeat, nihil ei prodest. .. .Nostrum autem honestum qui Christiani sumus illud ipsum est quod dixi prius et anterius fuisse, nee propter se expetendum utpote durum, asperum, arduum, nee propter utilitates quae terrenae sunt, sed gradum facit ad earn beatitudinem qua sive animus sive anima exonerata his membris mortalibus apud rerum parentem a quo est profecta perfruitur." ibid, 108. V [2] and 110. IX [!]• 78 pleasure, albeit the supreme and eternal pleasure of heaven, is the only "true good." This is Valla's first legacy to More and Utopia.

* * *

Like Valla's first challenge to the ethics of the later Middle Ages, the second challenge discussed here also involves a word that fell frequently from the pens of his contemporaries. As in the case of voluptas, Valla is determined to recast a familiar word in a radically different light. In this case the word at issue is the abstract noun prudentia.

Prudentia has the literal meaning of 'foresight' but it also carries strong associations with the English prudence, discernment, and wisdom. Prudentia had always held an important place in medieval ethics as one of the four cardinal virtues. And while Valla does not question its value, he assigns it a special role in his ethical system. In his usual fashion, Valla achieves a novel whole out of traditional parts. Valla takes prudentia, a standard concept in medieval ethics, and he places it in a new and surprising context.

In itself, the significance bestowed upon prudentia would have come as no surprise for Valla's readers. The central role of prudentia - this includes not only the noun but the related adjective, verb, and adverb - had been univerally recognized throughout the later Middle Ages. In some respects, this tradition began in antiquity with the dialogues of Cicero, works that influenced Valla in terms of their form as well as their

A Latin dictionary founded on Andrews' edition ofFreund 's Latin dictionary, revised, enlarged, and in great part rewritten by Charleton T. Lewis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). This dictionary will be known in later references as Lewis and Short's. For more on prudentia's uses in Valla's age, see Eugene Rice, The Renaissance idea of wisdom (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1978). Rice ably delineates those situations in which prudentia is used to mean 'wisdom' in English from those in which it is not. 79 content. It was Cicero who provided the formula that persisted through generations of ethical manuals until Valla's own day: "prudentia is the knowledge of what is good, evil, and indifferent."128 Even those of Valla's readers unfamiliar with Cicero's dialogues would have encountered this definition at second hand in the various ethical texts of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. To give only two examples, the twelfth- century Tenets of moral philosophy and the early thirteenth-century Summary of virtue and vice both employ Cicero's definition.1 It was also with Cicero that prudentia earned its familiar place as one of the 'four cardinal virtues' of ancient and medieval ethics. Cicero was the first to set prudentia beside iustitia, '', fortitudo, 'courage', and temperantia, or 'self-control'.130

And so Valla's contemporaries would not have been surprised to see Valla's

'Epicurean' and 'Christian' stress the importance of prudentia in moral conduct. But nothing in their previous reading could have prepared Valla's first readers for the special role assigned to this particular virtue. While Valla's two speakers hardly underestimate

The most notable example of the discussion oi prudentia is the dialogue of Cicero which, in many respects, provides a model for On pleasure : Definibus bonorum et malorum, 'on the definition of good and evil'. However, the definition quoted above is taken from the second part of another dialogue, De inventione, "prudentia est rerum bonarum et malarum neutrarumque scientia." Cicero, De inventione, ed., trans, and with an introduction by Maria Greco (Galatina: M. Congedo, 1998) 160:2. "Prudentia est rerum bonarum et malarum et utrarumque discretio." This formulation is offered by both William of Conches in section II [4] and Guido Faba in section I [A] of their respective ethical treatises. William of Conches, Moralium dogma philosophorum, digital version courtesy of the Latin Library at http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/latinlibrary/wmconchesdogma.html Accessed February 20th, 2008. Guido Faba, Summa de vitiis et virtutibus, ed. Virgilio Pini, digital version by Angus Graham http://www2.hs-augsburg.de/~harsch/Chronologia/Lspostl3/Faba/fab_sw0.html Accessed February 19th, 2008. 130 See Cicero's statement in the fifth part oi Definibus. "For while they are all very closely bound together, so that each plays its part so that one cannot be separated from the others, each [virtue] yet has its own unique quality. Fortitudo is demonstrated in difficulty and danger, temperantia in fogoing pleasure, prudentia in distinguishing goods and evils, and iusticia in treating each person according to what he deserves. "Nam cum ita copulatae conexaeque sint, ut omnes omnium participes sint nee alia ab alia possit separari, tamen proprium suum cuiusque munus est, ut fortitudo in laboribus periculisque cernatur, temperantia in praeterrnittendis voluptatibus, prudentia in dilectu bonorum et malorum, iustitia in suo cuique tribuendo." Cicero, Definibus bonorum et malorum libri quinque, with introduction and commentary by W. M. L. Hutchinson (London: Edwin Arnold, 1909) V [67]. 80 prudentia's value, they do not assess it in the standard terms of late-medieval ethics.

Valla's prudentia is at once more important than any virtue but also separate from the virtues. It stands above and apart from the qualities with which it had been associated.

Prudentia was a standard ethical term for Valla's contemporaries, but he casts this familiar concept in an unfamiliar role.

Like the argument over pleasure and morality, Valla's position on prudentia develops gradually throughout the dialogue. Valla builds it from the words of the

'Epicurean' and 'Christian' speakers in combination. It begins with their shared rule for characterizing actions as either moral or immoral. Since the 'Christian' accepts the

'Epicurean' premise that pleasure is the highest good, he also accepts an important consequence of this premise. The 'Christian' agrees that a moral action, defined as an action directed towards the highest good, must have pleasure as its end. This leads

Valla's 'Epicurean' and 'Christian' to agree on a further point: that the indispensable quality in the achievement of moral action is none other than prudentia. If the moral quality of an action is determined by its end, which is to say its consequences, it is necessary to forsee those consquences. And so 'foresight' - the literal meaning of prudentia - becomes the starting point of moral action.

This argument commences during the oration of the 'Epicurean', when Valla's second speaker qualifies his earlier statement that all actions should have pleasure as their immediate goal. The 'Epicurean' explains that this was an oversimplification. Life is full of occasions where someone who desires pleasure must do things that are not pleasant in the short term. We may keep pleasure in view as the ultimate end of our actions, but along the way we make sacrifices. In the name of greater pleasure we often 81

til deny ourselves pleasure or undergo pain. Anyone who is serious about pleasure will act with this in mind. The 'Epicurean' compares someone who accepts immediate gratification to a fish that bites the morsel on the end of the angler's hook, or a lamb taking food from a farmer without reflecting that it will be killed.132 "Nothing can be considered good that brings even greater evils after it." This has been the rule of wise and moral individuals in every day and age: to make painful choices in the present out of future considerations. This often involves doing something incredibly difficult, as when

Junius Brutus, the founder of the Roman Republic, executed his own sons for .

But as painful as some actions may be, true wisdom never forgets that the alternative is worse.134

As with every argument that Valla assigns him, the 'Epicurean's' demand for a careful arithmetic of pleasure follows logically from his ruling premise. In a philosophy that makes pleasure the end of all human actions it is essential to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. "So greater goods, which is to say greater benefits, are preferred to smaller ones, and minor evils to greater."135 For Valla's 'Epicurean' this is more than an important consideration, it is the only consideration, it is the supreme organizing principle of his moral system. The ability to pursue pleasure effectively is his measure of a moral life. "So they act morally who set greater comforts before smaller ones, and prefer smaller discomforts over greater... they are immoral who fail to do this."136

131 ibid, 74-75. XXVII [1-6]. 132 ibid. 62. XV [3]. 133 "Immo vero nee pro bonis habenda sunt quae a tergo maiora mala important" ibid, 62. XV [4]. 134 ibid, 61. XIV [1] and 64. XVII [1-3]. 135 "Ita maiora bona, quae sunt maiores utilitates, minoribus aut minora damna maioribus anteponuntur." ibid, 63. XV [5]. "Igitur hi honeste agent qui maiora commoda minoribus, minora incommoda maioribus anteponent - notitia maiorum et minorum necessaria est - inhoneste vero qui haec prepostere facient." ibid, 89. XXXIII [1]- 82

And while the 'Christian ultimately condemns the philosophy of the 'Epicurean', his critique is a good example of how Valla uses successive arguments to build a coherent case. The 'Christian' says that he finds the teachings of the 'Epicurean' immoral, it is true, but only because he agrees that moral individuals act to maximize their own happiness. From the perspective of the 'Christian', the 'Epicurean's' mistake is not his respect for pleasure or his contempt for morality: it is his atheism. The sort of conduct advocated by the 'Epicurean' is immoral by his own definition. The lying, stealing, and adultery which the 'Epicurean' defends are not aimed at pleasure, at least not at the real and lasting pleasure that awaits the faithful in the life to come. "Or what could be more foolish than to pursue things which are low, vile, truly earthly and quick to perish; and yet to ignore and despise heavenly things or, if it is possible, things eternal and more than heavenly?"137 Once again, Valla's third speaker refutes the second by adopting the better part of his argument. The 'Christian' agrees with the 'Epicurean' that moral action involves more than pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain: it also means carefully weighing immediate satisfaction against future prospects.

Ultimately, the 'Christian's' attack undermines the 'Epicurean' position because it is not an attack at all. It would be better to call it a modification of the 'Epicurean's' original scheme. Because the 'Christian' believes that the pleasures of heaven will surpass anything on earth, sacrificing the present for the future is even more relevant for him than it was for the 'Epicurean'. Like the previous speaker, the 'Christian' makes maximizing pleasure the yardstick of his morality: he simply believes that nothing will surpass the pleasures of heaven. And so the 'Christian' concludes that everything which

137 "Aut quid stultius quam res humiles, abiectas et vere terrenas citoque perituras consectari, caelestes autem et si fas est plus quam caelestes et eternas posthabere atque contemnere?" ibid, 111. XI [2]. 83 leads to our ultimate happiness, salvation, is moral, and that everything which undermines it is not. It is still the 'Epicurean's' moral arithmetic, but now heaven has been added to the equation.

Whatever is done in hope of present [pleasure] without thought of that future [pleasure] is sin. And this is true not only in great things, as when we build houses, contract marriages, purchase land, engage in trade; but even in the tiniest matters, as when we eat, sleep, walk, talk, desire. In all of these things, a prize and a punishment have been presented. Which is why we must abstain from [earthly pleasure] if we want to enjoy [heavenly pleasure]. We cannot enjoy both, since earth and heaven are not less alike, or soul and body.138

It is from the consensus of Valla's two later speakers that effective moral conduct requires an eye to the future that the case for the special role of prudentia emerges. The

'Epicurean' and the 'Christian' agree that moral conduct requires us to foresee future contingencies and so to anticipate what will maximize pleasure and minimize pain in the long run. The alternative is the short-sighted pursuit of whatever fleeting pleasure enters our field of vision: for each speaker this is the very definition of immorality. As a result, the 'Epicurean' and the 'Christian' both tend to praise and condemn different actions in terms of 'foresight', in Latin prudentia. This can be seen when the 'Epicurean' discusses the Lydian shepherd Gyges, in Plato's fable both a murder and adulterer. The

'Epicurean' says that Gyges sinned not through wickedness but through "insufficient foresight" - the original word is imprudentia.139 Both of Valla's two later speakers use the adjective imprudens, 'devoid of foresight', to describe actions which they consider

"Nam [voluptas] duplex est: altera nunc in terris, altera postea in caelis (caelos appello nostra more non antiquorum qui unum caelum putaverunt), altera mater est vitiorum, altera virtutum. Dicam planius. Quicquid citra spem illius posterioris fit propter spem huius presentis peccatum est; nee in magnis modo, ut quod domos aedificamus, fundos emimus, mercaturae operam damus, matrimonium contrahimus, verum etiam in minimis ut quod comedimus, dormimus, ambulamus, loquimur, cupimus, pro quibus omnibus et premium nobis et poena proposita est. Quare hac abstinendum est si frui ilia volumus; utraque non possumus, quae non aliter inter se contrariae sunt caelum et terra, anima et corpus." ibid, 110. X [1]. 139 ibid, 74. XXVI [15]. 84 immoral.140 And prudentia receives an extremely positive association at the culmination of Valla's dialogue, when the 'Christian' discusses the supreme moral act, the fashioning of the universe by God. The 'Christian' describes the work of creation in terms of God's summaprudentia, "deepest foresight."141 And so it is no wonder that the 'Epicurean' exalts prudentia over every other good quality: he calls it "the helper and forerunner of

147 every virtue."

And this is the first step in Valla's assignment of a new role to prudentia, the first thing that he does is shift the word's meaning. Although no word ever stands still, there is a certain consistency in how prudentia is used from the dialogues of Cicero to the moralists of the later Middle Ages. Prudentia continues to have a sense very close to the

English 'prudence', 'discernment' and 'wisdom'. Cicero implies this by making prudentia the Latin equivalent of the Platonic oocpia, usually translated as 'wisdom', and he confirms it through his enduring definition: "the knowledge of things good, evil, and indifferent."143 In Cicero's dialogues and the moral treatises of Valla's own age, prudentia is often discussed in terms that would make 'good moral judgment' an accurate translation. But Valla's two principal speakers give this traditional notion a characteristic twist. In making the ability to anticipate the consequences of our actions the foundation of moral conduct, Valla's two speakers emphasize prudentia's more literal sense. The moral arithmetic of On pleasure requires not 'wisdom' or even 'prudence', but

140 ibid, 22. XVI [3] and 33. XXVII [1]. "...omnia a Deo creata esse sapientissime quidem et cum summa prudentia et haec vocari bona." ibid, 114. XIII [4]. 142 "Nam de prudentia non attinet ut plura referamus, quae quadammodo ministra et precursoria est ceterarum." ibid, 61. XIV [1]. 143 Liddel and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon (London: Oxford University Press, 1968). It is also worth noting that Liddel and Scott's assigns ao(pia a negative aspect out of keeping with sapientia but very close to Valla's understanding oi prudentia. Liddel and Scott's says that aocpia can be used "in not so good a sense" to mean something close to 'cunning', 'shrewdness', 'craft'. 85

'foresight'. Moral conduct depends upon predicting what will bring the greatest pleasure ultimately rather than immediately. This is the origin of the 'Epicurean's' definition of prudentia, which the 'Christian' accepts without revision. Valla's 'Epicurean' says that prudentia means "knowing how to recognize what will prove advantageous and to avoid what will not."144

But if the shift towards the literal meaning is the beginning of Valla's modification of prudentia, he underlines the most radical change outside the pages of On pleasure. In the letter to Pope Eugenius and elsewhere in his correspondence, Valla writes that prudentia is identical with another, less attractive quality. Valla calls this malitia, and while this word is related to the modern English malice, the best equivalent is probably actually 'cunning'.145 Valla explains to Pope Eugenius that while prudentia has great potential for good, this potential is not always realized. Divorced from a religious awareness of God's justice and the life to come, prudentia "is no different than malitia, which is nothing but the knowledge... of good and evil."146 Valla invokes a passage from the of Luke in which the pertinent Latin adjective, prudentiores, is derived from prudentia. "The children of this world are more prudent in their own generation than the sons of light."147 Valla explains to the pope that this vindicates his theory that prudentia is not always admirable. Luke 16:8 furnishes a scriptural support for the notion that "malitia [is] either an empty name or it is the same thing as prudentia..."

144 "Prudentia est calliditas quae ratione quadam potest delectum habere bonorum et malorum." ibid. 96. IV[6]. "Prudentia - brevissime enim de re aperta dicam - ut commoda tibi prospicere scias, incommoda vitare." ibid, 34. XXXIII [1]. 145 Lewis and Short's defines malitia in terms of 'cunning', despite the modern derivation oi malice. 146 "Prudentiam non distare a malitia: quia tantum est cognitio boni et mali." De falsa obiedione, 240v. 147 The verse is Luke 16:8. 148 "...prudentiam aut inane nomen aut idem quod malitiam..." De falsa obiedione, 240v. 86

This argument does not appear explicitly in On pleasure: neither of Valla's speakers equates prudentia and malitia in so many words. But the dark side of prudentia is implicit in the contrast between the actions which Valla's speakers associate with the quality that they both praise. One advantage of the dialogue form is that Valla can do more than describe an idea: he can demonstrate it in action. And this is nowhere more evident than when Valla makes the 'Epicurean' a living demonstration of prudentia's potential for evil. In terms of the conduct he advocates, the 'Epicurean' could not be farther from the 'Christian'. No crime is immoral provided that it can be committed with impunity. And yet the 'Epicurean' is as ready as the 'Christian' to affirm that prudentia is the guiding principle of his actions. The only difference between the two speakers, which the 'Christian' reiterates constantly, is that the 'Epicurean' does not believe in heaven or the resurrection of the dead. And this is all it takes: or so Valla implies through the juxtaposition of these two perspectives. Only remove the saving faith in divine justice, and prudentia becomes morally neutral or even evil. The quality which the 'Christian' invokes in describing God's supreme creative wisdom is reduced to a reptilian cunning that considers murder a means towards the supreme end of wordly gratification.

This vivid contradiction sets On pleasure apart from contemporary books on ethics. Valla's prudentia is at once an attribute of God and the accomplice of the worst human crimes. It is no longer a virtue and yet it remains as essential to moral conduct as any virtue. This is the second challenge to the standard teachings of Valla's day. After centuries as one of the four cardinal virtues, prudentia has been separated and given a new role. Prudentia both precedes the virtues as their "helper and forerunner" and stands 87 apart from them through its moral ambiguity. It is also worth noting here that Valla's definition of prudentia has something in common with his earlier arugment about voluptas. In their own way, each of these theories leads towards the idea that morality can only make sense within a Christian context. But this will be discussed further in the coming chapters, when the time comes to understand the appeal of Valla's ethics for

Thomas More. For now it is enough to note how radically Valla departs from his contemporaries. It is enough to appreciate how sharply Valla's concept of prudentia breaks with received notions of its place among the four virtues.

* * *

But prudentia is not the only word that Valla redefines. He also does the same with the primary term in his dialogue, voluptas. It has already been seen that Valla introduces the radical argument that voluptas, and not virtue or morality, is the 'true good'. But as with prudentia, Valla does more than assign a new role to a familiar quality: he also redefines the word itself. To define is to set boundaries, and Valla draws new borders for voluptas, extending its meaning beyond the accepted uses of medieval ethics. In the process Valla annexes the meaning usually assigned to another word: delectatio, which can mean 'enjoyment' or 'delight'.

Valla's 'Christian' speaker makes the case. It is another point where he builds upon the 'Epicurean's' earlier statements about the supreme importance of pleasure. The

'Christian' starts with translation: he provides several phrases from the Latin Old

Testament that involve voluptas. Paradisus voluptatis, a heaven of pleasure; poma et 88 arbor voluptatis, the fruit and the tree of pleasure.149 The 'Christian' then observes that the Greek Septuagint reads differently: the word used in the Septuagint is more often rendered delectatio than voluptas.150 How significant is the difference? The 'Christian' says that in part it is the distinction between a thing, voluptas, and a process, delectatio.151 But he also adds that this is perhaps too subtle: a small difference is no difference. "For my part, I cannot tell what separates voluptas from delectatio if not that voluptas implies a more intense delectatio.'" The 'Christian' offers the evidence that

Latin writers will translate the Greek rov x£iMaPPovv with both words: delectatio is the

1 S7 normal equivalent but voluptas is used for something really intense.

Why does this matter to Valla? The digression on the identity between delectatio and voluptas is so brief and seems to have so little consequence that most Valla scholars ignore it. Maristella Lorch has written a detailed study of Valla's dialogue where she examines nearly every word: and yet she passes quickly over this point.153 And so it is natural to ask if it matters at all. If the time Valla spends on it is any measure, this distinction certainly appears minor. But like everything in On pleasure, it is there for a reason. The identity of delectatio and voluptas actually plays a crucial part in Valla's larger design. There are at least three reasons that uniting these two words supports

Valla's challenges both to contemporary ethics and to the received uses of the Latin language.

149 On pleasure, 110. IX [3]. 150 ibid. 151 ibid. 152 ibid. 153 To be fair, Lorch's study is at least as concerned with understanding Valla's methods through the sentence by sentence parsing of the dialogue as with an overview of his central ideas. 89

The best way to understand this is to begin with a closer look at how voluptas and delectatio are each used. What do they mean for Valla's models, Cicero and Quintilian?

What is the distinction between the two words in classical Latin? Voluptas definitely has the broader application. Valla chose it in part because it covers so many situations, far more in fact than pleasure. Unlike pleasure, voluptas can describe a public spectacle or a favorite child, cases that would demand amusement or joy in English.154 Delectatio is narrower, more specific. Among other things, it describes a refined, less physical pleasure. Delectatio is the intellectual satisfaction that comes from reading or writing, predicting the courses of the stars, from hearing music, and even from happy memories of the past.155 This is the principal distinction between delectatio and voluptas, and the first of Valla's goals in equating the two words is to abolish it.

Valla's first reason to identify delectatio with voluptas is that it supports the argument that pleasure is unconditionally good. In making the case for pleasure, Valla's

'Epicurean' and 'Christian' speakers both deny that some varieties of pleasure are bad, or at least worse than others. They acknowledge that one pleasure may interfere with others, but this does not make it bad in itself. All pleasure is good, and the only reason to renounce pleasure is the promise of more later.156

Cassell's dictionary cites the use oivoluptates with the meaning 'public shows' by Cicero and , and also Vergil's "carepuer, mea sola et sera voluptas," in which 'joy' seems very plausible as an English equivalent. Cassell's new Latin dictionary, ed. D.B. Simpson (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1959). i5SCassell's gives many examples: Cicero's "libris me delecto", "delectabat eum defectiones solis et lunae multo ante nobis praedicere," and "mira quaedam in cognoscendo suavitas et delectatio." And then there is Cicero's dialogue on ethics, Definibus. Here, Cicero uses the phrases "etenim si delectamur, cum scribimus," "delectet eos sermo patrius," "se isdem Euripidis fabulis delectari dicat," and "sapientes bona praeterita grata recordatione renovata delectant." Valla himself uses delectatio in this last way himself in the Repastinatio: "etiam in praeteritis inest et delectatio et molestia." Definibus, I [3], [4], and [57], and Lorenzo Valla, Repastinatio dialedicae et philosophiae in Laurentii Vallae opera omnia, facsimile of the Basel edition of 1540 with a preface by Eugenio Garin (Torino: Bottega D'Erasmo, 1962) 663. 156On pleasure, 89. XXXIII [1]. 90

This is true even in the case of the sort of physical pleasures that Valla's contemporaries often considered inherently unworthy. As Valla testifies himself in his dialogue The calling of the religious, this was an age when the self-denial of and nuns was widely considered the highest manifestation of the Christian life.157 And while

Valla's 'Christian' does not dismiss ascetism, neither does he defend it on the usual basis.

He avoids arguing that physical pleasures are not genuine or simply inferior to the pleasures of the mind. Regardless of whether they have made specific vows of chastity or poverty, there is still only one reason for Christians to forgo present pleasure, the

'Christian' speaker reminds his listeners, and this is the promise of pleasure to come.

The 'Christian' repeats this message when he concludes the dialogue by discussing the the joys of heaven. Valla's final speaker leaves no doubt that the pleasures

God has prepared will not be limited to intellectual pleasures: the blessed souls will enjoy physical pleasure as well. Why else should we refrain from food, drink, or sex in this life if these pleasures are not present in the next, more refined and more intense?158 Why will we receive new bodies on the resurrection if we will only enjoy spiritual sensations that we could feel without our bodies?159 "And so when we take up our bodies, our interrupted joys will be restored to us as I have said, sanctified and enriched."160 The pleasures of the flesh should not be renounced in this life because they are empty or inferior. On the contrary, it is because physical pleasures are too precious to cast away for the sake of immediate satisfaction that Valla's 'Christian' praises self-denial.

157 Lorenzo Valla, The profession of the religious and selections from the falsely believed and forged donation of Constantine, trans. Olga Zorzi Pugliese (Toronto: Center for Renaissance and Reformation Studies, 1994). Xi%On pleasure, 125. XXIV [1-2]. 159 ibid, 125-126. XXIV [4-5]. 160 "Ergo resumptis corporibus intermissa gaudia sed tamen sanctiora et ut dixi cum multo faenore reddentur." ibid, 126. XXIV [5]. 91

It is in the service of this notion that Valla unites delectatio and voluptas. Valla's most characteristic arguments begin and end with language, and this one is no exception.

By uniting delectatio with voluptas, Valla uses language to undermine the standard separation of physical pleasures from intellectual or spiritual pleasures. If the enjoyment derived from music or literature, from the study of astronomy or foreign languages is different only in intensity from other pleasure, then the normally accepted distinction disappears. There is no division between 'higher' and 'lower' or between 'physical' and

'intellectual'. Pleasure is pleasure, and at best the difference between delectatio and voluptas involves the intensity of the experience. And a similar difference in intensity is all that separates the pleasures of the present life from the pleasures of heaven.

But there is another passage where Valla identifies delectatio with voluptas, and it points to his second goal in uniting the two words. Here the 'Christian' is discussing the source of all pleasure, the love of God. The two relevant words remain in Latin:

This too should be noted: I can call the only good voluptas or delectatio, but it is not voluptas that I love but God. Voluptas is itself love... loving is itself delectatio or voluptas or happiness or felicity, or charity, for whose sake all things exist. And so I do not wish it said that God is loved for His own sake, as if love itself and delectatio were directed to some end, and were not an end in themselves.161

This is the second application for the unity of delectatio and voluptas. Like the earlier arguments about voluptas and prudentia, it reinforces Valla's claim that the philosophy of pleasure is inseparable from Christianity. Far from being incompatible

161"Illud quoque animadvertendum: licet dicam voluptatem sive delectationem esse solum bonum, non tamen voluptatem amo sed Deum. Voluptas ipsa amor est; quod autem voluptatem facit Deus, recipiens amat receptum amatur. Amatio ipsa delectatio est, sive voluptas sive beatitudo sive felicitas sive caritas, qui est finis ultimus et propter quem fiunt cetera. Quare non placet mihi ut dicatur Deum propter se esse amandum, quasi amor ipse et delectatio propter finem sit et non ipsa potius finis." ibid, 114. XIII [2-3]. 92 with religion, the teachings associated with Epicurus only make sense in a Christian context. Like most of Valla's arguments, this takes shape early in the dialogue. The

'Epicurean' has already associated voluptas with 'love' {amare) when he asserts that "[to be] loved is the source of all pleasure." Valla's 'Christian' only takes this farther: he says

1 fO that all pleasure arises from love, specifically the love of God. To say that the 'true good' is pleasure is merely a way of saying that the 'true good' is God's love.

Indeed He is the source of all good, and since this gift of joy has many forms we may call Him the source of all goods. And so if we love the One who has given us so many goods, we will verily have attained to every virtue...

It is convenient to blur the distinction between voluptas and delectatio as Valla does here because it makes it easier for him to assert the essential orthodoxy of his ideas.

It lends linguistic support for the notion that the philosophy of pleasure must be a

Christian philosophy. Equating voluptas with delectatio allows Valla to purge the former word of its associations with the materialism and atheism of Epicurus through the association of the latter word with 'love'. Delectatio provides the 'bridge', as it were, for

Valla to pass from the pleasure of Epicurus to the love of Paul.

Delectatio matters to Valla's system because it has a remarkable semantic quality: more than any word in the Latin language, delectatio has associations with both the

English pleasure and love. Voluptas is not a narrow term either - it can be translated as pleasure, joy, happiness, or amusement - but voluptas is still farther than delectatio from

162ibid, 115. XIII [7]. 163 ibid, 114. XIII [2]. 164 "Hie enim est fons boni, sed quia hoc bonum gaudii multiplex est, dicamus etiam fons bonorum. Ipsum igitur a quo tanta bona accepimus si amaverimus, nimirum omnem virtutem atque ipsam germanam honestatem adepti sumus." ibid. 114. XIII [7]. 93 love.165 It is delectatio that carries implications of loving something or someone. It describes pleasure derived from the object of love, even pleasure arising from feeling love for someone else. To cite a work that Valla and his contemporaries knew well, there is the use of delectatio in The city of God. Here St. speaks of

"veritatis delectatio" - "the love of truth," "delectatione iustitiae" - "the love of justice," and "pulchritudinis delectatione" - "the love of beauty."166 And while Valla is hardly an unconditional admirer of patristic Latin, he endorses this usage explicitly. In another of his works, the New foundation, Valla writes that delectare, the verbal form ofdelectatio, is a synonym for amare, 'to love'.

Nor is love anything but delectatio. And so T love wine', T love games', T love knowledge', and T love women' are all the same as saying T am delighted [the verb is delectari] by wine, games, knowledge, and women'.

If Valla's only word for the true good were voluptas, the argument cited above would be beyond his reach. Valla would not be able to equate pleasure and love without the flexible associations of delectatio. Delectatio allows Valla to accomplish the verbal slight of hand that confounds the highest good of the Epicureans with the otherworldly ideal of the Apostles. It gives the ethics of pleasure a distinctly Christian complexion.

This is important because Valla is constantly trying to stress his Christianity. The letter to Eugenius IV mentioned above represents only a single example of Valla's efforts to assert his orthodoxy in the face of real or potential criticism. And this vigilance was

165 See the relevant entries on delectatio and voluptas in Lewis and Short's. 166 Augustine, De civitate Dei, eds. Bernardus Dombart and Alphonsus Kalb (Stuttgart: B.G. Teubner, 1993), 388. XIX [XIX], 520, XVI [XXI], and 63. XXII [XXX]. 167"Neque aliud est amor quam delectatio: ut amo vinum, amo ludos, amo scientiam, amo mulieres: hoc idem est quod delectari vino, ludis, scientia, mulieribus." Repastinatio, 668. 94 necessary. There was hardly a time in his career when Valla was not facing some attack upon his reputation as a Christian and a scholar. This is evident in the many surviving letters where he tries to vindicate his books against his critics, and it is notably apparent in Valla's series of Antidota, invectives directed against specific detractors. Valla pushed back so hard against criticism because of the potential for harm: more was at stake than his standing as a scholar. Establishing that his ethics were compatible with

Christian orthodoxy was actually a matter of survival. Confirmed and repeated heresy could be punished by death. And in this sense Valla's apologetic letter to Eugenius IV is a serious piece of business. Valla is arguing in a case that threatens his very life. Valla writes to Pope Eugenius in terms of "lies... slander... resentment" and the attacks upon his

"reputation," but far more is actually at stake. Threats to Valla's reputation were also threats to his life.

Nor was this danger restricted to the realm of possibility. Valla had already experienced acute physical peril as a consequence of his ideas. Valla actually wrote the apologetic letter to Pope Eugenius after having escaped from an improvised trial for heresy at Naples in 1444. As Valla describes it, the trial that unfolded was closer to a lynching than a legal process. He says that he found himself confronting an armed mob made furious by the "outrageous slanders" directed against him.170 Valla writes that the inquiry into his beliefs had not even the appearance of justice: he was neither provided with legal counsel nor even permitted to speak in his own defense.

The most notable of these, of course, is the series of apologia directed against one of his most celebrated contemporaries, Poggio Bracciolini. Valla, Antidotum primum: la prima apologia contro Poggio Bracciolini (Assen, Netherlands: Van Gorcum, 1978). 169 De falsa obiedione, 23 8v. 95

Almighty God! Who ever heard tell of such a thing? That the judges were at once the prosecutors, the prosecutors at once the witnesses, the witnesses at once my enemies!? When I desired to refute their charges, they forbade me; when I prayed to be heard, they scorned me; when I wept, they threatened that if I persisted in speaking they would at once convict me not merely of heretical opinion but of contumacious heresy and order me stoned by the surrounding crowd... How is a judgment necessary when there is no possibility of absolution? 1 T| It is work for a butcher, not a judge.

It is worth remembering what Valla endured at Naples: certainly he would have found it hard to forget. The fear of conviction for heresy hung over Valla's life. And this makes it unnecessary to decide among the different considerations that would have led Valla to stress the orthodoxy of his ideas. There is no reason to choose between whether Valla was a sincere Christian or whether he was only concerned with saving his skin. It is more likely that both motives were at work. Did Valla want to demonstrate his orthodoxy because he was personally convinced that he was orthodox? Of course! Was it equally important to cultivate the appearance of orthodoxy in order to advance his career and protect himself from prosecution? Without question! And this is why Valla would have wanted to unite voluptas and delectatio in the pages of On pleasure. The identity of voluptas with love through delectatio matters whether Valla is actually a devout Christian or if he only wants to appear one. It satisfies Valla's Christian piety, which is probably genuine, and it also serves his instinct for self-preservation, which was most certainly sincere.

"Nam per immortalem deum, quando unquam fando est cognitum? Ut qui iudices fuerunt iidem accusatores fuerunt, qui accusatores iidem testes, qui testes iidem inimici? Qui me refellere obiecta volentem vetuerint, qui orantem ut audirer aspernati sint, qui lamentantem terruerint, si loqui perseverassem me non modo sensisse heretice, sed pertinacem in heresi se continuo pronuntiaturos ac per ipsum populum qui aderat lapidaturos... Quid enim iudiciis, ubi absolutione opus non potest? Carnifex potius adhibendus est quam iudex." ibid. 96

But Valla has an additional reason to make delectatio the 'bridge' between voluptas and love. Apart from giving his 'Epicurean' principles a 'Christian' application, it serves another purpose: to unite voluptas and delectatio, and so unite voluptas and love.

It is also necessary for the internal consistency of Valla's system. And it should not be forgotten that Valla believed in his own philosophy, certainly enough to endanger himself by promoting it. And so it is natural that he would co-ordinate the various elements into a constant pattern, and delectatio helps him do this. The nature of 'love' - Valla's noun is amor, his verb amare - helps Valla to overcome one of the principal hurdles of any ethical philosophy: it provides the motive for moral action. If voluptas is the end of

Valla's system, love provides a beginning.

Valla's 'Epicurean' and 'Christian' have already said that the virtues are not practiced as an end in themselves. Pleasure, whether voluptas or delectatio, is part of the solution to the problem that this premise creates. Pleasure can stand as a meaningful goal for virtue and so provide an end for moral action. But love, which Valla connects with pleasure through delectatio, offers something else. Love provides not only an end for moral action, but a beginning, a first cause. As Valla explains in the New foundation, love has a power of inspiration that is entirely unique: it motivates us without being an end at all. We do what is right not because we want to be loved, but because of the love we feel ourselves. We act not for the sake of love but out of love, not with love as a distant goal but because love is something that we already possess. Having just stated that delectatio is the same as 'love', Valla asks why we do not rest contented after we have found love. What motivates us to continue? "But if love is an end, why do we not 97 rest when it is found?"172 Valla's answer is that while the divine love that he identifies with pleasure is also an end, it has the special quality of moving us to act without any end in mind. Even to think in terms of means and ends is irrelevant when discussing love.

And so it displeases me when God is said to be loved for His own sake, as if anyone loved something for the sake of an end. God inspires love... because He is the creator, because He is good, and all the rest: not for any reward... Love... has no end towards which it inclines, but rather a cause from which it proceeds.

The motivating power which Valla ascribes to love completes the ethics of On pleasure. It gives Valla's system a starting point as well as a goal. This is vital for the last section of the dialogue since it lets Valla show how something generous and unselfish can come of a theory founded on pleasure. And this is probably the single most important reason that Valla identifies delectatio and voluptas. It gives sense to his closing argument that love and pleasure are one and that we do not love for the sake of pleasure, or feel pleasure for the sake of love, but that to feel pleasure is to love. Valla's final meditation on the meaning of God's love for us and our love for God is premised upon the association that exists in the Latin language between delectatio and amor. By intimating that voluptas is only a more intense delectatio, Valla can assert that the 'true good' which would provide the title for later versions of his dialogue is actually love, the supreme virtue of Christian theology. It is true that this serves Valla's practical need to deflect the perilous suspicion of heresy, but this is not his only consideration. The identification of voluptas and delectatio is also vital to the internal structure of Valla's philosophy.

172 "Sed si amor est finis, cur amantes laboramus?" Repastinatio, 668. 173"Et idcirco non placet mihi cum dicitur Deum amandum propter se, quasi quis aliquid amet ob finem. Amandus est Deus... quia creator, quia bonus, et caetera huiusmodi: non autem ob remunerationem... Amor... non habet ille quidem finem ad quern tendat: sed causam unde procedat." ibid. 98

* * *

After the argument that pleasure is the highest good, the longest discussion in On pleasure concerns the Golden Mean. As an argument, it is discrete from Valla's case for the ethics of pleasure, and in some respects it is even more significant. It is also even more inflammatory in terms of contemporary opinion than Valla's embrace of Epicurus.

This is because it involves criticizing a philosopher who was even more admired than

Epicurus was despised. If Valla is on risky ground associating himself with a notorious materialist, the only way to court greater danger would be to attack the reigning deity of the philosophy that still dominated the learned institutions of his day. To praise Epicurus was one thing, but in tampering with the Golden Mean, Valla must confront the legendary wisdom of Aristotle.

It is well known that interest in Aristotle enjoyed something of a resurgence in the

Latin West during the centuries that immediately preceded the writing of On pleasure.

After a long period in which his philosophy had been almost unknown, Aristotle returned during the thirteenth century via the second-hand Latinizations of Arabic productions from the Islamic world.174 Of course not even the most celebrated of the Latin

Aristotelians escaped the suspicion of heresy in their own day: the theology of St.

1 7S (1225-74) enjoyed its share of controversy. But by the time that

For a series of essays touching on the extent of Aristotelian influence during the later Middle Ages, see Aristotle and his medieval interpreters, ed. Richard Bosley (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1992). 175 Although they were mainly concerned with the extreme of and his Christian imitators, the ideas condemned by the bishop of Paris in 1277 included several associated with Aquinas. Etienne Gilson, History of in the middle ages (New York: Random House, 1980) 406. 99

Valla was born in 1407, Aquinas and many lesser lights of the resurgent had passed beyond these early challenges and achieved institutional status.

Nor did academic interest in Aristotle and his Arab interpreters Avicenna (c.980-

1037) and Averroes (c.l 126-1198) decline during Valla's lifetime. It was in 1436 that the great Aristotelian Gaetano da Thiene (1387-1465) began to lecture on Averroes,

Avicenna, and (c.l 200-80) in the university city of Padua. If anything, the real golden age of Italian Aristotelianism took place after Valla's death, when

Thiene's Paduan school produced philosophers like Tommaso de Vio, later Cardinal

Cajetan (1469-1534), and Pietro Pomponazzi (1462-1525).176 While it might seem difficult to estimate something as subjective as prestige, it is hard to think of any philosopher who enjoyed a similar place among Valla's contemporaries. Aristotle had his critics: but such criticism hardly detracted from the devotion of his followers. Few other figures, pagan or Christian, could rival him.

And Valla made no secret of his feelings for contemporary Aristotelianism. Valla was something of a natural iconoclast, and the size and fanaticism of Aristotle's following presented a tempting target. For all of Valla's care to frame his philosophy in terms of Christian orthodoxy, he was often reckless in his challenges to Aristotle and his latter-day followers. The fierceness and intemperance of Valla's language towards

Aristotle personally has already been demonstrated: see the letter above where he speaks of Aristotle's "astounding idiocy."177 But Valla was also willing to attack Aristotle's disciples directly. In another letter Valla reproaches "the stupid Aristotelians" for the

Dominick A. Iorio, The Aristotelians of Renaissance Italy: a philosophical exposition (Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1991) 106-107. 177 Valla, Correspondence, 215. 100 unthinking admiration he accuses them of bestowing upon their idol. Valla sneers at

Averroes for alleging that Aristotle has never been proven wrong and declares that the works of Averroes are not worth committing to the flimsiest writing material. Valla makes Averroes the embodiment of the uncritical Aristotle-worship that he has consecrated himself to fight.

Because [Aristotle] is the man who has never been reproached, they say, whom no man, as Averroes plainly says, has ever convicted of error. What perfect ignorance! O Averroes, natural-born barbarian! Is not Aristotle opposed by every school beside his own? ...But come now! Let us trust Averroes alone: Averroes, whose learning I so esteem that, in the words of , I think his works should be inscribed not on parchment but on papyrus.

Even apart from his larger war upon the Aristotelians, Valla's contempt for

Averroes is notable in its own right. For Mario Fois, it involves the defining characteristic of Valla's philosophy. Averroes was best known to Valla and his contemporaries for teaching that philosophy could be isolated from religion: he personified the notion that faith and reason represent hermetically separated spheres of human understanding. Fois argues that Valla is especially hostile to Averroes because the tendency of Valla's own thinking is precisely the opposite. Valla is always building this argument, be it through the 'Stoic' arguing that men and women should do what is right but fail, or the 'Epicurean' praising a life of amoral self-interest, or the 'Christian' demonstrating that moral action is only justified through the consideration of a life to come. According to Fois, the point of these orations is that philosophy cannot be separated from religion and that only faith can give reason meaning. This is what Fois

178 ibid, 207. "...stulti Aristotelici..." 179 "Quia hie est qui nunquam reprehensus est, inquiunt, certe, ut Averrois ait, a nemine errare convictus. O imperitissimos homines, o Averroim vere in barbaria natum! ...Eamus nunc et uni Averroi credamus, cuius doctrinam tanti facio, ut libros eius papyro non membrana, sicut ait Martialis, scribendos existimem. " ibid. 101 means when he sets Valla against the "Averroistic" notion that "philosophy and religion are clearly differentiated and do not intersect." "[Valla] asserts that [philosophy] is unable to resolve the fundamental problems of the human condition and that its rationalistic solutions are consequently irrelevant, especially in terms of the religious dimension [Valla] attributes to moral issues."180

But apart from opposing Averroes personally, Valla opposes him as an embodiment of something greater. Valla makes Averroes a symbol of the uncritical respect for Aristotle which he lays at the feet of his contemporary opponents. And it is in the spirit of challenging what Fois has called "the gigantic Aristotelian idol" that Valla compounds the risks he has already taken with his dialogue. In addition to his controversial praise of Epicurus and the ethics of voluptas, Valla's dialogue includes a characteristic challenge to the belief in Aristotle's wisdom - Valla would call it the credulous faith in Aristotle's infallibility. On pleasure is not only the defense of an unpopular philosopher, it also criticizes a widely respected pagan thinker.

Since On pleasure concerns ethics, Valla's specific target is the cornerstone of

Aristotelian ethics: the teaching of the Golden Mean. The Golden Mean is a particular way of discussing vice and virtue, it provides a specialized vocabulary for classifying the moral choices men and women make. It is laid out most famously in Aristotle's

Nichomachean ethics, and it has since become part of the public inheritance of Western civilization. With a few small variations, the idea may be explained as follows.

Moral action is a matter of finding the middle ground. To do what is right in a given situation, the correct degree of a certain quality is needed: bravery, generosity,

180 "Filosofia e Religione rimangono distinte e parallele..." "Ne dichiara l'incapacita a risolvere i problemi fondamentali dell' uomo e quindi l'invalidita delle sue soluzioni razionalistiche, proprio per il senso religioso attribuito da lui ai problemi morali." Fois, 631-632. 102 honesty are all examples. Too much or too little leads to a mistake, to doing what is wrong. This means that in every instance there is one right course of action and two wrong ones. Take the virtue which Valla discusses specifically, namely courage. In a moment of danger, men and women can do one of three things: they can manifest too little courage, too much courage, or they can manifest courage in just the right degree.

Someone who shows insufficient courage - in battle or some other stressful situation - will be a coward. Someone who is excessively courageous will behave rashly. Only the person who is brave without being too brave and who strikes the right balance between cowardice and rashness will exemplify the virtue of courage. The same goes for any other good quality. A generous person will avoid being either stingy or profligate and an honest person will balance truthfulness with tact. It is the ethics of Goldilocks and the

10 1 three bears: too little, too much, and just right.

The 'Christian' speaker introduces his criticism of this teaching with an example.

A man is walking in the forest. He hears a noise and, safely sheltered in the brush, he sees a party of bandits. Because the man knows that he cannot defeat the bandits alone, he stays hidden and waits for them to pass.182 How should we describe this? If we talk in terms of the Golden Mean, the 'Christian says that there are three possible ways to characterize the man's action. Was he brave? Was he excessively brave, which is to say rash? Or was he not brave enough, a coward? This is where the 'Christian' explains that the Aristotelian system fails. Someone who hides is hardly rash, but neither of the other two terms is a good fit either. The man concealed himself in the bushes, and this might

181 This is, at least, the accounting of the Golden Mean Valla gives in On pleasure. That virtue is a middle point between contrary vices, the twin extremes of excess and deficiency, is how the 'Stoic' speaker explains the matter near the beginning of the dialogue. On pleasure, 7-8. IV [3-5]. 182 ibid, 95. IV [4]. 103 be called the act of a coward if it were not that in this case hiding was the right choice.

And how can the right choice be labeled cowardice if cowardice is a vice? Because the man in the example did what was right, the Golden Mean might seem to demand that he be called brave. But Valla has the 'Christian' observe that no one calls hiding in the bushes brave.184 The man made the right choice, but he was hardly brave to run and hide.

It was observed earlier that all of Valla's ideas have a linguistic foundation, and this is no exception. Valla's objection to the Golden Mean appeals to a very specific understanding of the relationship of language to experience. Valla assumes that there is a precise correspondence between words and the reality that they describe. The 'Christian' explains that the Golden Mean fails because it charges one word with describing more than one kind of behavior. This what Aristotle does if he uses the word 'brave' to describe both the person who fights when it is the correct decision and also the individual who wisely chooses to avoid a fight. "What can we say, but that Aristotle... confuses two very distinct things under the same name?"185 The philosophers who speak in terms of the Golden Mean have forgotten that each word can only correspond to one thing, no more and no less.

