CHAPTER 4 Translating in Fifteenth-Century : George of Trebizond and Leonardo Bruni

J. Cornelia Linde

On 4 May 1452 an encounter between the two humanists George of Trebizond (1395–1484) and (1380–1459) at the papal chancery turned violent. Wrongly considered the aggressor, George was forced to spend a brief spell in prison, after which he sought to arrange a meeting with his disgruntled patron, . His goal, however, remained unaccomplished, and George finally left for Naples in June 1452.1 His position with Nicholas V had already been precarious before the alterca- tion with Poggio: a request earlier in the same year that his translation projects not be re-assigned to others—he singled out Poggio and Jacob of Cremona— had resulted in a rebuke from the pope.2 With George now finally fallen from grace, Nicholas V, unwilling to wait for the completion of his latest commis- sion, a translation of Ps.-Aristotle’s Problemata, passed the task on to Theodore Gaza. This was adding insult to injury: only a few years earlier, in 1449/50, George had been publicly attacked by his fellow Byzantine, who in ad- dition had also superseded him as Cardinal ’s protégé.3 Nicholas V’s

1 For a vivid description of the events at the papal chancery, see John Monfasani, George of Trebizond. A Biography and a Study of his and Logic (Leiden, 1976), 109–111. My sum- mary is based on Monfasani’s work. This article is the revised version of an essay written under Jill Kraye’s supervision during the Warburg Institute’s MA course 2003/4. 2 George voiced his discontent in a document published by Monfasani, George of Trebizond, 341–2 (Appendix One: The Autobiographical Sketch in the De Antisciis): ‘Anno domini 1452 a papa Nicolao Quinto … exacti Roma sumus quia non patiebamur tot tantaque volumina, summo labore nobis edita, partim in Pogium Florentinum, partim in Iacobum Cremonensem transferri … A me sibi fuerat supplicatum ut nollet labores meos in alios transferre velletque a vexatione quam acerba huius rei memoria faciebat liberare, respondit obediendum esse mihi aliter faceret ut nullius rei possem in posterum recordari.’ 3 Monfasani, George of Trebizond, 81–82 and 47–49. For a detailed analysis of the relationship between George and Bessarion, see Christina Abenstein, ‘“Penitus me destruxisti…” Das Verhältnis Georgs von Trapezunt zu Kardinal Bessarion vor dem Hintergrund seiner Basilius- Übersetzung’, in ‘Inter graecos latinissimus, inter latinos graecissimus’. Bessarion zwischen den Kulturen, eds Claudia Märtl et al. (Berlin and Boston, 2014), 301–346, esp. 321–324, for the issues discussed here.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi ��.��63/9789004355323_005 48 Linde decision, most likely fuelled not solely by pragmatism, to assign the translation project to his rival was thus adding fuel to the flames. George found himself cornered and out of favour. His own translation of the Problemata, finally published in late 1454, was possibly still unfinished or had only just been finished when he left Rome in June 1452.4 The publication of Gaza’s rival translation, also in 1454,5 provided him with an excellent op- portunity not just for revenge but also for making up lost ground. He did not lose time, and in the second half of 1456 he composed Adversus Theodorum Gazam in perversionem Problematum Aristotelis, an invective against Gaza and his translation. In addition to carefully dissecting individual passages of Gaza’s translation (which, he claimed, contained more absurdities than syllables)6 as well as continuously criticising and at times bluntly attacking his rival, George laid out guidelines on how to translate properly, often with special reference to the writings of Aristotle. As George had to provide solid arguments to prove the superiority of his rendering of the Problemata over Gaza’s, the ideas he expressed concerning the proper way of translating had to have serious grounding: if George wanted to rehabilitate himself, the invective could not just be turned into a mudsling- ing campaign. Below the thick layer of personal insults against Gaza, Adversus Theodorum Gazam thus contains notions which George must have regarded as sound.7

4 For the dating of the translation of the Problemata and the subsequent commission of Gaza, see Monfasani, George of Trebizond, 74–75. For the publication date in late 1454 see Collectanea Trapezuntiana. Texts, Documents, and Bibliographies of George of Trebizond, ed. John Monfasani (Binghamton, NY, 1984), 640. Anna Modigliani, in her edition of Manetti’s De vita ac gestis Nicolai quinti summi pontificis, claims that the translation of the Problemata had been finished just before spring 1452; see Giannozzo Manetti, De vita ac gestis Nicolai quinti summi pontificis, ed. Anna Modigliani (Rome, 2005), 62, n. 56. 5 For the dating, see John Monfasani, ‘The Pseudo-Aristotelian Problemata and Aristotle’s De animalibus in the Renaissance’, in Natural Particulars. Nature and the Disciplines in Renaissance Europe, eds Anthony Grafton and Nancy Siraisi (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1999), 205–247, at 206. I am grateful to John Monfasani for supplying me with his forthcoming edition of Gaza’s preface to his edition of the Problemata. 6 George of Trebizond, Adversus Theodorum Gazam in perversionem Problematum Aristotelis, in Kardinal Bessarion als Theologe, Humanist und Staatsmann. Funde und Forschungen, III, ed. Ludwig Mohler (Aalen and Paderborn, 1967), 274–342, at 316 (30.1). For the dating, see Monfasani, George of Trebizond, 163. 7 See also Monfasani, George of Trebizond, 152. For an analysis of George’s criticisms of Gaza’s translation, see John Monfasani, ‘George of Trebizond’s Critique of Theodore Gaza’s Translation of the Aristotelian Problemata’, in Aristotle’s Problemata in Different Times and Tongues, eds Pieter de Leemans and Michèle Goyens (Leuven, 2006), 275–294, at 276.