Lives Transformed: John Whethamstede’s Use of Plutarch’s Lives

Marianne Pade

Italian humanism began to be influential in England during the 1430s, and one of the immediate effects was an import of the new translations of ancient . Among them were Latin versions of a number of Plutarch’s Lives. This article will first give a short overview of the reception of Plutarch’s Lives in the early Italian and then discuss how the learned abbot of St. Albans, John Whethamstede (1392–1465), adapted this new corpus of biographies for his own purposes—almost as soon as it became available in England.

Plutarch’s Lives in the Early Italian Renaissance

In the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century a fervent interest in Plutarch’s writings manifested itself among a Latin readership for the first time since antiquity. The period has even been named the ‘Plutarchan Age.’1 Like most Greek authors Plutarch had been almost unknown in Western Europe during the Middle Ages, but when Renaissance humanists rekindled interest in Greek language and culture, he became one of the most widely read authors of the period. The most popular part of his works was clearly the Lives. This was in part due to the influence of Manuel Chrysoloras (ca. 1350–1415), the Byzantine diplomat and scholar who had been invited by the Florentine chancellor to teach Greek in . Chrysoloras undoubt- edly hoped that his cultural embassy would induce the West to help defend against the Turks.2 As we know it did not; still, his tenure at

1 Roberto Weiss, Medieval and Humanist Greek, Medioevo e Umanesimo 8 (Padua: Antenore, 1977), 226. 2 See for instance James Hankins, “Chrysoloras and the Greek Studies of ,” in Manuele Crisolora e il ritorno del greco in Occidente, Atti del Convegno Internazionale (Napoli, 26–29 giugno 1997), ed. Riccardo Maisano and Antonio Rollo (Naples: Istituto Universitario Orientale, 2002), 175–197; Noreen Humble, “Parallelism and the Humanists,” in Plutarch’s Lives: Parallelism and Purpose, ed. Noreen Humble (London: Classical Press of Wales, 2010), 237–265.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi: 10.1163/9789004339750_007 94 pade

Florence, where he held the chair of Greek from 1397 to 1400, was immensely successful.3 Chrysoloras used Plutarch’s writings to remind the Latin West of the close relationship which once had existed between and Romans— and which he strove to revive. He proudly emphasized that Plutarch’s Lives had contributed more to the fame of quite a number of great Romans than had any Latin book.4 The Lives were central to Chrysoloras’ cultural enterprise, and his pupils, and eventually their pupils as well, were responsible for making the Lives accessible to a Western readership through Latin translations.5 Humanist educators generally subscribed to ’s notion of historia ma- gistra vitae (‘history, the instructor of life,’ De oratore, ii.36). They taught that learning by example far surpasses learning by precept, in other words that history and biography are far more effective means of moral education than theoretical moral philosophy. Genres were valued in proportion to their ability to convey moral lessons;6 thus history, which teaches the reader practical ethical lessons by setting before him examples of laudable or blameworthy modes of behavior—and rhetoric, without which profound thoughts or great events cannot be properly expressed—were central to the studia humanitatis, as was of course moral philosophy proper. Biography was rarely discussed as a separate genre but grouped with history in discussions of its pedagogical worth. Certainly, Plutarch’s Lives, which are written with the explicit aim of teaching through the examples of great men, of conveying a moral lesson in a style that would make it irresistible, of forming the reader’s character, inevitably recommended themselves to anyone interested in the studia humanitatis. The very educational program expressed by Plutarch in the Lives coincides perfectly with the theories of Renaissance educators; that in itself, one might say, was enough to secure his popularity. In fact, Plutarch’s educational zeal has been

3 For Salutati’s invitation to Chrysoloras see Ronald G. Witt, Hercules at the Crossroads: The Life, Works, and Thought of Coluccio Salutati, Duke Monographs in Medieval and Renaissance Studies 6 (Durham, nc: Duke Univ. Press, 1983), 303–305. The official invitation to Chrysoloras of 28 March 1396, written by Salutati, has been edited by Michael D. Reeve, “The Rediscovery of Classical Texts in the Renaissance,” in Itinerari dei testi antichi, ed. Oronzo Pecere (Rome: l’Erma di Bretschneider, 1991), 134–136. 4 Coluccio Salutati, Epistolario, ed. Francesco Novati, 4 vols. (Rome: Istituto storico italiano, 1891–1911), 4:341–343, Appendice prima. 5 Antonio Rollo emphasizes the connection between Chrysoloras’ letter to Salutati, his teach- ing, and his cultural and diplomatic endeavours in “Problemi e prospettive della ricerca su Manuele Crisolora,” in Manuele Crisolora, ed. Maisano and Rollo, 74–75 and n. 156. 6 See Eckhard Kessler, Das Problem des frühen Humanismus: Seine philosophische Bedeutung bei Coluccio Salutati, Humanistische Bibliothek: Abhandlungen und Texte, 1st ser., vol. 1 (Munich: Fink, 1968).