Why do you make one thing of two? Why do you give one word two meanings, against its nature? How can you deprive some words of their significance, and bestow upon others what is not theirs?186

183 ibid, 95-96. IV [5-6]. 184 ibid, 95. IV [4]. 185 "Quid ergo dicemus? Absurdum esse quod Aristoteles fecit ut duas inter se res sane diversas in unam speciem includeret atque in unum nomen confunderet." ibid, 96. IV [7]. 1 6 "Quid duas res unam facis? Quid unum verbum in duas significationes ultra quam ferat eius natura deducis? Quid aliis vocabulis suam potestatem adimis, aliis donas non suam?" ibid, 96. IV [8]. This is the essence of Valla's critique. Every action should have only one name and these names should correspond to how people actually describe their actions.

Philosophers have no right to invest words with special qualities and try to join two different actions with the same word. Valla's solution is one that seems guaranteed to outrage his enemies in its audacity. Indeed it must antagonize any admirer of Aristotle who had not been his enemy before. Valla insists on replacing the Aristotelian system entirely, and he dares to propose his own alternative in its place. Instead of talking about vice and virtue by threes - too much, too little, and just right - Valla proposes groups of two. In his system there will be one vice for every virtue.

But even this is not the most revolutionary element of Valla's proposition. While it may have seemed worse than arrogance to challenge Aristotle at all, the shocking thing is how Valla frames that challenge. It is not simply the specific authority of Aristotle but the very notion of authority that Valla questions here. Valla's age elevated the word of the canonical writers, the auctores - 'authors' captures none of the word's force - to a status just beneath that of scripture. In fact the very line between authoritative literature and scripture was faintly drawn. Paul and the were merely considered the greatest auctores of them all. Only certain associations surviving in the modern

English authority can give any hint of what the auctores meant to Valla's contemporaries. It was not only perilous to contradict the auctores, even to note contradictions among the auctores themselves was often undesirable. It was better to follow the example of thinkers like Abelard and Aquinas, who each won fame by

187 In fact, the notion of an 'author' as the writer of a specific work, already present in Valla's use of the word, is not part of the original etymology. Audor is derived from the verb augeo, 'to strengthen or increase'. The use oiaudoritas by Valla and his contemporaries is based on the notion that the endorsement of a canonical writer lends strength to any argument. See the relevant entries in Lewis and Short's. 105 discovering ingenious ways to reconcile apparent differences among the auctores and so harmonize Christian scripture with itself and with the best of pagan wisdom.

There is certainly nothing new in the idea that Valla challenged the notion of . It is an accusation repeated both in the surviving attacks of Valla's critics and in Valla's own letters on the subject of their criticism.18 Valla seems to alternate between two ways of characterizing his position. In certain letters he argues that he affirms the wisdom of the genuine auctores. In others, including the first of Valla's letters quoted in this chapter, he actually boasts about the formerly brilliant reputations he has tarnished.190 But Valla goes further in the pages of On pleasure. Here his crime is not merely to attack the greatest of the auctores. If he had contradicted Aristotle with another authority this might have been more acceptable. But Valla does more than this: he transgresses against the very notion of auctoritas when he sets Aristotle against human experience, against the record of life. He says that Aristotle is not wrong because another canonical writer contradicts him, although many do, but also because Aristotle's theory contradicts the way that people actually live and talk.

Twentieth-century scholarship has been quick to recognize this approach.

Maristella Lorch calls her study A defense of life because of her sense that Valla is appealing to experience over theory. She says that Valla is searching for "a language that

For several good examples of this sort of attempt to reconcile authorities even through specious reasoning, see Michael Clanchy's book Abelard: a medieval life (Bodmin, Cornwall: Blackwell Publishers, 1997) 37-40. Among other things, Clanchy cites a passage where Abelard argues that Christians can and indeed must avail themselves of Aristotelian logic. Abelard observes, taking Augustine's authority on account of his own ignorance of Greek, that in the Gospel of John, Christ is called the logos. Therefore, Abelard concludes that Christ-iam must necessarily be logic-ims. 189 See particularly pages 193-210 of Valla's Correspondence for a letter devoted explicitly to discussing this charge. Filelfo's letter cited earlier also alludes to this. 190Valla, Correspondence, 215-216. In another letter, Valla argues that every great author of the Greco- Roman tradition, including even the patristic writers, was a sort of iconoclast, ibid, 202-206. 106 expresses the fluid quality of life."191 Lorch recognizes the significance of Valla's repeated declarations that he objects to the Golden Mean because he wants everyday language to be respected and not manipulated. "Aristotle's sin consists in having overburdened a word, charging it with meaning beyond its 'nature'; in general, Aristotle abused the relationship of verba [words] to res [things]."192 Lorch recognizes that Valla expresses his criticism of the Golden Mean in terms of a specific theory of how words are really used.

Perhaps the best way to illustrate what Lorch means here is to return to the example that commences Valla's critique, the story of the man in the woods. It is instructive to see how Valla resolves the problem which he presents. What can you call someone who hides from danger, but in hiding does the right thing? Valla has an easy answer: he is cautious. That is how people describe someone who hides or runs when it is the right choice, just as they say that someone who does so when it is the wrong choice is a coward. And this is the key to Valla's alternative ethics. Vices and virtues are grouped in pairs based on whether an action is right or wrong in a given situation. If someone stands and fights when it is the correct decision, that person is brave. Someone who does this same when it is wrong is rash. The person who runs and hides is either cautious or cowardly, depending once more on whether it is the correct choice. The same goes for every other quality. An action is good at the right time and bad at the wrong time: but no action is bad in itself.194 Someone is not wasteful for spending a great deal

A defense of life, 237. 1 ibid, 240. '"Cautum vocabo, non fortem." On pleasure, 96. IV [6]. [ ibid, 96-97. IV [8-9]. of money, but for spending money when it should be saved. Thrift is not simply to refrain from spending but to do so when no money should be spent.195

This is Valla's alternative: instead of an ethics of too much, too little and just right, he proposes an ethics of right and wrong. But in terms of Valla's challenge to auctoritas, what matters is how Valla justifies his alternative system. The appeal to experience over authority is implicit in Valla's nomenclature of vice and virtue, but the justifications that follow bring Valla's thinking into the open. From the beginning of On pleasure, commencing with the 'Stoic's' opening oration, Valla builds his case that the

Golden Mean does not correspond to life as it is actually discussed and experienced.

Without trying to undermine Aristotle's system himself, the 'Stoic' announces Valla's radical theme when he laments the fact that the tripartite description of virtue and vice does not correspond to anything in nature. Rather than indicate a philosopher who contradicts Aristotle, Valla prefers to draw the reader's attention to human experience, specifically as it is mediated through language. Colors are not arranged in threes, nor are sounds or flavors. Only with human beings do we talk of one quality having two opposites.

I pray that you notice and consider how unjustly balanced this is. For there is no color opposed to white but black, no sound opposed to high but low, no taste opposed to sweet but sour. For other colors, sounds, and flavors are not opposing but varied: they are not called contrary but diverse. Whereas a virtue, such as watchfulness, is set between two opposites, inquisitiveness and negligence. And matters are so established that the moment you withdraw from one [vice] you are in danger of straying into the other.196

Ui ibid, 100. IV [23]. 196"Quod quam inique comparatum est animadvertite, quaeso, atque aestimate. Etenim albedini nullus est adversus color praeter nigredinem, nullus sonus acuto praeter gravem, dulcedini nullus sapor praeter amarorem. Nam alii vel colores vel soni vel sapores non contrarii sed varii, non adversi sed diversi vocantur. Virtus vero, velut diligentia, inter bina contraria, curiositatem et negligentiam, constituta est atque ita constituta ut cum pedem ab una retuleris, in discrimen venias ne in alteram relabaris." ibid, 7. III[3]. 108

For the 'Stoic' this is a condemnation of human nature, not the Golden Mean, but

Valla often makes this speaker a vehicle for arguments he does not intend. In the New foundation Valla frames this same notion as an explicit refutation of Aristotle. Nature is diverse and varied, Valla observes, with no obvious 'middle' to be found. If Valla appeals to any authority here, it is not the specific authority of a single celebrated writer but the authority of the anonymous millions who have unconsciously expressed their metaphyiscal system through the language which describes their everyday experience.

First, is the middle point of black and white green, or purple, or blue, or yellow, or red? I cannot tell. For indeed between a high sound and a low sound there is no middle: neither sweet, nor smooth, nor clear, nor firm, nor soft, nor the opposites of any of these. Nor is there a middle point between sweet and sour: there is salty and bitter, and their opposites. Nor between hot and cold in the sense of touch: something can feel soft or it can feel rough. 97

But this is not the only way that Valla appeals to experience over authority. He argues that his system is closer to life because it better reflects how vice and virtue can co-exist in individuals. When writers like Quintilian and Sallust discuss examples drawn from real experience, they do not talk in terms of the Golden Mean. This is true whether they are discussing good qualities or bad ones. On the one hand, those who excel do not excel through moderation, but by combining very different virtues. When Quintilian discusses Homer, he praises him for a whole range of contradictory and complementary qualities, not for striking some perfect middle ground. "Fluent and restrained, cheerful and grave, remarkable both in invention and in brevity: no one surpassed him in

197 "pfjjjja an mter album et nigrum colorem sit medius viridis, sit croceus, sit venetus, sit viridaceus, sit rubeus. Ego non sentio: quia inter actutum sonum et gravem non est medius, nee dulcis, nee facilis, nee clams, nee firmus, nee flexibilis, nee his contrarii. Nee inter dulcem et amaram saporem, est salsus, acidus, et his contrarii Nee inter calidum et frigidum tactum, est mollis tactus asperque." Repastinatio, 689. 109 discussing great matters grandly, or small matters with delicacy." Quintilian also says something similar in listing the virtues of an orator: moderation is not among them. In

Quintilian's observation, excellence is not finding the Golden Mean but displaying different qualities as the occasion demands. "Let his speech be swift but not hurried, measured but not sluggish."199 And if this were not enough, the 'Christian' adds from his own observation that speaking demands more than moderation. Sometimes a high, sharp tone is demanded, and sometimes a low, soft one.200 The 'Christian' says that his own experience in public speaking confirms "that the two extremes are not vicious but helpful and necessary."201

As for the people who do not excel, those who exemplify vices, Valla feels that the Golden Mean is also inadequate here in describing the facts of human nature. If right and wrong are measured in Aristotle's terms, the vices are irreconcilable because they oppose one another. No one can manifest too much of a quality and too little at once: it is impossible to be both rash and cowardly, both prodigal and stingy. And yet this is how the great writers describe real people and real situations. In his diatribe against the corruption and perversity of human nature, the 'Stoic' refers to Sallust's account of

Catiline, the would-be dictator of Rome. As Sallust describes him, Catiline is a bundle of contradictions. The Roman historian sees in his subject a whole list of opposing vices.

"He was at once greedy and prodigal, both a glutton and an abstemious hypocrite, careless of his reputation and yet hungry for glory, the same man was possessed by every

198 "Hunc nemo in magnis rebus sublimitate, in parvis proprietate superavit; idem laetus ac pressus, iocundus et gravis, turn copia tumbrevitate mirabilis." On pleasure, 99. IV [18]. 199 "Os sit promptum non incitatum, moderatum non lentum." ibid, 99. IV [20]. 200 ibid, 100. IV [22]. 901 "Ex quo licet mediocritatem vocis esse vitiosam quotiens acutum sonum vel gravem rei condicio postulabit, et ilia duo extrema non vitiosa esse sed commoda et necessaria." 100, IV[22], 110 vice." Since the 'Stoic' takes Aristotle's classification for granted, he is at a loss.

How can someone manifest too much and too little virtue at once? Such a combination seems fantastic, impossible, even monstrous.

How can it be that contrary and inimical qualities can co-exist? By the very gods that know this, I cannot guess. Can water mingle with fire? Light things with heavy? The highest with the lowest? And yet wrath and mildness are not less unlike, or rashness and cowardice, arrogance and abasement. But still we see '(AT these "cyclops and centaurs," as Statius says.

The 'Stoic' cannot understand this, but the 'Christian' perceives his mistake. The

'Stoic' is baffled because he is looking at things the wrong way: he is letting theory blind him to reality. The Golden Mean fails because in real life - Valla's speakers take it for granted that as a historian Sallust is an authority on the subject - vices that Aristotle considers opposites can co-exist. In fact they often complement each other. This is because doing the wrong thing in one situation makes it easier to do the wrong thing in another. Someone who spends money when he should not will have less money on hand when the time comes to spend. This ensures that the prodigal person will also be stingy.

Vices can be combined in Valla's system because it is not a question of having too much or too little of a given quality: if that were true personalities like Catiline would be impossible. Vice is a matter of making the wrong choice in a given situation, and the person who makes the wrong choice in every situation will manifest seemingly contradictory vices. Someone who runs when he should fight and fights when he should

"Adiice nunc, quod me paene exclamare compellit, quod saepe usu venit ut uno eodemque tempore a contrariis vitiis velut ventis auferamur, ut de Catilina legimus: idem avaras, idem profusus, idem ganeo erat, idem simulator frugalitatis, idem negligens famae, idem ambitiosus, idem omnibus vitiis copertus." ibid, 8. IV [6]. 203"Quonammodo fieri queat ut contraria et repugnantia simul esse possint. Per deos ipsos qui hoc sciunt non intelligo. An aquae cum ignibus misceri queunt, levia cum gravibus, summa cum imis? Sic nulla communio est inter iracundiam et lenitudinem, audaciam et formidinem, tumiditatem et humilitatem. Et tamen videmus hos Cyclopes atque centauros, ut Statius inquit." ibid, 8. IV[6]. Ill run will be a both a coward and reckless.204 The great poets, orators, and historians who have compiled a literary record of the human condition all testify that it can be so.

And even this is not the end of Valla's argument on behalf of a bipartite system of virtues and vices. Ultimately, Valla moves to the extremely technical argument that moral conduct is actio, an action, and that a three-part scheme is impossible because every situation offers only two choices: act or do not act. As the 'Christian' explains

90S

"you can either give or not give: either can be a virtue, either can be a vice." There is no need to discuss the details of this argument here: what matters is that Valla continues to refute the accepted system with an appeal not to authority but to nature, to the empirical facts of how virtuous and vicious actions are discussed. Valla argues that people either say he fled or he fought, he gave or he refused. This is how ordinary men and women speak, and it is how distinguished writers describe such choices. No one but a dialectician ever says of a single, discrete action, he was moderate. This is language reserved for discussing the sum of many actions. And so in classifying moral action in terms of moderation, Valla's 'Christian' maintains that Aristotle blurs the vital distinction between a single, discrete act and repeated action over time. And so for Valla,

Aristotle's crime in joining courage and caution under the common name of moderation is not that he contradicts some wiser philosopher, but that he ignores the lessons of 907 experience and "conflates things that by their nature are distinct."

m ibid, 98. IV [14] and 100. IV [24-25]. 205 "Potes enim dare et non dare, utranque cum virtute et utranque cum vitio." ibid, 97. IV [11]. 206 "For 'generous', 'thrifty', 'greedy', and 'spendthrift' individuals are not subject to praise or blame on the basis of singular acts but of an ongoing and consistent pattern of behavior." "Nam liberalis, parcus, avaras, prodigus non ex singulis actibus laudari vituparive possint, sed ex perpetuitate ac frequentiore usu actionum." ibid, 97. IV [11] and 100. IV [23]. 207"Disunge haec duo vocabula eorumque significantias, quia natura disiuncta sunt." ibid, 96-97. IV[9-11]. 112

But regardless of whether Valla is correct in this particular argument - along the way he makes the very questionable claim that moral qualities are never described in an

90S adjectival sense - his justification is potentially revolutionary. Valla has not only challenged Aristotle's particular philosophy, he has challenged a popular notion of what philosophy can and ought to be. Valla has set the artificial terminology of the philosophers against the description of life in the language of the great writers - poets, orators, historians - and the speech of ordinary men and women. It is no wonder that

Valla complains in his longest apologetic letter that he has been accused of

"indiscriminate criticism of the auctores."209 By appealing as he does to experience, including his own and that of his readers, Valla positively invites such a charge. He is asking his readers to prefer the lessons of oratory, poetry, and history, even their personal experience of how language is used, to opinion of the most revered philosophy of their day. It is easy to imagine how Valla's contemporary critics might think that he had deliberately conceived the most radical perversion of established wisdom possible.

Valla's system is not merely an attack on the greatest of the auctores, but a challenge to auctoritas itself.

* * *

It is worth observing at this point that Valla's ethical principles may not be quite as radical as he makes them seem. Valla is after all part of a tradition which more than one scholar has documented. Petrarch, only the most famous example, had praised the

208 ibid, 62. XV[1]. 209 Valla, Correspondence, 194. "...dicunt omnes a me auctores reprehendi..." 113 poets and orators of antiquity at the expense of contemporary Aristotelianism almost a century earlier.210 And Valla's often uncritical admiration for certain ancient authors,

Quintilian for one, can certainly seem to undermine the argument that he opposes any

911 notion of auctoritas. But what matters in understanding the influence of On pleasure upon Thomas More and Utopia is the appearance of radicalism. It is not merely that

Valla convinces many of his contemporaries that he is a radical innovator "appointing himself the master of every art," but that Valla influences himself with this self-created myth. Valla sees himself as the man who "overturn(s) every branch of ancient wisdom."

Indeed it can be argued that this is the crucial element of Valla's personal mythology: he casts himself in the role of the lonely defender of neglected truth.

And the attraction of such a position is easy to understand, especially considering

Valla's chosen career. A lawyer may study for years in the name of personal prosperity, monks and nuns sacrifice comfort and convenience for a life pleasing to God, but a writer writes for renown, and renown was never won through conformity. In one of his most personally revealing letters, Valla admits that the desire to seem original and to be renowned for the uniqueness of his discoveries is among his primary motivations for writing. He declares that it rivals even the love of truth and religion, both obligatory references. Valla says that he writes not only out of more honorable considerations, but

"for the sake... of the fame that arises from seeming privy to knowledge shared by no one

The most notable example, although not the only one, is Petrarch's apologetic epistle On his own ignorance and that of many others. Francesco Petrarca, De sui ipsius et multorum ignorantia, ed. with facing Italian translation by Enrico Fenzi (Milan: Mursia, 1999). 211 Apart from anything else, Valla's speakers do not hesitate to invoke auctoritas, as long as the audor in question is one they respect. "Quod si in hac re auctoritas requiritur, vides quinam homines hic et quantae auctoritatis assunt." On pleasure, XV. [4} 116. 114 else."212 The thirst for originality or even, as Valla seems to acknowledge, for the appearance of originality is one of the principal reasons that he picks up his pen. It is even arguable that Valla only includes truth and religion among his motives because he could not afford to omit them. It could be that this last motive, a radical reputation, is the real consideration that drives his writing.

What is certain is that this is the principal appeal of Valla's work for Thomas

More. Whether or not Valla really placed the desire to seem original or even radical first among his motives, this lies at the heart of his influence upon More and Utopia. As the chapters to come unfold, it will be seen that Valla's self-conscious radicalism both attracts More and scandalizes him in equal measure. The four departures from medieval ethics discussed here can all be found in the pages of Utopia, and in the next chapter they will each be used to prove that More read On pleasure and made it one of his models.

But apart from this, the chapters that follow will explore More's relationship with Valla's radical attitudes in depth, examining both the appeal of Valla's radicalism and More's rejection of Valla's most controversial ideas. Whether More agrees with Valla or disagrees with him, the only constant is Valla's deliberate striving after originality. As a writer and as a personality, More is radical enough to be interested in Valla's ideas, but not sufficiently radical to follow him all the way.

And this is why the four arguments discussed here constitute an essential introduction to the chapters to come. Any discussion of More's reaction to Valla's ideas had to be preceded by an exposition of those ideas, above all the deliberate and self- conscious radicalism of so much that Valla wrote. To understand why More would have

212 Valla, Correspondence, 216. "Hoc tantum consideres velim, non odio pape adductum, sed veritatis, sed religionis, sed cuiusdam etiam fame gratia motum, ut quod nemo sciret, id ego scisse solus viderer." 115 appreciated On pleasure, it is necessary to understand what Valla means when he declares that "I can scarcely imagine myself writing anything without introducing some element of originality: I do not know what other reason I could have to write." Valla's radical ethics is the key to his relationship with More, and it serves as a preface to any account of that relationship.

213 ibid. 116

CHAPTER THREE: THE FOUNDATION OF UTOPIA

The last chapter discussed the ideas which Valla lends to More, and now it falls to the present chapter to illustrate the use that More makes of those ideas. This means that the connection between Utopia and On pleasure, the lynchpin of the whole argument, must be firmly established. Valla's four radical challenges to contemporary ethics all show up in the pages of Utopia. Pleasure the highest good, prudentia separate from the virtues, delectatio identical with voluptas, the rejection of the Golden Mean: each of these can demonstrate More's familiarity with On pleasure.

But before looking at Utopia, it is worth asking if other evidence exists that More knew of Valla, or in fact read On pleasure. The record here is encouraging but inconclusive. On the one hand, there can be little doubt that More knew Valla by reputation and had read some of Valla's books. Considering his lifelong interest in humanist studies, it would be truly surprising if More had been ignorant of Valla and his achievement. More was a product of the developments discussed in chapter one: he exemplified the standard of scholarship that was once unknown outside of Italy. Apart from Utopia, itself an outstanding specimen of literary humanism, More produced a Latin translation of the Greek satirist in which he provided the kind of the access to ancient literature which had long endeared Italian learning to English readers. 14 There is nothing close to a complete record of the books More owned, and so scholars have

91 S resorted to guesswork even to deduce which classical authors he would have read.

214 , Thomas More: a biography (New York: Knopf, 1984) 83-87. 215 On the other hand, it is eminently possible that More and Erasmus owned this particular book. The unnamed works of Valla in Erasmus' possession might easily include On pleasure. And in More's case, no accurate and complete booklist is available. J. B. Trapp is left with nothing but speculation even to decide 117

More would certainly have known On Latin style: considering that it was probably

Valla's most popular book, it would have been unavoidable. As it was noted in the first chapter, On Latin style circulated in English libraries and universities from the time More was born.216 Concerned as he was with the intricacies of Latin usage, More would certainly have appreciated the various insights Valla provides. And even if More had not encountered this book earlier, he would have known On Latin style because he knew

Erasmus, who admired Valla enough to paraphrase this masterpiece of Latin usage in his youth.217

And More would also have appreciated another aspect of Valla's work. Valla would have been known not only to More the Latinist, but to More the student of

Christian scripture. Partly because Erasmus did so much to publicize it, More's relationship with Erasmus has always been well known. Although Richard Marius has argued that Erasmus exaggerated the strength of their friendship from political

918 considerations, it is impossible to deny More's professional respect for Erasmus. As it will be seen in the following chapter, More defended Erasmus against the critics of his program of biblical scholarship. And so it is only natural that Erasmus would have introduced More to Valla's Annotations on the New Testament just as he introduced the 91 Q book to England generally. And More recognized Valla's role in preparing the way which classical and patristic writers were to be found in More's library. Even with canonical authors such as Thucydides and Sallust, Trapp must resort to 'internal evidence', "verbal reminiscences" and so on, to determine which books More owned and read. Trapp, 49-52. 216 Trapp says that On Latin style was "enormously popular from its first printing in 1471 and enormously accessible." Trapp, 5. 217 Reynolds, 5. 218 Marius, 92-97. 219 Carlo Vecce, "Tradizioni valliane tra Parigi e le Fiandre dal Cusano ad Erasmo" in Lorenzo Valla e I'umanesimo Italiano, eds. Ottavio Besomi and Mariangela Regoliosi (Padua: Editrice Antenore, 1986). Erasmus, Letter 29, 1489, Opus epistolarum D. Erasmi Roterodami, vol I, ed. P.S. Allen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1906), 120. 118 for Erasmus' attempt to clarify Christian scripture. Long before Erasmus produced his

New Testament translation, More explains, "Valla made certain useful annotations"

990 which facilitated further study of the sacred text.

It is one thing to establish that More knew and admired Valla as a grammarian and a philologist and even as a biblical scholar: this is easy enough. It is another thing entirely to suggest that More had ever seen On pleasure, let alone that the content of the book interested him. The lack of any documentation of More's reading is a problem here. If there is no record of More owning the works of Livy, Sallust or Thucydides, there can be little hope of discovering whether any of Valla's books passed through his hands, let alone this specific text.

However, as long as we are trading in probability rather than certainty, it is not hard to imagine how More might have come across Valla's dialogue. There is always the chance that More encountered On pleasure through Erasmus. Erasmus never mentions

On pleasure explicitly, but Carlo Vecce builds a convincing argument that Erasmus had seen not only Valla's dialogue on ethics but also On free will. Erasmus did not try to bring Valla's philosophical works to print along with the Annotations, but since they were part of the same collection in which he found the former work, they could hardly have escaped his notice.221 Somewhat later, in 1512, the humanist printer Josse Bade, who had produced the second edition of Erasmus' Praise of Folly earlier that year, printed On pleasure in Paris. And then there is the 'internal' evidence, the similarity between Erasmus' writing and Valla's. Peter Bietenholz explores the parallels between

On pleasure and the Praise of Folly in the article that was mentioned in the introduction 220 More, Selected letters, 176. 221 Vecce, 405. Since this dissertation does not deal with Erasmus, it is enough to present Vecce's conclusion here. "Erasmo dunque ebbe di fronte un manoscritto del De vero bono e De libero arbitrio." 119 to this study. The most notable of these similarities involves the common manner in which Erasmus and Valla both caricature the ancient philosophy of Stoicism.222 Edward

Surtz has also suggested that Valla exercised an influence upon another of Erasmus' books, De contemptu mundi, 'On holding apart from the world'. But like most scholars who have explored this relationship, Surtz offers only speculation. He goes no further in arguing this case than a very generalized reference to "the great effect of Valla upon the

99^ northern humanists."

So on the one hand, it would certainly have been possible for More to read On pleasure. Apart from the likelihood that Erasmus introduced More to Valla's dialogue, which he certainly knew himself, it is even possible that More could have discovered the book independently. Copies circulated in England while More was still a small child, including the one listed at Oxford in 1483.224 And Valla wrote the sort of books that

More would definitely have read with interest. But this is not the same as proving that

More read Valla's book: it is not sufficient to establish it as fact. The absence of any documentation regarding the books More owned himself means that the only reliable proof would involve More mentioning the book explicitly. And More never mentions having read On pleasure.

But what is truly interesting considering the scant evidence that More read On pleasure, is that the theory has persisted nonetheless. More than one Utopia scholar in the last century has suggested Valla's book as a possible influence. No one has ever

222 Bietenholz, "Les promenades d'Erasme." Bietenholz discusses the critique of Stoicism throughout his article. It is the logical complement to the praise of Epicurus which he observes on the part of both Valla and Erasmus. 223 Eward Surtz, The praise of pleasure: philosophy, education, and in More's Utopia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957) 34. 224 Weiss, 175. pursued the argument in a systematic fashion, however: the usual procedure is to raise the

99 S possibility and then leave it unresolved. At a dozen pages George Logan has pursued it at greater length than anyone in his 1983 study The meaning of More's Utopia. And while Logan's book is not primarily concerned with More's models, Logan's conclusions regarding On pleasure are still telling. Logan offers more than the simple assertion that

More has read On pleasure: in itself this would be relatively insignificant. He also anticipates the argument of the present dissertation and maintains that More is developing concepts derived from Valla's dialogue in the pages of Utopia, notably in the philosophy attributed to his fictional island republic. "Considering the importance of Valla to humanists in general and particularly to Erasmus, as well as the resemblances between

Valla's argument and that of the Utopians," Logan explains, "it seems certain that More's 996 passage is indebted to De vero falsoque bono." Logan has little interest in supporting this conclusion, however, since it is something of a digression from the principal subject of his book. And so after a few pages comparing Valla's ideas with the philosophy of 997

More's Utopians, he sets the argument to rest. But while Logan's argument may be brief, it is still significant. It might be said that the present chapter is an attempt to illustrate and elucidate Logan's certainty, to show why his intuition "that More is consciously revising Valla's arguments" is correct.

And in at least one sense, Logan also indicates how this chapter will prove that

More read On pleasure. It is true that there may not be any surviving statement on

More's part or any booklist that points to his having known Valla's dialogue. But the 225 Apart from Logan, Surtz argues that "Thomas More may have seen... Valla's book..." Surtz seems to believe that if More did not encounter Valla's ideas about virtue being rewarded with pleasure first-hand, he came to know them through Erasmus' De contemptu mundi. Surtz, 34. 226 George Logan, The meaning of More's Utopia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983) 146. 227ibid, 5-8 and 157-163. 121 pages of Utopia themselves provide evidence that More is "consciously revising Valla's arguments." The real proof that More read On pleasure and adapted elements of Valla's ethical system in Utopia can be found in the two books themselves, in their language and ideas. Valla's arguments and language were laid out in such detail in the previous chapter because they can furnish a link with Utopia which no booklist can provide.

Valla's influence can be traced through a close reading of Utopia itself. A careful reading of More's book shows that his debt to Valla's ethics is very real; in fact it is even greater than Logan suggests.

At the same time, it is only reasonable to ask how far the methods described here can be trusted. It is rarely difficult to find a place where two writers say the same thing and even say it in the same way, and so nothing is more common than for a careful reader to discover the sort of parallels which Logan observes in Utopia and On pleasure. But experience has shown that this can be less than reliable. How easy it would be to 'prove' that Newton had influenced Leibniz in the invention of calculus, or vice versa, or to demonstrate that Alfred Russell Wallace had read Charles Darwin's theories of natural selection!228 Two people may say similar things and two writers may produce similar theories out of nothing more than co-incidence. Or if it is preferable to think that the history of ideas is not a matter of chance, there is always the possibility that common influence and shared sources can explain corresponding structures and expression. Two writers write in the same fashion because they have read the same books. This is the generally accepted explanation in the two examples given above, and nothing could be more likely in the case of two students of the Greco-Roman classics such as More and

228 There are many other, less famous examples of this kind. Musical reminiscences are especially common, and in most cases it is impossible to determine whether it is co-incidence or a common source. 122

Valla. While it is difficult to assess exactly which ancient authors More read, there can be little doubt that his reading overlapped with Valla's and that he could have reached similar conclusions independently. In either case, there is reason to feel uncomfortable with an argument based on internal similarities alone. It is natural to seek some more decisive demonstration.

But while there is no use trying to minimize the risks in an argument from

'internal evidence', it is also possible to exaggerate them. The similarities between

Utopia and On pleasure axe far from worthless. This is true even if they are not so immediately convincing as something outside the texts such as a booklist or a direct acknowledgment on More's part that he had read Valla's book. It is especially important to understand that they have a cumulative value: alone each means relatively little, but together they demand serious attention. With each new correspondence of idea and expression, it becomes harder to argue that it is a product of co-incidence or shared sources. The commonalities are specific and numerous enough to demand reasonable consideration for the claim that More read On pleasure and that he had it in mind when he wrote Utopia.

And it may even be said that textual evidence is uniquely appropriate in this particular case. It is fitting that Valla's influence on Utopia be demonstrated entirely from the texts themselves, since this involves a technique that proved exceptionally convincing in Valla's own hands. Valla's most notorious piece of scholarship, his

Declamation on the donation of Constantine, is built entirely upon the text. As it was seen in chapter one, Valla had nothing in the way of 'hard proof for his argument against the 'donation' of the Western Empire to the Roman Catholic Church. There was no 123 statement convicting the forgers, no record of their forgery, nothing outside the suspect

'donation' itself. Valla's only tools were the words and arguments within the document attributed to the Emperor Constantine I. All Valla had was language, and yet language provided all that he needed. And so it is certainly appropriate that a similar method should be employed in the question of Valla's influence upon More.

And now it is time to look at the texts themselves. What can be found in the pages of the two books to suggest a relationship between Utopia and On pleasured The best beginning is to examine the broad similarity of the arguments in the two books. This is the least decisive consideration, but it makes a good foundation for the more specific evidence to come. And from this perspective, the most obvious parallel involves the principal word of Valla's dialogue, voluptas. This is certainly the resemblance that previous scholarship has been readiest to acknowledge, the one that has led a few More scholars to speculate on Valla's possible influence. More talks about pleasure, voluptas, in terms that make it natural to wonder if he has read On pleasure.

The discussion of voluptas takes place in the second book of Utopia, the book that describes the eponymous island republic. And while the first part of More's book is a dialogue with arguments presented by two major characters, one of whom is More himself, the second half is different. The second book of Utopia is taken up chiefly with an extended narrative in which the wise traveler Hythlodaeus details the customs and attitudes of the fantastic island of Utopia. Among other things, Hythlodaeus describes the Utopians' philosophy, including their teachings concerning ethics and the highest good. More never mentions Epicurus by name, but several scholars have detected a reference to the Greek philosopher. For readers of On pleasure, the discussion 124 of Utopian ethics may bring to mind the consensus of Valla's 'Christian' and

'Epicurean'. Allowing for a certain degree of individual variation, the philosophers of

More's republic are in agreement. They more or less universally teach that pleasure, and not virtue or morality, is the highest good. In the following quotation, words corresponding to voluptas in the original have been italicized.

[The learned of Utopia] debate regarding virtue and pleasure, but the first and foremost of all their controversies involves their opinion regarding human happiness, whether it lies in one thing or many. But on this subject they betray a definite bias towards the partisans of pleasure, which they define as all or at least the best part of human felicity... They say in consequence that Nature herself commands us to live pleasantly, which means having pleasure as the end of all our actions. And virtue, in their definition, is the life which She ordains.

In itself this proves little. There is no use pretending that this argument is unique to Valla, or even confined to the Epicureans of antiquity. Apart from Epicurus himself, or an ancient disciple like Lucretius, many other philosophers of the Middle Ages also affirmed the value of pleasure. Marius suggests that the fifteenth-century jurist Sir John

Fortescue might have planted this notion in More's head, and so Marius seems dismissive of those who would make too much of it. "The idea that pleasure is the goal of human

9^M life was neither radical nor uncommon in the Middle Ages and Renaissance." And while it does not explain why More ascribes this particular teaching to the Utopians, the fact that it is reasonably common is enough for Marius to set the matter to rest. And it is true that in itself this does little to prove that More read On pleasure. If there were

"De virtute disserant, ac voluptate, sed omnium prima est ac princeps controversia, quanam in re, una pluribusue sitam hominis felicitatem putent. at hac in re propensiores aequo videntur in factionem voluptatis assertricem, ut qua uel totam, vel potissimam felicitatis humanae partem definiant... Vitam ergo iucundam inquiunt, id est voluptatem tamquam operationum omnium finem, ipsa nobis natura praescribit, ex cuius praescripto vivere, virtutem definiunt." Utopia, 160. 230 Marius, 174, 125 nothing else to the case for Valla's influence, Marius might be right to say no more. But this is only the beginning of the ethics of Utopia: that More's fictional people consider pleasure the highest good is merely one part of their moral philosophy. The Utopians accept not only the premise of On pleasure, but also many of the consequences of this premise. Their theory of pleasure resembles Valla's in several points.

First, there is the argument about how pleasure is best achieved. Like the

'Christian' and the 'Epicurean', the people of Utopia understand that the morality of pleasure must be a morality of sacrifice. They define a moral life as knowing how to achieve the most pleasure possible by forgoing smaller pleasures for larger ones: precisely what Valla's speakers have argued. The moral individual pursues pleasure

"with this single reservation, that he take care that a lesser pleasure does not impede a

9^1 . greater, or that he does not pursue pleasure that will be followed in turn by pain." The

Utopians also agree with Valla's two later speakers in rejecting the 'Stoic' notion that virtue should be practiced for its own sake. They assert that it is ridiculous to believe in virtue for virtue's sake or to expect no return from moral action. Again, this is hardly restricted to Valla, or even to the ancient Epicureans. But all the same, the argument - virtue its own reward a sort of insanity - certainly recalls Valla's 'Christian'. "For to follow a bitter and difficult virtue, and not to taste the sweetness of life, but rather willingly to pursue pain from which you expect no return... this they reckon the very extreme of madness."232

231 "Hoc tantum caveret ne minor voluptas obstet maiori, aut earn persequatur quam invicem retaliet dolor." Utopia, 162. 232 "Nam virtutem asperam, ac difficilem sequi, ac non abigere modo suauitatem vitae, sed dolorem etiam sponte perpeti, cuius nullum expectes fructum... id vero dementissimum ferant." ibid. 126

This last sentence deserves a second look. More is fond of parenthetic insertions, and an important clause, an entire thought in itself, was elided in the quotation above so that it could be discussed separately. In terms of moving beyond more general Epicurean platitudes towards Valla's marriage of Epicurus and St. Paul, it deserves special attention.

"And what return can there be if, when you have passed this whole life unpleasantly,

9^^ which is to say miserably, you attain nothing after death?" This passage is important because it calls into question an understanding of the Utopian people which is still widely respected. It has been popular, at least since R.W. Chambers' classic study of More's life and work, to interpret the men and women of Utopia as virtuous pagans, and there is certainly some merit in this. The religion of the Utopians may indeed be characterized as pagan, but 'proto-Christian' would be just as close to the mark. In the passage quoted above, they assert that the 'Epicurean' ideal can only be truly realized in terms of the hope of a life to come: the argument of Valla's 'Christian'. Their 'paganism', if it can be called that, is founded on the promise of personal immortality. And this is something which many do not promise at all, and which Christianity makes the unique consequence of the sacrifice and Christ.

And this is the real significance of a notable aspect of Utopian civilization, the general receptivity of the people to Christianity. According to Hythlodaeus, the men and women of Utopia responded immediately and enthusiastically to the Christian message.

"Quis enim potest esse fractus si post mortem nihil assequeris cum hanc vitam totam insuaviter hoc est misere traduxeris?" ibid. 234 Chambers, 125-31. Chambers explains, in a section entitled "The meaning of Utopia," that the paganism of the Utopians is sufficient to explain every particular in which their beliefs or practices deviate from More's ideal. Apart from their ignorance of Christ, Chambers implies, the Utopians are as perfect in their beliefs and practices as human nature and human reason allow. Although they had heard nothing before the arrival of Hythlodaeus and his companions, their conversion was swift.

But once we had imparted the name of Christ, His teaching, character, miracles, and the no less wonderful constancy of so many , who in willingly shedding their blood led numberless nations from far and wide into His religion, you would not believe how completely they surrendered their hearts to Him. It was as if God had secretly inspired them, or because [Christianity] seemed very -lie like the sect which is most prevalent among them.

There are other reasons that Hythlodaeus thinks the Utopians have been quick to embrace Christianity. Among these there is the appeal of Christian for the austere, communistic people of Utopia, and this will be discussed further in the next chapter. But for now, the essential consideration is that the Utopians were attracted to

Christianity because it was so close to what they already believed. And there is every reason to believe, in the light of More's considerable piety, that this is his way of suggesting that any truly wise and honest human being, even a pagan, should be quick to embrace the Christian message.236 But More's argument is actually more specific than this: he is not simply talking about paganism, but a particular type of paganism. He is arguing, as Valla does, that Christianity is especially compatible, among the various pagan philosophies, with the Epicurean attitude. The Utopians are quick to convert because they already hold what Valla's 'Christian' speaker considers an essential doctrine. They already believe that morality is not the highest good and that virtue demands a reward. Valla had argued that this Epicurean premise was not only

"At posteaquam acceperant a nobis Christi nomen, doctrinam, mores, miracula, nee minus mirandam tot martyram constantiam, quoram sponte fusus sanguis, tam numerosas gentes in suam sectam longe lateque traduxit, non credas quam pronis in earn affectibus etiam ipsi concesserint, siue hoc secretius inspirante deo, siue quod eadem ei visa est haeresi proxima, quae est apud ipsos potissima." Utopia, 216-218. 236 This assumption, implied by Marius and Logan, can be found as far back as R.W. Chambers' 1938 biography Thomas More (London: Jonathan Cape, 1938). 128 compatible with Christianity but actually inseparable from Christian faith in a future life, and this is precisely what the response of the Utopians confirms. Their 'Epicurean' beliefs prepare them to become Christians.

And in some ways the people of Utopia have already gone beyond Valla's

'Epicurean' and entered the territory of the 'Christian'. They do not merely believe, with

Valla's second speaker, that any sacrifice in this life must be rewarded. They also agree with Valla's final speaker that sacrifice actually is rewarded after death. This is what leads Valla's 'Christian' to his paradoxical defense of asceticism and self-denial as temporary expedients. "The morality of those of us who are Christians... is not to be desired in itself, as it is hard, bitter, and difficult... but as a passage towards that

9^7 happiness which the soul will enjoy... in the presence of... the Father of all things." It is the same paradox which informs the religion of Utopians: it is austere, even puritanical, and yet it is also premised upon the fundamental goodness of pleasure. "All the more reason to wonder that such a hedonistic philosophy is justified in terms of their religion, which is heavy and severe, even gloomy and inflexible." The Utopians are so receptive to Christianity because they share the fundamental insight of Valla's 'Christian' speaker: attaining the greatest possible pleasure is not the same as doing what is immediately pleasurable in the present life.

The Utopians agree completely with Valla's 'Epicurean' and 'Christian' speakers about the dangers of failing to keep future pleasure firmly in mind. They insist, as much as Valla's 'Christian' does, that ethical conduct cannot even be discussed outside of 237 "Nostrum autem honestum qui Christiani sumus... est... nee propter se expetendum utpote durum, asperam, arduum..., sed gradum facit ad earn beatitudinem qua sive animus... apud rerum parentem... perfraitur." On pleasure, 108. V [2] and 110. IX [1]. 238 "Et quo magis mireris ab religione quoque—quae grauis et seuera est fereque tristis et rigida—petunt tamen sententiae tam delicatae patrocinium." Utopia, 160. 129 certain religious principles "without which the rational investigation of happiness is impeded and crippled.. ."239 Without these crucial moral postulates, any evil deed can be rationalized.

These principles are as follows: that the soul is immortal, and by the good work of God born for happiness; that our virtues and good deeds will be rewarded in the life to come, and that our crimes will be punished. And although these are all derived from religion, they teach that reason leads us to believe and accept them. For they declare without hesitation that if these principles were removed from consideration, no one would be such a fool he could not see that pleasure should be pursued by any means, no matter how wicked.240

It only takes a passing familiarity with On pleasure to see where this is headed.

One advantage of a dialogue like Valla's, as it was noted in the last chapter, a dialogue with three very different speakers, is that it is possible to show as well as tell. The

Utopians say that a person who denies life after death must be immoral, but Valla's

'Epicurean' is that person. Valla's second speaker defends cowardice, adultery, and rules out self-sacrifice on the grounds that virtue unrewarded is not virtue at all. The

'Epicurean' is a living example of what the Utopians teach. He proves what the intellectual leaders of More's island only describe in theory. The immoral consequences of the 'Epicurean's' attitude are implied in one of Utopia's most important : the that denies any public trust to a person who does not believe in the immortality of the soul.

239 "Sine quibus ad verae felicitatis investigationem mancam, atque imbecillam per se rationem putant." ibid. 240 "Ea principia sunt huiusmodi: animam esse immortalem, ac Dei beneficentia ad felicitatem natam, virtutibus ac bene factis nostris praemia post hanc vitam, flagitiis destinata supplicia. haec tametsi religionis sint, ratione tamen censent ad ea credenda, et concedenda perduci, quibus e medio sublatis, sine ulla cunctatione pronunciant neminem esse tam stupidum, qui non sentiat petendam sibi per fas ac nefas voluptatem." ibid, 160-162. 130

This law is especially revealing in that it is more or less unique. Because they are aware of how little they understand of God or religion, the Utopians are generally tolerant regarding personal belief. They allow citizens considerable freedom in deciding important questions.241 The only exception is the case of someone who believes as

Valla's 'Epicurean' does, someone without basic faith "that our virtues and good deeds

94.9 will be rewarded in the life to come, and that our crimes will be punished." Without this belief, the one that Valla's 'Christian' defends so fiercely, the moral conduct expected of a citizen has no foundation.

Whoever denies this, they do not even reckon to be numbered among men, let alone count him a citizen: for he has degraded the sublime character of his own soul to the vileness of animal flesh. And how other than through fear could he respect their laws and customs? For it is past doubt that whoever has no fear beyond the law, whoever has no hope beyond the hope of the flesh; such a man would try either to escape secretly or break openly the public ordinances of the commonwealth in order to gratify himself personally. Because of this, no such man is given any office or trust or any part in the public business.

This whole paragraph, especially the italicized passages, is a perfect synopsis of

Valla's 'Epicurean': earthly punishment is the only 'moral' consideration he respects.

And it is easy to see why the Utopians would consider him a bad citizen. By his own admission he will break any law provided he avoids getting caught and he will never perform a genuinely unselfish action.244 And in one sense the Utopians and Valla's

241 ibid, 218-220. "Ea principia sunt huiusmodi: animam esse immortalem, ac dei beneficentia ad felicitatem natam, virtutibus ac bene factis nostris praemia post hanc vitam, flagitiis destinata supplicia." ibid, 162. "Contra sentientem, ne in hominum quidem ducunt numero, ut qui sublimem animae suae naturam, ad pecuini corpusculi vilitatem deiecerit, tantum abest ut inter cives ponant, quorum instituta, moresque—si per metum liceat—omnes, floccifacturas sit. cui enim dubium esse potest, quin is publicas patriae leges, aut arte clam eludere, aut vi nitatur infringere, dum suae privatim cupiditati serviat, cui nullus ultra leges metus, nihil ultra corpus spei superest amplius. quamobrem sic animato nullus communicatur honos, nullus magistratus committitur, nulli publico muneri praeficitur." ibid, 220-222. 244 For an example, see the 'Epicurean's' words quoted in chapter 2 on the value of a patriotic death. 131

'Christian' would say that he is right to act this way. Or at least they agree that they would do the same if they also foresaw no prospect of future pleasure or pain.

