The Power of Images and Forces of Fragments in the Works of Pier Paolo Vergerio the Elder

14-spikic 240-257 09.01.2007 10:26 Page 240 PREGLEDNI ^LANKI PREGLEDNI ^LANKI Review Articles Marko [piki}, Zagreb THE POWER OF IMAGES AND FORCES OF FRAGMENTS IN THE WORKS OF PIER PAOLO VERGERIO THE ELDER A sixteen-year-old from Koper named Pier Paolo Vergerio (around 1369–1444) came to Florence in the mid-1380s. The youth, who had started his education in Padua, chose Florence as the environ- ment for his intellectual growth. He got in touch with the chancellor Coluccio Salutati and became his close associate in the pursuit of the knowledge of antiquity and its renewal in a cohabitation of rhetoric, ethics and history.1 Vergerio started lecturing in logic at the Bolog- 1 On Vergerio, cf. introduction of Leonard Smith to Vergerio’s epistolary, Pier Paolo Vergerio, Epistolario, Fonti per la storia d’Italia 74, Roma 1934, pp. XI–XXXI; David Robey, Virgil’s Statue at Mantua and the Defence of Poetry. An Unpublished Letter of 1397, Rinascimento, 2 ser. IX, 1969, pp. 183–203; Hans Baron, La crisi del primo rinascimento itali- ano. Umanesimo civile e libertà repubblicana in un’età di classicismo e di tirannide (ed. R. Pecchioli), Firenze 1970, pp. 140–148; David Robey, P. P. Vergerio The Elder: Republicanism and Civic Values in the Work of an Early Humanist’, Past and Present, 58, 1973, pp. 3–37; IDEM, Aspetti dell’umanesimo vergeriano, L’umanesimo in Istria (ed. Vittore Branca, Sante Gracciotti), Firenze 1983, pp. 7–17; Alan Fisher, Three Meditations on the Destruction of Vergil’s Statue: The Early Humanist Theory of Poetry, Renaissance Quarterly, XL/4, 1987, pp. 607–635; George Holmes, The Florentine Enlightenment, Oxford 1992, pp. 15–16; Philip Jacks, The Antiquarian and the Myth of Antiquity. The Origins of Rome in Renais- sance Thought, Cambridge 1993, pp. 67–71; Andrea Bolland, Art and Humanism in Early Renaissance Padua: Cennini, Vergerio and Petrarch on Imitation, Renaissance Quarterly, XLIX, 1996, pp. 469–487; John M. McManamon, Pierpaolo Vergerio the Elder. The Humanist as Orator, Tempe 1996. On Vergerio’s writings on the three disciplines in his texts, cf. especially David Robey, Humanism and Education in the Early Quattro- cento: The De ingenuis moribus of P. P. Vergerio, Bibliotheque d’ humani- sme et renaissance XLII, 1980, pp. 27–58 and John M. McManamon, Inno- vation in Early Humanist Rhetoric: The Oratory of Pier Paolo Vergerio The Elder, Rinascimento I, 2 ser., XXII, 1982, pp. 3–32. 240 14-spikic 240-257 09.01.2007 10:26 Page 241 PREGLEDNI ^LANKI na University as early as 1388, but he returned to Padua two years later. Despite his occasional contacts with the core of the Florentine renewal, he played a truly significant role in the development of early humanism.2 The indirect contact was by no means fruitless. This paper attempts to clarify his attitude to antiquities and consider his importan- ce in passing his insights to others. Ever since the 13th century, Padua was a major centre of antiquary studies, from the interpretation of archaeological finds in the age of Lovato Lovati to Petrarch’s identification of guidelines that were based on effigies of Roman rulers on medals and were supposed to give impetus to the spiritual formation of great contemporary fig- ures.3 Early humanists in Padua kept an interested eye on what was going on in Florence, so any talk of precedence, of giving or receiving influence, would be unrewarding in relation to these cities. Bruni’s Dialogues show that it was precisely the Paduan milieu that resolved some formative issues of humanist culture. The celebratory spirit of the Second Dialogue presents Niccolò Niccoli, who used the previous discussion to attack the older generation for their supposed ignorance, justifying himself with claims that he proved his attachment to Petrar- ch by going to Padua, where he copied the poet’s Africa, and brought the copy to Florence.4 Petrarch’s evocative text, which initiated human- 2 Words addressed to him by Leonardo Bruni in the introduction to Dialo- gi ad Petrum Paulum Histrum: ”… corpus quidem tuum a nobis montes et valles intermedie separant; memoriam vero atque caritatem nec distantia loci, nec ulla unquam a nobis separabit oblivio“, indicate their spiritual kin- ship, but also introduce the reader to one of the main topics of the dispute: bringing closer the terms distantia and praesentia in the discussions on antiquity and the present time. Cf. Leonardo Bruni, Opere letterarie e poli- tiche (ed. Paolo Viti), Torino 1996, p. 80. 3 On early antiquarians, cf. Roberto Weiss, The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity, Oxford 1988, pp. 1–58, and Jacks 1993, cit. n. 1, pp. 1–73. On Petrarch’s use of visual sources, cf. Annegrit Schmitt, Zur Wieder- belebung der Antike im Trecento. Petrarcas Rom-Idee in ihrer Wirkung auf die Paduaner Malerei. Die metodische Einbeziehung des römischen Münzbildnisses in die Ikonographie „Berühmter Männer“, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, XVIII/2, 1974, pp. 167–218. 