Impiety Compounded: Scaliger's Double-Edged

Critique o f

by Laurel Carrington

March 1528 Erasmus published the Ciceronianus, an attack on a group Inconsisting mostly of Italian humanists who were fervent admirers of Cicero. The main features of this lengthy piece are well known.l It is written as a dia- logue in which two friends, Bulephorus and Hypologus, meet a third, Noso- ponus, who is suffering from a mysterious malady. Bulephorus knows that Nosoponus has an extreme desire to become a Ciceronian, as exact an imita- tor of Cicero's prose style as possible. Nosoponus has laboriously prepared two enormous volumes which list each word, trope, rhythm, and sentence of Cicero's prose. So simple a task as writing a letter requires that he spend many sleepless nights combing through these concordances, to phrase his let- ter exactly as Cicero would have done. Bulephorus recognizes this condition as a disease, and together with Hypo- logus he decides to help his troubled friend by carefully reasoning him out of his obsession. The dialogue that follows is a lengthy critique of the Ciceroni- ans, and is in fact one of many treatises and letters exchanged in a long de- bate concerning the appropriate way to imitate Cicero. Earlier moments in the debate include the exchange between Cortesi and Poliziano, the quarrel of Pietro Bembo and Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola (nephew of the more famous Pico), and a scandalously acrimonious series of letters and in- vectives between Poggio Bracciolini and the hero of Erasmus' youth, Lorenzo Valla.2 The long-simmering feud between Italians and Northern Europeans reached a peak of bitterness with the Ciceronianus and with the response of the real Ciceronians who, unlike Nosoponus, did not cheerfully give up their

[57 ] 58 point of view upon being exposed to the voice of reason.3 Hence the Cicero- nianus is typically interpreted as part of a literary quarrel extending over sev- eral generations. At the same time, however, a further context for the Cicero- nianus lies in the unfolding religious reform that was polarizing Europe. Erasmus himself stepped into the middle of that conflict with his De libero arbitrio published in September 1524, and his two-pronged response to Luther's reply, the Hyperaspistes I and II, published in February 1526 and in the fall of 1527 respectively. In the meantime he was enmeshed in a quarrel with the Sacramentarians, who persisted in attempting to portray Erasmus as being in essential agreement with them on the question of the Eucharist.4 On the Catholic side, he was thrown continually on the defensive against the theologians who wanted to brand him as a Lutheran. Finally, two Italians in particular, Alberto Pio of Carpi and Girolamo Aleandro caused him unceasing headaches throughout this period by accusing him of being Luther's inspiration.5 One might reasonably wonder why Erasmus, who already had so much trouble on his hands, would open yet another wound in the Republic of Let- ters by publishing the Ciceronianus. That he did so testifies to the seriousness with which he viewed the role of the Ciceronians on the European stage. As early as 1516 with the first edition of the New Testament Erasmus began his Paraclesis,I

The illustrious Lactantius Firmianus, good reader, whose eloquence Jerome especially admires, as he begins to defend the Christian religion against the pagans desires especially an eloquence second only to Cicero's be given him, thinking it wrong, I believe, to want an equal eloquence. But I indeed might heartily wish, if anything is to be gained by wishes of this kind, so long as I exhort all men to the most holy and wholesome