So far, Utopia and On pleasure are in agreement. But it is still true that neither of the two notions involved here is especially novel in itself. The philosophy of voluptas is common enough, and the same is true for the 'Christian' belief in divine justice. That someone will only act morally through the fear and hope of God is not Valla's special invention any more than the teaching that pleasure is the highest good. As Valla observes, Paul suggested something similar himself when he said "if we have hoped in

Christ in this life alone, we are the most wretched of men." Religious thinkers have all but universally maintained that moral conduct is founded on spirituality and faith. Valla makes this argument in reference to Christianity in the preface to On pleasure?45 Even if there were something original in Valla's use of the premise of pleasure to support a religious morality - Epicurus affirming Paul - this does not mean that More learned it from him. Like most good theories, Valla's hybrid, his 'Epicurean Christianity', is plausible enough for More to have discovered it independently. More read many of the same sources, the same classical and patristic authors that Valla did. How hard would it be for him to reach the same conclusion?246

The same can also be said for another element in Utopia and On pleasure, namely the common treatment of the word prudentia. Like the parallels in the arguments about pleasure, virtue, and the life to come, the use of prudentia in the two books is certainly

245 On pleasure, [1-9] 1-3. 246 For a general discussion of the books that passed through More's hands, see Trapp. The argument that More could have independently arrived at a similar synthesis of pagan and Christian ethics is especially plausible in the light of the considerations mentioned later in this chapter. As it will be seen in the following chapter, More's scholarship is characterized by the desire to wed Christian and pre-Christian learning, and consequently the chances that More could have done this without reading Valla are good. 132 not sufficient to rule out some other explanation. But it has the value that every correspondence does in that it makes Valla's influence on More seem more probable.

And so it should be mentioned briefly before proceeding to the two more specific points that will conclude this chapter.

It will be remembered from the last chapter that prudentia describes a quality essential to Valla's arithmetic of pleasure. While Valla insists that prudentia is not itself a virtue, he also argues that it is necessary for the operation of the virtues. It is the word associated with the foresight necessary to calculate advantage and disadvantage attendant on a given action. This is enough in the context of Valla's forward-looking ethics to make it an indispensable term. It has been seen that Valla even enhances this aspect of prudentia. He stresses the literal meaning of the word to an extent that Cicero and the many writers who parroted his definition do not: and this is what his moral system demands. If consideration of future pain and pleasure is essential to moral action, it is only natural to value 'foresight', the literal meaning of prudentia.

Prudentia is an important word for Valla, and it will be seen that it is an important word for More as well. But it is also easily overlooked. Prudentia's full significance in

Utopia has been hidden from the majority of readers, and this includes some scholars, who have encountered More's book through English translation. This is because every major translator, from Ralph Robinson in the sixteenth century, through Gilbert Burnet in the seventeenth, all the way to Paul Turner and Robert and David Wootton in the

947 last century, and Clarence Miller in 2001, has buried prudentia beneath another word.

247 The translations that have been consulted are as follows. Utopia, trans. Robert Adams (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989). Utopia, trans. Gilbert Burnet, ed. Henry Morley (London: Cassell and Company, 1901). Utopia, trans. Clarence H. Miller (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001). 133

They have made it difficult or even impossible to distinguish the places where More speaks in terms of prudentia from those where his chosen word is sapientia.

Nor is it inevitable that translations of Utopia should obscure the distinction between these two words. Since the English vocabulary is considerably larger than the

Latin, translators often use several words to cover one in the original, hence the range of

948 meanings assigned to prudentia in most dictionaries. In the case of Utopia, however,

More's translators have done the opposite; instead of making two or three words do the work of one, they have made one word stand for two. They have rendered prudentia so that it is often indistinguishable from sapientia? The normal equivalent for both prudentia and sapientia in translations of Utopia - as always this includes verbal, adverbial, and adjectival forms - is 'wisdom'. The problem here is not only that

'wisdom' is a better equivalent for sapientia than prudentia, but also that by rendering the two Latin words with one English word, More's translators obscure an important distinction. When they make prudentia 'wisdom' in the majority of cases where the word appears, the word loses much of its special quality. This might not matter if prudentia were incidental to More's dialogue, if it were only a minor variant of sapientia, another synonym for 'wisdom'; but this is hardly the case. Prudentia is a significant word for More, as much as for Valla. It is rich and ambiguous as neither 'wisdom' nor sapientia.

Utopia, trans. Ralph Robinson, ed. with additional translations, introductions and notes by J.H. Lupton (London: Oxford University Press, 1895). Utopia, trans. Paul Turner (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Viking Penguin, 1961). Utopia, trans. David Wootton (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1999). 248 See Lewis and Short's entry on prudentia. 249 On the rare occasions that they render it as something other than wisdom, as in the phrase "rede prudenterque provisa," Robinson, Burnet, Turner, Adams, Wooton and Miller, all use 'prudence'. Of all five translators, Miller is the only one who uses 'prudent' or 'judicious' with any consistency, but even he will resort to 'wisdom'. 134

And prudentia appears frequently enough in the pages of Utopia. Including not only the noun, but also the adjectiveprudens, the verbs providere andpraevidere, the adverb prudenter, and the corresponding antonyms imprudentia, imprudens, and imprudenter, words related to prudentia appear no less then thirty-six times in the course of this brief work.250 Like the speakers of Valla's dialogue, More prefers 'foresight',

'prudence', and 'discernment' over simple 'wisdom' to praise the mental acuteness of an individual or the aptness of an action. More's own principal speaker, Hythlodaeus uses the word in the same sense that Valla's 'Epicurean' and 'Christian' do, as the highest possible praise. Plato, for Hythlodaeus the prince of philosophers, is called not

9S1 sapientissimus, 'the wisest of men', but prudentissimus, 'the most farsighted'. John

Morton, the cardinal and archbishop of whom More knew and loved, is 9S9 distinguished as much for his prudentia and virtue as the majesty of his office. And when Hythlodaeus finishes speaking, More declares in his own voice that he has spoken prudentissime, 'with the greatest possible discernment'. And it should be no surprise that prudentia is also emphasized in a negative sense as well, in what More condemns as much as what he praises. Those who bring grief on themselves and others through indifference to the consequences of their choices are said to have acted not out of stultitia, 'foolishness', but imprudentia, 'improvidence'.

250 A concordance to the Utopia of St. Thomas More and a frequency word list, eds. Ladislaus J. Bolchazy, Gregory Gichan and Frederick Theobald (New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 1978). 251 "Siquidem facile praevidit homo prudentissimus..." Utopia, 104. To compare how this phrase is variously translated, see Turner, 66, Adams, 38, Miller, 47, Wootton, 86, Burnet 45, and Robinson 106. At least in terms of his sensitivity to prudentia, Turner's translation is the best, without question. His rendering oi homo prudentissimus with "a powerful intellect" captures the moral ambiguity oi prudentia very nicely. 252 "...non authoritate magis, quam prudentia ac virtute venerabili." Utopia, 58. 253 "Nam cum Raphael prudentissime recensuisset..." ibid, 54. 254 "...periculum sit, ne quae res magno eis bono futura putabatur, eadem per impradentiam magnorum causa malorum fiat." ibid, 52. 135

And it is worth adding that the prudentia of Utopia is not restricted to a worldly cleverness. It will be remembered that Valla's 'Christian' ascribes prudentia to the supreme creative wisdom of God in framing the universe. This usage also finds an echo in Utopia. Hythlodaeus calls the Utopian laws and customs which he admires prudentissima atque sanctissima, 'at once most prudent and most holy'. Even those

Utopians perceptive enough to realize that the sun and moon or their heroic ancestors are not worthy of worship are praised for prudentia rather than sapientia. It is a usage lost on More's translators, who prefer to describe the religiously advanced Utopians as

'wiser', but it is consistent with On pleasure. Just as Valla's prudentia includes foresight beyond the present life, More's word can describe a spiritual as well as an earthly illumination. The "more prudent" Utopians understand that the God who made the world, "unknown, eternal, infinite, too mysterious for the minds of men" cannot be compared to any part of His creation.257 It is prudentia that gives them the necessary vision, the discernment to realize that none of the superstitions of their neighbors can be true.

But the most telling parallel between More's use of prudentia and On pleasure may be seen in the word's moral ambiguity. The crucial thing about Valla'sprudentia, it will be remembered, is that it is not a virtue, nor even unequivocally good. Instead of giving prudentia its usual place among the cardinal virtues, Valla argues that prudentia is potentially evil. Under the right circumstances it is indistinguishable from malitia, or

"Quam ob rem cum apud animum meum reputo, prudentissima atque sanctissima instituta Utopiensium..." ibid, 102. 256 ibid, 216. 237 "At multo maxima pars, eademque longe pradentior, nihil horum, sed unum quoddam numen putant, incognitum, aeternum, immensum, inexplicabile, quod supra mentis humanae captum sit, per mundum hunc uniuersum, virtute non mole diffusum." ibid. 136

'cunning'. Prudentia is a necessary condition of moral conduct, but not a guarantee. A good person may display considerable 'discernment', 'prudence', and 'foresight' - all possible renderings of Valla's prudentia - but so may an evil one. In fact prudentia can actually empower the wicked to do more harm. "The children of this world," as Valla reminds Pope Eugenius, "are more prudent in their own generation than the sons of light."258

And this is the surest similarity in how Valla and More each use prudentia. The prudentia that turns up so many times in the pages of Utopia is Valla's prudentia: "the servant and forerunner of the virtues," but not a virtue in itself. This can be seen in all of

More's Latin writings, most notably in his contrast of prudentia with 'pity' and 'mercy' in Richard III?59 And it is especially evident in the pages of Utopia. The best example comes in a passage where the advisors to the king of France, who illustrate the evils of

European courts, are described in terms of prudentia. Unlike the individuals mentioned above, Plato, Cardinal Morton, the 'more discerning' Utopians, the French counselors are far from admirable. More presents them as grasping courtiers, plotting "by what methods and devices [their prince] can hang on to Milan... overturn the Venetians, and reduce all

Italy to obedience." They also plan how to cheat the inhabitants of the realm. They

258 De falsa obiedione, 243r. 259 One valuable source for More's own understanding oi prudentia is furnished by his Richard III. Since More wrote his history in Latin and in English it is possible to compare how he expresses the same thoughts in two different languages. And so the phrase "magis misericordes quam pradentes," which More renders as "more piteous than politic," is revealing for two reasons. First, it contrasts prudentia with misericordia, "pity" in More's English. Second, it shows More choosing to translate prudentia into English with "politic," a word with modern meanings of 'crafty' and 'scheming'. Thomas More, The history of King Richard III, The complete works of Saint Thomas More, Vol. 2, ed. Richard S. Sylvester (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963) 31. For a near-contemporary definition of Move's politic, see Shakespeare-lexicon : a complete dictionary of all the English words, phrases and constructions in the works of the poet, ed. Alexander Schmidt (Berlin: W. De Grayter, 1972). 260 "Age finge me apud regem esse Galloram, atque in eius considere consilio, dum in secretissimo secessu praesidente rege ipso, in corona prudentissimorum hominum, magnis agitur studiis, quibus artibus ac 137 suggest charging violators of "certain ancient and moth-eaten laws, outdated from long neglect," or extorting money "under pretext" of preparing for war that never comes: in the process winning their prince praise for love of justice and peace. They are a model of how subjects should not serve their sovereign. And yet More describes them with the very same word that is praise applied to others. He says that the French councilors exhibit prudentia in the highest degree: like Plato they are prudentissimi, 'the most far-

969 sighted of men'.

And while it might seem like a contradiction or at least bitter sarcasm for More to apply the same word both to Plato and to the French councilors, Valla's use of prudentia offers another explanation. More very deliberately describes good and evil men in terms of prudentia because he believes with Valla that prudentia is morally neutral, not a real virtue at all. The advisors to the French king may be "the most far-sighted of men" but unlike Plato their ability "to foresee what is advantageous and avoid what is not" is restricted to the narrow interest of their sovereign. They are a living example of Valla's declaration to Pope Eugenius that a selfish prudentia, which is to say a limited, worldly prudentia, is only malitia, which to say only 'cunning'. More alludes to this when he records the teaching of the Utopians that prudentia is incomplete without a sense of obligation to others - the Latin is pietas. "To look after your own interest without machinamentis retineat, ac fugitivam illam Neapolim ad se retrahat; postea vero evertat Venetos, ac totam Italiam subiiciat sibi." Utopia, 86. 261 "Uti et multum aeris parao dissoluat, et pro paruo multum recipiat; dum alius suadet ut bellum simulet, atque eo praetextu coacta pecunia cum visum erit, faciat pacem, Sanctis cerimoniis, quo plebeculae oculis fiat praestigium, miseratus videlicet humanum sanguinem princeps pius; dum alius ei suggerit in mentem, antiquas quasdam, et tineis adesas leges, longa desuetudine antiquatas, quas quod nemo latas meminisset, omnes sint transgressi, earum ergo mulctas iubeat exigi, nullum uberiorem proventum esse, nullum magis honorificum, utpote qui iustitiae prae se personam ferat; dum ab alio admonetur, uti sub magnis mulctis multa prohibeat, maxime talia, quae ne fiant, in rem sit populi." ibid, 90-92. 262 See footnote 261 above. The French counsellors are the "pradentissimorum hominum" mentioned in the relevant passage. 138 violating the laws is prudentia, to look after the public interest as well is pietas."

Goodness requires prudentia, but evenprudentissimi like the French councilors need pietas as well.

This emphasis on prudentia's limits also explains a passage cited earlier, one where More underlines this notion with great subtlety. This is the passage in which More characterizes the laws and traditions of the Utopians as "at once most prudent and most holy." If prudentia were an unqualified good, the Latin word atque, more forceful than a simple 'and', would be unnecessary. Wisdom and holiness co-exist naturally, but the kind of crafty, sharp-sighted discernment, the calculating malice that even the French councilors can manifest is not always joined to sanctity. Hence the need to emphasize the union of these two very different qualities with atque. This notion is confirmed as well by More's later observations on the monks of Utopia. He explains that there are two orders: the more worldly are esteemed for greater prudentia, the stricter for greater sanctity. Like the revealing atque, this is an admission that prudence and holiness are very distinct conditions, even if it is sometimes possible to combine both.264 It is a small example of how More uses prudentia in Valla's sense, not as one of the cardinal virtues but as an important and yet morally doubtful quality.

But if prudentia is an important word for Valla and More, it is only one of many.

And it has already been conceded that their common use of prudentia is insufficient to establish a connection between Utopia and On pleasure. To be certain that More derived his understanding of prudentia from Valla, it would be necessary to look at humanist

Latin generally. It would be necessary to test Valla's claim that his position is really as

263 "lis inoffensis legibus tuum curare commodum, prudentia est; publicum praeterea, pietatis." ibid, 164. 264 ibid, 226. 139 radical a departure as he represents it. Otherwise, there is nothing to deny that Valla was merely developing an ambiguity present even in scholastic Latin, let alone the 'classical' idiom associated with the humanists. And since More can safely be assumed to have studied On Latin style and admits to having read Valla's Annotations, he need not have read On pleasure to derive his understanding of prudentia from Valla. And so More's use of prudentia in Utopia is not sufficient in itself to prove that More read On pleasure.

But if prudentia is not sufficient, it adds something to the weight of evidence, just as More's 'Christian' treatment of voluptas does. And in any case, it is not the most compelling consideration. In establishing direct influence, the most helpful correspondences are often the smallest and the most specific. Each of the two most decisive traces of Valla's influence on Utopia is very small and quite specific. And this is what makes them so effective in demonstrating that influence.

The first of these points involves the identity, discussed at length in the last chapter, between delectatio and voluptas. It will be remembered that Valla abolishes the standard distinction between these two words. Since no one studying On pleasure has made much of Valla's statement, it is no surprise that something similar has been overlooked in Utopia. But it is there, however neglected, and it makes any doubt that

More read Valla's dialogue on ethics harder to sustain. Discussing how the Utopians endorse the joys of good health, Hythlodaeus remarks that they see no difference between

96S delectatio and voluptas. "And delectatio, what is it but voluptas by a different name?"

Even in isolation this recalls On pleasure. The simple declaration that delectatio is the same as voluptas raises the question that occurred so forcefully to Logan: is More thinking of Valla's ethics? Is More "consciously revising" the radical theories of On

265 "At delectatio quid aliud quam alio nomine voluptas est?" ibid, 166. 140 pleasure? But if the bare statement invites speculation, it is only more convincing in

context. More uses the identity between delectatio and voluptas in the same way that

Valla does, in the service of the defense of physical pleasure.

Valla has several reasons for uniting voluptas and delectatio, but the first is

probably that it supports his argument that pleasure is unconditionally good. By treating

the two words as synonyms, Valla eliminates the traditional distinction between 'higher'

pleasures and 'lower' ones. The pleasures of literature, astronomy and quiet

contemplation are the ones traditionally associated with delectatio, and Valla wants to

argue that these are only different in degree from the pleasures of the flesh. And

although Valla stresses that smaller, physical pleasures must be forgone in favor of

greater, spiritual ones, his 'Christian' speaker still praises sensual pleasure. Even in

heaven, the pleasures of the body will be enjoyed, albeit in a purified form. Valla equates

delectatio and voluptas in part because he is affirming that all pleasure is fundamentally

good, whether it arises from the body or the mind. If physical pleasure were different

from other pleasure, let alone evil, this would nullify his central claim.

And it is here, with the ideas that underlie these two words, delectatio and

voluptas, that we find deeper parallels in the arguments presented by More and Valla.

The Utopians do not simply follow Valla's dialogue in their approach to language, they

also draw the same conclusion from the identity of delectatio and voluptas. The Utopians

agree with Valla's 'Christian' that the pleasures of the body are good, and

unconditionally so. They take physical pleasure seriously enough to have considered all

of its varieties and distinctions. On the one hand there are the active physical pleasures,

receiving things the body needs such as food and drink, and also those that come from 141 relieving a natural desire. Here More includes not only sex but defecation and scratching an itch! Then there is the almost sensual thrill that men and women feel who are responsive to music - Erasmus says that More was one of these people.266 Even the enjoyment of good health untroubled by disease and pain is an important variety of voluptas.

Many consider it the greatest pleasure, and almost every Utopian respects it as the basis and foundation of all others, in fact the only one that can render this life peaceful or desirable. They believe that without it no pleasure would be possible.

The Utopians still praise self-denial, but this is a separate issue: it does not detract from the fundamental goodness of physical pleasure. Pleasure does not have to be bad to be traded away for something better. What matters here is that, like Valla, More is proposing an ethic which does not demonize the body: even the lowest sensations are good in their proper place. The joys of eating, drinking, sleeping, defecation and sex are not condemned in the Utopian ethics as evil in themselves. They can lead to evil, but so can anything good that is misused or given a disproportionate value; this is true of spiritual pleasures as surely as physical ones.

In itself, this reminiscence of the ethics of On pleasure might be as easily dismissed as the other similarities mentioned earlier. It might be yet another example of

More and Valla making similar arguments. It is the common philological theme, delectatio a sort of voluptas, that sets it apart and makes a coincidence seem more

266Utopia, 172. Letter 999, The correspondence of Erasmus: letters 993-1121 ed. Peter Bietenholz, trans. R.A.B. Mynors (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987) 18. 267 "Multi earn statuunt voluptatum maximam, omnes fere Utopienses magnam et velut fundamenfum omnium ac basim fatentur, ut quae vel sola placidam et optabilem vitae conditionem reddat, et qua sublata, nullus usquam reliquus sit cuiquam voluptati locus." Utopia, 172. 142 unlikely. It is one thing for More and Valla to affirm physical pleasure, another to associate this affirmation with the same pair of words. The identity of delectatio and voluptas is like Valla's fingerprint, the individual touch that reveals the source of More's idea. There are many places where More could have read that sensual pleasures were naturally good, but how many authors also support it by asserting that delectatio "is but voluptas by a different name?" As the resemblances accumulate, the likelihood that On pleasure served as one of More's models increases.

But even this is not the last argument for Valla's influence upon the ethics of

Utopia. There is one more consideration, one more trace of On pleasure in the pages of

More's book. Unlike the previous three examples of Valla's influence, this one does not involve specific words, although it reflects a theory about the use of language. It is a brief reference, which may help explain why it has been overlooked so many times.

Alone it would still mean little, but in the context of what has come before it must be decisive. It is the last and most specific of several intellectual and linguistic parallels between Utopia and On pleasure. It is a description of a game "not unlike our chess" that

Hythlodaeus says the Utopians play in their free moments. Because the passage is short it can be quoted in full.

[In this game] the virtues and vices are drawn up in opposing lines and do battle. This game sets before their eyes every detail of the disorder among the vices and their unity against the virtues. It also reveals which vices oppose which virtues, how they openly attack and secretly undermine them, and how the virtues defend themselves and break the vices' strength, how they skillfully frustrate their efforts, and how one side finally wins the victory.

268 "Duos habent in usu ludos, latrunculoram ludo non dissimiles." ibid, 128. 269 "Alteram in quo collata acie cum virtutibus vitia confligunt. Quo in ludo perquam scite ostenditur et vitioram inter se dissidium, et aduersus virtutes concordia. item quae vitia, quibus se virtutibus opponant, quibus viribus aperte oppugnent, quibus machinamentis ab obliquo adoriantur, quo praesidio, virtutes 143

When scholars have noticed this little passage at all, it has only been to remark that the Utopians are so earnest that even their games teach a moral lesson.270 No one has asked the really important question. Just what morality does this game teach? It may still be relevant, as it will be seen in a moment, that the Utopians use a boardgame for their ethical instruction. But the means of education is less important here than the content. The great, unacknowledged consideration is this: the morality of the Utopian boardgame is not the morality of Aristotle. Utopian students cannot learn any sort of

Aristotelian morality because the structure of the game, as More describes it, forbids this.

The layout of the board, in which virtues and vices are "drawn up in opposing lines" in an arrangement "not unlike... chess," makes it unsuited to reflect that great truism of

Aristotle's ethics, the Golden Mean. In the Aristotelian system, each virtue is a middle point with a vicious extreme on each side, and yet it is all but impossible to represent such a tripartite scheme in a game remotely similar to checkers or chess. There can be no doubt that More, educated as few of his contemporaries, knew and understood Aristotle's ethics. And so his description is no accident. The game of the Utopians cannot represent the ethical nomenclature of Aristotle because it is not meant to: instead the arrangement of vice and virtue seems derived from On pleasure.

More's reference to the Utopian boardgame is brief, but it is also clear. In describing the game of 'virtues and vices', More recalls the most radical and most characteristic of Valla's challenges to contemporary ethics: his objection to grouping vices and virtues by threes and describing virtue as a middle point between contrary vitioram vires infringant, quibus artibus eorum conatus eludant, quibus denique modis alteratra pars victoriae compos fiat." ibid. 270 Marius, 164-165. 144 extremes. As it was seen in the last chapter, Valla appeals both to literature and to everyday usage to justify a bipartite ethical nomenclature. For every virtue there is a related vice. This reflects the notion that an action, whether fight or flight, giving or withholding, speaking or remaining silent, may be wrong in one situation and right in another. And it is in the light of this theory that the choice of a two-sided board like a chessboard seems quite deliberate. Like the pieces that face each other across the chessboard, the virtues of the Utopians each do battle with a single corresponding vice: courage against rashness, caution against cowardice, generosity and thrift against profligacy and avarice.271 It is the ethics of the right choice against the wrong choice, not of the ideal middle way. It is as compatible with Valla's ethics as it is irreconcilable with the most salient aspects of Aristotle's.

And while the passage is hardly explicit, it would be a mistake to let its obscurity diminish its significance any more than its brevity. It is true that More's account of the

Utopian game would only reveal its full meaning to another humanist familiar with

Valla's critique of Aristotle. But this would not be the first time More buried his message behind a learned allusion. Utopia is full of oblique references: the very title is a splendid example of this. More's intention in this name is incomprehensible to anyone without enough Greek to appreciate the double word-play upon both ev-xonoq, 'good place' and ov-xonoc, 'no place'. The island republic of Utopia is both an ideal place and a nonexistent place, and More is not troubled if Latinists without Greek will not realize this. More wrote for the educated few, and he showed no inclination to produce or support a vernacular translation that would put his book within reach of men and women without the education to understand his intentions. The game of the Utopians is an

271 Utopia, 128. 145 obscure passage in an obscure and learned book, but it is no less valuable for that. What matters is that it is the single most specific reminiscence of Valla's dialogue, and therefore the best index of More's mind when he sketched the ethics of Utopia. Unlike the more general arguments, this is something characteristic of Valla's system, something that does not come from Epicurus or Fortescue or Paul. More does not simply describe an ethic of pleasure, or even a 'Christian' ethic of pleasure. He also refers to a descriptive model of moral qualities, one vice corresponding to each virtue, that is incompatible with Aristotle and perfectly consistent with Valla.

And even apart from the content of the game, it is possible that the very medium is significant as well. Considering More's habitual obscurity, there may also be a hidden message here. Valla's objection to Aristotle's tripartite arrangement of vice and virtue was related to his most radical position: his rejection of auctoritas in favor of experience.

In contrasting the Aristotelian nomenclature with the way that virtue and vice are discussed by the poets, historians, and orators, Valla is also making a larger point. He is not simply arguing about ethics, but about the relationship between words and the experiences those words are meant to describe. He is arguing, as Lorch observes in her study, that language must reflect the reality of human experience in a way that

Aristotelian abstractions fail to do. He is arguing that ethical terminology must be based on observing how vice and virtue are actually discussed, not only by Quintilian, Livy, and Homer, but also by ordinary men and women. It is his clearest appeal to experience over auctoritas.

There are probably several reasons that More has the Utopians discover ethical principles by playing a game. And these may well include the notion mentioned above. 146

More could very well be alluding to the argument that learning is not consulting one of the auctores but seeing first hand and discovering for oneself. A case can certainly be made based on More's language in the relevant passage. Note the emphasis on personal experience in the words More chooses to describe the manner in which the game instructs! The relevant verb in More's account, translated above as 'sets before their eyes' and 'reveals', is ostendere, which literally implies holding out an object for others to examine: the game does not tell, it shows. And More qualifies his verb with the adverb scite, itself derived from a verb associated with the acquisition of empirical knowledge, learning about something at first hand. Scite is actually the adverbial form of the participle of scire, a verb which implies discovery through investigation rather than a

979 book or living teacher, and for that reason it is the source of the English science. Like

Valla's final speaker, the Utopian game of 'virtues and vices' presents an ethics that can be seen and experienced rather than simply codified, a matter of action and example over principle and authority.

But the real significance of the Utopian boardgame does not depend on the language that describes the game itself. Even if More did not want to stress experience over authority in teaching ethics through a game, the structure of the game is certain. The

Utopians cannot teach anything like Aristotle's ethics of the Golden Mean. But even if this can be taken as demonstrated, it still remains to ask whether this rejection of the

Aristotelian system constitutes the kind of decisive proof of Valla's influence which this study demands. The chapters to come are premised on the claim that More read On pleasure, and so this must first be demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt. Which makes the question inescapable. Is this last piece of evidence sufficient?

272 Lewis and Short's has revealing entries on scire and scientia. 147

The answer involves restating something that was said earlier in this chapter.

Taken alone, the Utopian boardgame only means so much. But what is crucial is that this example need not be understood in isolation. It is true that one brief reference in a work as long as Utopia would mean nothing. And the other similarities that have been indicated before would carry little weight individually. But this is what it means to say that each of the points presented here has a cumulative value. Each resemblance between

Utopia and On pleasure lends strength to the others. With each new argument - pleasure the highest good, morality dependent on life after death, prudentia essential but amoral, delectatio a sort of voluptas, the rejection of the Golden Mean - it becomes less plausible to suggest that this is a co-incidence or the product of a common source. One or two such points might be explained in this way, but together the similarities between Valla's ethics and the ethics of Utopia can only be explained in terms of a direct influence.

Nor is there anything novel in the method employed here, certainly not by the standards of recent scholarship. The accumulation of resemblances and apparent references is how scholars without access to a comprehensive list of More's readings have assessed his debt to other writers, particularly the ancients. Richard Sylvester, editor of the History of Richard III, is convinced that More's models include Tacitus,

Suetonius, and Sallust, but he can present no booklist to illustrate the specific works that

More had read. The best that Sylvester can do is list the similarities that he discovers.

There are similar characters - "the correspondence between Tacitus' description of

Tiberius and More's portrait of Richard" - similar themes - power, corruption, conspiracy - and then there are "verbal similarities" - phrases or expressions suspiciously close to those employed by an ancient historian. "From Tacitus come phrases like 'moras 148 in via nectente' or 'structis in principem insidiis', while perhaps contributes the

'atrocitatem poenae sustulit'... and the 'quo turn plurimum pollebat'." The case of

Sallust is especially difficult since More never quotes the Conspiracy of Catiline and the

Jugurthine war directly. Sylvester can only point out significant "verbal parallels" and

974 refer to a single letter in which More refers to "Sallustian diction." But in the end this is all Sylvester needs to do. Sallust's works were accessible to More and sufficiently

admired in humanist circles that Sylvester needs no further evidence.

And all of this is not to criticize Sylvester. Instead it is to provide a precedent.

Establishing the influence of On pleasure is not really so different from establishing the influence of certain specific works of Tacitus, Suetonius, or Sallust. In both cases, there

is an author easily available and widely respected by More's contemporaries, and in both

cases there is proof that More read something by the author in question. The only

difference is that there is a greater amount of specific evidence in Utopia to suggest the

influence of Valla than there is in the History to suggest the influence of Sallust. Or at

least it can be said that Sylvester has offered fewer details in his introduction to Richard

III. And so it may be said that the preceding pages meet or even exceed the standard of proof required to demonstrate More's knowledge of a classical author. If the content of

Richard III is proof that More knew the ancient historians, the content of Utopia is more than sufficient to demonstrate that More read and studied and borrowed from On pleasure.

In the end, the theory that More read Valla's dialogue on ethics is not only plausible but necessary. It is necessary in the sense that it is the most probable

Introduction to Richard III, xciv and xci. ibid, lxxxxvii. 149 explanation of the content of Utopia, the single best answer for all the writers who have traced the origins of More's themes. How else, unless More read On pleasure, did he manage to include so many of the same arguments, whether about ethics or even about words? What other writer besides Valla has framed the attack on Aristotelian ethics in terms of a Christian defense of pleasure, in terms of delectatio and prudentia, in terms of a binary arrangement of virtues and vices? It would be truly unlikely for More to have arrived at so many conclusions independently. This would be the improbable assumption that the serious student of Utopia cannot afford. 'Internal evidence' will always be suspect, but if it can ever be sufficient, it is sufficient here. Setting the two books side by side, there is every reason to believe that More knew Valla's ethical system, and to conclude that On pleasure was an important source for Utopia.

But if we can accept it as demonstrated that More indeed knew and borrowed from Valla, this only invites new questions. It still remains to ask why More attributes an ethics to his Utopians that is derived at least in part from On pleasure. What did More find in Valla's ideas that made him want to explore them? Why did he want to revise them or impart them to his contemporaries? It is one thing to argue that More deals with terms and concepts derived from On pleasure, another to understand why these terms and concepts interested him. This raises, once again, the central problem of this study: the appeal of Valla's work in England generally. To ask why Valla's ideas turn up in Utopia is to ask what application More perceived for the problems of his time and place. Such a study can provide insight, through two exceptional individuals, into the larger process through which the literary culture of England assimilated the intellectual inheritance of

Italy. The individual question - why did Valla's ideas appeal to More? - easily becomes part of the historical question - why did Italian ideas take root in England? The following chapter will be dedicated to the first of these questions, all the while keeping one eye upon possible applications to the second. 151

CHAPTER FOUR: THE APPEAL OF VALLA'S ETHICS

The last chapter ended with the admission that more questions had been raised than answered. It is one thing to connect Utopia and On pleasure, but this only proves so much. The bare fact that More alludes to Valla's ethics is at best a preface to asking why he would turn here in the first place. The list of reasons that Valla's book inspired a response in More, the 'why?' of their relationship, has yet to be explored. What was so attractive or interesting about Valla and his system? What in the conditions of More's time and place made him turn to the solutions Valla had devised for his own? From a historical perspective, this is where the really important discussion begins.

A series of specific points will follow, but first a general observation is in order.

There are any number of reasons that More might have considered Valla's book worth

exploring, but in a sense they can all be reduced to a single observation. More reads and discusses On pleasure because of the attitudes he holds in common with Valla. This is not to discount the differences between More and Valla as men, or the differences between the two societies that shaped them. In fact the two chapters that follow will focus on those differences, both individual and social. But what matters is that More still

sees something in Valla's words that he recognizes. Something in Valla's writing seems relevant to the conditions of More's life and the problems of his society. The relationship between the Utopia and On pleasure is premised on an underlying continuity between

Quattrocento Italy and the England of the first Tudors.

But having said this, it is time to face the question directly. Why would More value what he read in On pleasure! The first of these is probably the most obvious. It 152 involves the principal theme of the first chapter, the dominant reason that English readers were interested in Italian humanist books generally and in Valla's books specifically.

This is the revival of classical studies, the renewed attention to the literature of ancient

Greece and Rome characteristic of Renaissance culture first in Italy and later across most of Europe. English universities imported Italian humanist books, English patrons cultivated Italian scholars, and English students visited Italy to improve their Latin prose and acquire knowledge of Greek. Or at least students traveled to Italy until English institutions were able to offer an equivalent level of instruction. The first reason that

More would have responded to On pleasure, and in fact to all of Valla's books, is that he shared Valla's interest in the classical studies that had reached such perfection in Italy.

And this interest was a natural consequence of More's early education. Valla's books would have seemed accessible because they are based upon what, for the mature Thomas

More, would have been a familiar literary tradition.

From his time at St. Anthony's School, where Colet had previously studied, to his two years at Oxford, possibly at Canterbury College, More received the perfect preparation to appreciate Valla's books.275 He enjoyed the sort of education that would hardly have been possible a generation earlier. Like Grocyn, More was one of that new breed of English scholars who achieved a high standard of Latin and Greek without the once obligatory visit to Italy. In fact it was Grocyn who first recognized More's talents

According to Marius Latin grammars had come into use at St. Anthony's by the later fifteenth century and so allowed More opportunities, even in his early education, that would have not been available a generation or two earlier. Reynolds argues that St. Anthony's was an excellent grammar school. Roper maintains that More attended Canterbury College, but Marius thinks this is unlikely. Reynolds argues that despite the innovations of recent years, education at Oxford was still largely traditional and scholastic. , The life of Sir Thomas More in Two early Tudor lives, eds. Richard S. Sylvester and Davis P. Harding (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962) 197-198. Marius 15-16 and 25-28. Reynolds, 17. 153 and invited him to present a series of lectures on what is perhaps the single greatest monument of classical Christian literature, Augustine's City of God?16

But even apart from this promising beginning, More's interest in classical studies continued after his formal education came to an end. There was More's Latinization of the Greek satirist Lucian, mentioned briefly before, a perfect example of the art of translation that had originally endeared Italian scholarship to England. And then there was More's History of King Richard III, a work that he never completed but which he attempted in both English and Latin. Apart from its literary quality, More's Richard III is like so many humanist histories in that in relies upon ancient models. In More's case, the

977 pattern is provided by the Romans Sallust, Tacitus, and Livy. And More's description of Richard's character also influenced later accounts of the last Yorkist monarch. Either directly or through chroniclers like Holinshed, More seems to have influenced

Shakespeare's treatment of King Richard as an unnatural monster, deformed alike in body and spirit.278 And then More was also a poet. He wrote Latin epigrams in imitation of the poets of Greece and Rome. These epigrams say a great deal, as it will be seen shortly, about More's attitudes as a young man.

But while there is no question that More was an accomplished humanist, it may not be clear how this contributes to his interest in On pleasure. It is easy to see why

More would have read and appreciated a grammatical work like On Latin style, but the appeal of Valla's dialogue on ethics is more difficult to understand. The answer is that

More and Valla shared something more specific than an interest in ancient literature.

276 Reynolds, 35. 277Introduction to Richard III, lxxxii. "If [Augustine's] De civitate Dei gave him his , it was the works of Thucydides and Livy, Sallust and Tacitus that taught him how the best history should be written." 278 ibid, xxii. 154

Both men were concerned specifically with finding a Christian application for their classical studies. Unlike at least a few of the men and women historians have called

'humanists' - Machiavelli is the obvious example - More and Valla both present themselves as sincere and devoted Christians. They are both what are generally referred to as 'Christian humanists'. This is a vaguely defined term, but it is reliably associated with certain individuals. It invariably includes Petrarch (1304-74), the great fourteenth- century advocate of classical learning, as well as Erasmus and More himself.279 More's interest in Valla's ethics may begin with the classics, but it also involves a common profession of Christian faith. On pleasure would have appealed to More because it provides a Christian application for pagan teachings.

And relationship of a pagan civilization to the problems of a Christian society was no academic question for More. Apart from the evidence of his early career, there is a good deal to suggest that More believed in the value of classical education his entire life.

It is well known that More recommended the study of ancient literature not only to his sons, but even his wives and daughters. And this is especially notable, since according to

Erasmus, "there was not a man alive," himself included, who believed that such learning held any benefit for women. More took the greatest care with the education of his

While admitting that many humanists were devout Christians, Paul Oskar Kristeller denies that religion is essential to Humanism. "The admiration which the humanists held for the classics and their often violent attacks upon medieval have led more than one historian to see antichristian tendencies in Humanism and the Renaissance. This perspective has found few advocates recently, and instead there is much talk, in my mind vague and overblown, of the of the Renaissance. Renaissance Humanism, understood in itself, was neither Christian nor antithetical to Christianity." "L'ammirazione che gli umanisti ebbero per l'antichita classica e le loro polemiche spesso violente contra la scolastica medievale hanno portato parecchi storici... a attribuire all'umanesimo e al rinascimento una tendenza anticristiana. Nei tempi recenti questa prospettiva non e piu tanto difesa, e si parla invece spesso dell'umanesimo cristiano del rinascimento, in una maniera che mi pare spesso esagerata e confusa. L'umanesimo del rinascimento, inteso in se stesso, non fu ne cristiano ne anticristiano." Paul Oskar Kristeller, Studies in renaissance thought and letters (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1985), 60. 280 Erasmus, Letter 1233, Opus epistolarum Desiderii Erasmi Roterdami, ed. P.S. Allen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906-1958) 578. "lam neminem mortalium non habebat haec persuasio, sexui foemenino 155 children, male and female alike, and then his grandchildren; and he is said to have declared that classical learning would benefit them in death as surely as in life. Even in the eventuality that his daughters met an unfortunate end, Erasmus reports, even if they never had an opportunity to make use of what they had learned, More still maintained that it was better if his daughters did not die ignorant.281

But this is not the same as arguing that More's attitude to classical learning was unequivocal. For as the choice of Augustine for his series of lectures reveals, More was also deeply attached to Europe's Christian traditions, traditions that often seemed at odds with the pagan civilization of Greece and Rome. And this perceived contradiction was one that More, like so many other Christian students of antiquity, needed to resolve.

More had to confront the same problem which had faced Petrarch generations before and which occupied Erasmus in More's own time. More needed to justify to himself and to others why Christians should study, translate, and imitate the literature of a pre-Christian civilization. On pleasure interests More because it assists him in providing such a justification.

And More would have been grateful for any such assistance, considering the enduring difficulty of the challenge. Since the days of the , and in fact since Christianity became more than a Jewish sect, the relationship between pagan learning and Christian revelation had been problematic. It is unlikely that the Latin father

Tertullian (fl. 200) was the first to discuss the relationship between the two traditions.

However, his famous question "what is Athens to Jerusalem?" remains one of the most litteras et ad castitatem et ad famam esse inutiles." It should be noted in passing that the only use Erasmus can conceive for female learning involves protecting the chastity of women and their reputation for chastity. 281 Erasmus, Letter 1233, 579. "Si quid acciderit quod vitari non potest, malim eas mori doctas quam indoctas." Marius 221-225. 156 memorable expressions of the issue. As a Christian whose education was largely informed by Roman rhetoric and Greek philosophy, articulates the problem that would face generations of thinkers in the Latin West. He takes as his text the warning of Paul in Colossians 2:8, "see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition... and not according to Christ."282 In a deservedly famous passage, Tertullian presents the relationship between classical learning and Christianity in terms that would resonate into More's lifetime and beyond.

[Paul] had been to Athens, and he perceived the nature of that human wisdom which is dressed up in the appearance of truth... a wisdom itself divided into various factions, different schools opposing one another in turn. And then what is Athens to Jerusalem? What is Plato's Academy to the Christian Church? What are heretics to Christians? We study before the temple of , who has left us the injunction to "seek the Lord in simplicity of heart." Let those who have made the Stoic and the Platonist and the dialectician an example for Christians understand this: we have no concern with anything beyond Jesus Christ, nor any study beyond the Gospels. Believing this, we are content without further belief. Indeed we sooner believe that we should not believe anything else.

Tertullian's words were not forgotten in the centuries that followed. Indeed they seemed to be amplified by certain statements of the next generation of Latin fathers,

Augustine, Jerome, and . No more than Tertullian did these writers escape the influence of pagan culture, but they remained equivocal regarding the application of such

The translation here is from the English Standard Version, eds. John Schwandt and Ed Collins (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2006). 283 "Fuerat Athenis, et istam sapientiam humanam, affectatricem et interpolatricem veritatis, de congressibus noverat, ipsam quoque in suas haereses multipartitam varietate sectarum invicem repugnantium. Quid ergo Athenis et Hierosolymis? Quid Academiae et Ecclesiae? Quid haereticis et Christianis? Nostra institutio de Porticu Salomonis est, qui et ipse tradiderat Dominum in simplicitate cordis esse quaerendum. Viderint, qui stoicum et platonicum et dialecticum Christianissimum protulerunt. Nobis curiositate opus non est, post Christum Jesum; nee inquisitione, post Evangelium. Cum credimus, nihil desideramus ultra credere. Hoc enim prius credimus, non esse quod ultra credere debeamus." Tertullian, De praescriptionibus adversus haereticos, in vol II, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne, VIL20B-21. Accessed online at: http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/1003/1001 /0160- 0220._Tertullianus._De_Praescriptionibus Adversus_Haereticos._MLT.html 157 studies to Christian devotion. But if the relationship between Athens and Jerusalem was always controversial, the revival of classical learning during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries gave it a renewed urgency. Hostile theologians had long asserted that the humanist program associated with Petrarch and other later Italian writers was useless or even dangerous.285 Why should Christians care about anything non-Christians had written? Why not bury all the poets, historians, philosophers and tragedians along with the vestal virgins and the augurs and the flamens of Jupiter? Why should pagan literature outlive the pagan faith of Greece and Rome? In a time when interest in ancient texts was at its greatest in almost a millennium, Tertullian's thousand-year-old question was as relevant as ever.

Petrarch was not the first to seek a Christian justification for a classical curriculum, but his love for the Roman masters, especially Cicero, gave him the incentive to defend ancient literature with exceptional vigor. In a sense, Petrarch's entire body of work can be interpreted in these terms. From his letters to the spirit of Cicero, to his dialogue with the spirit of Augustine in the Secret book, to his late epistle answering his critics and encouraging his disciples, On his own ignorance and that of many others,

Petrarch evolves a sustained meditation on a recurring theme. His whole output reads as an extended apology for his enduring love affair with Greek and Roman literature. And what is more, it is an apology that the next generation of Italian classicists, admirers like

Harald Hagendahl, The Latin fathers and the classics (Goteborg: Elanders Boktrykeri Aktiebolag, 1958). See particularly Hagendahl's sections on Augustine's understanding of classical ethics, 341-345, and the somewhat longer discussion of Jerome's attitude towards the classics, 309-330. 285 But it is fair to observe that not all of Petrarch's critics were hostile to pagan ideas per se. The Aristotelians whom Petrarch famously answered in On his own ignorance were simply advocating a different approach to the classics, hence their devotion to Aristotle, rather than a complete renunciation of pre-Christian thought. See Kristeller's "Petrarch's Averroists, a note on the history of Aristotelianism in Venice, Padua, and Bologna" in Studies in renaissance thought and letters, 209-216. 158

ORf\

Boccaccio and Salutati, carried forward. It is true that some early humanists, notably

Salutati, took the critique of classical rhetoric so seriously that they seem almost to concede the field to the skeptics and admit the vanity of their studies. But what matters is that the study of pagan literature continued to be fiercely debated and often fiercely 9R7 defended in the years that followed.

And so by the time that Valla was born, the apology for classical studies was nothing new. But Valla can still be said to have made an important and original contribution. He opened up a new field in the defense of classical letters, one which

Erasmus would later make his own, by applying textual scholarship and proficiency in

Greek to the sacred matter of the New Testament. Valla merely criticized the existing

New Testament translation, where Erasmus would actually provide a fresh Greek text and an original Latin rendering. But both men provided a similar argument for Christian classicists to deploy. A mastery of pagan literature, Valla and Erasmus each maintained in their turn, could lend new insight into Christian texts. It was even necessary since the idiom of the basic documents of Christianity was a close cousin to the language of

Hesiod, Euripides, and Lucian. As long as no earlier scriptural sources could be found than the Pauline epistles and the Greek gospels, Athens had everything to do with

Jerusalem.

More entered this particular controversy publicly by joining Erasmus in the ongoing dispute over his translation of the New Testament. More took it upon himself to

286 For Petrarch's devotion to classical literature as well as his immediate influence on Boccaccio and Salutati see Jerold E. Siegel, Rhetoric and philosophy and Renaissance Humanism: the union of eloquence and wisdom from Petrarch to Valla (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1968) 31-35. For a discussion specifically focused on Salutati's defense of classical studies, albeit derived from Petrarch, see Berthold L. Ullman, The Humanism ofColuccio Salutati (Padua: Editrice Antenore, 1963) 39-43 and 54- 70. 287 Ullman, 60. 159

answer a critical letter written to Erasmus by the Dutch theologian, Martin van Dorp.288

More very publicly defended Erasmus' aims and ideals against various critics in England

and Europe, vindicating the study of Greek in terms of its value for renewing and restoring Christian piety. More's arguments here are hardly original but they are

certainly sincere. They follow the precedent already established by Valla, whose

Annotations More praised in a letter to one of Erasmus' critics. Christians must study

Greek in order to understand the most important sacred texts.