4 Bruni 1996, cit. n. 2, p. 126, «Franciscum vero Petrarcham tanti sem- per feci, ut usque in Patavium profectus sim, ut ex proprio exemplari libros suos transcriberem. Ego enim primus omnium Africam illam huc adduxi, cuius quidem rei iste Colucius testis est.» 241 14-spikic 240-257 09.01.2007 10:26 Page 242 PREGLEDNI ^LANKI ists into the world of ancient Rome at a time when its power emerged, roused Vergerio’s interest too. During his second stay in Florence in 1394, he worked with Salutati to prepare the text for publication.5 Again, Vergerio wished to emulate his great predecessor by choosing the same patrons, the powerful Carrara family, but with a significant difference: his devotion to the public sphere and even to the political weight of his rhetoric. Even before Quintilian’s text was discovered in its entirety, Vergerio showed the awareness that Cicero’s precepts on the involvement of intellectuals in state affairs, which had scandalized Petrarch, had to be implemented. This is confirmed by the readings of Africa: Vergerio increasingly saw them as far-reaching and important motivations, where the basic “mechanisms” had been largely prepared by Salutati in his texts, related to the issue of presenting and dissemi- nating knowledge about antiquities to a community.6 The first results can be seen in the respect paid to Petrarch’s genius in his biography, and, shortly afterward, in the use of the powers of evocation, where Ve- rgerio personifies Cicero’s “voice” as the orator’s “response” to Petrar- ch’s famous epistle from 1345, where the poet laments Cicero’s involvement in the struggles between Pompey and Caesar.7 As demonstrated by the words spoken by Salutati in Bruni’s dialogues, addressing oneself in private (in solitudine sequm locui) became unacceptable. Knowledge absorbed by the mind had to be exchanged and, like in ancient discussions, displayed through different positions. The paragon of personal virtue and feeling of bliss appeared as an idea that had to be shared within the larger community. Dispute 5 Paolo Viti notes the possibility that Niccoli brought the text to Florence in 1396, as a transcription of the edition arranged by Vergerio. Cf. Bruni 1996, cit. n. 2, p. 127., n. 30. 6 Salutati was more than a censor to the younger generation. In his etymological analyses, allegorical interpretations of ancient names and contemporary buildings (Hercules in De laboribus Herculis, the Floren- tine baptistery as the temple of Mars in Invectiva in Antonium Luscum), Salutati provided the humanists with new insights. As noted by Witt, the Florentine chancellor even started discussing complex problems of the cognitive theory, as seen in an epistle from 1394, which talks about the roles of senses, mind, body, and the terms sensus communis, phantasia, intellectus, mens. Cf. Ronald Witt, Hercules at the Crossroads. The Life, Works, and Thought of Coluccio Salutati, Durham 1983, p. 298. 7 On Vergerio’s letter to Petrarch, cf. McManamon 1996, cit. n. 1, p. 52. 242 14-spikic 240-257 09.01.2007 10:26 Page 243 PREGLEDNI ^LANKI (causa), used by humanists as a prominent epistemological principle, did not allow lingering within reliable dogmas. In this way, humanists made an important step to accepting and applying the insights which they gained on topics that were not seen as unilateral and dogmatically codified any more. Vergerio’s documents stand out because they make a diagnosis similar to the one from the Dialogues, about the neglect of important skills like rhetoric.8 Eloquence, once used by the great Ro- mans to order the life and welfare of the state, had to be revived. Vergerio responded to such challenges in writing and speech; it is not surprising that he was fascinated by Petrarch, recognized as a major founder of the ideals of humanism. This constant swerving between meditation and action, which had a special and important place in Petrarch’s life, can be seen in Vergerio’s speeches, some invok- ing ancestors, others intended for his contemporaries. His most emi- nent recipient from the past was Saint Jerome, to whom Vergerio ded- icated ten speeches between 1392 and 1408, praising the saint’s with- drawal from the world.9 Speeches addressed to the saint had the role of a moral corrective for worldly actions. They are similar to Petrarch’s confiding to St Augustine; however, they do not stop at confiding personal issues to a letter, but are presented to the community on the saint’s day, with the intention of affecting it according to the rhetorical prin- ciples of docere et movere. Such scholarly promotion in the first humanist communi- ties in Padua and Florence was focused on identifying and preserving values received from the past.

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