But even before he was called on to defend Erasmus, More had confronted the problem of pagan learning as directly as Petrarch, and without the saving claim of

advancing the study of Scripture. A few years before taking up his pen for Erasmus'

New Testament, More had searched for a Christian application in his translation of

Lucian. This was difficult because More's chosen author was especially controversial.

Lucian was not only a pagan, but an atheist, an admirer of that most dreaded of pagan philosophers, Epicurus. And even worse, Lucian was a satirist: he was often obscene and always irreverent. And so translating Lucian led More to confront the most uncompromising objections against the humanist program. Why should someone devoted to the church and teachings of Christ translate a writer who does not recognize his Savior, or even affirm the immortality of the soul? How can someone whose beliefs are false lead others to the truth? More is certainly sensitive to these questions, and he tries to answer them in the introduction to his translation. He argues that what Lucian

Letter 15 in More's Selected Correspondence. Salvatore Camporeale discusses this letter in some detail in the article mentioned in Chapter Three, the article that concludes Lorenzo Valla: Umanesimo, riforma e controriforma. Dorp's original letter to Erasmus is Letter 304 in The correspondence of Erasmus: letters 298 to 445, trans. R.A.B. Mynors and D.F.S. Thompson, annotated by James K. McConica (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976). 160

does not believe matters less than the harmful superstitions such as astrology that he

exposes.

I am not much troubled by the fact that the author seems to have been disposed to doubt his own immortality... What difference does it make to me what a pagan thinks about the articles contained in the principal mysteries of the Christian faith? Surely the dialogue will teach us this lesson: that we should put no trust in magic and that we should flee superstition, which obtrudes everywhere under the guise of religion. It teaches us also that we should live a life less distracted by 9R1 anxiety, which is to say less fearful of any gloomy and superstitious falsehoods.

This is not More's only argument for classical learning, but it is certainly his most

direct. Lucian's beliefs are irrelevant except where they can offer Christians a potentially

useful lesson. And it would be easy to imagine that because More can defend the reading

of pagan literature by Christians, he saw no merit in the contrary argument. It could be

maintained that any concession to this perspective is simply a rhetorical conceit to refute

the critics of the humanist program. This is a natural assumption on the part of almost

any modern reader - regardless of specific religious opinions almost certainly more

broad-minded than More or the majority of his contemporaries. But the deeper More's

writings and life are explored, the more obvious it becomes that this problem concerned

him deeply. More had to justify the classical studies associated with humanism not only

to others, but also to himself. As with Petrarch, who often seems to write and think of

little else, the very number of times More returns to this question indicates how

"In quo non valde me movet, quod eius animi fuisse videtur, ut non satis immortalitati suae confideret... Quid enim mea refert quid sentiat his de rebus ethnicus, quae in praecipuis habentur fidei Christianae mysteriis? Hunc certe fructum nobis afferet iste dialogus: ut neque magicis habeamus praestigiis fidem, et superstitione careamus, quae passim sub specie religionis obrepit, rum vitam ut agamus minus anxiam, minus videlicet expavescentes tristia quaepiam ac superstitiosa mendacia." Thomas More, Translations from Lucian, ed. with translation by Craig R. Thompson in The complete works of Saint Thomas More. Vol. 3 Part I (Valley Forge, Mass.: Yale University Press, 1974) 4-5. Apart from a minor adjustment, the translation here is Thompson's. 161 persistently it preoccupied him.290 More tackles it so often because he is never personally convinced; he never feels that the Christian objections to the study of pagan literature have been answered decisively.

And there can be little doubt that More identified himself wholeheartedly with

Christianity, whether in terms of its institutions, doctrines, sacraments, or traditions. On the one hand, More was certainly skeptical about the condition of contemporary religion.

He associated himself with some of the most famous critics of the institutional church.

More was not only the friend of Erasmus but also of John Colet, a fierce, almost violent opponent of clerical corruption. Although he was never as vocal as Colet, who was almost charged with heresy for his attacks upon the clergy, More was not silent regarding perceived abuses.291 And at least during his earlier years, More also betrayed a definite skepticism regarding the dictatorial pretensions of the Roman papacy. He never associated himself openly with efforts to limit the pope's authority, but More certainly appreciated the need to resist the unwarranted expansion of Roman power. On the other hand, More was sufficiently devoted to the universal church to make himself one of only two prominent martyrs when Henry VIII decided to break with the Vatican and establish the Anglican Confession. More might not have felt worthy of sainthood - what would he have said of his in 1935? - but he certainly aspired to call himself a

Christian.292

Utopia, which discusses the reaction of the pre-Christian Utopians to classical pagan literature, may be taken as an example of this. 291 Jonathan Arnold, Dean John Colet of St. Paul's: Humanism and reform in early Tudor England (New York: LB. Tauris, 2007) 40-44. 292 The other prominent martyr was , Bishop of Rochester. See Brendan Bradshaw, Humanism, reform, and Reformation: the career of Bishop John Fisher (Cambridge, Mass: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 162

And what a Christian! If More seemed less than satisfied with the institutional church in his earlier years, his essential religious devotion was never in question.

Although More ultimately chose a legal career, he famously spent several years considering a monastic vocation with one of the strictest orders in Europe. Nor would his choice of a secular career have resolved More's anxiety about the study of the pagan classics. If anything, More might have found it easier to justify his interest in a writer like Lucian if he had chosen a less worldly profession. He might have felt that he had earned the right to study pagan literature if his life were unequivocally Christian. Even in his career outside the cloister, the chief models of More's piety were the men who would have trusted such studies the least. As it was mentioned earlier, More was a devoted student of Augustine, whose own attitude towards the pagan classics is ambiguous at best. More also admired the twelfth-century monastic reformer , a

strict ascetic who was skeptical not only of pagan literature but of all studies except the most explicitly religious.293 It is only to be expected that More would understand the perspective of men like Bernard and Augustine. More had nearly renounced the world for a monk's cell and he continued the mortification of the hair shirt and knotted cord into his married life: so it seems natural that he would share their suspicion that secular literature is at best a kind of necessary evil.

It is precisely because More was sympathetic to the case against the pagan

classics that he would have welcomed the central argument of On pleasure. For all his doubts, More loved Greek and Roman literature, and so he needed to affirm the value of

293Marius, 66-68. Marius assumes, very reasonably, that Bernard's attitude may have influenced More, although he provides no example of More actually referring to anything that Bernard might have written. On the other hand, Headley mentions a reference, noted by Clarence Miller, to one of Bernard's sermons in More's Responsio adLutherum in The complete works of Saint Thomas More, Vol. 5 Part I, ed. John Headley, trans. Scholastica Mandeville (Forge Village, Mass.: Yale University Press, 1969) 893-894. 163 his studies for a Christian life. In this situation, Valla's dialogue would have been a welcome gift. The principal thesis of On pleasure, discussed extensively in the previous chapter, is that the internal logic of Epicurean philosophy supports Christian doctrines.

And so Valla is demonstrating that pagan teachings have a Christian application. Virtue not its own reward, pleasure the only real good, moral actions meaningless that end in death; all of these 'Epicurean' premises support the 'Christian' conclusion that human life and purpose can only be understood through the promise of the resurrection and the

saving power of the cross. Valla's argument that Epicurus and Paul each sing from the

same hymnbook might be shocking, but it also provides precisely the justification for

classical studies that More would have been seeking. Just as the Greek language can illuminate the New Testament, so Greek philosophy also has its value. Valla shows how

even the atheistic philosophy of Epicurus can provide insight into the underlying ideas of the Gospels and Pauline epistles.

This would have been an attractive notion for More, and it would certainly have been hard to overlook. Apart from embedding this message within the internal logic of his dialogue, Valla also declares it explicitly in the introduction. He tries to anticipate

criticism on the part of the pious by explaining that he is not interested in pagan philosophy for its own sake, and that he is only exploring the teachings of Epicurus and

Zeno in order to vindicate the doctrines of Christ. Not content merely to use pagan ideas

for a Christian end, he actually writes to discredit these philosophers by discussing their doctrines. With consummate rhetorical skill, Valla turns the principal charge of his

detractors on its head. The best way to refute the Stoics and the Epicureans is to reveal the emptiness of their lives and teachings through their own words. Just as David severed 164

Goliath's head with the very weapon of the Philistine giant, Valla declares that he will confound paganism "not with [Christian] arguments, but with those of the philosophers themselves." He promises "to cut their throats with their own sword."294 Here is a justification to satisfy even Tertullian! Christians should study pagan literature to expose paganism and triumph over it. Jerusalem must understand Athens to conquer her.

This is hardly a ringing endorsement of classical scholarship, but it is still an

effective defense, not to say an imaginative one. Rather than simply placate the zealots who have set themselves up against the study of pagan philosophy, Valla declares that he is actually one of them, taking up their fight on behalf of Christian piety. He claims that he is writing from a sense of outrage at recent claims made on behalf of the ancient philosophers. He wants to refute those supposedly Christian authors, some among his

own contemporaries, who have had the audacity to defend the great names of pagan

literature and argue that their wisdom and virtue have won them a place in heaven. Valla presents his indignation at such as proof of his own sincerity. He is angry, he

implies, because he is so far from any such flirtation with paganism. How dare the

admirers of Socrates and Zeno so diminish the value of Christ's incarnation!

There are not a few men, and what is more disgraceful, learned men ... who inquire the reason that many... who have not known or worshipped our God as we do.. .have been cast into the blind darkness of Hell. And what of the great integrity of these men, they say, and is their justice, and faith, and devotion, and all their other virtues no good to them? Is it no help that they should be led into the company of the wicked and the impure and the evil-doers, and consigned to eternal torments? .. .What is this, I ask, but to affirm that Christ descended to 9QS earth in vain, or did not come at all?

On pleasure, 2. [4] "Ego e contra planum faciam, non nostris, sed ipsoram philosophoram rationibus..." 2. [6] "...partim suo mucrone iugulemus." 295 ibid, 1. [3] "Sunt non param multi, et ii, quod sit indignius, docti, in quoram sermonibus saepe ipse affui, qui percontantur et causam quaerant quam ob rem veteram multi etiam novoram qui Deum ita ut nos vel non cognoverunt vel non coluerunt, dicuntur non modo non asscripti in caelestem civitatem, sed etiam 165

As a sincere Christian confronting stubborn personal reservations about the merits of classical studies, this would have been exactly what More wanted to hear. More would have been reassured by Valla's insistence that in exploring the arguments associated with the Stoics and the Epicureans he is really defending the foundations of

Christian faith from those who admire pagan learning excessively. More would have been impressed by the passage where Valla resorts to his favorite description of himself as a soldier of Christ, fighting for his captain "with the shield of faith... and with the sword of faith, which is the word of God."296 Valla uses this military metaphor, also evident in the image of David and Goliath, to embrace the very conflict between

Christianity and paganism that caused so much embarrassment and discomfort to other students of the classics. Valla emphasizes the traditional opposition of Athens and

Jerusalem rather than minimizing it, and then he proceeds to set himself upon the righteous side.

From the perspective of the present day, it is hard to read this without admiring

Valla's audacity. If Valla is not a devoted student of pagan literature, then no one is!

And yet Valla refuses even the smallest concession on this count. Despite the fact that he is manifestly defending certain aspects of ancient wisdom, despite the fact that he builds an argument which asserts that there is a great deal of truth in the 'Epicurean' perspective, Valla professes only hostility for classical culture. He still manages to cast in infernam caecitatem esse coniecti. An tanta, inquiunt, illoram probitas, iusticia, fides, sanctitas, ceterarumque virtutum chorus nihil ipsis potest opitulari quin in contubernium sceleratoram, impuroram, maleficoram adducantur et in eterna supplicia detradantur.... [4] Quod quaeso quid aliud est quam Christum gratis venisse in terras fateri, immo non venisse confiteri?" 296 ibid, 2. [6] "Scuto fidei adolescentes et gladio, quod est verbum Dei dimicabant." Shortly after, Valla speaks of "Jesus himself [having] giv[en] the shield of faith and handfed] that sword" to him. "Quare si mihi in hunc campum descensuro et in Christi honorem pugnaturo ipse Jesus scutum fidei dederit et gladium ilium porrexerit, quid nisi reportanda victoria cogitemus?" 166 himself as the quintessential Christian champion, taking up the arms of the spirit to defend the faith of the primitive church.

I declare that I forget my own inadequacy and burn to defend our commonwealth, which is to say the Christian commonwealth. I have not considered the burden that I have assumed, instead I only remember this: that whatever we achieve, we do it through God and not our own strength.297

This is certainly impressive rhetoric: but it is also difficult to read without hearing a note of self-reliance sounding beneath Valla's ringing declaration of personal inadequacy. But then More was no stranger to this sort of false modesty. As someone who rose to the highest office in England and engaged in public controversies over religion and literature while insisting that he desired the life of a private citizen, More reconciled himself to greater contradictions than the one Valla presents here. What matters is how skillfully Valla has dismissed even a suggestion of sympathy towards the pagan philosophers whose poetry and prose he has studied so carefully. Valla has succeeded, as More could only admire, in giving his exploration of Zeno, Aristotle and

Epicurus a purpose as Christian as his revision of the New Testament. He may not be improving the understanding of scripture, but he is working equally for the greater glory of Christ. Whether or not this is true, it is something More would have wanted to believe, and Valla's splendid rhetoric would have made it easy. More would have welcomed On pleasure both specifically for turning the philosophy of pleasure to a pious end, and generally for making pagan learning the weapon of a Christian champion.

ibid, [5] "Fateor me oblitum meae infirmitatis et ardore raptum defendendae reipublicae nostrae, hoc est Christianae, quantum onus a me susciperetur non animadvertisse atque id demum cogitasse quicquid aggredimur ut id praestemus non in nobis esse sed in Deo." 167

But these rhetorical professions, however impressive, are only the surface. It would do a man as intelligent as More a disservice to think that he could be convinced on this basis alone. It is not merely the introduction but the entire dialogue that would have appealed to More. More would have admired Valla's explicit defense of Christianity, but he would have been equally impressed by something implicit in his arguments: a rationalization of Christian asceticism. For More, one of Valla's most appealing arguments would be the justification for a life of discipline and self-denial. In the character of both the 'Epicurean' and the 'Christian', Valla talks as much about denying pleasure as embracing it. Even the 'Epicurean' understands the value of self-control in transcending the lure of immediate gratification. And the 'Christian' is equally adamant that worldly pleasure must be traded for the pleasure of the life to come. This would have appealed to More just as it would have appealed to so many of the men and women who had either chosen, considered, or simply admired a monastic vocation.

The particular order which More considered joining during his youth, the

Carthusians, will be discussed further in chapter six, and only a little will be said here.

What matters now is that like so many of his contemporaries, More did not believe that the perfect life, or at least the perfect Christian life, involved the full enjoyment of physical pleasure. The various orders of monks and nuns denied themselves pleasure whenever they renounced family and material wealth, or engaged in fasting, enforced lack of sleep, or even deliberate physical mortification. But they did not represent the limits of asceticism. More was one of many laypeople who chose to observe a degree of ascetic discipline in secular life without specific vows. Apart from famously continuing the hair shirt and the knotted cord of the Carthusian cloister, it was More's practice, even

298 Reynolds, 35-36. Roper, 198. 168 as a busy public servant, to devote every Friday to solitary prayer and meditation.299 In maintaining that the calculation of happiness must include consideration of a future life,

Valla's 'Christian' speaker provides the pretext for the "hard, bitter, and difficult" morality which More attributes to the Utopians. It is a morality that can accommodate the asceticism that was important to More's own life and that he admired so much in others. Valla's argument that the pursuit of pleasure demands an outwardly wretched and miserable existence involves an irony that More, whose favorite literary devices are all ironic, would have appreciated.

And it is no use asking yet again whether Valla is serious in his defense of asceticism. It is unecessary to reconsider the sincerity of the final pages of On pleasure.

Regardless of whether Valla means everything that he writes, the effect on More must be the same. What matters is not the content of Valla's heart, but that More would have had every reason to take him at his word. More proves that he is serious about Valla's

'Christian' argument - suffer in this life to win pleasure in the next - by including this notion in Utopia essentially unchanged. It will be remembered from the last chapter that the religion of the Utopian people is distinguished by the paradoxical understanding of pleasure. It seems remarkable to Hythlodaeus, as it must have been for More reading On pleasure, that the unconditional goodness of pleasure does not exclude a painful personal discipline. The Utopians say that they believe in a life of pleasure, and yet their island is home to two monastic orders. Even the laypeople of Utopia lead lives of considerable self-restraint. And Valla's book provides an obvious model for this paradox. Valla's

Christian Epicureanism is the pretext for the sort of asceticism that More the almost-

Carthusian revered and which he celebrates in the pages of Utopia. When the

299 Roper, 210-211. 169

'Epicurean's' principle of delayed gratification is joined to the 'Christian's' argument for delaying gratification even beyond the present life, anything can be justified. Fasting, celibacy, and self-flagellation can all have their place in an existence directed towards maximizing pleasure.

Of course this might also sound like another of Valla's excessively clever arguments, of a piece with his claim that he is writing about ancient moral philosophy as

an act of Christian piety. But what matters is that More would have had sufficient reason to believe it. Why would More doubt Valla when he has only done what the Utopians have done? To borrow the words of Hythlodaeus in Utopia, Valla has explained how

"such a hedonistic philosophy is justified in terms of their religion, which is heavy and severe, even gloomy and inflexible."300 Whether Valla's rationale for the study of pagan philosophy is anything more than an excuse may always remain a mystery. But if it is only an excuse, it is at the least the kind of brilliantly argued excuse that a man of More's temperament and inclination would have been all too happy to embrace.

More's Christian devotion is also the key to the second reason that On pleasure would have been appealing. It is not only that Valla presents an ethics of asceticism and sacrifice, or at least one that can plausibly be presented that way. The fact that it is an accountable ethics is just as important to More. In either its 'Epicurean' or 'Christian' manifestation, the ethical system of On pleasure is premised on punishment and reward.

Both of Valla's later speakers agree that good actions have good results and that bad actions end badly. It is the kind of responsible ethics that is arguably characteristic of

Petrarch and Erasmus as well, and it is certainly an accurate description of More's own

00 "Et quo magis mireris ab religione quoque—quae grauis et seuera est fereque tristis et rigida—petunt tamen sententiae tam delicatae patrocinium." Utopia, 160. thinking. In the years after he wrote Utopia, More found himself defending this kind of accountable ethics against the new voices raised against it. The zeal he displayed then, in the later part of his career, provides a useful insight into More's mindset in the earlier years when he read Valla's dialogue and when he wrote Utopia.

When Utopia was published in 1516, More did not anticipate the challenges soon to be posed by Martin Luther and other religious revolutionaries. More could not have personally foreseen the arguments of the coming decades where he defended the doctrines of the Catholic Church against the nascent Reformation. What matters is that

More's later argument with Luther and other reformers can shed light on his beliefs during the earlier period when he was writing Utopia. In the polemics More produced from 1523 to his death, the outlines of his ethics are very clear. In arguments against

Martin Luther and (1494-1536) as well as less famous adversaries,

More argues for an accountable, responsible ethics. He insists that the choices human beings make have real consequences in terms of their own happiness, indeed their salvation. The Reformation brought these beliefs into the open, but More felt this way long before. The depth of conviction which More demonstrates in these polemics is sufficient to make his later statements a reliable guide to his earlier attitudes.

More's opposition to the Reformation, first Luther's Reformation and then King

Henry's, obviously has no single cause. But it is also clear that like Erasmus, More saw serious consequences in the doctrine of justification which Luther shared with nearly every reformer. More's Response to Luther and Erasmus' Discussion of free will were each published during the first decade of Luther's notoriety and each take aim at this 171 target.301 Their common objection involves the assumption that human beings must be morally responsible. More and Erasmus each felt that Luther threatened this notion, one that More would have seen reflected in On pleasure.

For More and Erasmus alike, the problem with Luther's doctrine is simple.

Luther's teaching of justification, often referred to as 'salvation by faith alone', removes any element of moral accountability from the critical decision of every Christian soul: will it be heaven or hell? By teaching that men and women are justified not by works but by faith bestowed through the grace of Christ, Luther makes ethical conduct seem irrelevant. While Luther was clearly trying to emphasize the pious lesson that salvation depends entirely upon God, More and Erasmus still found this problematic. It leaves no room for the individual accountability that mattered to both men. And so it is easy to understand their reaction on hearing Luther explain that salvation rests entirely with God.

Why try to do what is right if it has not the slightest bearing on where you spend eternity?

Erasmus asks this directly in his Discussion of free will, which More read and applauded as a welcome change from his friend's former caution in engaging Luther. Erasmus says that Lutheran theology contradicts the premise of the Judeo-Christian scriptures, books steeped in moralistic language.

Nearly the whole of Scripture speaks of nothing but conversion, endeavor, and striving to improve. All this would become meaningless once it was accepted that doing good or evil was a matter of necessity; and so too would all the promises, threats, complaints, reproaches, entreaties, blessings, and curses directed towards either those who have amended their ways or those who have refused to change.303

301 Michael A. Mullet, Martin Luther (Bodmin, Cornwall: Routledge, 2004) 170-178. 302 Marius, 274 and 331-336. 303 Erasmus, Collected works of Erasmus Volume 76: Controversies, ed. Charles Trinkaus, trans. Peter Macardle (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999) 26. 172

A moralist in almost every sentence of a lifetime of writing, Erasmus had invested his whole career in this notion. It is an idea arguably derived as much from Roman oratory as from Christian scripture: that words have a moral impact, that it is possible to persuade, exhort, and encourage men and women to a higher standard of conduct. And so the questions which Erasmus poses in the guise of an ordinary Christian contemplating the commandments of God could just as easily be the questions of Erasmus' own readers attempting to reconcile the moralistic tone of Erasmus' writing with the determinism of

Luther. What is the use of God demanding ethical conduct, or what is the use of Erasmus demanding it for that matter, if our ultimate destiny has been decided for us?

Why complain of my behavior when all my actions, good or bad, are performed... regardless of my will? Why reproach me, or keep out the evil You put into me? Why entreat me, when everything depends on You, and happens as it pleases You? ...What is the purpose of such a vast number of commandments if not a single person has it at all in his power to do what is commanded?304

In the matter of Luther and the Reformation there is one essential difference between More and Erasmus. More disagreed with the reformers more vehemently and deliberately drew a clearer line between himself and the new doctrines. Unlike Erasmus,

More suspended his old criticisms of the church once the controversy began, and he was always more aggressive in attacking not only the message but even the personality of the reformers. But what counts here is that More and Erasmus shared this particular objection to Lutheran doctrine. More might be willing to admit that Luther was correct in citing Augustine as a precedent for his erroneous belief in the emptiness of good works,

304 ibid, 27. 173

-5 f\C but this marked the limit of his accommodation. In his polemics More hammered away at precisely the same vulnerable point in the doctrine of justification that Erasmus had indicated. In his Response to Luther, More declares the theology of justification fundamentally immoral: it means surrendering any hope of holding men and women accountable. He quotes the words attributed to Henry VIII in the Assertion of the seven sacraments, words which More himself may have written for the English king.

O disloyal voice, mistress of all disobedience, in itself so horrible to listeners conscious of their duty that there is no need to refute it! And will adultery not be condemned? Or murder? Or false witness? How else if each person believes he shall be saved by virtue of the pledge of baptism alone?

Luther had of course denied that this was a consequence of his teachings: to say that a sin can be forgiven is not the same as arguing that God condones it. But More will not surrender this point so easily. Like so many of Luther's critics then and since, More hammers away at the theme of moral responsibility. More says that King Henry was correct in feeling that the implications of Luther's teaching are both irresponsible and immoral. Without punishment and reward, there is no basis for ethical conduct.

If [Luther] does not believe we should sin, why does he declare that sin will go unpunished? Why does he invite the whole world to sin with impunity?308

305 The letter is Letter 83. More observes that Augustine is the legitimate source of Luther's erroneous understanding of salvation and damnation. "[Augustine] maintains that infants who die unbaptized are tormented with feelings of eternal pain. And what person is there today who takes this seriously? The only exception is Luther, who has sunk his teeth into Augustine's teaching and is said to be laboring to re­ establish it." "Asserit infantes sine baptismo defunctos, aeterna sensus poena torquendos, quod nunc quotus est quisque qui credit? Nisi quod Lutheras fertur, Augustini doctrinam mordicus tenens, antiquatam sententiam rarsus instaurare." 306 Mullet, 143-144. 307 "O vocem impiam et omnia impietatis magistram, ita per se exosam piis auribus ut non sit opus earn redarguere. Ergo non damnabit adulterium? Non damnabit homicidium? Non periurium? Si tantum credat, se quisquam salvum fore per virtutem promissionis in baptismate?" Responsio ad Lutherum, 262 and 263. 308 "Si non censet esse peccandum, cur impunitatem peccandi pollicetur? Cur orbem totum ad peccandi securitatem invitat?" ibid, 266-269. 174

The implication for Utopia should be obvious. Anyone reading Utopia with the benefit of hindsight can immediately understand More's hostility to Luther's most celebrated teaching. Long before the first whisper of Luther's name had reached him,

More had already expressed his conviction that moral conduct depends on the awareness of God's retributive justice. Luther's teaching that we cannot influence our salvation is precisely the teaching that the people of Utopia reject. It is the single belief, the belief that good deeds go unrewarded and that evil deeds go unpunished, that in the constitution of Utopia is grounds for revoking the rights of citizenship. "Whoever denies [divine justice], they do not even reckon to be numbered among men, let alone count him a citizen." Someone who proselytizes this belief is put to the most severe punishment,

even executed after repeated offenses.309 Assuming that More shares most opinions with his fictional creations, his reaction to Luther in later years is hardly unexpected. There is no doubt the Utopians would have killed or exiled every Lutheran missionary who tried to win new converts to his irresponsible creed. Is it any mystery if More tried to do the

same?

This is not the only reason for More's later hostility to Luther, but it is among the most significant. And it can also explain why More would have embraced On pleasure.

More would have been as glad to hear what Valla says as he would be horrified years later by Luther. In hindsight, Valla's arguments about the moral necessity of reward and punishment would seem the opposite of Luther's claim that no human action can affect what God has determined. The message of Valla's dialogue was precisely what More wanted to hear. Good actions have good consequences, bad actions meet their just

309 Utopia, 220-222. 175 reward. The 'Epicurean' demonstrates the immoral consequences when someone is not accountable to God, and the 'Christian' reinforces this by showing that morality depends on the future pleasures that God will bestow. Nothing could be farther from the mystery of Luther's unaccountable, entirely unmerited salvation, in which good actions are not the occasion of the slightest divine reward. On pleasure would have appealed to the same conviction, to the same aspect of More's worldview that preachers like Luther and

Tyndale would later threaten and cast into doubt.

But accountability is only the start. While More appreciated Valla's arguments about the rewards of moral actions, Valla's ethics has other applications which More would have welcomed as well. More's objections to Luther and the other reformers extended beyond the notion that virtuous actions have no bearing on the rewards and punishments prepared by God. It was not only moral conduct, it must be remembered, that Luther denied could earn men and women their salvation. Luther also attacked a number of practices which More defended, including fasting, prayers to , masses for the dead, pilgrimages, and of course physical mortification. Here More's response was very differently from that of Erasmus, who remained openly hostile to many of these same perceived abuses after the Reformation was well underway. Unlike Erasmus, More preferred to stress that these traditions were ultimately good and worthy of respect. And so he suspended his earlier criticism and came to their defense when he saw them seriously threatened. The fact that so many Catholic practices can be misused, More explains in the Dialogue concerning heresies, is no reason to reject them entirely.

.. .The effect of our matter... stands in this: whether the thing we speak of, as praying to saints, going on pilgrimage, and worshipping relics and images, may be done well, not whether it may be done evil. For if it may be well done, then 176

though many would misuse it, yet doth all that nothing diminish the goodness of the thing itself.310

Like More's arguments against justification, these words come a good decade after the writing of Utopia. But here too it is reasonable to assume that More held these opinions long before they were tested by the reformers. Even before Luther, More entertained a deep respect for the traditions that he sometimes criticized. And this is why

More would have appreciated On pleasure even in the days when Catholic piety seemed secure. Trading pain in this life for pleasure in the next can not only explain moral behavior, but it can also justify religious devotion. All of the practices that More defended so fiercely from Luther can be justified in terms of Valla's ethics. This includes the monastic vows which More admired and the expressions of popular devotion that he tolerated. And so On pleasure would have yet another application. More would have applauded Valla's insistence that God rewards virtuous behavior, but he would also have seen how this reasoning could justify specific religious practices. More explains this in the second book of Utopia, where he describes one of the island's two orders of monks.

They deny themselves many things, but only because they will be richly compensated in the long run.

[They] not only abstain from sexuality, but also from eating meat, some reject even the flesh offish and birds. And having all at once cast aside the pleasures of the present life as so much deadly poison, they set their entire hope of hard days and sleepless nights on the pleasure of the life to come, which they long quickly to attain.311

310 Marius 342. 311 "Qui non Venere modo in totum abstinent, sed carnium esu quoque. quidam animalium etiam omnium, reiectisque penitus tamquam noxiis vitae praesentis voluptatibus, futurae dumtaxat, per vigilias ac sudores inhiant, eius propediem obtinendae spe." Utopia, 226. 177

The essential phrase here is the second from the end: "the pleasure of the life to come." This is the heart of Valla's 'Christian' argument, and it can be turned to the defense of asceticism or pilgrimage or any other traditional practice that seems worth preserving. This is not the same as saying that Valla would have defended all of these practices himself. Valla makes it clear in The calling of the religious that he is skeptical about the intrinsic value of monastic vows. And in his dialogue On free will, Valla seems to suggest, according to something like Luther's reasoning, that our moral destiny lies in God's hands.313 But what matters here is how More would have read On pleasure.

And Valla's premise in this particular book is that an action, including an act of religious devotion, can be justified in terms of otherworldly pleasure and pain. This principle makes it possible to defend anything if it can be plausibly maintained that God will reward it. The fact that masses, pilgrimages, and ascetic self-denial bring no discernible benefit in the present life is irrelevant: gratification has been delayed until death. It is natural that More would be open to this, just as he would have been open to any line of thinking which could support the way of life that he loved. And he would have felt this way long before Luther openly challenged the foundations of Catholic piety.

* * *

But even this is still only a part of the appeal of On pleasure. It is interesting to examine More's future positions, but the year 1516 had its own questions, and there is one that Valla answered supremely well. It is the final argument of this chapter that it is

The profession of the religious. Lorenzo Valla, De libero arbitrio, ed. Maria Anfossi (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 1934). 178

a mistake to scrutinize one idea too closely. It is no use trying to estimate the value of

any single idea in isolation. It is possible to find points in Valla's dialogue that would have seemed appealing in themselves, and this has been done in the previous pages. But it is equally important to step further back and look at Valla's ethics as a whole. Because the most attractive and compelling feature of Valla's ethical system is simply that it is a

system. The various arguments fit together beautifully, and the whole is not merely the

sum of the individual parts. It is this quality, more than an individual teaching, which would have made On pleasure attractive to More. The system itself would have

impressed More as no single idea could. And what is perhaps most interesting is that

Valla's systematic ethics appealed to More less for anything that he believed than for a

set of ideas that he rejected. To understand More's response to On pleasure, it is necessary not only to look at what he loved, but also to examine what he hated.

Ultimately, the secret to Valla's appeal lies in the observation that began this

chapter. More's England and Valla's Italy may have been different in many respects, but the similarities are real as well. More's life was not so different from Valla's that he

could not recognize some reflection of contemporary problems in the writers, systems

and concepts that Valla challenged. Specifically, More would have discovered in

Valla's ethics a focused and effective critique of an intellectual establishment which both men recognized. This establishment embraced the traditions of medieval dialectic and logic which historians have often referred to under the general rubric of Scholasticism. It was for this compelling and systematic critique of the scholastic traditions that More would have valued On pleasure. More responded to Valla as someone who, in his own time and place, had engaged with the same orthodoxies, the same stale rhetoric, the same 179

calcified systems that frustrated him in his own lifetime. In discovering Valla, More

discovered a co-belligerent, someone else who had made war on the same enemies and

fought upon the same ground.

It is hard to appreciate the significance of Valla's example without first understanding More's dissatisfaction with the England and indeed the Europe in which he

found himself living. More was so eager, hungry even, for a plausible critique of the

intellectual establishment of his time because he blamed that establishment for what he

saw as the corruption of contemporary civilization. More was neither the first nor the last

person to imagine that he lived in an age of decline, but what matters is that he felt this

acutely. More was extremely unhappy with the conditions of early Tudor England,

whether political, moral, social, or intellectual: the first part of his life was informed by

the conviction that something had gone terribly wrong in almost every aspect of public

and private life. And he attributed this perceived decadence - this is the crucial thing -

to the attitudes he saw prevailing among the intellectual elite, to bad education and bad

ways of thinking entrenched in church, court and university. Nearly everything was

wrong because nearly everyone was learning, believing and teaching the wrong things.

And this is why More would have welcomed On pleasure. The very radicalism

that made Valla so controversial in his lifetime would have made his ideas incredibly

appealing to the young Thomas More. Valla does not belong to what More would have

considered an established intellectual tradition, in fact Valla deliberately sets out to

overturn many of the traditions which More knew and hated. This distance from the

ideas and attitudes which More blamed for the decadence of English society meant that

Valla could be seen as part of the solution to the problem which older schools of thought 180 presented. Valla offered More an alternative, an articulate, beautifully organized alternative, to any prevailing moral philosophy, and More responded because he was seeking an alternative even before he knew precisely what form it would take. More wanted something which he could set against the various Aristotelianisms that he believed had poisoned the intellectual springs of contemporary civilization. And so

More's feelings about society provide the best explanation for his taste in literature and philosophy. It was More's sense of the pervasive corruption of early Tudor England and his rejection of anything connected with it that made him reach out so eagerly to the original and challenging ethics of On pleasure.

From one point of view, it might seem strange to describe More as a natural rebel.

Rebellious men are rarely appointed to high office, and More's martyrdom on behalf of

Europe's established religious order has made it easy to cast him as a passionate defender of the status quo. And there is no question that, when the time came, More found almost anything preferable to the changes he saw envisioned first by the religious radicals and then by his own sovereign. But More could not have foreseen this in 1516, when he wrote Utopia, or in the preceding years as the book matured in his imagination. And so his attitude in those days was very different. As long as society seemed relatively stable,

More was relentlessly critical. Even here, it might be argued that he was still a traditionalist in the sense that his criticism was couched in fashionably traditional terms.

Like essentially everyone in England and Europe at that time, More attributed the ills of his society not to a failure to develop or adapt to changing circumstances but rather to dangerous, unnecessary departures from the sound and effective traditions of the past.

314 The very notion of classical humanism which More, Erasmus, and Colet all embraced is a good example of this attitude. The promotion of Latin and Greek literature can be understood not as a call to dangerous 181

But however More understood the causes, there is no doubting the depth of his discontent. The Thomas More who wrote Utopia seems to have disapproved of nearly every aspect of contemporary civilization.

It is important to take the full measure of More's critical attitude because it is the key to understanding the appeal of On pleasure. More was not simply unhappy with specific aspects of society, whether political, social, or religious. He actually saw the whole structure in disrepair. Where More assigns the blame will be discussed in a moment, but first the scope of his discontent must be illustrated. While his preferred literary forms lend themselves to hyperbole, there is no doubt that More's frustration was real. He believed that the most important institutions of English and indeed of European life were approaching a dangerous state of dysfunction. Their situation was so dangerous that the fiercest criticisms were justified to inspire his contemporaries with an awareness of the decline.

To start with, More was unhappy with the prevailing political system of Tudor

England, specifically the defining institution of the monarchy. And while More was preoccupied in later years with the threat of anarchy unleashed by the unstable passions of the Reformation, the younger Thomas More feared that the central authority of the king would prove too strong. Such fears are implicit in the political structure of Utopian society. While More prefers not to stress this fact, the ideal constitution of his island nation is republican. Unlike England or most of the great European states, the Utopians have no hereditary monarchy. Like the Venetians, they elect a leader for life rather than

innovation, but a return to studies buried by centuries of neglect. Even someone like Valla, who to modern eyes seems a great innovator, could view himself as a restorer of tradition. 182 entrust the business of the state to someone chosen by an accident of birth.315 This is a subtle expression of More's political opinions, but in its own way it is telling enough.

And if More was not an enthusiastic monarchist, he had good reason to feel this way. The outline of his life is enough to explain why he might have mistrusted a hereditary sovereign. Born during the disastrous conclusion of the War of the Roses,

More saw the English system at its worst in the dynastic squabbling of the rival claimants to the crown. And while More was only a small child when the infamous King Richard

III clawed his way to the throne across the murdered bodies of his two young nephews, the event still left a powerful impression. In his History of Richard III, More relates a vivid childhood memory of a visitor who appeared at his father's house to announce the death of King Edward the IV and boast of Richard's imminent accession. In More's recollection, this visitor, who announced his arrival before dawn with a loud and threatening knock at his father's door, already assumed that Richard would be king.

"Either because he had become acquainted with [Richard's plans] or through some indication of what was to come," the man knew that the two little children who stood in

Richard's way would not live long.316 And while More never finished his account of

Richard's infamous reign, what he did write served to establish the image of Richard as a monster both in mind and in body. "He was malicious, wrathful, envious, and from afore birth, ever fro ward... ill featured of limbs, crook-backed, his left shoulder much higher than his right, hard-favored of visage."317

Nor would More have preferred Richard's successor, King Henry VII. More began his political career at the age of twenty-three opposing the elder King Henry's

315 ibid, 122. 316 Richard III, 101. 3,7 ibid, 7. 183 financial demands in parliament. This early stand against overreaching royal power led both to the displeasure of the king and to the imprisonment of More's father in the on fictitious charges. Roper relates the story that Bishop Foxe of Winchester, a member of the king's influential privy council, tried to entrap the young Thomas More.

Foxe affected genuine concern for More, but his real purpose was to induce More to incriminate himself. If More spoke too openly, "his highness might with better color have occasion to revenge his displeasure against him." Whether or not he was already skeptical of the monarchy, More's attitude after this confrontation is clear. The persecution that followed his resistance to the king left More with a sense of contempt for

Henry VII personally, and also with a lasting awareness of how easily the kingship itself could be abused and debased.

And while More might have hoped for better from King Henry VIII, it is no secret that he was disappointed. Unlike any of his predecessors, the younger King Henry had received the sort of education that Erasmus and More both hoped would inspire him to govern not only for himself but for his subjects.319 And More certainly could not have entered the king's service without convincing himself that Henry VIII was at least potentially a better ruler than the last two men to hold the office. But even More's hopes for a good king would not have changed his attitude towards the monarchy as an institution. While More would never have anticipated the conclusion of his relationship with Henry as he wrote Utopia, he already had a sense of the instability inherent in the very nature of the monarchy. This is the argument of More's History of Richard III,

318 Roper, 199 and 200. 319 See, among other things, More's celebratory poems on the accession of Henry VIII. While simple careerism obviously played a role in this, there is every reason to believe that More's praise reflected the sincere hope that the new king would prove a better ruler than his predecessors. Carlson, 65. 184 voiced explicitly in some places but implicit in the subject matter itself. The account of a particular bad king is designed to drive home the disastrous consequences for the whole nation when the crown settles, as it always may, on an unworthy head. Even when one monarch is good, what guarantee is there for the next?

And so in one sense, it matters less what More thought of the monarchy as an institution than that he hated those who abuse it. The Latin epigrams, which are an excellent guide to More's opinions during the first part of his life, include several descriptions of wicked rulers. More writes of kings turned tyrants, feeding off their people like wolves instead of defending them like shepherds, sovereigns who have enslaved their subjects when they should preserve their freedom. One epigram ends with the ominous suggestion that if the tyrant did not "hide fearfully inside [his] walls, [his] life would be in the hands of every man."320 Could this be how More felt about the elder

King Henry's vindictive actions against his family? Or the horror of the whole nation at

Richard's depravity? Another epigram moves beyond anger at injustice and proposes a recipe for dealing with it. More compresses into four lines a notion that is revolutionary in the literal sense that it provides the intellectual justification for . More argues that government depends upon the consent of the governed and that no sovereignty of any description should persist if it does not benefit its citizens.

Whatever man would reign alone over men Owes this to those he rules: That his power should not one moment outlive ^91 The pleasure of those he rules.

320 "Quod nisi conclusus timide intra tecta lateres, / In cuiusque foret iam tua vita manu." Latin poems, 164. 321 "Quicunque multis vir viris unus prae est / Hoc debet his quibus prae est / Prae esse debet neutiquam diutius / Hi quam volent quibus prae est." Thomas More, Latin poems in The complete works of Saint Thomas More, Vol. 3 Part II, ed. Clarence H. Miller, Leicester Bradner, Charles A. Lynch, and Revilo P. Oliver (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963) 168 and 169. 185

And it is not only the domestic policy of kings that More condemns. One of the many famous passages in Utopia has Hythlodaeus lament the grasping foreign policy of

European monarchs. He derides their perpetual discontent, their restless scheming to rule over more land than God has bestowed. The councilors of the French king, the prudentissimi mentioned in the last chapter, are bent on nothing else. They are "so many

•199 noble men presenting in turn their plans for war." How, Hythlodaeus asks, can anyone dissuade them? He sees no end to "all these warlike measures, through which so many nations are disturbed for [the king's] sake, his treasuries emptied and his people destroyed.. ."323 And while this passage is well known, it is not the only place where

More expresses this idea. Like Erasmus, who often articulates similar criticisms, More makes it his principal objection to contemporary foreign policy. In one of the epigrams, written at some point prior to 1516, More articulates this theme with a brevity unsurpassed elsewhere.

Of kings and kingdoms, how many are content with one? That king is one, if even one. Of kings and kingdoms, how many can well govern one? There is scarcely one, if even one.324

As for the various ways that a king can fail to govern his kingdom well, the list is a long one. Apart from an insatiable greed for new revenue arising from improvident

"Hic, inquam, in tanto rerum molimine, tot egregiis viris ad bellum sua certatim consilia conferentibus, si ego homuncio surgam, ac verti iubeam vela, omittendam Italiam censeam et domi dicam esse manendum, unum Galliae regnum fere maius esse, quam ut commode possit ab uno administrari, ne sibi putet rex de aliis adiiciendis esse cogitandum." Utopia, 88. 323 "Praeterea si ostenderem omnes hos conatus belloram, quibus tot nationes eius causa tumultuarentur, cum fhesauros eius exhausissent, ac destraxissent populum, aliqua tandem fortuna frustra cessuros tamen, proinde avitum regnum coleret, ornaret quantum posset, et faceret quam florentissimum." Utopia, 90. 324 "Regibus e multis, regnum qui sufficit unum, / Vix rex unus erit si tamen unus erit / Regibus e multis, regnum bene qui regat unum, /Vix tamen unus erit si tamen unus erit." Latin poems, 256 and 257. 186 wars or from lavish expenses at court, there is the casual injustice of society which they tolerate and often aggravate. The discussion of the working and idle poor which runs through both books of Utopia needs no comment. Arguably the single most famous passage in all the famous passages is the one where Hythlodaeus rails against the English system of criminal justice. With a passion that rises straight from More's own heart,

Hythlodaeus indicts the fundamental injustice of a society that punishes the very criminals whose transgressions result from the poverty which that same society creates.

"What else is this, I ask you, but that first you make thieves and then you punish them?"325

But even this active injustice, this deliberate manufacturing of transgressors is really only the beginning. Kings are supposed to care for their subjects, not simply refrain from preying upon them. There are places in Utopia and elsewhere where More even implies that the community, along with its leaders, is guilty in a passive sense through failure to save the people from themselves. Declamations against the corrupting powers of gambling and idleness and drinking turn up everywhere in More's writing - one epigram equates "luxury, drinking, and lust" with "the short road to Hell."326 That no one follows the leaders of Utopia in distracting the poor and uneducated masses from these harmful practices is worse than any active abuse. The disastrous foreign policy of kings is only the final injury after long-sustained domestic neglect. The people are being led or even driven into the ruin of personal vice, and yet their sovereigns are lost in

"Siquidem cum pessime sinitis educari, et mores paulatim ab teneris annis corrampi, puniendos videlicet, rum demum cum ea flagitia viri designent, quorum spem de se perpetuam a pueritia usquam praebuerant, quid aliud quaeso quam facitis fures, et iidem plectitis?" Utopia, 60. 326 This translation is very loose: More literally says that "baths, wine, and Venus hasten the journey for anyone hurrying to descend to the spirits of the underworld." "Si quis ad infernos properet descendere manes, / Hue iter accelerant, balnea, vina, Venus." Latin poems, 84-85. 187

dreams of international conquest and intrigue. Small wonder then, that Hythlodaeus

should declare that "the various governments that flourish in the world today... [are] nothing other than a certain conspiracy of rich men..."

But what matters most for the purpose of the present work is that kings are not the

only ones that More holds to account for the mismanagement of the realm. It is also the moral and intellectual leaders of society, the priests and monks and theologians who have

failed: the pastors have led the Christian flock astray. It has already been seen that More

gives religion an essential role in upholding social norms. In More's mind, civilized life depends upon the religious teaching of divine reward and punishment. At least this is what both Utopia and his Response to Luther would suggest. What then must be the result if the moral and intellectual leaders of society forget to tend the light of religion

and through neglect allow it to go out? From More's perspective, the social and political decline of the community proves that the religious establishment has failed. His belief in the importance of religion to civilized life demands such a conclusion. If a healthy

society rests upon healthy religious faith, and faith demands a flourishing church, then the illness of society demonstrates that the institutional foundation of religion is itself unsound.

And there is no doubt that More saw problems with the religious order of his day: this must not be obscured by More's later writings against Luther and other reformers.

Simply because More felt that the church and its traditions were worth defending from mortal threat does not mean that he thought they were incapable of improvement. After

Luther entered the scene, the need to correct abuses may have seemed insignificant

327"Itaque omnes has quae hodie usquam florent respublicas animo intuenti ac versanti mihi, nihil sic me amet deus, occurrit aliud quam quaedam conspiratio divitum, de suis commodis reipublicae nomine, tituloque tractantium." Utopia, 238. 188 beside the immediate danger. But in the first part of his career, in the years before writing Utopia, More was preoccupied with reform himself, less radical but still ambitious. More believed that the contemporary church had decayed along with the rest of society, and he was easily as critical of abuses in religion as in foreign policy or the treatment of the poor. As someone who had chosen a secular existence rather than take religious vows he could not keep, More was especially frustrated by monastic corruption.

He had little reason to tolerate the failure of monks and nuns to observe the full measure of ascetic discipline.

And then there was the role of England's many prosperous monastic houses in the deliberate defrauding of the poor, the part of the great abbots in "the conspiracy of rich men" mentioned above. Apart from laxity in the observation of their vows, the leaders of the great English houses have put financial concerns above the welfare of rural families.

To the list of celebrated passages from Utopia there must now be added More's rebuke of the monastic houses, mostly Cistercian, engaged in the wool trade. Instead of caring for the poor like sheep, "certain abbots and holy men" have driven men and women from their homes to create more grazing land for actual sheep.328 And so the land that once supported human beings is populated by animals that in Hythlodaeus's memorable phrase

"have grown so hungry and fierce that they devour even men themselves, and lay waste

"Nempe quibuscumque regni partibus nascitur lana tenuior, atque ideo pretiosior, ibi nobiles et generosi, atque adeo abbates aliquot sancti uiri, non his contenti reditibus, fructibusque annuis, qui maioribus suis solebant ex praediis crescere, nee habentes satis, quod otiose ac laute viventes, nihil in publicum prosint, nisi etiam obsint, arvo nihil relinquunt, onmia claudunt pascuis, demoliuntur domos, diraunt oppida, templo dumtaxat stabulandis ovibus relicto, et tamquam parum soli perderent apud vos ferarum saltus, ac vivaria, illi boni viri habitationes omnes, et quicquid usquam est culti, vertunt in solitudinem." ibid, 64-66. 189

^9Q to fields, leaving homes and towns empty." The rural poor are driven out, ironically enough, by the greed of supposedly unworldly monks.

And it is not only the monks who have forgotten their purpose: it must always be remembered that More has no special grudge against . Secular priests have also proven unworthy of their office. The ordination of priests on the island of Utopia has often been understood in terms of More's criticism of the English priesthood. The

Utopians have very few priests - no more than thirteen to a city - and they are chosen with care to ensure that they manifest "extreme holiness." The people of Utopia prefer this to having many priests and finding some unworthy of their office. They are even willing to appoint women, as no church in Europe would ever do, if it will help ensure that only unequivocally holy individuals find a place in the priesthood. This could be read as an unflattering inference about the priests More had known, or even an echo of

Colet's unstinting criticism of priestly conduct. And there may be an allusion to a very specific scandal, namely the "Hunne affair" of 1511 to 1515, in which several prominent •2-2 1 clergymen were implicated in no less a crime than murder.

And if this is More's implied position within the pages of Utopia, it is not hard to find the same attitude elsewhere in his writing. It only takes a glance at More's epigrams to see how More felt about certain individual clergymen. In many cases the titles alone are enough: Against an illiterate bishop, On a priest foolishly advising the people to fast 329 "Oves, inquam, vestrae, quae tam mites esse, tamque exiguo solent ali, nunc - uti fertur - tam edaces atque indomitae esse coeperant, ut homines devorent ipsos, agros, domos, oppida vastent ac depopulentur.." ibid, 64. 330 "Sacerdotes habent eximia sanctitate, eoque admodum paucos." ibid, 226-228. 331 It is perhaps typical of More's later reluctance to criticize the church that he went from suggesting that Hunne had probably not been murdered by the chancellor of the to stating flatly that he had killed himself "for despair, despite, and for a lack of grace," a pair of characterizations dating from 1529. While it is still possible that the More of 1516 had a different view of the Hunne affair, the post- Luther More, who never wanted to lend encouragement to the wicked, is firmly on the side of the church. Marius, 129. after the day was already past, On a certain fat priest who would say 'knowledge puff eth

up \332 The last of these should be quoted in full. Among other things, it shows how

freely More resorted to sharply critical language in the years while he still thought the

church was safe.

You say that knowledge, after Paul, will puff up any man, And so you shun it. Then why are you, stout father, so inflated? You can scarcely move for the great, swelling mass of your gut, And your head is puffed up with airy ignorance.333

But there is another reason to dwell on this particular epigram. It should be clear

from these four lines of verse, as well as from the titles mentioned just before, that More

has a clear idea of what is wrong with the clergy. More chiefly blames ignorance. He

believes that the want of education is one of the most important, perhaps even the

principal source of the abuses in contemporary religion. The bishop in the one epigram is

illiterate, the first priest does not understand the Christian calendar, while the other is

actually proud of his ignorance and misinterprets Paul's epistles to justify his contempt

for learning. All of these men are unworthy of their office and as a result betray the trust

of the people because of how little they know. More implies that this is the price of

inadequate education. If these individuals knew more, the inference can be made, they

would be better clergymen and would serve society better.

As nowhere else, it is here that More's concerns intersect with those of other

humanists such as Erasmus or Valla. While More did not accept all of the attitudes

which the scholarship of the last fifty years has associated at one time or another with

In episcopum illiteratum, De sacerdote ridicule admonente populum de ieiunio cum dies iam praeterisset. In pinguem quondam patrem cuifrequens erat in ore' scientia inflat'. 232 and 272. 333 Quemlibet inflat, ais, vel teste scientia Paulo, / Hanc fugis. Unde igitur tu, pater ample, tumes? / Vix gestas crasso turgentem abdomine ventrem / Inflaturque levi mens tibi stulticia. Latin poems, 272-273. humanism, he was at least here a 'typical humanist. Like Valla and Erasmus, More believed that ignorance, whether on the part of clergy or laity, was an evil which

education could remedy. His friendship with Erasmus was only possible, which is to say that More could only have defended Erasmus against his critics and supported him in so many other ways, on the basis of this crucial agreement. Both men believed that

education was the essential instrument to reform society, just as Valla seems to have believed in his own day. This does not mean that More, Erasmus, or Valla believed that

evil was limited to ignorance. But there is also no doubt that all three humanists agree

that error, although not synonymous with sin, is a close companion.

And what is just as important - here is the application of On pleasure - More and

Erasmus agree that error is not only a matter of insufficient education. Both feel that the

greatest danger lies in corrupted education. The rural masses had little education of any

description, it is true, but More believed that his society's ills begin at the top rather than

the bottom. Nor was it simply a matter of English elites receiving too little education.

More felt it was true that many courtiers, abbots, bishops and royal officials were

ignorant, but this is still only part of the problem. In More's eyes, the deeper issue was

that those few who could be called truly learned, the best educated clerics and the

theologians of the universities, had spent their time learning the wrong things. Most

people had been educated too little, but the rest were educated badly. Education alone

would solve nothing as long as nothing was done about the kind of education that

prevailed in English schools.

More and Erasmus both tell stories intended to illustrate this point, stories where

supposedly accomplished theologians make fools of themselves demonstrating their 192 deficient learning. Erasmus relates how More humiliated one theologian in a debate before no less an auditor than King Henry VIII. Erasmus says that it was easy for More to expose this supposedly erudite man since he actually thought that Greek and Hebrew were closely related languages.334 More was able to demonstrate that while the man had a reputation for learning, his actual learning was dangerously unsound.

But what precisely was this unsound learning? What sort of education did More and Erasmus consider useless? Their principal target is the interpretations and theories of the scholastic tradition. When More and Erasmus criticize bad education, they are talking about a curriculum that includes Thomas Aquinas, , Duns Scotus, and many less famous interpreters and commentators on Scripture and the writings of the church fathers. This was the education of Erasmus' loudest critics, or at least this is how

More tells it. He calls them "men who read nothing of the fathers or the Scriptures

lit except in the Sentences [of Peter Lombard] and the commentators on the Sentences."

They studied the central texts of the Christian tradition at second or third hand, More implies, filtering them through the interpretations set down during the later Middle Ages.

The scriptural source, the fons exalted by Erasmus, was all but buried beneath layers of medieval theory. And while this picture is obviously exaggerated, it is one that More,

Erasmus, and other contemporary humanists draw expertly. Wherever else the two men may disagree, they are of one mind in describing what they dislike.

Some of their stories are very colorful. More's fellow humanist and diplomat

Richard Pace (14837-1536) recounts how More answered two disciples of the scholastic theologian Duns Scotus with an obscene joke. Pace describes the two theologians as "the

Reynolds, 132. ibid, 101. sort of men respected as serious thinkers and so it is fitting that More responds to them by means of ridicule.

More heard [the two theologians] agreeing among themselves that King Arthur, a man some claim was never born and others insist never died but somehow vanished, had made a coat for himself out of the pelts of giants slain in battle. And when More asked them how this could possibly have happened, the elder responds with a straight face. "The answer, my son, is plainly evident, for the skin of a dead man obviously possesses a miraculous elasticity." When the other theologian heard this answer, he not only agreed, but even marveled at its subtle, Scotist quality. Then More, still a boy, replied "that is something I never guessed before, but almost everyone knows this: that one of you milks a billy goat while •JO/" the other holds a sieve underneath."

The details of the story are questionable. Pace did not meet More until both men were well past the age of thirty, and so any story concerning More's youth must have come to him at second hand, assuming it is not entirely invented.337 And the scatological humor is certainly more characteristic of Pace than More. But on the other hand More tells similar stories himself. More's own accounts are similar to Pace's not only in terms of their targets but also in the nature of their criticism. Like the More of Pace's story, the real Thomas More attacks the advocates of medieval grammar and dialectic for their empty and tendentious reasoning. And since this is the point of Pace's story, it contains an element of truth despite its fictitious particulars. What matters is that the young

Thomas More in the story is disgusted with how the Scotist reached his absurd

"Quale contigit, quum audiret duos Theologos Scotistas, ex his qui graviores habentur et pulpita conterant... Quum audiret inquam, serio affirmantes inter se Arcturam regem - quem aliqui natum negant, aliqui nunquam obiisse, sed nescioquo disparaisse contendunt - togam sibi ex gigantum barbis, quos in praelio occiderat, confecisse. Et quum Moras interogasset illos qua ratione hoc posset fieri, turn senior, composito in gravitatem vultu, 'ratio,' inquit, 'o puer, est aperta, et causa evidens, quod scilicet cutis hominis mortui mirifice extenditur.' Alter hanc rationem auditam non solum approbavit, sed etiam ut subtilem et Scoticam admiratus est. Turn Moras adhuc puer 'hoc,' inquit, 'semper antea aeque mihi incognitum fuit, atque illud est notissimum, alteram ex vobis hircum mulgere, alteram cribrum subiicere.'" , Defructu qui de doctrina percipitur, edited with English translation by Frank Manley and Richard S. Sylvester (New York: the Renaissance Society of America, 1968) 104-106. 194

conclusion. Which is precisely what the mature, factual More implies through his own

anecdote concerning a certain monk "who was a theologian and a noble disputant."338

Like Pace, More cannot not resist embroidering this tale - it is a little too convincing to be accurate - but strict veracity is not what matters. Even if the reality was less humorous than the telling, the story still shows More presenting a critique similar to the

one in Pace's account. Like the More of Pace's story, the actual Thomas More seizes upon the specious arguments employed by the scholastic theologians. He takes issue

with the ridiculous reasoning that they use to achieve their conclusions.

In More's story, the debate concerns not the history of the mythical King Arthur but practical theology. The monk is a guest in the home of an Italian merchant, and he

does his best to answer the theological and philosophical questions that are posed to him.

The problem is that, unlike a humanist trained in the persuasive arts of classical rhetoric, he finds himself unsuited for the task. The monk has never learned to build a persuasive

argument. Instead he tried to discuss every matter in terms of his scholastic training, the

sort of "subtle, Scotist" reasoning ridiculed by Pace. Regardless of what anyone says,

More's learned monk "would refute it with a syllogism," the classic tool of scholastic reasoning. More says that the host "soon realized that this monk was not so well

acquainted with his Bible as he was ready with his syllogisms," and so he decided to set a trap. In order to expose the ignorance he perceives, the merchant begins to invent false

scriptural quotations. He cites fictitious chapters and verses with impossible numbers "so that if a book was divided into sixteen chapters he would quote from the twentieth."

Reynolds, 102-103 195

And so, More explains, the worthy theologian has his training put to the extraordinary test of refuting scriptures deliberately fabricated to run contrary to his arguments.339

The point of the story is twofold. The first is a matter of simple ignorance. More wants to illustrate how little this model of traditional education really knows about the scriptural sources which ought to be the basis of every Christian's study. The monk "had no notion that the passages quoted were spurious" and he took them for real because he had neglected the study of Scripture.340 In this sense, the monk is just like the theologian in the story Erasmus tells, the man More humiliated for thinking that Greek was related to

Hebrew. More's monk and Erasmus' theologian are both examples of Christians who do not understand the central text of their religion. In both cases the study of the secondary literature, the various commentaries and summae of the scholastics, has crowded everything out.

But the second point of More's critique is both more serious and much closer to the story Pace tells. The crucial thing here is that it involves what the monk had learned rather than what he had not. Like the young More of Pace's anecdote, the More who tells this story is concerned with the tendentious character of scholastic reasoning. In Pace's bawdy joke, the two Scotists engage in an irrelevant discussion of a fairy tale, while

More's less frivolous account emphasizes the pernicious sophistry that lets the monk distort the clear meaning of language. More is serious where Pace writes in jest, but

More's point is still the same. Even facing the formidable challenge of quotations deliberately fabricated to confound him, the theologian manages to use the medieval commentators and dialecticians he has studied to bend the invented passages to his will.

339 ibid. 340 ibid. 196

He invokes the favorite authors of the scholastic tradition which More, Erasmus, and

Pace all ridiculed to support his ridiculous readings. "When he was contradicted," More explains, "he declared he was speaking on the authority of Nicholas of Lyra."341 This last sentence illustrates the danger More sees in unsound education. More would rather the monk had learned nothing than that he had studied how to twist any text to prove his conclusions.

But this story is useful in another respect. Apart from illustrating More's attitude towards education, it connects his concerns with those of Lorenzo Valla. The story of the sophist monk and the fabricated scriptures is telling because it shows More frustrated with the same traditions in European thought that Valla had denounced in his own time.

Valla shares More's frustration with medieval grammar and dialectic, and this common frustration unites the two men despite their many differences. This was the meaning of the earlier suggestion that More is drawn to Valla not for what they both love but for what they both hate. The two men do not think alike in everything, but their shared disgust with scholastic methods spans all the accidents of time and place. Like so many of the individuals that have been called 'humanists' at one time or another, More and

Valla participate in a common critique of the intellectual status quo of the later Middle

Ages. They are each part of a tradition that developed in reaction to models of learning and education which prevailed across Europe.

It is easy to underestimate the appeal of the negative to the human personality, and so it is easy to forget what Valla's hostility to Scholasticism must have meant to

More. As a young man, More was angry with the conditions of his society. If his writing is taken at face value, it is fair to say that More was bitterly angry. Because he was a man 197 who valued education, More was inclined from the start to believe that bad education must be the source of the various problems he perceived. And so he was searching for alternatives to the traditions he saw dominant in contemporary education. More was searching for a consistent and plausible alternative to the intellectual traditions which he blamed for the worst abuses of his age.

And Valla was prepared to provide such an alternative because, as it was seen in chapter two, he was also discontented, and like More he chose a similar target for his discontent. Valla was frustrated with the same traditions of late medieval thought that

More would blame for the problems of his day. For Valla there are no more pernicious saboteurs, no worse enemies of the sound education the world needs than the grammarians, dialecticians, and commentators that More's monk has studied to the exclusion of Scripture or the church fathers. Valla calls these people - a few names on his list include Albertus Magnus, William of Ockham, Alain of Lille, Martin the Dacian -

"the scum of humanity." Like More, Valla prefers ignorance to the kind of learning such authors trade in. "I would rather be illiterate than sink to their level," Valla declares.

"And I cannot decide whether I should sooner scorn the things they praise or praise the things they scorn."342 Valla hated the same writers and the same traditions which More hated, and he hated them with something like the same indiscriminate passion.

Valla would have understood More's search for a fresh model of learning and education because he was engaged in this search long before More was ever born or thought of. From one point of view, Valla's entire career seems like the pursuit of just

3 2 Valla, Correspondence, 198-199,201, and 194. "Ita ne illi quos nominavi - quibus addo Priscianum, Donatum, Servium ceterosque veteres - hanc fecem hominum ferre possent... " "Quos omnes tantum abest ut existimem doctos fuisse, ut, deum testor, mallem me illitteratum quam parem alicuius illoram esse; idemquoque, si viverent, veteres opinor esse dicturos." "Et nescio an frequentius laudanda sint que vituperant, quam vituperanda que laudant. " 198

such an alternative. In so many different books, orations, and letters, it can be argued that

Valla is really doing the same thing. This is true whether Valla is trying to provide a New foundation of dialectic and philosophy, or taking a fresh approach to grammar, or purifying the study of scripture; it is true whether he is re-examining Christian doctrine in

On free will or reinventing ethics in On pleasure and The calling of the religious. Valla is always at work on a massive task of reinvention. He is trying to collapse the entire rotten structure of medieval thought, a structure that in his calculation goes as far back as

Boethius.343 This is what Valla's old enemy Filelfo meant when he accused Valla, in the excerpt presented in chapter two, of "appoint(ing) himself the master of every art."

Whether he approves or not, Filelfo realizes that Valla is setting out to destroy whole

layers of medieval tradition. In the same diatribe, Filelfo laments that Valla "condemns, reproves, blames, and despises... all those profoundly learned men whose memory has been celebrated in every age with the highest and praise." These words are meant as a condemnation of Valla's arrogance, but they also testify to the extent of his

ambition, the sheer scale of the task Valla has set for himself.

And in this sense, Filelfo could probably have anticipated the appeal of Valla's ideas to the rebellious temperament of Thomas More. Filelfo might not have appreciated

Valla's wholesale condemnation of the past, but he could easily have feared that others would. His very effort in writing his invective suggests that he foresaw how Valla's radical posture would be received by the disillusioned and disaffected. Filelfo goes to

343 Boethius, who represents, with the Latin fathers, the fusion of the pagan philosophy of late antiquity with the theology of the Western church, is attacked with special severity in Valla's dialogue On free will. Here, Valla's speakers treat Boethius as the originator of the decadence of contemporary theology. 344 "Qui propter innatam mentis imbecillitatem, propter insitam cordis vesaniam, propter insitam animi perversitatem omnes priscos illos doctissimos viros quorum memoria omnibus seculis summa laudis veneratione celebrata est, fera quadam immanique protervitate contemnit, reprehendit, culpat, aspernatur..." Barb. Lat. 53, 89R. such pains to answer Valla because he knows or at least suspects that angry and unquiet minds will respond eagerly to his wholesale repudiation of nearly a millennium of civilization. Filelfo is writing against Valla, in a sense, out of concern for the unhealthy influence Valla's work may have on future generations, on men like the young Thomas

More.

And what must have been More's reaction when he first opened On pleasure!

What must have been his gratitude? Here is a book that challenges the philosophical establishment which More despised in no uncertain terms, a book that undermines nearly every cherished assumption, "every branch of ancient wisdom," as Valla puts it so boldly! More would surely have recognized something of his own desire for reform in

Valla's writing. As the preceding pages have shown, More detested Valla's "scum of humanity" as much as Valla did. Pace describes More's hostility towards the dialecticians and grammarians as "an all-out war... declared against those whose speech is neither true nor plausible nor even remotely appropriate to their character."345 And as

Pace's characterization serves to remind us, More's feelings were rooted in the same issues that led Valla to pick up his pen. More's criticism is like Valla's in that it is ultimately linguistic. It is founded on the same condemnation of words that fail to describe reality adequately, words that distort the truth rather than reveal it. And this is why More could respond favorably to On pleasure. More was looking generally for a criticism of the dialecticians and grammarians, and specifically for a linguistic criticism that would strike at their defective reasoning. More was waiting for someone to identify the gap between language and experience that he perceived in the scholastic tradition.

"Is denique magnum bellum istis indixit qui nee vera nee verisimilia atque a personis suis alienissima loquuntur." Pace, 104. 200

And this, beyond anything else, explains More's response to Valla. This is why

More praised Valla's Annotations in his letter in defense of Erasmus and why he would have welcomed On Latin style. And it is certainly why On pleasure informs the ethics of

Utopia. More is looking for a revolution and Valla offers one. Even the book's final

Latin title, De vero falsoque bono, 'On the true and false good', suggests reform of corrupt thinking and the correction of mistaken attitudes. It could provide one piece of the alternative to established models that More was seeking. It may not have been perfect - it will be seen in the next chapter that More was profoundly uneasy with some parts of Valla's ethics. But what counts is that it was credible.

This last point in particular bears repeating. Valla's ethics did not have to be perfect from More's point of view because More was not looking for a perfect ethics. All he wanted was an alternative. He was simply interested in something different from the systems which he associated with a corrupt establishment. And so Valla's ethics was perhaps most appealing in a negative sense, attractive for what it is not. It is not a traditional system, it is not an Aristotelian system, it is not the kind of ethical system that one of the "profoundly learned men" of the universities would endorse. Simply that

Valla does not derive his system from Aristotle would be a mark in his favor. Valla was not one of the writers admired by the monk of More's story, or the theologian Erasmus mentions, or the two Scotists described by Pace. More could deliver an implicit rebuke to the intellectual establishment by attributing elements of Valla's radical ethics to the

Utopians. What better way for More to tweak the Aristotelians with their handy syllogisms and the Scotists with their subtle reasoning than to suggest that the Utopians 201 follow an ethical theory radically unlike any of theirs? That the ethics of Utopia is derived from the fiercest critic of only makes the rebuke sharper.

And while ethics is not the only subject of Utopia - foreign politics and the treatment of the poor have been mentioned - it is also the pattern of the whole. More's use of Valla's ethics is one example of something that occurs time and again. More challenges established wisdom throughout Utopia. On almost every page More offers unconventional ways of seeing the world, fresh approaches to problems thought long settled. Wherever a question seems decided, Utopia opens it and renews it. Are thieves punished by hanging? Behold a more humane treatment to spare their lives! Have the policies of kings brought kingdoms to ruin? Here is a republican model that operates without a king! Are Aristotle and his medieval expositors considered the final word in moral philosophy? Consider a radically different ethics, an ethics derived from Valla that turns Aristotle on his head! Presenting an alternative to Aristotelian ethics is of a piece with what More does on every page of Utopia. It is a natural suggestion in a book that proposes alternatives to everything, even the use of money. The communism of the

Utopians has always been a controversial aspect of the book, and only so much can be said about it here. It is enough that this radical suggestion is typical of Utopia as a whole.

It is one more instance of More's constant search for alternatives, whether serious or playful. The Utopians have rejected the Golden Mean, and so is it any wonder if they also reject ?

* * * 202

These are the principal considerations that would have led More to admire the ethics of On pleasure and that would have shaped the ethics of Utopia. The last pages have been largely speculative, but then it could hardly have been otherwise. This would still have been the case even if More had written explicitly about the role of Valla's ethics in Utopia. Even if More had plainly listed his reasons for turning to Valla, scholars would still debate whether More was honest with himself or others. There would still be an argument about More's real motivation. And this is the real lesson of the literature that has grown up around Utopia and On pleasure. If all the books that have been written about More and Valla have proven anything, it is that the declarations of authors regarding their own work are rarely trusted. More and Valla can say whatever they like about their motives, but this does not guarantee that they will be believed. In the end, the most that can be demanded is that the considerations presented here maintain a reasonable degree of probability. At best, the preceding chapter is a likely account of

More's attitudes and motives.

But even apart from the argument that has been made so far, there is another question which remains to be explored. The last two chapters have both examined the similarities between On pleasure and Utopia. The third chapter established these similarities, and the fourth chapter has explained them. But this is only half of the story.

For while it has been instructive to consider what More borrows from Valla, what he rejects is equally worthy of notice. More and Valla do not always think alike, and their disagreement deserves as much investigation as anything they have in common. And this is precisely what the coming chapters will explore. In one sense, the two following chapters will be like the last two. One will emphasize the relationship between On pleasure and Utopia, while the other will examine both books in broader, historical terms. But now a new side of the relationship will be featured. The focus of the study will shift from what unites More and Valla to what divides them. 204

CHAPTER FIVE: PRIDE AND UTOPIA

Perhaps the most important conclusion of the previous chapter was simply that it is risky to conclude too much. Because Utopia borrows so much from On pleasure, it is only natural to ask what these borrowings reveal about Thomas More. What was

appealing in an ethics of pleasure? Or in the identity of delectatio and voluptas! Why

did More prefer to see vices and virtues arranged in pairs instead of sets of three? It was

the conclusion of the last chapter that the individual value of these questions is limited.

More was interested in Lorenzo Valla's ethics primarily as an alternative to traditional

systems, systems implicated in his mind with the corruption of contemporary society.

Some of Valla's ideas may have appealed to More individually, but it was the system as a

whole that mattered. This means that no single issue provides the key to More's own

convictions. More could appreciate Valla's alternative without feeling strongly about its

components. This means that More does not always discuss elements of Valla's system

in Utopia because they are specifically appealing. He might have valued them only as

necessary parts of an admirable and intriguing whole.

Without denying this conclusion, the present chapter will qualify it in one respect.

It is time to explore a significant exception to this rule. There is one case where the

relationship between Utopia and On pleasure illuminates something beyond More's

restless search for alternatives to accepted wisdom. On one issue, More reveals his

convictions through his response to Valla's dialogue. In coming to terms with Valla,

More reveals himself. 205

To understand how this can happen, it is necessary to examine an aspect of

More's response to On pleasure which the previous chapters have neglected: it is time to see how More rejects what is most controversial in Valla's thought. Until now this study has been concerned with how Utopia reaffirms the conclusions of Valla's dialogue. This was necessary to demonstrate that More had in fact used On pleasure as one of his models in writing Utopia. But in terms of understanding More's own thought, the opposite case is the most revealing. The points where Utopia departs from On pleasure are revealing because they are deliberate to an extent that simple imitation of Valla's ideas is not. To include something from Valla's dialogue in Utopia, More would need no better reason than that it was part of a system that intrigued him. It does not mean that

More felt any special affection for that particular aspect of Valla's thought. But to contradict one of Valla's arguments, it would not be enough for More to feel indifferent.

More would need a powerful motivation to modify something in On pleasure: he would not casually remove some part of the carefully contrived machine. This is why it seems reasonable to assume that when More changes a feature of Valla's ethics, it is this feature that he finds hardest to accept. It is where Utopia does not agree with On pleasure that

More's deepest convictions are brought to light.

With More's debt to Valla established, it is time to explore the other side of their relationship: More's antipathy to Valla's system. The argument is easily summarized.

Although More borrows many elements from Valla's ethics of pleasure, he also rejects one of its foundational premises. For all that More admires in On pleasure, there is a single, crucial idea that he cannot accept, even in a half-serious account of Utopian philosophy. And while this disagreement reveals something about the historical relationship between More and Valla, that will be reserved for the following, final chapter. First it is necessary to appreciate the magnitude of the difference. This means exploring three questions. First, what element of Valla's system does More reject?

Second, what principle is at stake? Third and last, what are the consequences for Utopia and On pleasure!

* * *

At first glance, there would seem to be little question that the ethics of the

Utopian people recalls the ethics of On pleasure. The fictional nation which More describes certainly embraces an 'Epicurean' ethical system which makes pleasure the highest human good. This is stated explicitly at one point, and it is implied in several places. In theory at least, the people of Utopia believe that all pleasure is good. The pleasures of food, music, good health, and even sex are all considered honest and natural: none is condemned as inherently false or vicious. In most respects, as it has been seen, the people of Utopia are good disciples of Valla's 'Epicurean'.

This is why the philosophy of the Utopians has seemed like a reference to Valla or at least to the 'Epicurean' notions of Erasmus. Even if More had not derived the notion directly from the pages of On pleasure, there is no mistaking the resemblance.

But the matter is not quite this simple. While the Utopians uphold the doctrine of pleasure, they also interpret it in a peculiar way. They make an exception to the rule proposed by Valla's 'Epicurean' and 'Christian' speakers, one which robs it of a great deal of its force. Pleasure is always good, the Utopians teach, but this means less than it 207 would seem at first glance. This is because many of the things that people appear to enjoy are not actually pleasures. Pleasure is redefined and its meaning is limited and circumscribed in a way that separates the Utopian philosophy of pleasure from Valla's.

Through what More memorably calls "the supreme folly of collective self-deception," men and women convince themselves that they find pleasure in things "by their nature without sweetness, the better part indeed full of bitterness."346 Instead of the real thing, they derive a poor imitation described as falsa voluptas oxfucata voluptas: 'counterfeit' pleasure. The Utopians teach that these 'counterfeit' pleasures are "without number," but in emptiness they are all the same.347

Although the common mortality considers them pleasures, [the people of Utopia] plainly declare that since there is nothing pleasant in their nature, they have no connection with real pleasure. And although these things delight the senses of the masses, which would seem the effect of pleasure, they are firm in their opinion. For it is not the nature of the thing which is to blame, but the people's unwholesome habits that they embrace bitter things as if they were sweet: no differently than the sense of taste is corrupted in pregnant women who find pitch and tallow sweeter than honey.

This is an obvious departure from Valla's position in On pleasure. Valla has used the three speakers of his dialogue to construct the argument that every variety of pleasure is good without exception. It is an error to choose smaller pleasures over greater ones or to trade immediate pleasures for future happiness: but this is not the same as calling any pleasure bad. And More seems to affirm this in the pages of Utopia. This was More's intention in having the Utopians equate delectatio and voluptas. But Valla's 'Epicurean'

346 Utopia, 166. 347 ibid. 348 "Quamquam pro voluptatibus mortalium vulgus habeat, illi tamen cum natura nihil insit suave, plane statuunt, cum vera voluptate nihil habere commercii. Nam quod vulgo sensum iucunditate perfundunt — quod voluptatis opus videtur — nihil de sententia decedunt. Non enim ipsius rei natura, sed ipsorum perversa consuetudo in causa est. Cuius vitio fit, ut amara pro dulcibus amplectantur: non aliter ac mulieres gravidae picem et sevum, corrapto gustu, melle mellitius arbitrantur." ibid, 170-172. 208 and 'Christian' speakers never claim that people mistake things empty or worthless for pleasure, and this is precisely what the Utopians teach. More's departure from Valla's argument is unmistakable, and it is telling because it breaks the established pattern. More had seemed to follow Valla so closely elsewhere, and so this divergence demands a closer look. What are these 'counterfeit' pleasures? And why does More maintain that while men and women seem to enjoy them, they are not legitimate or natural?

At first glance, the 'counterfeit' pleasures listed in Utopia seem as diverse as real, healthy pleasures. They include gambling, hunting, wearing fine clothes, hoarding up money or jewels, the empty glory of a noble name, or the social honor of having inferiors bow their heads and bend their knees in greeting.349 But while variety seems the rule, these pleasures are not actually so different. With the possible exception of gambling and hunting, both standard targets of humanist invective, there is a common theme in all of

More's 'counterfeit' pleasures. More is really talking about several manifestations of the same thing. Whether it is a suit of fine cloth, or hoarded gold and gems, a noble heritage, or the bended knees and bowed heads of obedient subjects, each of More's 'counterfeits' is a variation upon a single theme. In every case More is condemning the universal human drive to stand out from the crowd, to feel distinguished, even superior to the rest of humanity. All the people in More's examples derive their pleasure, if it can be called that, from the notion that they are better than others. More says this explicitly about the wearers of fine gowns: his words here might stand for all the meaningless distinctions

ibid, 166-170. 209 people desire. "The better gown they have," More explains, "the better men they think they are."350

In a single matter, these men are twice mistaken: and they are not more deceived in thinking their gown is better than in thinking that they are better... They raise their heads high as if the illusion of their superiority were real, prizing themselves more highly in consequence. And because of this they demand as their right the honor they would never hope or dare to receive in humbler dress.351

Arguably then, More does not condemn several 'counterfeit' pleasures at all. He is really talking about one sort of pleasure under different names, the pleasure of preeminence, it might be called. Even an apparent exception such as hunting may fit this pattern. Hunting is an aristocratic sport, after all, and a mark of status and superiority.

When More observes that there is no real pleasure "in hearing the barking and baying of dogs," he may be implying that hunters enjoy not the chase itself but the exalted social position it reflects.352 In either case, the general rule is clear enough, and this leads naturally to the next question. What is wrong with this pleasure? It is one thing to note that More condemns 'counterfeit' pleasure, but what matters are his reasons. Why is this pleasure alone unreal or unnatural?

More's argument is stated plainly, and it is as convincing as any such paradox can be: he tries to maintain that what seems pleasant is not actually pleasure. More condemns

'counterfeit pleasure' on two counts. The first is that it is negative. Food, music, sex and simple good health are all enjoyable in themselves, but in the case of 'counterfeit'

"In hoc adulterinae voluptatis genere, eos collocant, quos ante memoravi, qui quo meliorem togam habent, eo sibi meliores ipsi videntur.." ibid, 166. 351 "Qua una in re, bis errant. Neque enim minus falsi sunt, quod meliorem putant togam suam, quam quod se. Cur enim si vestis usum spectes, tenuioris fili lana praestet crassiori! At illi tamen tamquam natura non errore praecellerent, attolunt cristas, et sibimet quoque pretii credunt inde non nihil accedere. Eoque honorem, quem vilius vestiti sperare nonessent ausi elegantiori togae, velut suo iure exigunt..." ibid. 352 ibid, 170. 210 pleasure, the things that appear the objects of pleasure are really irrelevant. In each instance it is not the actual possession that gives pleasure, but the consciousness that others are deprived. If bowed head and bended knee were the standard greeting for every rank, these gestures would afford no sense of special status. A fine-spun gown provides the pleasing illusion of superiority only so long as others are resigned to wearing coarser cloth. Even the miser who hoards up gold without using or seeing it takes pleasure in having what so many want and cannot get: it is their deprivation and not his treasure that he enjoys. A thief may have stolen the old man's riches years ago, but he will remain satisfied until he discovers this.353 It is this subjective quality of 'false' pleasure that the

Utopians condemn. No one enjoys drinking imaginary wine or imagining away a toothache, but with 'counterfeit' pleasure fantasy matters more than reality.

More's second objection is related to his first: in fact it is a natural consequence.

Because 'counterfeit' pleasure is negative, it can never be shared by everyone. The moment it is universalized, it ceases to exist. Unlike the pleasures More considers natural and legitimate, the pleasure of preeminence diminishes the more widely it is enjoyed. The taste of food never changes whether one person or ten thousand eats, and music sounds the same no matter how many hear it.354 But this is not how someone delights in precious gems, as More famously observes. If all that mattered was the beauty of the stone, men and women would not go to such lengths to ensure that their jewelry is genuine. False jewels indistinguishable to the naked eye would serve just as well, or the beauty of the sun, which surpasses any gem. But beauty is irrelevant, More implies: the rich love gems not for their appearance, indeed "they might be blind" and

353 ibid, 168. 354 It will be remembered that both food and music are explicitly numbered among healthy pleasures in the account of Utopian philosophy discussed in the third chapter. 211 still treasure them.355 They love them for the same quality that is found in every occasion for 'counterfeit' pleasure: exclusivity. The fact that fine jewelry is expensive ensures that it is restricted to the few, and this confers prestige upon those lucky enough to possess it. The sun may be beautiful, but even more than false jewels, it suffers from the disadvantage that nearly anyone can enjoy it.

If the 'false pleasures' of the Utopians are really of one type, the source of their appeal can also be summed up in a single word: inequality. The Utopians are aware of this, and their customs are deliberately built around this insight. The philosophers of

More's republic condemn anything that cannot be enjoyed universally and equally by every member of their community. It is important to stress this point because it helps to clarify More's argument. Clarification is necessary here because it might be easy to assume that More's target here is not inequality but ambition. More lived at a time when sharp social distinctions were all but universally accepted, and so it would be natural to imagine that the Utopians would feel them necessary in their own society. This was the spirit of contemporary sumptuary laws, some published by King Henry VIII, which stipulated the appropriate dress for each social class.356 These laws were drafted on the assumption that the real problem is not that people occupy different rungs on the social ladder, but that they are always trying to improve their place. It is not rank and status that stand condemned so much as the striving after these things. And so it would be natural to assume that the laws of the Utopians are cast in the same spirit. It is one thing to condemn men and women of humble birth for desiring fine clothing or an exalted title, and it is another to declare these things intrinsically evil.

355 Utopia, 156 and 168. 356 Wilfred Hooper, "Tudor sumptuary laws" in The English historical review, 30.19 (1915), 433-449. 212

And yet this is precisely what More's fictional citizens do. The Utopians do not merely forbid citizens to pursue an honor or distinction out of keeping with their natural place in society. Instead they consider every form of social distinction odious, whether manifested in the clothing that men and women wear, the food they eat, or the houses they inhabit. Unlike the people of Europe, the Utopians all dress alike in the same simple, coarse cloth; they eat the same food in their communal kitchens; and they trade living quarters at regular intervals so that no one glories in a finer home.357 It is not merely forbidden to pursue social distinction, it is impossible. No one can seek a larger home, or better food, or a finer suit of clothes because houses, food, and clothing are all the same. And so More moves beyond the contemporary platitude that ambition is a sin to the more sweeping idea that no pleasure derived from a sense of superiority is a valid or honest pleasure.

This is the principal difference, then, between More's Utopians and Valla's

'Epicurean' and 'Christian'. While Valla's two later speakers assert that all pleasures are good, the wise men of More's fictional republic cannot endorse pleasure derived from a sense of superiority. Other pleasures may be valid, even physical pleasures, but they draw the line here. But if More breaks with Valla on this question, it remains to ask how serious this departure is. It is one thing to discover an exception to Valla's rule in

Utopia, and another to understand why this exception is incompatible with Valla's system as a whole. What is it in the idea of 'counterfeit' pleasure that cannot be reconciled with On pleasure! To understand the threat the Utopian teaching poses, it is necessary to see what Valla's dialogue says specifically about the condition of inequality.

Far from neglecting the pleasure of preeminence, Valla discusses it explicitly and defends

357 ibid, 120,126,130-134,146. 213 it without reservation. Valla's last speaker, the 'Christian', affirms and endorses the very same pleasure that the Utopians condemn as empty and unnatural. This an important indication of the magnitude of the difference between Utopia and On pleasure.

In contrast to the wise men of Utopia, Valla sees nothing empty or false in pleasure founded on a feeling of superiority. He approves of both the 'natural' superiority conferred by birth and, more controversially, the distinction that results from striving and achievement. Apart from being a natural pleasure in this life, Valla is willing to affirm that differences in status will furnish one of the chief delights of heaven.

This is stated explicitly at the close of the dialogue, where the 'Christian' addresses his listeners' concerns regarding the life to come. Since the guests at the fictional dinner party are all distinguished, either for wealth or learning or some combination of the two, their question is only natural. Will everyone be treated equally in heaven? Will there be no distinctions of class or rank? The 'Christian' has promised that heaven will offer every sort of pleasure known on earth, and his listeners want to know whether this is really true. After a lifetime occupying a favored social position, they are concerned that they will lose their privileged status in the life to come. Certainly this will not be possible in an afterlife of equality. There can be no distinction if every blessed soul occupies the same station and enjoys an equal measure of glory.

The 'Christian' calls this "the universal demand," and he has a ready answer.358

Yes there will be a social hierarchy, yes there will be distinctions of rank and station: all these things will be preserved, even amplified, in heaven. And this is essential to provide a sufficient incentive to the faithful. Because it is obvious that an equal distribution of heavenly glory will not satisfy those whose merits are exceptional: Valla's 'Christian'

358 On pleasure, 125. XXIV [2] "Atque haec quidem communis omnium postulatio est." takes this for granted. "It does not seem that men adorned with uncommon gifts of body,

•ICQ mind, and fortune will be content with a regular, common share [of divine pleasure]."

Like the Utopians, the 'Christian' understands that certain pleasures cannot exist in a condition of perfect equality: it is no more possible for every person to enjoy a noble title than for each man or woman to be taller than the average. But unlike More's fictional philosophers, the 'Christian' expresses sympathy for those who have the most to lose.

Virtue must be rewarded, after all; and it is no reward to rob the deserving of the delight they take in their exalted status.

No king will be convinced to abstain from so many pleasures of royal wealth and power, not if he will associate with peasants in heaven, where he would suffer worse than anyone. The others would be equal to a king, and he would be equal with his chambermaids and scullions. And so this would not be an honorable but rather a shameful treatment of those who have held distinguished office in this life.360

For Valla's 'Christian' the pleasure of preeminence is like any other earthly pleasure: those who enjoy it are right to hold onto it. He has already confirmed that physical pleasures will have their place in the life to come, and now he says the same about the pleasure of preeminence. The 'Christian' explains that the fear of being deprived of privilege and status in heaven is natural, but he is quick to reassure. He promises his listeners that all of the "offices, ranks, and positions of authority" which bring pleasure to the lives of the best and the brightest will adorn their afterlives as well,

ibid, 125. XXIV [3] "Qui autem singularibus bonis ornati sunt, ut animi, corporis, et fortunae, non videntur fore vulgari portione contenti." 360 ibid, "Non putabit sibi faciendum rex ut tot voluptatibus quae ex dominatu et regiis opibus percipi possunt abstineat, ut postea habeat cum plebe consortium, in qua re ipse peiori esset conditione quam ceteri; alii enim aequati essent cum rege, rex vero cum famulis. Ita non foret honore sed dedecore afficere eos qui in hac vita fuissent honorati." 215 different only in being higher, finer, and more satisfying. And while not even the

lowest resident of the heavenly city will be deprived of satisfaction, the most deserving will also enjoy the special thrill of holding a superior position, of being better, more important, and more distinguished. "And so all of us shall be kings and sons of God, and yet some will be preferred before others," the 'Christian' concludes. If the heavenly

father cannot guarantee the pleasure of preeminence to all of His children, at least while respecting logical consistency, He sees no reason to deny it to the worthy few.

Even in isolation, this establishes something of the real difference between Utopia

and On pleasure. On the question of equality, More and Valla are divided. But there is

another measure of the issue's importance, perhaps more telling. One of the best ways to discredit an idea is first to give it a sympathetic hearing. The dialogue form lends itself to this naturally and so this is what Valla does. Nearly a century before Utopia, Valla

anticipates More's arguments, no doubt because he expects something similar from

contemporary critics. In order to refute the idea that human beings love things that are not naturally pleasant, Valla first presents the argument in his own words. He has one character condemn certain pleasures as false and empty, just as the Utopians would, in order that the other speakers can better deny this. The debate between Valla's characters concerning the notion of 'counterfeit' pleasure provides an important insight into the larger principle at stake.

The speaker who anticipates the discussion of 'counterfeit' pleasures in Utopia is the first of the three: Valla's 'Stoic'. Before the 'Epicurean' and 'Christian' build the philosophy of pleasure, the 'Stoic' launches the dialogue with an alternate picture of

361 ibid, 125. XXIV [4] "Ego vero istos optime sperare iubeo, spondeoque assecuturos esse non eiusmodi quos cogitant honores, dignitates, imperia, sed cuiusmodi debent esse in caelo..." 362 ibid, 126. XXIV [4] "Qui licet omnes future simus reges ac filii Dei, tamen alii aliis antecellent." 216 human nature. The 'Stoic' says precisely what the Utopians will say in their turn: people enjoy what they should not. Look at any aspect of human experience, the 'Stoic' invites his listeners, the evidence is everywhere! Almost without exception, men and women love the wrong things. We delight in "affairs difficult and laborious," we love to destroy more than to build, to lose more than to gain.363 We seem born inclined to evil as if "we had imbibed a love of vices along with our mothers' milk."364 Like the Utopians, Valla's

'Stoic' blames this on a corruption of the natural sense that is supposed to attract us to what is good and healthy. The Utopians compare the situation to the cravings of a pregnant women, and the 'Stoic's' analogy is also the sense of taste. He says that human beings "hunger after vices and love them," that we "find them sweet."

While the 'Stoic' does not use the same examples as the Utopians, his illustrations have a similar purpose: they also point to the negative quality of 'counterfeit' pleasure.

Just as More would argue that precious jewels are not loved for their appearance, the

'Stoic' says that women are not desired for their beauty. He observes that men prefer seducing females who are "chaste, pure, holy, and respected... even if less outstanding in appearance" to the easy favors of "low, immoral women, courtesans, or common whores." He says that this proves that men do not "corrupt" honest women for the natural pleasure of sex: beauty would be all that mattered if they did. Rather, declares the

'Stoic', they act from a purely negative "desire to sin and to pollute what is good and

ibid, 9. V [4] "Ob id ipsum res appetuntur atque retinentur quod laboriose sunt, alioquin relinquendae." 364 ibid, 8.V [1] "Nonne id quod multis deploratum est deplorari potest, amorem vitioram una cum materno nos lacte suxisse?" 365 ibid, 9. V [2] "Quod cum ita sit, unde fit tamen ut honesta fugiamus, vitia appetamus atque amemus?" 366 ibid, 9. V [3] "Cur enim tantopere nos delectate si contaminemus pudicas, integras, sanctimoniales, honoratas feminas, citiusque inardescimus in has turpitudine afficiendas quam in prostitutes, improbas, lascivas, humiles, etiamsi praestantiores specie fuerint?" 217 moral."367 The 'Stoic' says that even laughter reflects this universal human perversity.

Instead of wishing well, we delight in the misery of our fellow creatures and so we are happy to see them suffer. That we laugh at the foolish, feeble, unfortunate and wicked is proof of this. The vice of anger is so pleasant to observe that we try to provoke others with ridicule, deliberately enraging them to provide material for our amusement. "The more we see a man inflamed, the more we enjoy it."

But perhaps the most disturbing aspect of human nature which the 'Stoic' indicates is the natural consequence of our corrupted taste. If people love what they should hate, they also hate what they should love. Valla's two later speakers agree that

•770.

"all vice by its nature is hateful," but the 'Stoic' argues just the opposite. It is virtue that is hateful, virtue that men and women despise. He illustrates this with the stories of

Socrates and other wise and upright men who suffered persecution for their integrity and wisdom. The 'Stoic' declares that these men, whose ranks Thomas More would someday join, were mistreated to the point of death not despite the fact that they were good and honest, but for this very reason. Their virtues attracted envy and hatred in the same way that the virtue of chaste women invites corruption. "It follows naturally that every upright household must inspire resentment in the lovers of wickedness." The great philosophers were victims of the same unwholesome corruption that pervades every aspect of the natural order. It is a condition represented in literature through the horrible monsters of legend.

367 ibid, "In quo nihil aliud nisi ipsum peccare et honesta inquinare videtur appetisse..." 368 ibid, 10. V [6]. 369 ibid, "Saepe enim inducit ut alios insectemur et in atrem bilem concitemus, et quidem per iocum, tantoque magis gaudeamus quanto magis hominem in furorem accendi viderimus." 370 ibid, 105. V [11] "Omne enim vitium suapte natura odiosum est." 371 ibid, 10. V [7] "Cum necessario consequatur qui flagitiis oblectatur huic invisam esse omnem domum honestatis." 218

We can see that this is what the poets have done in describing these things through . They dream up Cyclopes, Cacuses, Sphinxes, Harpies, Sirens... and many similar monsters to signify how many people are composed by nature to love injustice and cruelty and wickedness to the point that they are not free to restrain their inborn viciousness.372

This is a perfect example of how Valla makes the 'Stoic' into a straw man. No sooner has he made the case that so much human enjoyment is essentially negative than the 'Epicurean' and the 'Christian' proceed to answer him. This is important because it suggests the sort of reply Valla might have made to the teachings of the Utopians.

Specifically, Valla's response to the criticism he anticipates reveals the insecure point in his reasoning, the soft spot he feels such attacks expose. In order to defend his ethical system, Valla reveals a defining weakness in his theory of motivation. Valla's system depends on a very particular understanding of why people act the way they do, a specific notion of the goal of their actions. This means that he cannot tolerate any alternate explanation, whether the one he assigns to the 'Stoic' or the one More would later devise in Utopia.

Just as it is vital for the 'Stoic's' introduction, motivation is also the key to the later two sections of Valla's dialogue. The 'Epicurean' and the 'Christian' differ on many things, but they both work towards the same end: each refutes the 'Stoic's' account of the motives that drive human conduct. Valla's two later speakers each revisit the

'Stoic's' examples, determined to show how actions that seem to arise in malice have another, less sinister origin. Men desire chaste women because they admire the integrity

372 ibid, 10. V [6] "Undique nobis exempla se offerant: proinde videmus poetas qui res allegoricas scribunt fecisse ut Cyclopas, Cacos, Spingas, Harpyas, Sirenas et multa id genus excogitarent, significantes esse complures natura compositos ad iniuriaram, praedaram, flagitioramque amorem ita ut illis integrum non sit a naturali vitio recedere." of their character and their power of self-control, not because they resent virtue and want to pollute what is clean.373 Socrates was not killed because he was good or wise but because the judgment of his enemies was "clouded by ignorance."374 His persecutors sincerely believed that he deserved death for being "dangerous, wicked, insane, a corruptor of youth and a polluter of religion." They may have been confused or misguided about the real character of Socrates, but it was still vice that they hated and not virtue. To both later speakers virtue is nothing more or less than pleasure, and it is essential to their definition of pleasure that no human being can ever hate it.

One by one, the 'Stoic's' charges fall to the arguments of the 'Epicurean' and the

'Christian'. Virtue is not the highest good and human nature is not nearly as perverse, malicious, or deficient as the 'Stoic' has tried to claim. In the end only one point remains: his words concerning laughter, which he had made an example of the native cruelty of humanity. It is left to the 'Christian' to answer this near the end of the dialogue. Of all Valla's arguments, none seems less empirically justified or less probable than this discussion of laughter, but it is worth seeing how seriously he pursues it. Minor though it seems, it is the heart of the difference between Utopia and On pleasure: it represents the failure of Valla's theory of motivation. It is both the most radical of

Valla's teachings and the crucial point of controversy that separates him from More.

3/3 ibid, 38.XLIV[1] 374 ibid, 105. V [15] "Quo fit ut omnes aut suoram emolumentorum et sui gaudii ratio aut honestatis respectus, qui et ipse ad gaudium animi spectat, ad aliis nocendam inducat: quanquam ignorantiae tenebris quas sibi ipsis obduxerant, quales fuerunt inimici Socratis, honesti lucem videre non possunt." 375ibid, "Nam ut de uno Socrate, qui videtur fuisse omnium inocentissimus, dicam: quid aliud huic mortis causam attulit nisi quod perniciosus, nefarius, insanus esse putabatur, qui corramperet iuventutem, qui introduceret novas superstitiones, qui dignum se existimaret ut amplissimis honoribus et praemiis decoraretur sibique victus quotidianus in Prataneo publice praeberetur, qui honos apud Graecos maxime habetur." 220

The 'Christian' begins by declaring that the 'Stoic' has mistaken human motives as usual. No one is ever amused by the suffering, the errors, or the sins of others. It is true that we seem to act this way all the time. But why are we really laughing? The

'Christian' must admit that the people who inspire laughter are missing some good, be it beauty, intelligence, virtue or simply the blessing of fortune.376 What he denies is that this deficiency really inspires our pleasure. We do not enjoy someone's shortcomings even when it seems this way. We feel pleasure because the sight of someone who is deprived reminds us of the real goods that we possess ourselves: we are happy to remember that we are not miserable, foolish, or wicked. "When [a man] laughs at his neighbor's vices, he does not rejoice because the latter is laughable but because he is not."377 This means, concludes the 'Christian', that there is nothing negative in mockery and ridicule. As everywhere, something real and positive is the true source of our pleasure.

The shortcomings of this argument should be obvious to anyone who has even a passing acquaintance with the real world. While Valla often appeals to experience to justify his arguments, this is a case where he seems to forget his own principle. Not only our observation of the actions of others, but even a brief scrutiny of our own motives must be enough to dismiss it out of hand. Essentially, Valla is claiming that children who mock a crippled man are only happy to be reminded that their bodies are healthy, or that the wealthy who watch beggars swim in the mud for small coins are laughing not at poverty and desperation but at their own prosperity. He is arguing that the depravity of

Falstaff and the madness of Don Quixote are only amusing in so far as they set our own

376 ibid, 105. V [12] 377 ibid, "Si de alterius turpitudine ridet, gaudet non quia ille ridiculus sed quod ipse non sit." condition in a better light. He is arguing that this is the unique case where men and women misinterpret their own motives. We do not know our own minds and so we say and even think that we enjoy one thing when we are actually enjoying something else.

This sounds so absurd that it is natural to suspect some satirical or ironic intent on

Valla's part. Surely the 'Christian' must not speak for Valla here! One advantage of a dialogue, after all, is that fallacious arguments can be exposed simply by being stated.

But while it may be difficult to accept, Valla is not trying to undermine his speaker by assigning him such claims. The argument about laughter is not a diversion from Valla's larger case but a necessary and logical part of the system he is constructing. And so however hard it strains credibility, Valla is committed to maintaining this point. He cannot afford to admit that human beings can ever enjoy the suffering of others because to do so would be to concede an essential premise of his dialogue, whether to his contemporaries or to later critics like More.

And what is this premise? On pleasure presents many challenging claims, and it is no easy task to determine the most important or audacious. One obvious choice would be the suggestion of both the 'Epicurean' and the 'Christian' that pleasure is always good. But while it is necessarily important, this is not what More and the 'Stoic' each challenge. Measured by the time Valla's characters spend discussing it, his most radical suggestion is not that pleasure is unconditionally good, but that it is the end of every human action. As a branch of philosophy, ethics deals not merely with what men and women should want but with the things they actually do want: it is the study of our real desires, good or bad or indifferent. It is this aspect of his ethical system, his theory of motivation, which Valla works hardest to defend. 222

Near the beginning of his oration, Valla's 'Epicurean' defines pleasure as "the good universally desired," and this is the foundation of everything that he and the

'Christian' say afterward. It is actually the foundation of Valla's entire theory of pleasure. This is the premise that the 'Stoic' challenges when he says that people act from a hatred of virtue, and the later speakers also defend this premise when they argue that human beings have different motives. Established by the 'Epicurean' and elaborated by the 'Christian', the theory that every action has pleasure for its end is supported by

Valla's usual appeal to the evidence of experience. He presents dozens of examples drawn from history and poetry, accounts of Socrates or Scipio, lines from Virgil and

Ovid, and even instances from everyday life: all to prove that people have consistently positive motives. The dialogue's three speakers treat this question at such length because they must: it is a consequence of the absolute nature of Valla's claim. It is not

Valla's thesis that men and women do some or even most things with the 'true good' in mind. Valla wants to establish that pleasure is the end of everything we do, the goal of every action, great or small. He allows no exceptions, and so the 'Epicurean' and the

'Christian' must prove that there are none.

It is for this reason that the 'Christian' makes such unlikely claims about the nature of laughter. Valla may want to build his ethics upon the reality of human experience, but he cannot afford to do so here. Valla cannot admit that people laugh out of malice, no matter how ridiculous it sounds, because it would constitute an exception to his premise that he cannot permit. Things like weakness, foolishness, ugliness, poverty

78 ibid, 21. XV [1] "Voluptas igitur est bonum undecunque quaesitum, in animi et corporis oblectatione positum, quod pene voluit Epicurus, quam Graeci T|8or|v vocant." 379 The use of examples from classical history and literature to illustrate arguments is so typical, not only of Valla but of his contemporaries, even many critics, that it might be called one of the characteristic techniques of Humanism. 223 are obviously negative: not real things but the absence of positive goods like strength, intelligence, beauty, and wealth. If people can laugh at their neighbor's misfortunes, this would mean that they can enjoy the absence of something as much as they enjoy the thing itself. Their object would not be pleasure but the deprivation of pleasure, instead of desiring the 'true good' they would enjoy its absence. This is why Valla's theory demands an alternative theory of laughter, one that sounds implausible and which runs against all practical experience. Pleasure is a good, "the good universally desired," and men and women can desire nothing else, let alone something negative. The 'Christian's' account may sound incredible - people laughing not at others but themselves - but the internal logic of Valla's dialogue demands it. Only pleasure brings happiness, not vice and misery. Anything less would surrender the premise defended over so many pages.

At this point it must become apparent that the difference between More and Valla is not a matter of nuance but of principle. It should be clear that More is proposing no small modification to Valla's theory of pleasure. By introducing 'false pleasure' More does not simply alter or develop Valla's system; he pursues a position in direct contradiction to Valla's central premise. But even this is only part of the story. The consequences of this difference have yet to be fully described. It is one thing for More to oppose Valla on such a crucial point, but it is something else entirely for him to make this the primary message of Utopia, which is precisely what More does. More builds his case against Valla's theory of motivation systemically so that it runs all the way to the conclusion of his satire. Even at the very end, Utopia continues to develop themes derived from On pleasure, but the order of Valla's dialogue is reversed. Where the earlier passages dealing with the philosophy of the Utopians borrowed from Valla's 224

'Epicurean' and 'Christian', More concludes his satire with the same perspective that began On pleasure, the perspective of the 'Stoic'. And in this sense Utopia can be seen as the vindication of the 'Stoic' position. By condemning rather than affirming the teaching that pleasure is the end of every action, More reverses the verdict of On pleasure and stands Valla on his head.

The first hints of this purpose in Utopia can be seen in the first book. Here the prevailing tone of pessimism, the pervasive awareness of all that is twisted and unsound in court and country, recalls the perspective of the 'Stoic'. This attitude is implied at first, but it moves to the foreground with the discussion of the Utopian teaching regarding

'false' or 'counterfeit' pleasure. This is where More begins explicitly to challenge the idea that pleasure is the end of every human desire. More introduces this critique of

Valla's ethics even as he is laying out those elements of Utopian philosophy which seem borrowed from the pages of On pleasure. Before More has actually finished introducing the position associated with the 'Epicurean' and the 'Christian' in Valla's dialogue, he has already begun to undermine it.

But if it is never absent, More's vindication of the 'Stoic' perspective is most apparent at the climax of Utopia, during the series of arguments that conclude the work.

Refuting Valla's theory of motivation is so crucial to Utopia that the putative subject of the final pages, the viability of Utopian communism, is made to serve it. Just as Valla's three speakers illustrate their claims with examples drawn from life, More's principal speaker, Hythlodaeus, turns to the society which he has just described for evidence of his theory of motivation. The most remarkable characteristic of More's island republic is the absence of money or any distinction in the condition of its citizens. In this respect, 225

Utopia has no significant parallels: only a few scattered monastic houses live this way.

Hythlodaeus says that the very uniqueness of Utopian society - that it is actually nonexistent provides a special irony here - is a demonstration of the 'Stoic's' vision of human nature. That such a social arrangement may only be found in Utopia, which is to say that it is found 'nowhere', justifies an extremely pessimistic assessment of human motivation.

The Utopian example is so damning to humanity, More implies, because it does not have to be unique. Nothing would be easier than to imitate it everywhere, and this would seem eminently sensible and attractive. This is what Hythlodaeus has implied in describing the wonders of the Utopian republic: it is a society of perfect equality without famine, unnecessary drudgery, idleness, ignorance, or gratuitous cruelty. And now that he has finished his account, he asks his listeners to consider why Europe has not adopted similar customs long before. This intransigence is hard to understand because the secret of Utopian happiness is obvious. If money causes every problem, removing money alone suffices to heal society. Only remove money and you remove the inequality produced by money, inequality which Hythlodaeus considers the pernicious spring of every social evil. The cause is simple, and the solution must be simple too.

End the use of money and you end the lust for money, and then what a heap of troubles is removed, what a tree of vices is torn out by the roots. And who does not know that frauds, thefts, robberies, feuding, riots, brawls, seditions, murders, treacheries, poisonings... would all cease if money were abolished? Or along with these, that fear, worry, anxiety, toil, and sleepless nights all perish in the same instant that money perishes? Even poverty itself, which alone arises from the lack of money, even poverty would vanish as soon as money disappeared.38

380 "E qua cum ipso usu sublata penitus omni aviditate pecuniae, quanta moles molestiaram recisa, quanta sceleram seges radicitus evulsa est! Quis enim nescit fraudes, furta, rapinas, rixas, tumultus, iurgia, seditiones, caedes, proditiones, veneficia, cotidianis vindicata potius quam refrenata suppliciis, interempta pecunia commori, ad haec metum sollicitudinem, curas, labores, vigilias, eodem momento quo pecunia 226

The Utopian solution is so obvious that it leads naturally to the concluding question of More's satire. If poverty, hunger, and injustice can be ended so easily, why do they persist? Hythlodaeus' answer, simple and direct, is the answer of Valla's 'Stoic'.

If men and women allow inequality to continue, it is because they want it to continue.

Poverty is unnecessary, hunger is unnecessary, injustice is unnecessary, therefore, it follows that if they persist, they persist because the human race allows them to persist, even wants them to persist. The things that Hythlodaeus describes are obviously evil, and yet it is just as obvious that they are tolerated and in some cases cherished and deliberately cultivated. Who could think otherwise, Hythlodaeus asks his listeners, when everyone knows what must be done?

Imagine for a moment some meager, fruitless year in which famine carries off many thousands of souls. And yet I am certain that at the end of that misery, if the stores of the rich were opened, enough grain would be found... that not one person need have felt the effects of the poor season. So easily would men make their living if blessed money... alone did not bar the way.

Since there is no practical obstacle to human equality, Hythlodaeus concludes that the fault must lie with human nature. The persistence of inequality throughout history is enough to refute any optimistic theory of motivation. Weighted with the testimony of countless lives, this single example alone suffices to outbalance every earnest attempt to

perituras. Quin paupertas ipsa, quae sola pecuniis visa est indigere, pecunia prorsus undique sublata, protinus etiam ipsa decresceret." Utopia, 240-242. 381 "Id quo fiat illustrius, revolve in animo tecum annum aliquem sterilem atque infoecundum, in quo multa hominum milia, fames abstulerit, contendo plane in fine illius penuriae excussis divitum horreis, tantum frugum potuisse reperiri, quantum si fuisset inter eos distributum, quos macies ac tabes absumpsit illam caeli, solique parcitatem, nemo omnino sensisset. tam facile victus parari posset, nisi beata ilia pecunia, quae praeclare scilicet inventa est, ut aditus ad victum per earn patesceret, sola nobis ad victum viam intercluderet." ibid, 242. prove that men and women love only what is good. It is evidence of a fundamental evil in the human spirit, a natural malice that makes us perpetuate injustice and misery even when a better way is obvious. Valla's 'Stoic' had many words for this quality, "a love of injustice and cruelty and wickedness," "a desire to sin and to pollute what is good and moral," but Hythlodaeus uses only one. He calls it superbia, in English More calls this quality pride?82 "Nor have I any doubt but that each person's regard for their own advantage, or the authority of Christ our savior... must easily have brought the whole world under the laws of Utopian republic were it not for the resistance of that that one beast, the mistress and mother of all evils, pride."383 It is pride and not any practical obstacle that restrains humanity from the sort of life that has always been technically possible. It is because of pride, which is to say because men and women hate equality worse than they hate famine, crime, war, poverty, and ignorance that the world must continue upon its wicked course.

As it will be seen in the next chapter, the evils of pride are a favorite theme in

More's writing, a commonplace from patristic and medieval literature that he enthusiastically embraced. But what matters for the present purpose is how clearly this argument, coming as it does at the very conclusion of Utopia, contradicts On pleasure.

The natural question involves the nature of this 'pride' which Hythlodaeus blames for the persistence of inequality. What is pride, for More or for Valla? Much will be said about pride in the following chapter, but for now a brief answer will do. Pride is the aspect of

382 Sometimes, as in his Richard III, More uses ambition rather than pride, but the latter is the normal equivalent oisuperbia, whether in a modern English lexicon, in Robinson's near-contemporary translation of Utopia, or in centuries of English meditations upon the . 383 "Neque mihi quidem dubitare subit, quin vel sui cuiusque commodi ratio, vel Christi servatoris authoritas — qui neque pro tanta sapientia potuit ignorare quid optimum esset, neque qua erat bonitate id consulere, quod non optimum sciret - totum orbem facile in huius reipublicae leges iamdudum traxisset, nisi una tantum belua, omnium princeps parensque pestium superbia, reluctaretur." Utopia, 242. human nature that Valla s Epicurean and 'Christian both maintain does not exist.

Pride is what Valla denies every time he tries to demonstrate that people take no pleasure in the humiliation, the suffering, the abasement of their fellow creatures. It is pride that the 'Christian' denies when he declares that every motive is essentially positive and that men and women only injure each other to benefit themselves. "And should one person ever envy, disparage, or wrong his neighbor, he does so not to harm his neighbor but for his own good."384 The 'Christian' turns a blind eye to the operations of pride when he explains that wanting more for ourselves is not the same as wanting others to have less.

No one would wish, if he had the power, that everyone else be sick and he alone well: he would want all people to enjoy good health, and to have his health be the greatest and best. And so it is with other goods: he rejoices that this or that one is handsome, strong, rich, only desiring personally to be outstanding and distinguished among the rest. For every man wishes well for others, and best for himself.385

It must be obvious that Valla is denying the very aspect of human nature that

More affirms, the same desire which in Utopia is called pride. More's Latin is superbia, which is derived from super, 'above'; and it is clear that Valla is also describing the urge to rise 'above' others, to be superior. The difference is that Valla is determined not to view this desire in negative terms. Having already insisted that the pleasure of laughter does not arise from the misery of others, Valla is now compelled to prove that deprivation, abasement, and suffering provide no pleasure of any description. No more than elsewhere can he afford to concede that pleasure can be negative. Valla has said

384 On pleasure, 105. V[13] "Quod si quando alius alii invidet, detrahit, iniuriatur, id non propter illius malum facit sed propter suum bonum." 385 ibid. "Nemo velit, si detur facultas, ceteros insanos, se unum sanum esse; velit omnes sensu vigere sed se praecipue et maxime. Sic in ceteris bonis gaudet singulos esse pulchros, fortes, divites, ceterum inter omnes se existere et eminere. Ita fit ut quisque bene aliis velit, sed sibi tamen optime." 229 unequivocally that the pleasure of preeminence is good and natural. He has said it will even be enjoyed in heaven, and in heaven only the highest and purest pleasures will endure.

As in the earlier case when Valla discusses the origins of humor, he is a slave to his theory here. Valla is determined to make the observable facts of human nature fit his system. The only difference is that in this case Valla reverses his approach. If his theory demands that men and women only desire what is good, there are two choices. Valla chooses the first option when he discusses laughter and ridicule: this is simply to deny that people actually enjoy something that is obviously not a positive good. The misery of others is evil; therefore this cannot be what we enjoy when we laugh. The second option, which Valla takes when discussing the enjoyment we take from rank and status, is the precise opposite. Here Valla prefers not to dispute whether a feeling of superiority is desired: instead, he tries to maintain that it is not really negative, not really evil. In practice, this means that Valla must insist on the essential goodness of everything that he concedes men and women actually desire. People obviously want to be superior: that they want to rise above their neighbor is too plain to dispute. This means that Valla must try to prove that the love of preeminence, which experience forces him to acknowledge, is actually positive. He must assert that this desire is inspired by the presence of good and not by its absence. Hence his argument that we enjoy being raised above our neighbors without wanting to see them diminished.

More's answer to this is stamped on nearly every page of Utopia, but in terms of directness and simplicity, he never expresses it better than in the final peroration on the power of pride. Pride perpetuates inequality, Hythlodaeus explains, because it operates on the very principle that Valla's two later speakers deny. Pnde is the reality of human behavior that Valla tries so hard not to see. Men and women are never satisfied with being blessed in a fuller measure personally because prestige is relative. "[Pride] measures her happiness not by her own advantage," declares Hythlodaeus, "but by the disadvantage of others." We do not simply wish the best for ourselves, as Valla's

'Christian' had maintained, we also wish the worst for others: seeing them debased is every bit as pleasant as seeing ourselves exalted. In fact we can only be exalted when someone else undergoes abasement and degradation. This is what Hythlodaeus means when he declares that "[pride] would not be a goddess if there were not left any poor wretches for her to rule and abuse, besides whose suffering her relative happiness could shine, and whose miseries she could aggravate and increase through the display of her riches."387 Hythlodaeus is arguing here that every pleasure is what the Utopians would call a 'counterfeit' pleasure. Pride finds nothing enjoyable if everyone has the same opportunity to enjoy it.

This assessment of human nature may appear extreme, but as much as any of

Valla's speakers, Hythlodaeus supports it with an appeal to experience. That pride is queen over the human heart is the best, perhaps the only explanation for the wicked course of the world. What else can explain why the rich strive not only to pile up wealth, but also to magnify the labors and indignities of the poor? What else can explain why humanity as a whole will never tolerate the social equality that exists on the island of

Utopia? If we refuse to live like the Utopians it can only be because the pleasure of

386 "Haec non suis commodis prosperitatem, sed ex alienis metitur incommodis." Utopia, 242. 387 "Haec ne dea quidem fieri vellet, nullis relictis miseris quibus imperare atque insultare possit. Quoram miseriis praefulgeat ipsius comparata felicitas, quoram suis explicatis opibus, angat atque incendat inopiam." ibid. 231 personal satisfaction is insignificant next to the malicious delight that we feel in the abasement of others. Contrary to the protestations of Valla's 'Epicurean' and 'Christian' that the matter is simply misunderstood, More's speaker concludes that the motives which drive men and women are as clear as day. Life is a zero-sum game in which someone else's loss is our gain and whatever enriches others leaves us that much poorer.

We would gladly wish ourselves blind in one eye if it would leave our neighbor blind in two.

This is the final word of Utopia, and in many ways it is the final word in More's conversation with On pleasure. More's flirtation with Valla's ethical system ends with rejecting that system's most radical premise. More borrows many small ideas from On pleasure, but he denies a single great one. Human beings are not motivated by pleasure alone: the 'true good' of Valla's two later titles is not the universal end of their actions.

There is a perversity in human nature, More insists, a wickedness that defies the simple rule of the 'Epicurean' and the 'Christian'. For More, the 'Stoic's' "desire to sin and to pollute what is good and moral" is closer to the mark. In this sense Utopia is as much a rebuttal of On pleasure as a tribute, and More is not only Valla's admirer but his determined critic. In perhaps the most crucial question of his ethical system, More believes Valla is wrong; not partly wrong, but black-and-white wrong; mistaken not in the chain of his reasoning but in a premise one hundred and eighty degrees from the truth.

The influence of Valla's dialogue on Utopia suggests that More considered On pleasure an interesting book, even an admirable one. But Utopia's conclusion demonstrates that

More also believed it was a fundamentally false book, a book conceived in a failure to read the lessons of human experience, a book built on a lie. 232

* * *

By this point, the reasons for the order of these chapters should be apparent. It was necessary that the previous chapters discuss the ideas that Utopia adapts from On pleasure. Only after this was finished and More's debt to Valla was fully established could the present chapter explore the most interesting aspect of their relationship, the conflict over human motivation. Without this necessary context there would be little novelty in the conclusions presented here. There is certainly little new in the account of

More's own ideas. To give the obvious example, it has long been acknowledged that

More understands the moral nature of humanity in terms of pride, and nothing has been

TOO said here to alter that verdict. The contribution of the present study is not to suggest any substantial revision of More's ideas, but simply to demonstrate that they are best understood in relation to Valla's arguments in On pleasure. Utopia receives a fresh meaning not from new information but from a new context.

The advantages of this approach are obvious. On the one hand, the many points of agreement between More and Valla furnish valuable insight into the shaping of

Utopia. And in the opposite case the comparison of the differences between the two men proves even more fruitful. If pride is really essential to More's intention in Utopia, Valla provides a vital insight into this intention. More's concluding words on the power of pride can only be properly appreciated in the light of Valla's influence. The final section of Utopia has often been seen as the restatement of an accepted attitude, the affirmation 388 The importance of pride to Utopia is so obvious that it is impossible to mention the number of scholars who have remarked upon it. J.H. Hexter's notes on page 565 the Yale edition of Utopia will suffice here as an example of this. 233 of a platitude from medieval and late-antique thought. And while this is true enough - and it will be discussed more in the next chapter - the previous chapters reveal that More is also doing something else. In proclaiming the supremacy of pride within the human heart, More is carefully and deliberately contradicting another author and another book, a book that interests him but which he ultimately rejects. The conclusion of Utopia can now be read as the conclusion of a dialogue between More and Valla, a conversation across generations and across regions.

But More's disagreement with Valla also invites the same question that their agreement did. Why? If the real interest in More's borrowings from Valla lies in his motives, this is equally true for More's rejection of Valla's ethics. If anything the question is even more relevant. Since More's decision to contradict Valla proceeds from personal conviction, the 'why?' of this conviction must naturally be of interest. Why did

More reject Valla's theory of motivation? What made this perspective seem appealing to one man and not to the other? These are perhaps the most interesting and important questions of all, and it is these questions that the coming chapter will address. 234

CHAPTER SIX: "IN OUR IMAGE AND LIKENESS"

How many words may a man or woman speak in the course of a lifetime? How many words, if we are literate, can we set down in writing? How many in letters, in private notes, or in published books? Although he was hardly the most prolific author of his age, the number of words Thomas More produced must be past reckoning. From his first exercises as a student to his last letters to his family, said to be drawn with coal while awaiting execution, how much did More write?389 It would be easier to count grains of sand than to measure his output in these terms. And yet for the purpose of the present chapter, one word outweighs so many others. One word bears a unique significance. Better than one hundred or one thousand or ten thousand of the words that

More wrote and spoke at other times, a single Latin noun holds the answer that this chapter seeks, the aspect of More's worldview that keeps him from accepting Valla's system as a whole.

In his lecture The early Tudor humanists and their books, J.B. Trapp discusses the notes More made in several texts, including his private copy of the Book of psalms. Like many readers, More scribbles words or phrases in the margins to assist himself in his reading. According to Trapp, More shows a special interest in passages where the

Psalmist writes about the 'enemies' that surround him, the various adversaries that seek his ruin. "Deliver me from mine enemies, O my God," reads Psalm 59, "for lo, they lie in wait for my soul." And again in Psalm 143: "quicken me, O Lord, for Thy name's sake... and of Thy mercy cut off mine enemies and destroy them that afflict my soul."

389 The letters in coal include Letters 210, 211 and 218 in More's Selected letters. It is mentioned by Roper on page 252 of his biography. 235

Over and over, wherever the Psalmist laments his nameless tormentors, Trapp observes that More has written a single word: demones, or ''.390

There are many inferences that can be drawn from these three syllables: they offer several lessons to the thoughtful reader. Trapp takes it, as anyone familiar with the outlines of More's life might, as evidence of personal spiritual torment, the vivid reality of More's belief in supernatural beings working to destroy him. Trapp calls More's notes

"the profoundly personal and moving record of More's search for protection from these

'demones'... who were tempting his immortal soul to ruin."391 In this reading the

'enemy' "who has set his snare" for More and for those he loves, who lies in wait

"greedy of his prey," is no mere human adversary. More believes that invisible, immaterial, deathless beings desire his ruin. This is certainly what More implies in writing "demones" beside such passages, and this interpretation also seems reasonable in terms of what he is known to have said or written elsewhere. More's conversations with his family reveal that he often spoke as if the Devil were personally at work in each of their lives, seeking the best way to thwart their salvation.392 When the chief ministers of

Henry VIII failed to convince More to assent to the king's new authority by taking the

Oath of Supremacy, Roper says that More understood this resistance in terms of his personal triumph over the powers of darkness. "In good faith, I rejoiced," More tells his son-in-law shortly after refusing the oath, "that I had given the Devil a foul fall."

That Satan's own ministers, his demons, should also be active in the world would be a logical consequence of this attitude, and there is little doubt More saw his own life as

ibid, 43-45. Roper, 211-212. 236 a sort of spiritual warfare. His weekly devotions and his private asceticism show that his exhortations to his family were meant for himself as well. More had better cause than any of his children to fear the powers of evil at work in his life. More's standing in the world, as a royal official and a public intellectual, made the temptation of worldly compromise and corruption all but irresistible. Only when he had so committed himself to resisting King Henry that there could be no turning back did More feel safe from temptation. It was only then that he could report to Roper that the struggle with his supernatural tormentors was finally decided.

But there is another context in which this word, demones, can be considered as well. It lacks the mystical flavor of More's belief in a personal Devil, but while it may seem more prosaic it is at least as valuable in historical terms. It is worth considering

More's brooding on the presence and active power of demons in the light of the principal subject of the previous chapter: his theory of human motivation. This may be one of the best ways to understand More's intent in the final passages of Utopia, the places where he describes the perverse love of suffering and needless cruelty that is woven so deeply into our human nature. It can be argued that More's preoccupation with demonic menace and his despair at the course of secular society are two faces of the same attitude. The awareness of spiritual dangers that More displays in his reading of the Psalms is the logical compliment to his jaundiced picture of the human world. Natural or supernatural, human or diabolical, the constant in More's thinking is pessimism, a sense of pervasive evil. The restless malice of demons is only the first example of the larger vision upon which More's psychology of motivation rests. 237

And it is precisely this matter of putting More's ethical arguments into perspective that now must be addressed. The great question of the present chapter is this: why does More reject Lorenzo Valla's positive account of human motivation? Why does

More deny that human beings only love and want what is good or that all their desires are natural and honest? The answer is simple enough, although like many simple answers it can be discussed at great length. More rejects Valla's theory of motivation because he must, because it goes against not simply his philosophical inclinations, but against his deepest convictions, his sense of what life is like, of what human beings are and the sort of world they can potentially build. It will be demonstrated that More's statements in

Utopia are only the first strokes in a larger design. When More denies the central argument of On pleasure, he is not simply opposing one academic opinion with another: he is giving expression to an antithetical vision of human nature and human society. In one sense More is even affirming a different sort of God, a different account of the divine providence that first created and then redeemed a sinful race. More's conception of the human condition, haunted by demons without and twisted by pride from within, an exile in a hostile world, belongs to a different intellectual universe from the essentially positive, affirmative picture of On pleasure.

* * *

For all his openness to new ideas, evidenced here by his interest in Valla's ethics,

More was in many ways a very conservative thinker. On the one hand, it has already been seen that More was extremely hostile to certain currents of medieval thought, particularly the dialecticians and grammarians of the later Middle Ages. But this is not the end of the matter. Although there were obviously certain traditions More disliked, he was not a true radical, certainly not radical enough to reject everything in the past. The thousand years that Petrarch had famously disregarded as a long sleep following the glories of were neither uneventful nor so homogenous as to be dominated by a single school of thought. There were many streams, and not all flowed through the channels carved by the scholastic traditions which More generally disliked. There was

Augustine, whose City of God was the topic of More's first public lectures during his student years. And there was Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), whose meditations on the sin of pride constitute the definitive expression of the outlook that More embraces in the final passages of Utopia. And then there were the Carthusians, the order More seems to have regretted abandoning until his last days, an order whose rule and motto shall be discussed further in a moment.

These thinkers and traditions are important to bear in mind because they balance the picture that was presented in the fourth chapter. They make an essential counterpoint to an account of the aspects of medieval thought that More rejected. In order to explain

More's interest in Valla it was necessary to explore his hostility to traditions of grammar and dialectic. Now it is time to discuss the traditions of medieval Christianity that More did not reject but that he valued and cherished. The briefest answer to the question posed in this chapter is probably Richard Marius' declaration that "More was to the marrow of his bones a medieval Christian."394 Since both relevant words, 'medieval' and

394 Marius, 167. In another place, Marius declares that "[More] was a Renaissance man, acquainted with a wide variety of knowledge, but he believed that a few great ideas gave meaning to life. They happened to be thoroughly medieval ideas..." xvi. Marius also discusses More's devotion to notions he considers characteristic of centuries of medieval thought on pages 171-183. 239

'Christian', are hard to define, this might seem difficult either to prove or to deny. But while they can be interpreted in several ways, Marius' words distill the essential reason that More challenges Valla's ethics where he does. There are certain truisms of medieval thought, foundations of More's worldview, which Valla undermines. If it is natural that

More the rebel should be intrigued by Valla, so it is also natural that More the 'medieval

Christian' must ultimately reject him. More cannot accept the ideas at the heart of

Valla's system because he is attached to certain aspects of medieval thought at the expense of any more recent humanist tradition.

But which medieval traditions does Valla challenge? More mentions the most important himself in the conclusion of Utopia, in a passage quoted in the previous chapter. "Nor have I any doubt, but that each person's regard for their own advantage, or the authority of Christ our savior... must easily have brought the whole world under the laws of Utopian republic; were it not for... that one beast, the mistress and mother of all evils, pride."395 More's views on pride and social inequality have already been discussed, but for the present purpose it is the last clause that matters: "the mistress and mother of all evils." More cannot accept Valla's ethics in its totality because it contradicts this idea.

More cannot accept everything Valla says because he is committed to a tradition that attributes every human evil to pride.

This is a notion with deep roots in Christian thought. The teaching that pride precedes and even begets the other ills of the human condition arguably dates back to the

Old Testament, to the famous declaration of Proverbs 3:34 that "God resists the proud."

395 "Neque mihi quidem dubitare subit, quin vel sui cuiusque commodi ratio, vel Christi servitoris auctoritas - qui neque pro tanta sapientia potuit ignorare quid optimum esset, neque qua erat bonitate id consulere, quod non optimum sciret - totum orbem facile in huius reipublicae leges iamdudum traxisset, nisi una tantum belua, omnium princeps parensque pestium superbia, reluctaretur." Utopia, 242. 240

But like many traditions, it had the most currency for More and his contemporaries in more recent expressions dating from the later Middle Ages, a notable example being

found in the work of Bernard of Clairvaux. In his treatise on the Seven Deadly Sins,

Bernard gives pride a place of special infamy. Bernard teaches that pride is the worst sin because it comes before the rest, that in fact it gives birth to the rest. "Pride," Bernard

declares, "is the throne of injustice, the corruption of man, the ruin of the Devil... the beginning of sin, [and] the mother of strife." It is through pride, "loathsome to God, hated by angels, intolerable to men," that Bernard believes Satan derives his power over

humanity. "The Devil reigns in man through pride."396

And even if More had not been convinced by the writings of Bernard, this

tradition would have been reinforced by any number of earlier sources. More would only

have needed to open his Latin Bible, where the Vulgate translation renders the injunction

of Proverbs 3:34 with the famous "superbis Deus resistit." There More could also have

found "superbia initium omnis peccati," 'pride is the beginning of all sin', a passage from

Ecclesiastes beloved by the countless writers who had devoted themselves to cataloguing

the infamous Seven Deadly Sins.397 But in terms of the tradition that More inherited,

perhaps one person contributed more than any other. It was Augustine who developed

the phrase, "superbia initium omnis peccati" into a comprehensive theory, almost an

entire theology. In The city of God, a book that More not only read and studied, but even

lectured upon, the notion of pride as "the mistress and mother of all evils" is fully

396Bernard of Clairvaux, Sancti Bernardi, abbatis Clarae-Vallensis operia omnia III et IV, ed. Mabillon (Paris: Gaume Fratres, 1839) 1534c-1535a. "Superbia solium est iniquitatis, vitium hominis, perditio diaboli. Superbia odiabilis Deo, angelis invisa, hominibus intolerabilis. Superbia origo peccati, mater discordiae, et concordiae noverca: superbia vitioram subsidium, succidium virtutum. Sic per superbiam diabolus in hominem regnat." 397 Apart from Bernard, this is a favorite passage both of the moral writers mentioned in chapter two, Guido Faba and William of Conches, both refer to this passage. realized. For Augustine, pride preceded every other sin, including even Original Sin.

The Devil could never have tempted Adam and Eve, Augustine explains, had not pride already corrupted them and opened their hearts to the potential for sin.

[Adam and Eve] could only have fallen into open rebellion if they were already secretly corrupted. For they had never arrived at the evil act were it not preceded by an evil will. And what could have been the origin of that evil will but pride? "Pride is the beginning of sin." And pride - what is it but the longing for a twisted exaltation? ...This secret evil, I say, preceded and made possible the evil committed openly. For it is true that which is written: "the heart is lifted up before destruction and before glory is brought low."

That More took this lesson to heart is evidenced not only in the pages of Utopia but in his other works as well. In his History of Richard III, More gives the dying king

Edward IV a speech which emphasizes both of pride's salient qualities: first its competitive nature, and second its role in begetting other sins. More's English is ambition, but the word in the parallel Latin text is superbia, the same word used in

Utopia, and in the writings of Bernard and Augustine, and in the Vulgate. As in Utopia,

More's metaphor is the serpent, alluding to the story of the Fall discussed in The city of

God. And as in the other examples mentioned, pride is here 'the beginning of all sin'. It is with pride, the dying king declares, that the miseries of civil war have their root. It is because human beings will tolerate no superior, no equal, because they long for

"vainglory" and "worship," that the kingdom has been plunged into ruin.

Augustine, De civitate dei ed. J.E.C. Welldon (Macmillan: Toronto, 1924) 106-107. "In occulto autem mali esse coeperunt, ut in apertam inobedientiam laberentur. Non enim ad malum opus perveniretur nisi praecessisset voluntas mala. Porro malae voluptatis initium quae potuit esse nisi superbia? Initium omnis peccati superbia est. Quid est autem superbia nisi perversae celsitudinis adpetitus? ...ilium, inquam, malum praecessit in abdito, ut sequeretur hoc malum quod perpetratum est in aperto. Verum est enim quod scriptum est: ante ruinam exaltatur cor et ante gloriam humiliatur." 242

Such a pestilent serpent is ambition and desire of vainglory and sovereignty, which among states where he once entreth and creepeth forth so far, till with division and variance he turneth to mischief. First longing to be next the best, afterwards equal with the best. Of which immoderate appetite of worship... what loss, what sorrow, and what trouble hath within these few years grown in this realm I pray God as well we forget as well remember.399

King Edward's lesson for his listeners is simple. Glory, the only fruit of his long pursuit of the throne, is bitter and worthless. After so much needless strife, the kingship that seemed worth any price has proved an empty prize. "Which things if I could as well have foreseen," explains the king, "I would never have had the courtesy of men's knees with the loss of so many heads."400 The contrast with Valla's attitude towards the glory of kingship should be obvious. Where the 'Christian' promises redoubled honors and distinctions in heaven, More's King Edward would never want this. He regrets pursuing glory in this life, and he desires none in the next.

Along with stressing the ruinous character of pride, More also affirms another tradition, namely the association of pride with diabolism. This can be seen at its most obvious in his use of the serpent as a metaphor for pride both in Utopia and in the

History. This lets More identify pride metaphorically with the agent of the Fall. And

More describes the Devil's own excessive pride in his private conversations. According to Roper, More's frequent warnings to his family about the power and wiles of the Devil often emphasized the evil spirit's pride. Roper says that his father-in-law taught that this pride was Satan's undoing, the crucial weakness that made him hesitate through his fear of the shame and ridicule that would follow failure to tempt a human soul to sin. "For as the Devil of disposition is a spirit of so high a pride that he cannot abide to be mocked, so

Richard III, 12-13. is he of nature so envious that he feareth to assault [one who withstands temptation] lest he should thereby catch a foul fall himself..."401

This passage is notable for several reasons. Among other things, it implies the very notion of laughter that Valla's 'Christian' would deny: someone being "mocked" for a failure or deficiency. It is the shame of letting a soul escape that irks Satanic pride and invites the ridicule the Devil "cannot abide." Satan fears the very kind of derisive laughter which Valla's system does not recognize. But More's warning to his family is also telling in that it places him within a tradition that makes pride the Devil's dominant characteristic and in which this pride is manifested by an inability to bear ridicule.

Martin Luther would often say something along these lines: in fact he repeats an adage also attributed to More that "the Devil, that proud spirit, cannot bear to be mocked."

Luther declared once that it was his habit to insult the Devil every night by asking "Saint

Satan" to pray for his soul. At other times, his ridicule was even sharper.402 And the tradition of Satanic pride can be traced through late-medieval authors like Bernard back to Augustine's account of the corruption of Adam and Eve. Augustine teaches that before he tempted the first man and woman, the Devil fell through pride himself.403 In speaking of Satan's pride, More is affirming what he considered an accepted fact, an eternal verity that would be repeated for generations to come. And More was right about this. The tradition received memorable literary treatment a century later in Milton's

4U1 Roper, 211-212 40 For Luther's theory of Satanic psychology, see H.A. Obermann, 'Teufelsdreck: Eschatology and Scatology in the "Old" Luther', Sixteenth-century Journal 19 (1988), 435-50. Ironically enough, Satan who is the father of ridicule and slander is best combated by turning his own insults and smears against him. Scatological mockery was always Luther's weapon against the Devil and his sermons, and not only in old age. Obermann summarizes a sermon of 1515 in German and Latin as "get lost, Satan, eat your own shit." 403 For one of many discussions of Satanic pride in Augustine, this one with special relevance to the story of the Fall, see 14:3 in The city of God. English epic, Paradise lost, where diabolical pride is elevated into something like the hubris of Greek tragedy.404

But the evils of pride are also implicit in More's writing, most obviously in the customs of the Utopian republic. More never says that the Utopians consider pride a terrible sin, but many of their practices imply this. Through all of the Utopians' customs, one thing is consistent: the laws of More's fictional society are designed to remove everything that might give one person occasion to feel exalted over another. Like an order of monks, the people of Utopia wear the same simple garments, they eat the same food, live in the same dwellings, and pray in the same churches. Jewelry is unknown, and gold is reserved for the basest functions, such as chains for prisoners and chamber pots. Everyone works and there are no privileged bloodlines or titles of nobility. It is little wonder that these passages can be used to demonstrate that while More never took vows, he always admired the monastic ideal.406 More might not have become a monk himself, but he still enjoys describing an entire society as a single great order with the whole island as a monastery. As no secular society that has ever existed, the Utopians have declared war on pride.

This is not all that might be said about More's relationship with medieval traditions of pride, but it is enough to set his objections to Valla in context. Valla says that it is an honest desire to dream of being stronger or wiser or wealthier, of enjoying higher status and a more exalted rank. He says that this pleasure is not only part of the present life but of the next as well: kings will be raised above their scullions even in

404 This is perhaps too obvious to merit comment, but the words pride and proud occur in relation to Satan more than half a dozen times in the first book oi Paradise Lost alone. 405 Utopia, 130-132 and 152. 406 Utopia, 412. In his notes to Utopia, Hexter draws attention to the possible Carthusian influence upon the undyed wool worn by the people of the Utopian republic. 245 heaven. And how could More accept this? How when his ears ring with the teachings of

Bernard and Augustine, with the "superbis Deus resistit" of the Latin Bible? In the

Christian traditions More knew and loved, there is nothing more ruinous than ambition, either in relation to God or to our neighbor. Valla treats "the desire of vainglory and sovereignty" as one more natural pleasure, but for More it is not only a sin but the worst of all sins. It is the sin that most deserves to be called 'Satanic'. It is the sin that More studied to resist in his years among the Carthusians, the sin responsible for the Wars of the Roses and the injustice of European society, the sin that awoke God's anger in Eden.

How much easier must it have been for More to accept the other aspects of Valla's system, even his defense of physical pleasure! Immoderate love of food and drink or sex might provide the occasion for sin, but only pride preceded Original Sin.

This answers one question but it also raises another. Because it is easy to understand why More defends the medieval notion of pride, it is natural to ask why Valla wants to challenge or revise it. Why does Valla try so hard to prove that ambition is not a sin? Almost certainly, Valla considered himself a Christian. Even setting aside the defensive posturing in the introduction to On pleasure, Valla definitely seems to have regarded himself as closer to the sources of Christian doctrine than many of his critics.

Then why should he deny or at least radically re-evaluate a vital Christian tradition that goes back all the way to Augustine, to Paul, arguably even to the Book of Genesis and to

Proverbs! Valla may be radical, but like every radical in a time where any concept of progress was unknown, he cast his radicalism as a defense of tradition. And yet it seems as if Valla is really undermining an ancient Christian tradition here. 246

The easy answer is that this charge is simply untrue. If Valla were confronted directly, he would probably insist that he recognizes that pride is a sin. Valla would argue that he never mentions pride in the pages of On pleasure. The pride in

Augustine's account of the Fall is the desire to be exalted in relation to God, and none of

Valla's three speakers mentions this. If Valla's 'Christian' had discussed this sort of pride, he would certainly have agreed that it could only lead to pain and abasement.

What kind of lunatic would try to surpass God! But exalting oneself in relation to humanity, which is the subject of Valla's 'Christian', is a different matter altogether. To rise above the human herd is an ambition which can be achieved, and Valla contends that it provides real pleasure. It is written that "God opposes the proud," but who are "the proud?" Those who aspire to equality with God, or those who merely want a better coat or a finer home than their neighbor? And so it is unlikely that Valla would admit to contradicting the traditional condemnation of pride. Pride is evil, Valla might say, but the king's sense of superiority to his scullions or the scholar's satisfaction in his learning or the banker's hoarded wealth is not pride, and therefore not to be reproached as such.

Humility and submission before God do not demand an equivalent humility and submission before our fellow creatures.

The only problem with this argument is that it overlooks one of the salient qualities of pride as More, Bernard, and Augustine all understood it. In medieval traditions of pride, the desire to be exalted over humanity leads to the desire to be exalted over God. These two desires may be the very same, in fact, and at best they are close kin.

To borrow More's words in the History, the human spirit, "first longing to be next the best, afterwards equal with the best," rises naturally from striving against creation to 247 striving against the Creator. Both the fictional people of Utopia and the factual monks of the Charterhouse wear simple clothes and eat simple food for this reason. They act out of a common belief that the pernicious illusion of superiority to their neighbor is the first step on the very short road to the fatal illusion that they are superior to God. From this perspective, Valla's 'Christian' is proposing a very dangerous arrangement when he asserts that kings will be distinguished above commoners in heaven. A spirit raised in glory above the other blessed souls will soon resent that God occupies a higher place.

This was what happened with Satan, after all. If Valla is not actually endorsing the sin that drove our first parents from the garden, he comes perilously close.

But if there is no doubt that Valla challenges this traditional understanding of pride, the question is impossible to avoid. Why? Valla's individual motives will be discussed later in this chapter, but what matters in historical terms is that he was not alone. Many of Valla's contemporaries were walking the same path. The revision of established notions of sin, virtue, and religion is evident among Italian thinkers of the fifteenth and arguably even the fourteenth century. Valla is neither the first nor the last

Italian author to re-examine the understanding of pride which More takes for granted.

Valla is only one of many Italian humanists trying to modify the picture of human nature and potential handed down by Augustine and Bernard.

A similar challenge is evident in the writing of Valla's younger contemporary,

Marsilio Ficino (1433-99). The most distinguished of the philosophers cultivated by

Cosimo de' Medici (1389-1464), Ficino was highly esteemed in learned English circles, especially by More's friend and fellow humanist John Colet.407 Like Valla, Ficino

407 Sears Jayne includes Colet's correspondence with Ficino in his study of their relationship. John Colet and Marsilio Ficino, 81-83. 248 opposed the fashionable Aristotelianism of the dialecticians, but since he was more interested in ideas than language, Ficino looked elsewhere for an alternative system.

Where Valla turned to the Latin oratory of Cicero and Quintilian, Ficino set Aristotle against the traditions associated with Plato and the Neoplatonists of late antiquity.40 And while this emphasis on Platonic philosophy separates Ficino from Valla, Ficino shares

Valla's doubts about the traditional condemnation of pride. In fact Ficino seems even less inclined than Valla to praise humility. Human beings are not made for lowness,

Ficino writes: our natural impulse is to rise, we prefer to overcome rather than be overcome and to command rather than obey. And while this sounds like the "ambition" which More blames for England's social and political ills in the History of Richard III,

Ficino does not condemn it. Instead he suggests that it is a noble quality and praises it as a mark of human dignity.

Even if [man] is forced to serve, he hates his master since such service is contrary to his nature. In fact he strives to overcome in any business and is ashamed to be overcome in the smallest matters or the most trivial games, as if it offended the natural dignity of man.409

It is this "natural dignity of man," Ficino observes, that inspires men and women with the love of renown. Ficino does not consider this a sin, let alone the sin of pride.

Instead he views the desire for distinction in the same light that Valla's 'Christian' does in the pages of On pleasure. Ficino sees nothing wrong with striving to be admired, to stand out from the crowd. And Ficino also follows Valla's 'Christian' in his manner of

408 Kristeller briefly summarizes Ficino's biography. Paul Oskar Kristeller, Marsilio Ficino and his philosophy (Gloucester, Mass: P. Smith, 1964) 16-19. Although not identical to Trinkaus' rendering, this translation above borrows several readings from it - e.g. 'the natural dignity of man'. 409 "Qui etiam servire cogatur, odit dominum, utpote qui serviat contra naturam. Superare autem obnixe qualibet in re contendit, pudetque vel in rebus minimis ludisque levissimis superari, tamquam id sit contra naturalem hominis dignitatem..." Charles Trinkaus, In Our image and likeness: humanity and divinity in Italian humanist thought (London: Constable, 1970) 490. 249 defending this appetite. Like the final speaker in On pleasure, Ficino accepts the premise that no one naturally desires anything evil and concludes that whatever men and women desire everywhere must necessarily be good. The craving for fame is universal, Ficino explains, and being universal it is beyond reproach. How can it be sin to want what everyone wants? The final sentence of the following quotation is especially telling.

[Man] aspires to be spoken of through every future age, and grieves that he cannot be glorified even in past centuries, nor be honored by men of every nation and every manner of beast. This is something every person strives after, young as well as old, ignorant as well as learned, with all their force and zeal. The more outstanding their spirit, the more fiercely they seek it. And what all men desire, especially the superior ones, they desire as a good by a .

As for the argument that this striving to transcend the human condition can lead to striving with God, Ficino readily acknowledges it. He admits that the servitude rejected by human nature includes servitude to a divine master: pride in relation to other human beings is indeed connected to pride towards God. But Ficino is not sure that there is anything evil in this. Why is it wrong if this spirit of independence leads us to dream of equality with God? Striving with our Creator does not always end in our destruction as

Augustine argued; sometimes it lifts us up. Ficino sees in ambition not a mark of the

Devil but a sign of our inherent divinity. Human beings really do long "first... to be next the best, after to be equal with the best." And why should this noble aspiration be condemned?

"Primo quod per omne futuram tempus in ore hominum restare contendit, doletque neque potuisse enim in omnibus praeteritis saeculis celebrari, neque posse in futuris ab omnibus rum hominum nationibus turn brutoram generibus honorari. Id omnes tam adolescentes quam adulti, tam rades quam eruditi omni ope studioque nituntur, et tanto affectant ardentius quanto magis excellunt ingenio. Quod autem omnes appetunt homines, maxime vero praestantiores, hoc ab illis naturali lege tamquam bonum appetuntur." ibid, 492. In everything except the elimination of an unnecessary passive verb in the last sentence, the translation is that of Trinkaus. 250

And so man desires none to be superior, desires no equal, will not permit anything to be removed from his authority. And since this is the condition of God alone, man therefore aspires to Godhood.411

Ficino is only one person, and with Valla he makes only two, but students of fifteenth-century Italy have observed that they are not alone. In his massive study, In our image and likeness, Charles Trinkaus associates Valla and Ficino with a characteristic development of the Italian Renaissance. Trinkaus names his book, whence the title of this chapter, from the passage in the Book of Genesis where God declares that Adam should be fashioned after Himself. "Let Us make man in Our image and likeness." For

Trinkaus, this passage sums up the guiding idea of many Italian thinkers from the fourteenth century onwards: that human beings reflect, however imperfectly, the qualities of God. It is the rallying cry of writers like Valla and Ficino, who wanted to affirm human nature in its positive capacities, even its potential divinity.

In the picture created by Trinkaus' study, the words "in Our image and likeness" play a revolutionary role. According to Trinkaus, they balance or even reverse the negative picture derived from Augustine's reading of a later passage in Genesis, the account of the Fall. Italian writers, "primarily the humanists," made "in Our image and likeness" proof of humanity's natural nobility and divinity. Trinkaus says that these five words became scriptural sanction for a radical new attitude towards "the nature, condition, and destiny of man within the inherited framework of the Christian faith."412

Trinkaus acknowledges that there are exceptions to this picture: it would be suspicious if he saw none. Among other things, Trinkaus admits that many writers did not participate

411 "Ita nee superiorem vult homo neque parem, neque patitur superesse aliquid ab imperio eius exclusum. Solius Dei hic status est. Statum igitur quaerit divinum." ibid, 491. 412 ibid, xiv. 251 in this redefinition and asserted more traditional notions of humanity's "nature, condition, and destiny." But Trinkaus also insists that the general tendency is undeniable.

The aspiration among the humanists and other thinkers towards an exaltation of human power, and certainly of man's ultimate destiny, to the level of the divine was widespread, dramatic, and influential. Though we have been careful to give due attention to the differing currents and have sought a just balance, it has been difficult to escape the sense of a gradual and powerful predominance of what is possibly the most affirmative view of human nature in the history of thought and expression.

Some aspects of this process lie outside the scope of the present study, but one is very relevant. A crucial part of this "affirmative view of human nature" that Trinkaus describes is a new appraisal of sin. To reconsider human nature is to reconsider ethics.

A new theory of what human beings are demands a new theory of what they should and should not do, a new theory of which actions and desires are worthy of condemnation.

This can be seen in the excerpts from Ficino presented above. If men and women are made in the image of God, it is no sin to emulate God or to seek immortality through the praise of future generations. As Ficino re-imagines human nature, he also re-imagines sin and virtue. And the same can be said for Valla as well. To assert that men and women desire only what is good is to imply, as a logical consequence, that whatever is desired must be good. This demands a new evaluation of earthly sin, and even a fresh conception of the final destiny of humanity. In the understanding of Augustine or

Bernard, the soul is made ready for heaven as much by extinguishing desire as fulfilling it. The blessed spirits will no longer want what they wanted in this life; the love of fame and distinction will be cauterized from the human heart. The contrast with the heaven of

3 ibid, xiv. Valla's 'Christian' must be obvious: there no desire will go unfulfilled and every love will find its object.

This is the notion which More finds too radical to tolerate, regardless of the fact that Valla tries to ground it in Christian scripture. For More, this stands apart even from

Valla's other admittedly radical ideas. More is interested in Valla's critique of the scholastics and Aristotle, and he is definitely interested in affirming Christian faith through pagan ethics. More is even willing to consider the notion that the pleasures of the flesh may not be objectively evil. What repels him is the extent of Valla's ambition:

More has no interest in reconsidering fundamental medieval notions of sin. And this is why More rejects Valla's theory of motivation. Utopia assembles so many components of Valla's ethics but More cannot accept the final piece. The Utopians can declare that all pleasure is good, but they cannot follow this idea to its logical conclusion. More is too fond of traditional perspectives to affirm every desire unconditionally. Even at the expense of consistency, he cannot agree that human beings are without evil or unnatural lusts. Above all, More cannot allow that pride, the ruin of Adam and the power of the

Devil, may not be a sin.

But although More's understanding of pride is the principal obstacle to accepting

Valla's ethics in its entirety, it is only part of the picture. The issue of pride and sin has broader consequences. Valla's argument that no desire is intrinsically evil runs against another medieval truism: a truly meritorious life involves the minimum possible contact with the corruption and compromise of the secular world. Here Valla challenges the foundation of all the various manifestations of Christian asceticism. 253

It has already been seen in the fourth chapter that On pleasure does not explicitly condemn the lives of monks and nuns. More appreciated Valla's dialogue precisely because it can be used to defend a life of holy self-denial. The 'Christian's' argument that pleasure in this existence must sometimes be sacrificed for heavenly pleasure can certainly be used to justify a monastic vocation. But it would also be possible to draw a contrary message from Valla's dialogue. The words of the 'Epicurean' and the

'Christian' can also justify a life outside the cloister. If all pleasure is good, why must a life of pleasure necessarily be a life of sin? Once more, the real problem is not physical pleasure, but the affirmation of the sort of ambition which the philosophers of Utopia would consider 'false pleasure'.

At its logical extreme, More's pessimistic vision of human nature leaves little room for any secular endeavor. Evil is so deeply rooted in the human heart, as the final passages of Utopia make clear, that almost any aspect of human achievement can be corrupted. But the most 'worldly' activities, and therefore the most suspicious, were those that savored not of physical gratification but of pride. It will be remembered that these are the crimes which More denounces most fiercely in Utopia: bankers and merchants and wealthy abbots striving to amass wealth, kings and statesmen seeking glory and personal aggrandizement. On pleasure is most troubling in what it implies about such activities. When Valla denies that status and riches and fame are intrinsically evil, he opens the door to the possibility that a life spent pursuing these things may be morally worthy. And this is definitely his most revolutionary suggestion. Valla's arguments about sacrifice and reward are less threatening to More's worldview because they can be turned in favor of asceticism; and this new theory can support an old practice. 254

But Valla's affirmation of the pleasure of preeminence calls into question More's conviction that there is something especially evil in a career rewarded by money, power, and social distinction.

But while they may seem radical in terms of certain medieval traditions, Valla's ethics are hardly unprecedented among contemporary Italian thinkers. Trinkaus finds that such attitudes were characteristic of the whole period. Even in the later fourteenth century, the search had begun for an ethics that did not condemn secular activities as harshly or as unconditionally as many established moralities. Trinkaus sees relatively early, conservative figures like Petrarch and Salutati experimenting with a flexible ethics that could accommodate a career of public service or the amassing of personal wealth.

There are several possible reasons for the timing of this development. One obvious consideration is the pace of social and economic change as the great cities of Italy, particularly Northern Italy, moved ever farther from the conditions of feudalism. Hans

Baron has famously argued that the new, secular ideal originated primarily in Florence, in the form of so-called 'civic humanism'. Baron's thesis that the wars of the Florentine republic against Milan between 1390 and 1402 represented a special moment of crisis has not lost its relevance after being debated for fifty years.415 More recently, Ronald Witt has traced the alliance of humanist letters and civic spirit as far back as the middle of the thirteenth century. For Witt, the process begins with scholar-citizens like Dante's

Trinkaus gives Petrarch credit for making it impossible to discuss theology without discussing questions of the place of humanity within the divine scheme: discussions of the Creator are inevitably intertwined with speculation regarding the created. "[The] concern [of post-Petrarch humanists] with God and religion was inseparable from their concern with man in his otherworldly destiny and his this-worldly condition." ibid, 3-4. 415 Hans Baron, The crisis of the early Italian Renaissance (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1955). mentor, , who used Tuscan translations of Cicero to tailor classical literature to the needs of Florentine bankers, merchants, and notaries.416

Whatever its origins, Trinkaus is sure of the trend. As he examines one humanist after another, he discovers a new pride - if that is the right word - in secular achievement. There is the Florentine Gianozzo Manetti wondering at the activities of contemporary civilization: "the busy planting of lofty trees... the daily building of mighty structures... the constant creation of children... [and] the perpetual publications of noble learning and liberal arts."417 There is Benedetto Morandi in Bologna praising the great cities of his day. Not only has Morandi's own city expanded beyond its ancient boundaries, there is also Florence, "the fairest and richest of cities... Venice which is almost equal in glory with Rome... [and] Ferrara, which takes second place in beauty to no city in Italy..."418 In Rome, Aurelio Brandolini writes in wonder of "the pleasure of our eyes when they turn to behold and contemplate... statues, paintings, buildings and all the other monuments of human genius and industry."419 Where Ficino had praised the soul's potential to develop divine attributes, and Valla's 'Christian' had spoken primarily about the pleasures of heaven, these writers are explicit in praising worldly achievement.

They exalt secular activities openly and directly, rejecting any philosophy that dismisses this life in favor of the next.

Ronald Witt, In the footsteps of the ancients : the origins of Humanism from Lovato to Bruni (Boston: Brill, 2000). 417 "Si omnes etiam viventes homines... quantum possint semper prodesse conantur, partim crebris proceraram arboram consitionibus, partim diuturnis magnorum edificium constractionibus, partim continuis filioram procreationibus, partim... perpetuis liberalium artium et ingenuaram scientiaram conscriptionibus..." Trinkaus, 420. 418 "Nam pro Fesulis Haetrasci habent Florentiam pulcherrimam ditissimmamque civitatem. Quid dicam de Venetiis cuius fere par est gloria cum Romana? Nova est Ferraria quae divi principis Borsi virtute nulli civitatum Italiae pulchritudine inferior est, gloria vero adeo iustissimi atque sapientissimi principis felicissima." ibid, 280. 419 "Quanta enim est voluptas ilia oculorum quum sibi nunc... signa, tabula, aedificia, caeteraque humani ingenii atque industriae monumenta intuenda et contemplanda subiiciunt." ibid, 305. 256

The contrast with established ethical systems should be obvious. For Trinkaus,

Italian humanists like Morandi and Brandolini were trying to escape traditional ethics, which is to say ethical codes that condemn the pursuit of worldly wealth and authority.

The words of Manetti, Morandi, and Brandolini demonstrate a desire for a new balance better accommodated to the recognition of secular achievement. The Italian humanists

Trinkaus discusses are all developing the potential implications of the arguments made by

Valla and Ficino.

It is has been our thesis that the traditional way in which human life was conceived and the way in which it was integrated into the Christian religious outlook was inherently unsatisfactory to many men of learning of the later Middle Ages... It was not simply that the norms of modern life ran against both the teachings of the church and the of individuals as sinful, but even that what from one perspective was admirable and desirable, from another was despicable and evil.420

The latter part of the final sentence is especially worthy of notice. "But even that what from one perspective was admirable and desirable, from another was despicable and evil." Here Trinkaus might be speaking specifically about the conflict between Valla's ethics and traditional notions of pride, tying Valla's re-evaluation of sin to the new validation of secular activities. It has been seen that Valla uses the contrasting orations of his speakers to demonstrate that the very same aspirations and the very same desires could be viewed in either a positive or a negative light. Are pleasures objectively sinful, as the 'Stoic' asserts, or the 'true good' of the 'Epicurean' and 'Christian'? In challenging accepted notions of sin, Valla is providing something essential toward reconciling the demands of religious and secular life. He is furnishing materials towards what Trinkaus argues is the end of so many Italian humanists: a morality which, while

420 ibid, 462-463. 257 still Christian, could be better accommodated to the life of educated, urban Italians. It is a morality that while rooted in religion does not condemn the secular features of contemporary life out of hand.

The major need was for an outlook which would discriminate between the actions of men that deserved religious sanction and those which should be subject to condemnation. There was not and could not be a blanket condemnation of life in this world... To many thinkers of the Renaissance, a new Christian reconciliation which extended the range of admirable human activity was essential... The effect of such new integrations would be... to render licit and Christianly admirable a whole series of activities and achievements of which the men of those times were justly proud...421

Like any theory, this is a deliberate simplification. But like all good theories, it proves useful in describing actual situations. It is certainly a plausible estimate of the radical potential of Valla's ethics. When Valla declares that the pleasures of food and drink, of sex and music, even of ambition, status, and pre-eminence will all be enjoyed after death, his words have consequences beyond his understanding of heaven. For those who share the secular sympathies of Morandi, Manetti or Brandolini, they provide the foundation for a more worldly morality, as surely as they provide the basis for the life of asceticism practiced in Utopia.

This is certainly how Trinkaus interprets Valla's project. For Trinkaus, Valla's mission is at once typical of his age and intensely personal. First, Valla is typical of fifteenth-century humanists in his efforts to reconcile the church and the world. He is typical in trying to create a new religious justification for the lives so many of his contemporaries were living, lives which might seem focused on worldly glory. Second,

Valla's project was personal in the sense that it was his own life and his own career that

ibid, 463-464. 258 he wanted to defend and justify. As anyone can see from the autobiographical passages scattered through his writing, Valla was proud of his achievements. And so he was uneasy with any moral code that would condemn this sense of his own excellence as a writer and scholar as unworthy of a Christian. "Valla was facing" explains Trinkaus,

"...the seeming contradiction between the kind of life man's nature and the historical and social order... imposed on him, and the kind of life the Christian religion, inspired by the

Gospels but defined, elaborated and directed by the medieval church... demanded from him."422

And there is every reason to believe that the "contradiction" between the life he lived and the life which many of his contemporaries still considered the ideal troubled

Valla. Whether or not he was conflicted personally, he was certainly sensitive to any criticism on this account. Valla's life often hung from the thread of his reputation for orthodoxy, and the charge of pride unworthy of a Christian was only a step away from the potentially deadly charges of heresy. And yet as a professional writer, Valla's success, his very livelihood depended upon promoting himself. And this self-promotion did not mean arguing that he was merely capable or even that he was second best. Valla could only win the patronage he needed if he proclaimed himself the finest Latinist, the most accomplished classical scholar, the single most brilliant of all the different writers competing for the limited financial support of church and court. And so Valla was indeed hemmed in by the sort of dilemma which Trinkaus describes: as a Christian he was expected to be humble, but as a man of letters it was necessary to boast of his talents and his achievements.

422 ibid, 147. 259

And Valla rarely hesitates to praise himself. In fact, Valla often finds it difficult to disguise his personal vanity and his aspirations to worldly glory. Assertions of his own greatness, his superiority even, can be found everywhere in Valla's writing. Valla's talents and achievements are one of his favorite subjects, and his statements are certainly hard to square with a morality that makes pride the worst possible sin. Take the public boast of one of his great apologetic letters! Here Valla declares that he is not only the greatest writer in recent history, but that his achievement in a single book, On Latin style, outweighs the combined value of entire centuries of literature. "I have done more for the

Latin language with the six books that I have mentioned than every man who has written either on grammar, rhetoric, logic, civil and canon law, or the meaning of words these past six hundred years."423 In his letter to Pope Eugenius, Valla speaks bluntly of his superiority whether in terms of his outstanding learning or simply his nobility of spirit. It is no riddle to see how Valla offends the traditional condemnation of pride with the colorful simile in which he portrays himself quite literally as a superior creature, different in kind from his jealous, carping adversaries.

I am like a great hound or some other noble, proud-spirited beast beset on every side by crowds of howling mongrels. And so it is that my foes, imagining themselves strong and brave, have fallen on me like curs upon a bear.424

It is worth noting that this is not the only time that Valla resorts to such vivid natural analogies. The notion obviously appeals to him, and in one letter his various

423 Valla, Correspondence, 201. "Atque ut isti intelligant se iniustos esse, qui me carpunt, ac temerarios mordacesque, cum me mordacem temerariumque appellant, dico et, si fas est, omni maledicoram turba audiente proclamo: sex libros meos, quos dixi, melius mereri de lingua latina, quam omnes qui sexcentis iam annis vel de grammatica vel de rhetorica vel de logica vel de iure civili atque canonico vel de verboram significatione scripserunt." 424 De falsa objectione, 239V. "Et quemadmodum ad magnorum generoso animo canum aliarumve nobilium feraram transitum cietur undique plebeiorum canum progressus atque allatratus, ita in me inimici mei, etsi magni potentesque viri sint tamen velut catuli in ursum invaserunt." 260 detractors are so many squalling puppies. In another letter he discusses his persecution through the image of an eagle assailed by ravens and the sun undimmed by the light of smaller stars.426 Rather than hide from charges of arrogance, Valla turns these accusations on their head and fashions them into a strategy of self-defense. He says that his enemies are angry not because they really condemn pride but because they are consumed with vanity and the resentment that arises from their inferior talents. His less talented rivals cannot bear to see how he has surpassed them both in virtue and in eloquence.427 The familiar charge that he should not criticize Aristotle or the other giants of contemporary learning because "modesty forbids us to reproach earlier writers," is a smokescreen for the resentment his successful critique has inspired. Valla illustrates his thought with a quotation from the poet : greatness attracts envy in the same way that the loftiest mountaintops attract the strokes of lightning. He may seem arrogant, but then so does every man of genius with the insight to see through the errors of his age.

Who ever wrote on any aspect of knowledge or learning and did not reproach his predecessors? Or what reason could there be for writing, if not to castigate either the errors or the omissions or the excesses of others? ...And this may be called the special quality of all the greatest men: for as each is unsurpassed in learning, so he is and ought to be perpetually occupied in searching out the errors of others. Which is only natural, since learned eyes detect more than ignorant ones.429

425 Valla, Correspondence, 216. "...nee generose fere est ad latratus catuloram ab instituto itinere deflectere." 426 ibid, 202. 427 De falsa obiedione, 239V. 428 Valla, Correspondence, 202. Valla's reference is to the second book of Horace's Odes, 10.11-12, "celsae graviore casu decidunt turres feriuntque summos fulgura montis." Although Valla makes it "feriunt summos fulmina montes." Horace, Q. Horatii Flacci opera, ed. Edward C. Wickham (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967). 429 ibid, 202 and 206 "Quis unquam de scientia quapiam atque arte composuit, quin superiores reprehenderet? Alioquin que causa scribendi foret, nisi aliorum aut errata aut omissa aut redundantia castigandi? ...Quod quidem precipue de maximis quibusque dici potest: nam ut quisque eraditissimus est, ita frequentissime insectandis aliorum erroribus et exercetur et exerceri debet, quippe cum plura pateant oculis peritoram quam imperitorum." 261

But whatever Valla's reasons for boasting of his own superior character, no matter why he challenged the traditional admonitions to humility, this can never answer the larger question. It does not explain how the culture of Quattrocento Italy contributed to this contradiction. A few theories have been alluded to above, but this question lies largely beyond the scope of the present study. Apart from its complexity, it is not strictly necessary to understand why Valla and so many of his contemporaries felt the need for a new reconciliation. This question deserves a study in its own right, and is too extensive to be addressed here. Valla's need to distinguish himself as a professional writer only provides a start to answering this question beyond an individual basis.

And ultimately, what matters at this point is not the 'why?' but the simple 'what?' of Valla's philosophy. What matters is the reality of the search for a more permissive, more affirmative ethics, not its motives. The important thing is that Valla and the other authors mentioned above were not narrowing but widening the scope of permissible activities. Morandi, Manetti and Brandolini discover greatness in building projects and expanding cities; Ficino makes ambition and love of fame the proof of humanity's divine potential. And Valla argues himself in The calling of the religious that the lives of lay

Christians are not objectively less meritorious than the lives monks and nuns, that there is no special merit in monastic vows.430

But what is most important is that a similar purpose can be found in the pages of

On pleasure. Like any of his books, Valla's dialogue on ethics admits many interpretations, not all of them mutually consistent. But it is hard to argue that Valla is developing a more restrictive moral code. Not even a conservative reader such as More could interpret the unconditional endorsement of pleasure as an effort to narrow the range

The profession of the religious. 262 of permissible actions. No one could imagine that Valla is trying to increase the number of desires or vocations that may be deemed sinful and deserving of condemnation. Like so many of his contemporaries, Valla was seeking more room for human action, not less.

And so it is easy to see how Trinkaus reaches his conclusions. It is natural that he should discover a search for more accommodating moralities both in Valla's work and in the work of other Italian humanists. It might seem harder to understand why More would not endorse this project. More's own life, after all, might easily have been condemned by a morality that views the desire for social distinction as evil. At least until its final act, when he resigned his office in protest of King Henry's religious policy, More's career was an uninterrupted march towards worldly glory. First a lawyer, then under-sheriff of

London, then a royal ambassador, then privy counselor, next speaker of the House of

Commons, high steward of Cambridge University, and chancellor of the Duchy of

Lancaster, More finally became the first layman to hold the office of lord chancellor of

England. More was knighted by King Henry in 1521 and received grants of land in

Oxford and Kent. In 1522 he had the honor of delivering the Latin oration welcoming

Emperor Charles V to England and served as speaker of the House of Commons during the parliament of the following year.431 If a more generous view of pride and social distinction appealed to Valla, there is every reason to imagine that More valued it as well.

More's life, at least the better part of it, departs even farther than Valla's from the ideal of

Christian humility.

But More never embraced Valla's perspective, however personally convenient it might have been. More remained committed to a different vision of human purpose: it

431For a chronology of More's career, see Marius. More knighted, 202. Chancellor of Duchy of Lancaster, 212-213. Undertreasurer of the Exchequer, 202. Greets emperor with an oration, 210. Lord high steward of Cambridge, 252. Under-sheriff of London, 53-54 and 62. Speaker of the 1523 parliament, 210-211. 263 might even be said that he did so despite the life he seemed to have chosen. Even though only the conclusion of his life could be considered unequivocally meritorious according to such a moral code, More remained loyal to the ethical vision that the writers discussed by Trinkaus tried to replace. And understanding More's reasons means understanding the tradition which he could not bring himself to reject, whatever the conflict with his own life of ambition and public glory. And this is difficult for almost any modern reader, chiefly because such a sweeping condemnation of secular life is hard for most of us even to imagine. To appreciate how More might have reacted to some of the implications of

On pleasure, it is necessary to understand the strength of these traditions and the devotion they commanded. And there is no doubt that they remained vigorous. Not even Trinkaus and Baron try to claim that the attitudes which the radical thinkers of Quattrocento Italy challenged were ever abandoned altogether. In fact the opinions More expresses in

Utopia and elsewhere testify to the continuing vitality of the attitudes which Trinkaus and

Baron both see threatened.

Like any great tradition, the rejection of worldly careers and preoccupations took many shapes over the long history of Western Christendom. It has been variously manifested by monks, clergy, and lay Christians, by orthodox authors and by heretics alike. And because is has no single definitive expression, it is difficult to describe briefly. But to understand More's perspective, it is only necessary to discuss the most tangible embodiment of this ideal: the monastic orders, the various models of coenobitic, eremitical, and mendicant life that flourished for centuries. Through their lives as much as their words, these communities embody an unequivocal rejection of secular life. Their members renounced property or the chance of marrying and begetting children, along 264 with many other pursuits celebrated in more secular moralities. And the stricter communities such as the Carthusians represented this otherworldly ideal it in its purest, least compromised form. And since it was their order that More nearly joined, the

Carthusians furnish the best example of the rejection of the secular world as he would have known it.

More's time with the Carthusians has been mentioned several times already; in fact it has been a cliche of More's biographers since Roper. It is one of the facts of

More's life, like his martyrdom, that no one fails to mention. On the other hand, it was certainly a meaningful chapter in his life. And it is worth revisiting to take the full measure of More's investment in an ethics that condemned worldly activities outright. If nothing else, the Carthusians' devotion to the monastic ideal illuminates the sort of attitude which would have seemed commonplace to the young Thomas More. The fact that More ultimately chose a secular life only seems to have sharpened his appreciation for the path he did not take.

And the path More rejected certainly led to a different place from the court of

Henry VIII. Had More become a choir monk of Charterhouse, he would have renounced not only the possibility of a secular career or married life, but even daily conversation and companionship. Carthusians cultivate silence and conduct a mainly solitary existence within their own small hermitage; choir monks meet and converse only once a week.

More would also have effectively renounced his family, since visits from relatives took place once a year. Not only the regular temptations of secular existence, but even the daily human contact most of us take for granted would have been eliminated from More's 265 life.432 Although technically alive, More would have been dead to most of the ordinary pleasures of life.

But the best example of the distance of the Carthusian ideal from the active engagement in public affairs can be seen in the choir monk's daily activities. Or more precisely speaking, it can be seen in what the choir monk does not do during the long silent hours between his weekly conversations with the other monks. As a father of

Charterhouse, More's only contribution to the wellbeing of humanity would have been the spiritual discipline of prayer. And even in the traditions of Western monasticism, this was unusual. The work of monks and nuns has often had a more practical, more earthly application. One of the best examples is the role of the Benedictine order in copying classical literature in the centuries following the collapse of the .

But the Carthusians, along with so many stricter orders, represent an exception. They are different in this sense from the Franciscans and Dominicans who preached to the people, or the Cistercians who in More's time raised sheep in the English countryside, or the earlier crusading orders such as the Hospitalers and Templars, or a later order such as the

Society of Jesus, distinguished for education and missionary work. Compared to these other orders, the Carthusians make no tangible contribution to the outside world. Apart from the publication of books, themselves limited to devotional subjects, prayer and private meditation are the beginning and the end of their service.43

This emphasis on the value of prayer may seem strange to anyone who associates religion with active engagement in the world, but it is the pertinent feature of a perspective which More considered eminently reasonable. This is not the 'civic

432 Robin Brace Lockhart, Halfway to heaven: the hidden life of the Carthusians (London: Methuen, 1985). 433 ibid. 266 humanism' that Baron sees arising in Italy during the first part of the fifteenth century; it is not a creed of active citizenship. It is not even an evangelizing faith like the ones that would take shape in the last part of More's life. It does not seek to remake the secular world along religious lines. It springs instead from a vision of the present life apparent in the gloomier passages of Utopia, a vision that sees earthly progress as either impossible or undesirable. The world either cannot be reformed or should not be. Any limited reform that might prove possible would only be a distraction from the real end of our existence, the preparation of our souls for the life to come.

And while such speculation obviously has its limits, it is valuable to imagine the mental state of More the aspiring Carthusian. How must More have felt as he considered the order's motto "stat crux dum volvitur orbis," 'as the world turns, the Cross stands fixed'?434 This brief motto effectively encapsulates the order's ideals, indeed the ideals of a major strain of Christian asceticism. And it is unlikely that More would have spent nearly four years in the without contemplating this motto at length.

The long hours of silent prayer and contemplation would have afforded him considerable opportunity to consider the philosophy behind these words, and to try to make that philosophy his own.

And what a philosophy! In these five words are summed up an attitude infinitely removed from the secular enthusiasms of the Italian writers just mentioned. It is an explicitly otherworldly statement, one that denigrates "the world" even as it glorifies "the

Cross." The opposition of motion and stability appeals to something like the

Neoplatonism of Augustine, which counts changelessness among the foremost divine

434 Gordon Mursell, The theology of the Carthusian life in the writings of St. and Guigo I (Salzburg: Institut fur Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 1988). 267 virtues.435 It is the perfect apology for the Carthusian way of life, for their days of silent prayer and meditation, and as such it is an implicit rebuke to anyone who would seek lasting glory in the world. The splendor of the Italian cities sets as surely as it rises;

"lofty trees" are cut down and "mighty structures" fall into ruin, even "noble learning" and "the liberal arts" are not forever. Like all "monuments of human genius and industry" these things fade for the very reason that they are human: they are the grass that withers in the prophecy of . 6 But the Cross is exempted from this state of corruption: it 'stands fixed' beyond the vagaries of time in unvaried glory. To change is to perish, and unlike secular activities undertaken to better the corruptible world, the prayers of the Carthusians are directed towards an imperishable end.

But even apart from his term with the Carthusians, the influences of More's later life would also confirm him in this suspicion of worldly achievement. More had the opportunity to see firsthand the corruption of the European courts he describes in Utopia.

And his steady progress through the ranks of the king's service in the years after he wrote

Utopia in 1516 would only have given him new opportunities to experience personally the squalid worldliness of secular politics. He would have had to witness and even participate in the kind of squalid compromise and immoral expediency that was only a theory to the blessed souls of the London Charterhouse.

And More's personal contacts would also have encouraged this attitude. The lessons of Charterhouse would have been confirmed through More's friendship with his older contemporary, John Colet. Like More, Colet could be described as a rebel, at least in his strident challenge to the institutional corruption of the English Church. He was

435 For an example of the role of stability in Augustine's thinking, see the passage from The city of God in Augustine calls the God of "the higher and unchanging good." The city of God, 106. 436 The reference is to Isaiah 40:8. 268

certainly fearless in pointing out the personal shortcomings of individual clerics and the

excesses of late-medieval theology. Colet's criticism of clerical mores, especially what he calls "the professional cunning and insatiable avarice" of the higher clergy was so

fierce in fact that he narrowly avoided charges of heresy in the years preceding his

death. And Colet shared More's critical attitude towards established traditions of logic

A'lQ

and dialectic: his contempt for the disciples of Scotus and Aquinas is well documented.

Nor is any comment necessary regarding Colet's promotion of classical literature in the

charter of his famous school, discussed in the first chapter of this study. In most of the

same ways as More, Colet was a man at war with the status quo of early Tudor England.

If anything Colet was more passionate, more vehement, and less willing to compromise

with contemporary society.

This rebellious streak perhaps explains the other interest that Colet shared with

More: Colet also welcomed the new and challenging ideas that had emerged in Italy

during the last century. The only difference is that in Colet's case, it was not Valla's

Christian Epicureanism, but the of Ficino and his Florentine school that

seemed fascinating. Judging from their correspondence, it is clear that More liked and

admired Colet, fourteen years his elder, respecting him for his personal character and his religious insight.439 And Colet's opinions would only have reinforced the rejection of the world that More had learned during his time at Charterhouse. Colet was less moderate

and nuanced than More in so many of his opinions, and his attitude towards the value of

secular achievement is a good example of this.

437 John B. Gleason, John Colet, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989) 89. The translation is Gleason's. 438 ibid, 141-144. 439 More's correspondence with Colet can be found in his Selected letters. 269

According to John Gleason, whose study deals as much with Colet's theology as with the details of his life, Colet was the last person to challenge More's estimation of earthly glory, or secular existence generally. As a Neoplatonist who considered spiritual things higher, better, indeed more real than physical things, Colet was hardly inclined to affirm earthly activities of any description. He certainly had little respect for the life of marriage, family and royal office that More ultimately chose. Gleason observes that

Colet seems to have literally endorsed the teaching from the First Epistle of John that the entire earth is given over to evil, the possession of Satan. Echoing More's demonic preoccupations, Colet declares the servants of the devil "the rulers of the darkness of this world." Gleason even argues that Colet's cosmology makes the world of humanity, and not Hell, the farthest possible point from the God who is the source of every good.

"Imagine a circle whose center is Christ," writes Colet, "the essence of goodness, and whose circumference is less good, while the farther outlying regions," here Colet refers to our present condition, "are evil itself."440

But there is more to Colet's condemnation than splendid rhetoric. Colet's sacramental theology is designed implicitly around an extreme rejection of secular life.

While his debt to Ficino's 'Platonic theology' is real, Colet is no slavish imitator. Colet puts his own stamp upon the Italian scholar's teaching that the noblest human impulses render us similar to God. For Ficino, men and women approach divinity in the pursuit of fame and recognition, in rejecting servitude and striving against creation. And while

Colet agrees that we aspire to the condition of God, he does not describe this aspiration in such worldly terms. And in a sense, it can be said that he also excludes women from the

440 Gleason, 188. The translation is entirely Gleason's apart from the last two words, "evil itself reflect my emendation of the original ipsum malum. 270 pursuit of divine attributes. This is because Colet teaches that human beings are closest to God when they are ordained, as only men can be, to the priesthood. He writes that

Christ, "the first and holiest Son of God," is both the first priest and the very institution of priesthood itself. Colet's God is "the priest-making God," and "the priest of priests," a

God who "ordains all things and from Whom derives every priestly ordination and every ordained priesthood." And while Christ is "the supreme and everlasting priest," the "nine orders" of the angels belong to the priesthood themselves, "consecrated in the temple of

God at the creation of the world."441 No other profession can boast such distinguished antecedents. Cain might have been the first farmer, the first to cultivate grapes, and

St. Jerome the model of the Biblical scholar, but priests can count Jesus and His angels as colleagues in their sacred calling.

The practical implications of this idea are obvious. Colet's notion of the priesthood stands in clear contradiction to the efforts of some Italian humanists to develop an ethics which places secular professions on the same level as sacred ones. It is the antithesis of the sort of practical ethics that Valla presents in The calling of the religious. In The calling of the religious, Valla had argued that no action is especially pleasing to God simply because someone has taken a vow to perform it: the deed stands or falls on its own merits.442 But for Colet, the vow is everything. This is why he argues that the priesthood is the only worthy calling. The sacred vows that consecrate the priest

441Colet, On the sacraments, ed. Gleason and included in John Colet with facing English translation, from British Library Loan Manuscript 55/2 (Duke of Leeds). "Sacerdotium illic est quidem — ut ita dicam — sacerdotificans, omne enim sacerdotium a deo est, sacerdotum sacerdote." "Itaque eternus sacerdos est dei, ipse deus sacerdotificans." "Ipse eternus Dei ordo, ipse Deus ordinans omnia a quo omnis sacerdotalis ordo est et omne ordinatum sacerdotium..." 272. "Dei filius summus et eternus pontifex condens et templum mundi et angelicos et spiritales sacerdotes." 274-276. "...magnifici sacerdotes summi Dei... qui consecrati et consummati ordines in creatura mundi Dei templo perfecti sacerdotes sunt sanctissime se in sacrifitiis laudis exercentes." 274. The profession of the religious. 271 to divine service give his life and actions a quality that could never be found in the good deeds of a banker, a royal minister, or even a humanist translator of the classics.

Priesthood is not only the profession of God and His angels, but even the highest aspiration of the human condition, the perfect expression of the love between Creator and

443 creation.

And so there can be no question that Thomas More's career stands condemned in

Colet's system. Even to call the life of a faithful husband and devoted father second best would be a mistake in that More's friend seems to feel that there only one correct choice.

Not even Christian marriage, itself a sacrament in , approaches the glory of a priestly calling. "Priesthood and marriage are one in the same in Christ," Colet the celibate son of the church declares.444 Human marriage is in fact only "a shadow" of the divine union of man and God, a second-class substitute which would not exist at all were it not for the Fall of Adam and the immersion of humanity in original sin.

"[Marriage] is the business of the man who is born into damnation, not the new man who is reborn to salvation in Jesus Christ."445 At an early point in human history, Colet opines, marriage was a necessary evil, tolerated in order to populate the earth with sinners, but that time is past and a celibate life is now infinitely preferable. "Fleshly matrimony, which was a spiritual sacrament, has been struck down and passed away with the dawning of Truth."446

It would nevertheless be better if all Christendom were celibate... Since the entire Christian church is spiritual, only spiritual marriage and the bearing of spiritual

On the sacraments, 306-308. 444 ibid, 308. "...matrimonium et sacerdotium in Christo omnino esse idem..." 445 ibid, 310. "Est enim ilia res hominis creati in damnationem, non recreati hominis in Christo salutem." 446 ibid, 314. "Carnale matrimonium, quod erat spiritalis sacramentum, modo chorascante veritate discussum est et abiise." 272

children is necessary through our spouse Jesus Christ. In Him fleshly men are made spiritual so that they bear only the spiritual progeny of justice in the manner of the angels after the example of Christ.4 7

And in a sense, Colet's jaundiced estimation of a secular career is connected with the other medieval tradition which More embraced, the one that regards certain aspects of human nature, notably pride and ambition, as inherently unworthy. Colet's condemnation of a married life, indeed of any vocation but a priestly vocation, is of a piece with his refusal to affirm that every aspect of the human personality is potentially legitimate. Gleason calls attention to an argument between Colet and Erasmus over the nature of Jesus, according to both men the perfect human being. Where Erasmus claimed that a God made flesh must experience the same emotions as other men and women,

Colet seems to have argued that Jesus was exempt from certain less noble feelings, notably fear of death. Certain desires, certain impulses, Colet maintained, are unconditionally evil, and therefore can have no place in the divine psychology of the Son of Man. As Gleason explains, Colet found it "unthinkable... that Christ should have chosen to participate fully in the human nature that he himself always regarded with a full measure of horror."448 Colet's disdain for secular achievement would have been especially compelling to More because it rests on a familiar premise. The life of the world is no match for the life of a priest or monk because it is not inspired by worthy motives. Too many of the impulses that lead men and women to choose the life of the world can never be honorable or wholesome.

447 ibid, 312. "Optandum est tamen ut tota Christianitas esset in celibatu... Quoniam sancta ecclesia Christi tota spiritalis non requirit nisi matrimonium spiritale et spiritalem prolificationem in marito nostro Iesu Christo in quo carnales homines sunt facti spiritales ut propagationem non agant nunc nisi angeloram more ad exemplum Christi, spiritalem iusticiae." 448 Gleason, 103-105. 273

It is always interesting to consider how much influence such ideas had on More's own attitude. How did More feel about his decision to marry in the light of Colet's uncompromising statements? Was he always a Carthusian at heart, longing to escape all worldly entanglements? What did he feel about his motives as he rose higher and higher in the service of King Henry? These are all worthy questions, but in some ways speculation is unnecessary. Within the very pages of Utopia, More makes his feelings clear. The first book of Utopia concludes with More's conversation with his own fictional creation, Raphael Hythlodaeus, a debate over the value of one of the most notable secular activities, public service for a prince. The discussion takes place shortly after Hythlodaeus has finished describing the ruinous policies, external and internal, of

European sovereigns. In itself, these preceding passages say a great deal about More's attitude towards the world. Hythlodaeus' account of how kings and their councilors ruin their subjects paints a very bleak picture of secular life. The description of greedy abbots pushing families off their land to graze more sheep could also be read in this light. It might be a denunciation of those orders which, unlike the Carthusians, have strayed from their spiritual vocation into worldly affairs. But this is only preparation for what follows, for the place where More makes the question explicit. Is there any value in a life of politics?

It is a famous discussion, but then it has been observed before that almost everything in Utopia is famous. This is something to be expected in a short book which has been the subject of so many long ones. Like many passages, this one has been discussed in almost every study on More or Utopia, and it is usually interpreted in 274 autobiographical terms.449 Here More, still in early stages of what will prove a lengthy term of service for Henry VIII, debates this decision with himself, as it were.

Hythlodaeus argues for uncompromising abstention: there is no use trying to serve the state. He says that even the wisest and most honest philosopher will not be able to divert a king and his councilors from their wicked course. More responds to his fictional interlocutor with a different perspective. He admits that little can be done to change the evil course of nations, but this is no reason not to try. Like someone steering a ship in a storm - his own analogy - or a doctor operating on a patient who seems certain to die,

More says that it is better to try than to do nothing. "You must not... abandon ship in the storm simply because you cannot restrain the winds."450 Thus, it is often argued, More settles the debate in his own mind in favor of involvement. It is better to serve a king, however imperfectly, than to remain aloof out of despair or indifference.

But even if this reading is correct, what is telling is how grudging More's endorsement of secular involvement really is. It is not merely that as the author of

Utopia, he expresses Hythlodaeus' feelings with great sympathy. Even if More the writer is of one mind with the 'Thomas More' of the dialogue, even if he disavowed all that

Hythlodaeus says, the conversation would still stand as proof of how far More's attitude lies from the Italian writers mentioned by Trinkaus. What is telling is not that More endorses secular life, but how grudging, how minimal his endorsement really is. There is no glowing praise of secular cities and buildings here, nothing like Leonardo Brum's famous expressions of Florentine patriotism. Instead More only declares that public life

449 Marius, 155 and 158-159. 450 "Si radicitus evelli non possint opiniones pravae, nee receptis usu vitiis mederi queas, ex animi tui sententia, non ideo tamen deserenda respublica est, et in tempestate navis destituenda est, quoniam ventos inhibere non possis." Utopia, 98. The analogy to an operation, also a humanist favorite, appears on pages 104-106. 275 can be a means of making the best of a bad situation. "You must try as far as possible to minimize the evil of what cannot be turned to good." This is the closest More can come to endorsing life in the world, and his concluding words are no more hopeful. "For all things can never be good until all men are good, and it will be many years before I expect to see that happen."451

That More chose to live and work in the world need not be read as an endorsement of anything like the 'civic humanism' Baron discovers in Florence. There were probably moments where More agreed with the grudging endorsement of a secular career that he makes in Utopia, but this does not mean he was ever certain that he had made the right choice. And if Erasmus's account is correct, the choice to leave the

London Charterhouse was less a matter of principle than a concession to human weakness. According to Erasmus, More abandoned the Carthusian vocation in part because he believed himself unworthy of a religious calling.452 Lacking the necessary self-control for celibacy, More chose to satisfy his sexuality through marriage without ever deciding that secular existence was as honorable or as meaningful as the life of the cloister. And as time passed, experience may have pushed More closer to the perspective he expresses through Hythlodaeus, closer to the attitude of his friend Colet, closer to the admiration for a life unsullied by worldly compromise.

As for the last stage of More's life, his decision to die rather than acquiesce to the policies of his former master, Henry VIII, there can be little question of More's attitude at that time. It was then that the conflict which had followed him throughout his life, the conflict attendant upon choosing the power and prestige of secular office over prayerful

451 "Nam ut omnia bene sint, fieri non potest, nisi omnes boni sint, quod ad aliquot abhinc annos adhuc non expecto." Utopia, 100. 5 Erasmus, Correspondence, 993-1121, 21. discipline, was finally resolved. Once he had triumphed over Satan by committing himself irrevocably to resisting King Henry, More was no longer trapped by the contradiction of his adult life. He no longer had to reckon with the tension between the life he was actually living and the life that Christian devotion and the admired voices of

Augustine, Bernard, and Colet demanded. As he is reported to have informed his daughter Margaret, More had at last returned to the condition of life that ought to have been his long ago. Confined within a cell not much larger than the one he would have occupied as a choir monk, he spent his time in prayer as he prepared his soul for death.453

If anything, More's bearing in his final days reveals how uncertain had had always remained about even the most tentative flirtation with a creed of secular achievement. His only regret seems to have been that he waited so long and that he only chose principle over social convenience when the decision was too clear to avoid. This is evident in the sentiments attributed to More near the end of Roper's Life, said to be delivered to Margaret as he looked forward to his execution. From his window in the tower More has just seen four monks going out to their death, three from the very

Charterhouse that More might have joined himself. It is true that his exact words are obviously invented after the fact, recalled as they were at second hand so many years later. But there is little reason for More's daughter or his son-in-law to have misrepresented the essence of what More felt at this moment, his regret at the opportunities he had missed. So while the precise words may not be his, they are still a fair reflection of the man. With death so close, More felt no sympathy for the confident embrace of worldly achievement to be found in the pages of Valla's dialogue.

453 Roper, 293. More seems to refer specifically to his lost vocation in the Charterhouse by saying that he would have locked himself in a "straighter" room than even his cell in the Tower of London. 277

Lo, dost thou not see... that these blessed fathers be now cheerfully going to their deaths as bridegrooms to their marriage? Wherefore thereby mayest thou see... what a great difference there is between such as have in effect spent all their days in a straight, hard, penitential, and painful life religiously, and such as have in the world, like worldly wretches, as thy poor father hath done, consumed all their time in pleasure and ease licentiously. For God, considering their long-continued life in most sore and grievous penance, will no longer suffer them to remain here in this vale of misery and iniquity, but speedily hence taketh them to the fruition of his everlasting deity. Whereas [I], that like a most wretched caitiff hath passed forth the whole course of his life most sinfully, God thinking him not worthy so soon to come to eternal felicity, leaveth him here yet still in the world, further to be plunged and turmoiled with misery.454

But ultimately, More's satisfaction or regret at the course of his life only matters so much. Whether or not he ever felt that he had spent his years well - and how many of us do? - the crucial thing is More's response to the arguments he encountered in the pages of On pleasure. What matters is that it is clear why More would have had little patience with Valla's attempts at an affirmative vision of secular achievement. In trying to assert that even the love of glory is not evil, that even the pleasure of social elevation can be a real and valid good, Valla pricks the raw nerve of More's own personal conflict.

Valla makes an argument that More, in effect, finds too good to be true. However convenient it might be for the Thomas More of 1516, a man rising swiftly with no end to his ambition in sight, he cannot embrace Valla's ethics because he has already ruled it out. He has already decided that there can be no easy reconciliation of the life that he has chosen and the life demanded by his God. More's vision of human nature and potential was set during his time at Charterhouse and confirmed by later disappointment and the gloomy opinion of friends like Colet. Valla's more forgiving, positive assessment of desire and fulfillment was drowned out by these more traditional voices.

Roper, 242. Ultimately, More rejects Valla's radical solutions to the problem presented by his career because he was always certain about the answer, however uncomfortable that answer made him personally. Long before he ever laid eyes on Valla's dialogue, More had made up his mind about the most controversial questions which Valla poses. By the time More read On pleasure, he had put to rest the notion that earthly glory could ever be an unqualified good: he had already condemned the striving for distinction and wealth intellectually, regardless of whether he ever overcame it in his heart. Even in the years when his own life of public distinction represented something of a painful contradiction with this principle, More still endorsed the classic medieval vision in the advice he reports that he gave his children as they made their way in the world: "to avoid the precipices of pride and haughtiness and to walk in the pleasant meadows of modesty; not to be dazzled at the sight of gold; not to lament that they do not possess what they erroneously admire in others; not to think more of themselves for gaudy trappings, nor less for the want of them."455 Even earlier than that, years before his children were grown, More included the following meditation on worldly glory among the Latin epigrams intended to establish his reputation as a scholar. The prisoner awaiting execution was More's metaphor for life long before it became his reality.

Condemned and awaiting death we are all closed up In an earthly prison: a prison where none escapes death. The grounds of this prison are divided in various parts Where various men fortify their respective sections, Contending for their prison as for a kingdom. In his lightless cell the greedy man piles up riches, This man wanders at large, this man is chained in a cave, This one serves, this one rules, this one wails, this one sings. And all the while the prison is loved as it were no prison,

Reynolds, 134-135. And each of us is released after a different death.

This attitude, expressed in different ways at different times but consistent in its

essentials, explains as well as anything can the ambivalence of More's response to On pleasure. More did not reject Valla's ideas outright, but he was most receptive when

Valla confirmed what he already believed. Valla's dialogue was certainly intriguing, and his critique of the intellectual establishment was welcome, but More was unsuited by

temperament and experience to agree with everything that Valla says. As a general rule,

it may be said that More was open to the world-denying possibilities of Valla's

reasoning, but not the world-affirming side. The most that More could ever concede was

that a career of public service might serve as a palliative for a chronically ill society. It

was too much for him to embrace the fruits of this service as Valla did, to imply that the

honors of high office or the privilege of a personal fortune or the renown of a famous

name could be good in themselves. And to affirm that kings, for More the supreme

embodiment of the folly of worldly greatness, might be exalted above their social

inferiors throughout eternity? For More this was far too much to accept. Like his

fictional island of Utopia, More's heaven is a republic in the sense that it recognizes no

form of human sovereignty.

And in a sense, the wonders of heaven might provide the best metaphor for the

difference between More's vision and Valla's. More could agree with Valla that the life

to come offers unlimited, inconceivable pleasure to the deserving, but the two men part

456 Damnati ac morituri in terrae claudimur omnes / Carcere, in hoc mortem carcere nemo fugit. / Carceris in multas describitur area partes, / Inque aliis alii partibus aedificant./ Non aliter quam de regno de carcere certant./ In caeco cupidus carcere condit opes, / Carcere obambulat hic vagus, hic vincitur in antro. / Hic servit, regit hic, hic canit, ille gemit. / Iam quoque dum career non tanquam career amatur, / Hinc aliis alii mortibus extrahimur. Latin poems, 166-169. 280 company on the nature of that pleasure, on what awaits the deserving after death. Each man's picture of life in heaven is his ideal of life on earth. In Valla's case, his heavenly joys are the joys of the active citizen: praise, fame, honor, the thrill of distinction and personal glory. At the end of On pleasure Valla even offers a description of the company of the saved entering the heavenly city in something like the pomp and splendor of a

Roman triumph. Trumpets sound and bells ring out and countless voices are lifted up in welcome.457 But More has no place for this vision, no more than the Augustine, Bernard, or the "blessed fathers" of Charterhouse would have. The last thing he or they would ever do was affirm that joys which are empty and meaningless in this life could be part of the life to come. To the extent that it is a place of equality and humility, a community ruled not by pride but abasement, it would be fair to say that the London Charterhouse is closer to More's personal concept of heaven than any other place on earth.

On pleasure, 130-135 XXV. [1-23]. 281

CONCLUSIONS

This, as far as it can be told, is the story of Thomas More's response to the challenge of Lorenzo Valla's thought, the account of how Utopia answers On pleasure.

Several aspects of the 'conversation' between More and Valla, the international, intergenerational dialogue, have been discussed. All that is left is to offer several parting observations regarding what has been learned here. This has been primarily an account of intellectual influence in action, but it is also intended to illuminate matters of wider significance. It remains to list some of these lessons.

First, the relationship between Utopia and On pleasure has demonstrated something of the remarkable continuity in European thought during this period. More and Valla lived nearly a century apart, in two relatively distant regions, pursuing different careers with different ends; and yet the 'conversation' described in the preceding pages was still possible! For all the distance between the two men, in time, space, or the shape of their careers, the story of intellectual influence that has unfolded here took place as surely as if the two men had lived in the same street of the same city and had been born and died in the same year. More could explore the ideas he discovered in Valla's book through Utopia, he could still echo arguments or reverse them as he pleased, as surely as if Valla were his contemporary. This could only happen because More and Valla belong to a shared cultural tradition, a tradition that maintains a substantial degree of continuity despite the accidents of time and place.

In part, this is a testament to the developments that were discussed in the first chapter. Valla's influence upon More and Utopia is only possible because the program 282 of classical studies originally associated with Italy was well-established by the time More was born in the later fifteenth century. It is the result of almost one hundred years of sustained and increasing interest in Italian books and Italian scholarship. Without this century of steady progress, Valla's books would not have been available to More and to other English readers: not only On pleasure, but also the Annotations, On Latin style, the

Declamation, the translations and commentaries. Everything that has been said here rests on the fact, so easily taken for granted, that More was in a position to read Valla's books in the first place. This account of sixteenth-century cultural influence depends upon the libraries, the universities, the scholars, and the patrons of the fifteenth century. If the contact between the two regional cultures had not changed since the year Valla was born, a very different story would have unfolded. The previous chapters could never have been written.

And the Ttalianization' of English learning which began at the dawn of the fifteenth century was also important in another sense. Apart from bringing Italian books to England, it provided the foundation for English writers, More and Colet among them, to appreciate what Italians like Valla and Ficino had to say. More was able to respond to

Valla because, like so many English readers, he had been prepared by the same program of classical studies that was already the standard in Valla's Italy. By the time that More attended St. Anthony's school and Oxford's Canterbury College, these institutions could provide him with the intellectual equipment to appreciate the literature of Quattrocento

Italy, including On pleasure.

More's humanist education involved more than reading specific works, but this is still the better part of what prepared him for Valla's dialogue. More could understand 283 what Valla wrote because he knew the books that Valla had read, not only the great moral philosophers, but the poets and the orators who provided the basis for Valla's appeal to experience over authority. More knew about the competing philosophies of the Stoics, the Epicureans, and the Aristotelians; he had read Quintilian - for Valla the undisputed master of Latin style - and he was familiar with the world of classical references which illustrate Valla's arguments. The various pagan classics that More had read, translated and consciously imitated all prepared him for Valla's learned allusions.

The very form of Valla's dialogue, with its three speakers building a consistent argument, might have proven difficult if More had received a different education. More could only have understood On pleasure's structure so readily because he knew the dialogues of Cicero. Works like On the definition of good and evil and On the nature of the gods provided More with a formal model to understand On pleasure. Thanks to his classical education, More was not only capable of appreciating Valla's dialogue, he was able to write such a dialogue himself. And so the work of the previous hundred years did more than make it possible for More to read On pleasure. The activities of the presses and the universities, the scholars, the poets, and their patrons also ensured that More had read the books necessary to make sense of On pleasure. Valla writes under the assumption that his readers have the same classical education that he does, and in More's case this is true.

And it is possible to press this argument even further. It can be argued that

More's education prepared him as much for Valla's presentation as for the thoughts that he actually expresses. The adoption of so many elements of Italian culture in the generations preceding More's lifetime ensured that not only Valla's content, but even his 284 style would prove familiar. As his own writing demonstrates, More was educated in the kind of polished, anachronistic Latin favored by Valla and other Italian humanists.

More's style was the natural product of an age when not only literature but even architecture - recall Wolsey's splendid college - reflected Italian models. And it can certainly be argued that without this influence More would not have been so receptive to any Italian book. Would More have felt the same interest if On pleasure had been written in an unfamiliar idiom as well as being cast in a difficult, allusive form? For this is how Valla's book would have seemed to English readers only a century earlier, before the advent of humanist grammar schools. That More's own Latin recalls the elegant phrasing of Valla and other Italians lets him engage more easily with the challenging arguments in On pleasure. More's education allowed him to navigate Valla's classical references and his difficult Ciceronian form, and it also ensured that he would appreciate the elegance of Valla's prose.

But while the enormous prestige of Italian books and Italian teachers cannot be discounted, the preceding pages have revealed other motives behind More's reading of

On pleasure. In understanding More's response to Valla's dialogue, the fact that so much of the literary culture of Quattrocento Italy had been imported to early Tudor

England is not what matters most. As chapter four has demonstrated, More is drawn to

Valla because of what the literary cultures of Italy and England had in common before the fifteenth century saw the program of classical studies take root in English universities, libraries, and courts. More responds to Valla's arguments because he recognizes Valla's targets. Valla is challenging traditions and writers - Aristotle, Avicenna, the dialecticians and grammarians, the scholastic theologians - who were as well established in More's 285

England as in Valla's Italy. On pleasure appealed to More because Valla's attacks were

still topical when he wrote Utopia. Valla had written his book two generations earlier on the other side of Europe, but his targets remained relevant. The traditions that Valla

challenges were not imported from Italy to England, as the classical scholarship of the humanists was, because they did not have to be. They were already part of the

intellectual landscape.

This is not to diminish the great diversity of European civilization, but it is also

clear that if More's England had nothing in common with Valla's Italy, More would have

found little of interest in Valla's dialogue. Valla appeals to More because the same issues matter to both men, the same dualities: asceticism and pleasure, auctoritas and.

experience, dialectic and rhetoric, pride and humility, mortality and immortality,

Christianity and paganism. Utopia echoes On pleasure because On pleasure echoes

More's own concerns. This is especially true in terms of the critical aspect of Valla's

dialogue, the late-medieval traditions of grammar and dialectic which he attacks. In fact

it is no exaggeration to suggest that if Valla had not challenged these traditions, More

would have found On pleasure considerably less relevant, or even incomprehensible.

Without these challenges to a familiar enemy, More might not have read so much as a

single page.

And so the relationship between Utopia and On pleasure is a measure of the

cultural continuity of late-medieval Europe. It is only because the traditions which Valla

and More both challenged were international that Valla's book had so much meaning for

More. Valla could only matter to More to the extent that it is possible to speak not

merely of an English or Italian literary culture, but of a European culture stretching 286 across political and geographical boundaries. Traditions of grammar and dialectic which are not associated with any single region provided More and Valla with a set of common cultural references, a basis for their shared critique. Their relationship depends on the fact that libraries in London and Rome contained many of the same books, that lecturers in Padua or Bologna might read from the same text as their colleagues in Oxford or

Cambridge, that the same authors were read and studied and commented upon from the heart of the Mediterranean to the shores of the North Sea. Educated men may have participated in their own local communities, but they also belonged to an international

'republic of letters', one with a shared language, shared issues, and shared conflicts. This was the case even at the beginning of the fifteenth century, and it only became more true as Italian classical studies found a place in England.

But for all the commonalities that this study has revealed, it has also laid bare the differences between More and Valla, as individuals and as advocates for two different positions. Both the depth and the range of their disagreement has been discussed at length. It is true that More and Valla are united in their hostility to certain traditions in

European thought. But regarding nearly everything else they are divided, often dramatically. The differences between More and Valla seem more serious than their common rejection of certain fashionable academic disciplines. They relate, after all, to essential questions of human nature and potential. More and Valla are of two minds on the relative merits of asceticism and the active life, on the nature of heavenly reward, on whether ambition is a sin, on why the righteousness of Socrates or Jesus inspired hatred, on the power of the Devil: they cannot even agree on the practical psychological problem of laughter. They disagree, in short, on man and on God, on heaven, earth, and 287 everything in between. On nearly every question relevant to the practical problems of the human condition, and even on matters merely speculative, More and Valla represent opposing poles of opinion.

This disagreement matters because it reveals the degree of diversity that can exist within a literary tradition. On the one hand, More and Valla are inevitably included in any survey of the movement in European literature and education known as humanism.

They are both referred to as humanists, along with several of the other writers mentioned

4S0. in this study: Erasmus, Ficino, and Colet. And this study has certainly vindicated such a description. 'Tradition' is exactly the word to describe how Utopia develops and re­ examines arguments from On pleasure. Valla's ideas have been 'handed down' to More in the manner of a master craftsman to his apprentice or a parent to her child: a tradition in the sense of one generation taking up the work of the last. On the other hand, this study has also demonstrated that this does not guarantee a shared attitude or outlook: here too the analogy with family and professional traditions would seem to hold. The fact that

More and Valla are part of a common tradition means that they have read many of the same books and that More has considered Valla's ideas seriously. But it does not mean that More and Valla agree on everything, or indeed on most things. The two men belong to the same tradition less because of what they believe than because of what they have read. Their only positive agreement, as opposed to a common critique of shared enemies,

458 For an example of the treatment of More, Erasmus, Colet, and Valla as part of the larger discussion of European Humanism, see the articles on Translation, terminology and style and Humanism by Brian P. Copenhaver and Paul Oskar Kristeller respectively in The Cambridge History of , general editor Charles B. Schmidt (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988). Eugenio Garin, Italian humanism: philosophy and civic life in the Renaissance, trans. Peter Munz (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1965) 75-137. As it has been seen earlier, Camporeale even connects More to Valla explicitly in his Umanesimo, riforma e controriforma. Eugenio Garin also includes Valla in the larger discussion of Humanism in Italy, a movement he sees as a reaction to the a-historical attitudes towards literature that prevailed during the Middle Ages. Garin, 11-17. 288 begins and ends with the subjects they consider worth discussing and the books that they

consider worth reading.

And it can certainly be argued that this paradox - More deeply influenced by

Valla without thinking like him - has an important application to the question posed in

the first chapter of this study. What was the appeal of Italian books for English readers?

A case was made that English schools, students, and patrons were primarily interested in

the linguistic applications of the new Italian learning: the ability to write classical Latin

prose and to read ancient Greek. The content of Italian humanism, the original ideas of

writers like Valla and Ficino, was generally less interesting. In Valla's case specifically,

the books which found the widest readership had the least to do with Valla's original

philosophy and the most to do with his mastery of the two ancient languages. Readers in

More's England were most interested in commentary, translation, annotation, rhetoric,

and in the explicit discussion of Latin usage in On Latin style.

And while it was observed that More's interest in On pleasure seems to represent

an exception to this rule, the matter deserves a second look. At first glance, On pleasure

seemed exceptional because it deals with more than the finer points of Latin style: it

contains Valla's ideas about ethics, his arguments about the meaning of life and death.

That More read this book and found it worth discussing seems like a case of an English

writer who looked to Valla for more than the perfection of Latin style. A man who would

read On pleasure would seem to be engaged with Valla's ideas and not simply his

Latinity. But after the last three chapters, this picture deserves some revision. If it is not

false, it is probably exaggerated. 289

If these chapters have demonstrated one thing, it is that More did not embrace all of Valla's ideas; he actually rejected the most significant. The close reading of Utopia and On pleasure reveals that More trusts Valla most on linguistic matters. Despite

More's well-documented ambivalence towards Valla's ideas, he accepts definitions of crucial terms like voluptas, delectatio, and prudentia, and he endorses Valla's bipartite nomenclature of vice and virtue. And More echoes the conviction, which runs through all of Valla's work, that the language of the poets, historians, and orators is more descriptive of human reality than the abstract terminology of the dialecticians. In a word,

More chiefly agrees with Valla concerning language. And so it could be argued that

More's interest in On pleasure is not fundamentally different from his interest in Valla's

Annotations or On Latin style. More respects Valla as an expert on language, someone who can help him to develop a more polished prose style, who can illuminate the Greek

New Testament, and above all someone who can provide a more accurate philosophical vocabulary. Even reading an explicitly philosophical book such as On pleasure More is less interested in what Valla says than in his manner of expression. And so the rule holds despite first impressions: More reads Valla for his Latinity rather than his opinions.

But the preceding pages have done more than build a purely negative argument; they have done more than illustrate what the tradition discussed here is not. Among other things, they have illuminated that often misconceived and overlooked word, influence.

And this is one advantage of the narrow focus of this study, which emphasizes two writers and two books. This has allowed a detailed exploration of what it means for one writer to influence another, for a later book to develop the themes presented by an earlier one. There has been time to observe how More comes to terms with Valla's ideas, rejecting some things, accepting others, but engaging with everything. It has been possible to document the process of influence in action, almost to witness it as it unfolds.

Of all the lessons this holds, perhaps the most important is one which the case of

Utopia and On pleasure does not so much reveal as reinforce. This is More's reliance upon literary models. While the argument that On pleasure furnished one of Utopia's models may be new, it belongs to a venerable tradition. Nothing has proved easier, for decades if not centuries, than to speculate regarding More's various literary allusions.

There is Plato's Republic, the dialogues of Cicero, the of Lucian, the political tracts of Thomas Aquinas, Augustine's City of God, and of course there are the books of the New Testament, notably the Four Gospels and the .459 Like so many Italian humanists, including Valla, More uses his writing to display his credentials as a reader: Utopia demonstrates the range and depth of his reading, often only implicitly.

On pleasure simply represents an addition to the long list of books that have left their mark on Utopia. Valla's name is only one more entry in the register of authors whose thought and expression have informed More's book.

And so, while it may be wondered that More never explicitly acknowledges On pleasure in the pages of Utopia, the sheer number of More's models may provide a partial answer. More draws on so many works that he can scarcely mention all of them: he fails to name every book that contributes to his achievement. It might even be said that acknowledging every influence is impossible because Utopia is all imitation: everything is borrowed and adapted from somewhere else. More reflects, revises, and reverses his influences to the point that his sources, from the smallest quotation to the broadest theme, are past counting. And so it is no wonder if More chooses not to discuss

459 For one example of this, see the notes of Surtz and Hexter to the Yale edition of Utopia. his borrowings. It could even be argued that More does not need to mention his influences explicitly - not considering the highly educated audience for which Utopia was originally and exclusively intended. More's references may be considered too obvious for discussion. It may be possible that the reference itself serves as a form of discussion.

There is also nothing new about the notion that More comments upon other texts through Utopia. Once again this is a lesson that the case of On pleasure only serves to reinforce. Even when More inverts Valla's arguments, as when he concludes Utopia with the same pessimistic view of human nature that begins On pleasure, More is interpreting Valla. More is making sense of Valla's book for himself and for his contemporaries. And so present study underlines the importance of such active imitation in the process of literary influence. It lends fresh meaning to the words of Terence Cave, now nearly thirty years past, in his study of humanist literary imitation, The cornucopian text. Although Cave is speaking primarily about the practice of understanding texts through paraphrase, his words can also be applied here. They are just as relevant to the less literal act of interpretation that takes place when one book revisits the themes of another.

In imitation, indeed, the activities of reading and writing become virtually identified.... The writer as imitator concedes that he cannot entirely escape the constraints of what he has read. In this respect, imitation is also germane to interpretation, since the interpretative act can only become visible in a second discourse which claims to be a reconstitution of the first.460

Terence Cave, The cornucopian text: problems of writing in the French Renaissance (Oxford, Clarendon Press: 1979)35. 292

Wherever else these words may be true, they are certainly true here. In writing

Utopia, More 'reconstitutes' On pleasure, as he does so many books, and in doing this

More also re-interprets Valla. Like a good translation or paraphrase, Erasmus' New

Testament paraphrases, Valla's Sallust commentary, Heywood's Sallust translation,

Valla's Homer and Chapman's, Utopia comments upon Valla's original text by modifying it. The order of some arguments is reversed, some are expanded, some are turned on their heads, others are restated with only the most subtle variation. All of them are changed, whether consciously or not, and the new text is really only the next act of interpretation. Think of the unconscious interpretation when Utopia's English translators blur the distinction between prudentia and sapientia by translating both words as wisdom! In this spirit of humanist translation and paraphrase, More understands his models by changing them. This includes not only Valla's book but all the other works that shaped Utopia. More's dialogue is at once an original work and a book about other books, a piece of highly imaginative criticism. To extend Cave's words above, it is an example of what might be called 'imitative interpretation'. This process of endless discussion and revision keeps the intellectual tradition in which both More and Valla participate alive: in some respects it could even be said that the process of imitation and interpretation is the tradition.

But the nature of the 'conversation' between More and Valla is only a start. The preceding pages have also revealed something of the content of their discussion, the issues that were actually debated through this process of 'imitative interpretation'.

More's reaction to Valla, at once sympathetic and hostile, offers a more basic insight into the substance of this literary tradition. It reveals an argument about coming to terms with 293 the legacy of previous centuries. Contrasting Utopia and On pleasure provides the basis for a division of medieval culture into two categories, categories which describe how

More and Valla each respond to this common heritage. In one case, More and Valla agree that the traditions in question are harmful and must be challenged and reformed.

Regarding others, they remain divided, and deeply so.

Little needs to be said about this division here - not if the preceding chapters have accomplished their purpose. On the one hand there are the more recent traditions of medieval grammar and dialectic. These are the traditions associated with high medieval culture and the age of the first universities: Aristotelian approaches to ethics, medicine, and theology, Latin grammars indifferent to the usage of Virgil and Cicero, matters secular and sacred explored through time-corrupted texts, learned scholars ignorant of

Greek and unashamed of their ignorance. In opposing all of this More finds in Valla a supporter, a mentor, a co-belligerent. But then there is another set of traditions, this one considerably older, with roots in the first centuries of the Christian era. It includes the

Christian authors known as church fathers, the pagan writers, like Plotinus, who helped inform patristic thought, and all the men and women, some famous and most obscure, who contributed through their lives to the ideal of Christian asceticism. Here More finds in Valla an unreliable ally or even an adversary, not the challenger of a corrupt establishment but a radical bent on undermining attitudes and institutions necessary to the continued health of society. More and Valla are as clearly divided over this second set of traditions as they are united in rejecting the first.

The implications for the intellectual history of the Renaissance should be obvious enough. The alternating agreement and disagreement between More and Valla regarding the different strands of medieval tradition opens a window onto one of Renaissance

Europe's liveliest debates. It is a debate that concerns the perennial question of how a society can renew itself without becoming unmoored from what is best in the practices and beliefs of previous generations. It is a question of how much of the past should be preserved and how much cast aside, how the culture of court and church and university can reform itself without being broken past hope of repair. In their varying degrees of radicalism, More and Valla illustrate this debate very well. Neither man can accept existing conditions and neither is entirely satisfied with the culture of the recent past, but neither proposes the same remedy. To use a favorite humanist analogy, More and Valla are in the situation of surgeons who both accept that some part of the patient's limb must be amputated, but who cannot agree on how high they should cut. Neither doubts that there is a problem, but each proposes a slightly different solution. Both desire change, but Valla would go farther, erasing even those traditions that More would see preserved:

Valla's willingness to revise notions of human nature and potential which More still endorses marks him as the true radical.

This debate - how high to cut? - is interesting not in the least because it demonstrates a consequence of adopting so much Italian literature and scholarship in

England during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It shows how English libraries, universities, and patrons imported Italian controversies along with the books, ideas and disciplines developed in Italy. The controversy over which aspects of medieval tradition to discard and which to preserve is not confined to More and Valla: it has deep roots in

Quattrocento Italy. And so in defending medieval traditions regarding the sinfulness of pride or the value of a secular career, in challenging the assessment of human nature 295 presented in On pleasure, More is stepping into one of the defining arguments of Valla's day and age. More is joining the debate over human nature that unfolds in the pages of

Trinkaus' In Our image and likeness.

Because More was not alone is his objections: Valla faced similar criticism in his own time. For all his natural interest in evidence that confirms his thesis, Trinkaus mentions many exceptions to his account of how Italian humanists tried to create a new, fundamentally positive conception of human nature and purpose. For every writer that

Trinkaus discovers intent on developing a more optimistic vision of individual potential, there is someone else determined to oppose him. Every book 'On the dignity of man' is matched by one 'On human misery', every attack on asceticism or the association of ambition with sin is met with a defense of those same concepts. And while it is true that

Valla's critics were often drawn from the ranks of the dialecticians and the grammarians, others were as devoted to classical philology and as hostile to traditional Aristotelianism as Valla himself. These writers took the same position that More would a century later.

While largely supportive of Valla's philological aspirations, they felt little sympathy with more radical philosophical goals, such as the affirmation of the pleasure of preeminence.

These less radical humanists were interested in overturning certain medieval traditions, but they also favored the traditions that condemned ambition and affirmed the essential depravity of human nature as surely as More did.

Nor were such men obscure or untalented. Trinkhaus' list of humanists who opposed the 'reinvention' of human nature and potential includes some of the most celebrated authors of the age. At one time or another Bartolomeo Facio, Giovanni

Garzoni (1419-1505), even Poggio Bracciolini, Valla's greatest contemporary detractor 296 and the most celebrated discoverer of classical texts, all defended an essentially pessimistic picture of the human condition. l Valla and others may have written in praise of ambition and asserted the fundamental soundness of every human impulse, but some of the finest and most distinguished Italian humanists spoke, as More would later, of the power of sin and the corruption of the human heart. They wrote with a passion equal to anything in the final pages of Utopia about the value of the solitary life and the evil temptations of worldly glory. There were first-rate Italian classicists, Poggio among them, who were just as willing as More to repeat commonplaces about The miseries of the human condition — the latter is actually Poggio's title! And there were other humanists, Facio being the most famous example, who took it upon themselves specifically to defend and reaffirm the 'Stoic' perspective which Valla caricatures in the opening pages of On pleasure.

And this is how it can be said that the individual story of More's reading of On pleasure has a larger historical relevance. By engaging Valla's ideas in Utopia, More is joining his English voice to a conversation that had taken place in Italy for at least a century. More demonstrates, as an individual, the natural consequences of the last century of cultural contact. If English students can read Italian books they will respond to what they read, and in so responding, a debate that was once confined to Italy extends across Europe: what was intranational becomes international. Of course it is true that

More does not agree with all of Valla's ideas, but then neither did many of Valla's own contemporaries. What matters is that More is discussing Valla's ideas and through

1 Trinkaus discusses these writers in chapters V through VII of In Our image and likeness. 462 Trinkaus, 258. Poggio's book was completed in 1455. ibid, 200. That Facio's book is called On mortal happiness — De vitae felicitate — should not obscure the fact that his assessment of human nature is, at least compared to Valla, pessimistic. 297

discussion he is keeping them alive. What matters is that More is continuing or even

reviving a discussion over human nature and potential that had begun generations earlier

in Italy. And so it is possible to see in the account of Utopia and On pleasure one aspect

of the internationalization of the Italian Renaissance. The conflict which occupies the

center stage of In Our image and likeness has moved from the Mediterranean to the

North Atlantic.

But even apart from these considerations, there is the matter of method: not

More's critical and interpretive strategies, or Valla's, but the method employed in the

present study. The very means that have been adopted here to explore Utopia and On pleasure can reveal something about the two books and indeed about the men who wrote

them. On the one hand, there is no denying the amount of time that has been spent within

the pages of Utopia and On pleasure. Not only have their principal themes been

discussed, but even the individual words, the linguistic foundations have been explored.

Whole chapters have been concerned with philology and philosophy, with ethical theory

and the language on which ethics depends. At times even single words, voluptas,

delectatio, prudentia, superbia-pride-ambition, became the subject of intense and

insistent scrutiny. But on the other hand, the very fact that these methods have proven

successful underlines the importance of such linguistic minutiae to understanding both

writers. These methods would certainly not be appropriate to every subject, but even this

is worth noting. Their success in the present study reflects the extent to which More and

Valla each traded in words, relied upon them. The linguistic approach has proved

effective thanks to the almost obsessive interest in language which unites More and Valla

despite all their differences. 298

And this is the final lesson of the present study. Once again it is not an entirely novel lesson, but it certainly bears repeating. Indeed, it is almost impossible to overstate.

And it has relevance not only for More and for Valla, but for the whole class of professional writers that they represent. The preceding pages have served as a reminder of the crucial role of reading and writing, of imitation and paraphrase and re-writing, in a word, of literature, for More and Valla alike. These activities stood at the center of their lives to an extent that most of us would find hard to imagine: the proportion of their days that men like More and Valla spent engaged with books, their own or those of others, would seem astounding to all but the smallest proportion of the human race. That so much can be learned about More and Valla simply through scrutinizing the language of the books that they wrote and the books that they read only drives this lesson home. The careful and systematic reading presented in this dissertation reinforces the impression created by casually inspecting even a single page from any of their books: these are men who make sense of themselves and their place in the world primarily through the written word.

And this is why the close reading employed here is significant even for its own sake. That More and Valla can be understood through an almost exclusive focus upon the words that they had written, read, and even spoken themselves demonstrates how both men relied upon linguistic self-construction. It illustrates, as no other approach could, how both men relied on literary means to define themselves and others, to give meaning to their present existence and to construct their future hopes. It is the best proof of how seriously More and Valla each believed in the relationship between sign and signified, the token of their shared conviction that the words on the page must remain 299 faithful to the reality of human experience. It is the most effective test of the humanist doctrine which lies at the heart of their common challenge to medieval dialectic: the teaching that words should serve as a mirror for life. More and Valla opposed traditions of grammar and dialectic on the grounds that they divorced language from nature and separated words from experience. It is only to be expected, then, that their own language should be something more than the sterile word-play which they criticized in others. If

More and Valla can be understood by their writing and reading, it is because they each invested so much of who they were in the things that they wrote and read.

And in this sense it may be said that the success of the primarily literary and linguistic methods employed here is more than the vindication of the present study; it is also the vindication of the study's two subjects. It confirms their shared theory, it rewards their common faith in the revelatory power of language that unites these otherwise very different men. More and Valla have been studied here through the very method they favored themselves, they have been subjected to precisely the same attention to the details of Latin usage, the same careful textual analysis which characterizes their own reading and writing. And so the approach that More and Valla both advocated has demonstrated its value, at the very least, in the case of More and Valla themselves. The written word, which both men used to understand their world, has proven its worth as a means of understanding both of them. 300

A Note on Bibliography

While almost all of the books listed in the following pages contributed something important, a few merit special acknowledgment. Among recent Valla scholars, Mario

Fois deserves mention for his understanding of the larger purpose of Valla's life and work. He anticipates the position taken in this dissertation that Valla is essentially sincere in his professions of religious faith. And the author of the present work owes

Maristella Lorch special thanks for her account of Valla's challenge to the medieval notion of auctoritas. The discussion of prudentia in the works of both Valla and More benefited greatly from Eugene Rice's The Renaissance idea of wisdom.

In terms of placing Valla within the larger context of Italian intellectual history, two authors stand out. Charles Trinkaus has offered a persuasive and exhaustively researched account of the emergence of a positive view of human nature and potential during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The argument presented in the fifth and sixth chapters of this dissertation is really an extension of the case Trinkaus builds in the pages of In Our image and likeness. Paul Oskar Kristeller deserves credit for expounding a theory which this dissertation implicitly confirms: that humanism is an educational philosophy rather than a consistent belief system.

Of More's various biographers, the most important here is certainly Richard

Marius, whose ability to present various details of More's life and work into a coherent whole has been invaluable. The present study is partially a vindication of Marius' argument that More's worldview was rooted in Medieval traditions and only superficially influenced by the newer intellectual currents of the Italian Renaissance. But while 301

Marius has probably proven most useful, E.E. Reynolds' study Thomas More and

Erasmus deserves credit as well. Reynolds brilliantly captures a conflict between humanist and scholastic methods which defined More's relationship with Erasmus and which also serves to explain Valla's appeal for More.

John B. Gleason's study of John Colet's life and philosophy has also proved extremely useful. Gleason's account of the disputes between Colet and Erasmus was not discussed in the text of this dissertation, but it was still invaluable in shaping the picture presented here. As Gleason describes it, the debate between Erasmus and Colet as contemporaries is very similar to the debate which takes place between More and Valla at a distance of nearly one hundred years.

Robert Black's Humanism and education in medieval and Renaissance Italy and

Ronald Witt's In the footsteps of the ancients are both excellent studies on the origins of

Italian humanism. They deserve mention in any study that sets out to come to terms with the development of humanism, whether in Italy or in Europe as a whole.

And finally, mention must be made of Salvatore Camporeale's series of essays,

Lorenzo Valla: umanesimo, riforma e controriforma. Camporeale does not anticipate the specific argument of this dissertation that On pleasure influenced More's Utopia. But he deserves credit for recognizing the connection between More and Valla in general terms.

His essay on Valla and More makes a rare and valuable case for treating these two writers a part of a recognizable intellectual tradition. And for this reason alone, it is definitely worth reading. Primary Sources, Published

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R.W. Chambers, Thomas More. London: Jonathan Cape, 1938.

Michael Clanchy, Abelard: a Medieval Life. Bodmin, Cornwall: Blackwell Publishers, 1997.

Brendan Cook, "The uses of fespiscere in the Latin of Erasmus: the Gospels and Beyond". Canadian Journal of History XLII (winter 2007) 397-410. 307

Lewis Einstein, The Italian Renaissance in England. New York: Columbia University Press, 1903.

Guido Faba, Summa de vitiis et virtutibus, ed. Virgilio Pini. Digital version by Angus Graham http://www2.hs-augsburg.de/~harsch/Chronologia/Lspostl3/Faba/fab_sw0.html Accessed February 19th, 2008.

Mario Fois, II pensiero cristiano di Lorenzo Valla ne quadro storico-culturale del suo ambiente. Rome: Libreria Editrice dell' Universita Gregoriana, 1969.

Eugenio Garin, Italian humanism: philosophy and civic life in the Renaissance, trans. Peter Munz. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1965.

Joseph Gill, Eugenius TV: pope of Christian union. Westminster, Maryland: Newman Press, 1961.

Etienne Gilson, History of Christian philosophy in the middle ages. New York: Random House, 1980.

John B. Gleason, John Colet. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.

Peter Gwyn, The king's cardinal: the rise and fall of Thomas Wolsey. London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1990.

Harald Hagendahl, The Latin fathers and the classics. Goteborg: Elanders Boktrykeri Aktiebolag, 1958.

George L. Hamilton, The indebtedness of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde to Guido della Colonne's Historia Troiana. New York: Columbia University Press, 1903.

Thomas Harris, The place of Duns Scotus in medieval thought. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927.

Michael A. Hicks, Who's Who in Late Medieval England. London: Shepheard-Walwyn, 1991.

Wilfred Hooper, "Tudor sumptuary laws". The English historical review, 30:119 (1915). 308

Dominick A. Iorio, The Aristotelians of Renaissance Italy: a philosophical exposition. Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1991.

Thomas M. Izbicki, "Councils of the Catholic Reformation: a Historical Survey" in The church, the councils, and reform: the legacy of the fifteenth century, eds. Gerald Christanson, Thomas M. Izbicki, and Christopher M. Bellitto. Dexter, Michigan: Catholic University of America Press, 2008.

Sears Reynolds Jayne, John Colet and Marsilio Ficino. Westport Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1980.

Douglas Kibbee, For to speak French trewely: the French language in England, 1000- 1600. Philadelphia: J. Benjamins, 1991.

Paul Oskar Kristeller, Marsilio Ficino and his philosophy. Gloucester, Mass: P. Smith, 1964.

— Studies in renaissance thought and letters. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1985.

Robin Bruce Lockhart, Halfway to heaven: the hidden life of the Carthusians. London: Methuen, 1985.

George Logan, The meaning of More's 'Utopia'. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983.

Maristella de Panizza Lorch, A defense of life: Lorenzo Valla's theory of pleasure. Munich: W. Fink, 1985.

James McConica, English humanists and Reformation politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965.

Michael A. Mullet, Martin Luther. Bodmin, Cornwall: Routledge, 2004.

Gordon Mursell, The theology of the Carthusian life in the writings of St. Bruno and Guigo I. Salzburg: Institut fur Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 1988. 309

H.A. Obermann, Teufelsdreck: Eschatology and Scatology in the "Old" Luther', Sixteenth-century Journal. 19 (1988): 435-50.

Patricia J. Osmond, "The Valla Commentary on Sallust's Bellum Catilinae: Questions of Authenticity and Reception". Renaissance commentaries, nodes Neolatinae, Neolatin texts and studies, band 4, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 2005.

Olga Zorzi Pugliese, "English translations from the Italian humanists". Italica, 50:3 (autumn, 1973).

E.E. Reynolds, Thomas More and Erasmus. New York: Fordham University Press, 1965.

Eugene Rice The Renaissance idea of wisdom. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1978.

Sergio Rossi, Ricerche suU'umanesimo e sul rinascimento in Inghilterra. Milan: Societa editrice vita e pensiero, 1969.

W. Rothwell, "English and French in England after 1362". English studies, 82:6 (2001): 539-559.

Susan Saygin, Humphrey Duke of Gloucester and the English humanists. Leiden: Brill, 2002.

Takashi Shogimen, Ockham and political discourse in the late middle ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Jerold E. Siegel, Rhetoric and philosophy and renaissance humanism: the union of eloquence and wisdom from Petrarch to Valla. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1968.

Joan Simon, Education and society in Tudor England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966.

Eward Surtz, The praise of pleasure: philosophy, education, and communism in More's 'Utopia'. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957. 310

Simon Thurley, Hampton Court: a social and architectural history. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Charles Trinkaus, In Our image and likeness: humanity and divinity in Italian humanist thought. London: Constable, 1970.

J.B. Trapp, Erasmus, Colet, and More: the early Tudor humanists and their books. Dorchester: The British Library, 1991.

Berthold L. Ullman, The humanism ofColuccio Salutati. Padua: Editrice Antenore, 1963.

Carlo Vecce, "Tradizioni Valliane tra Parigi e le Fiandre dal Cusano ad Erasmo" in Lorenzo Valla e I'umanesimo Italiano, eds. Ottavio Besomi and Mariangela Regoliosi. Padua: Editrice Antenore, 1986

Richard Waswo, Language and meaning in the Renaissance. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987.

Roberto Weiss, Humanism in England during the fifteenth century. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1967.

Ronald Witt, In the footsteps of the ancients : the origins of Humanism from Lovato to Bruni. Boston: Brill, 2000.

Dictionaries, Lexicons and Concordances

Cassell's new Latin dictionary, ed. D.B. Simpson. New York: Funk and Wagnells, 1959.

A concordance to the Utopia of St. Thomas More and a frequency word list, eds. Ladislaus J. Bolchazy, Gregory Gichan and Frederick Theobald. New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 1978.

A Latin dictionary founded on Andrews' edition ofFreund 's Latin dictionary, revised, enlarged, and in great part rewritten by Charleton T. Lewis. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Liddel and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon. London: Oxford University Press, 1968. 311

Shakespeare-lexicon : a complete dictionary of all the English words, phrases and constructions in the works of the poet, ed. Alexander Schmidt. Berlin: W. De Gruyter, 1972.