ILLUSTRATED from the in the NEWBERRY LIBRARY By

4° S 5999)-Zz

YZANflNE ELEHEffS IN HUMANISTIC SC1W1

ILLUSTRATED FROM THE AYLVS GELL}vS OF.1445' IN THE NEWBERRY LIBRARY

By STANLEY MORI SON Fellow of the Newberry Library

CHICAGO, I LLI NOI S Written, Composed and Printed at THE NEWBERRY LIBRARY 1952 S, F trncnl. t , /'t".t pMit., e554' c emn,., fänl- ýr rt, i,! ra, e, 'r'u ret, r lnbl. trl: t , ielirrt , N on tluer cýj"qni uänerro inc. týn, »int' lembnm Ä ý i! em, li, b, g, r. li brich-L4 ti+rre' rrmif, C. trcý:, llarrn in pr. ccef+l'prm, o r:, rr luea, l : ., tsm . AVLýGELý. If NocrvM ATTICARVM CiBL-R,.

". r" ... EýtµIVSc: }CPtýC. trceP. Xf. FELFc-t1%"Rý.,

ýo ortýert[ uoutbuli" rrr7. c"' iatLt:c: des: e; t mttlr, cluF' %up, wrpdLtntr, dcý; etitf nomtiulr, dc' rta trionc ,u lege 4's: 'ucrf+: C p:tcrrm. t, stý+c:! .mtccinsm! mn1rA .r ansnmt. t citcs (ýolir.t ('rnr. cArttttlttrn ý, - ,

in IAfVS hyraniil'qnAs orsnonc gr-,ec. t drrrbK! compoille: r. 4ý. rn: i :, rrr 'ppr.:: l7crrn. tiý . "nquininb: rcrirrri t»arirm trr {tali: ran, tsri cicýýco noc. ibnlo .+ý, pc1L 1 tan, ! 'crip! 'cýYrnr, clm boiic(gr. cc.t ucceri' lrý1Zu. t lr. tlot'itocýcýnýfunr; clclorci171 i11 [r+ncai: {zifi. i rr, agsli copi. i Fucýeir; ýýt 1i2 ca tm: t o, pi p1tctg: foltrA liT1t cotrlpLitrsttt. t. Goief t: ttY st-trim; ob ctndcln c.irn ro[Tstmuf jP tr.ylt. t tttnc ter. ttittettro/i(r&'tn. t. mnlr. lntci: tppol. tr (üpretttA "`1. litliiittLlt1, rs1 ltitQti[oýdtcs ditArnirt otttitm trtgsit t. i boutttn pro copt. t l'aLtuc botlntn procl:outtttrt pc- t Scd mtrt. . cairn etitl; rnöt -mttlr. t pcrort%irmrnttcj; lXAr: gt b. bot: oitdiý: ' .a rn: týAnb: clteht Ad: mc e/ .tl1. t! prmt p.=t-=::;, tlt. il'mAlonf; L'"ACpttfFacicb. tr sitc'cllt. cliý ? tlstt0lrpcittiant3tt ldcirco lsvr : - pofr-c: t ttrrin. t con liiiun"lttnr Ai o1tCf/iitgi, rPnbonciýrlY( MrnltttA WrA6Yfdeni:C"'ouif cpttf>

Folio 135 of the Aulus Gellius Noctes Atticae The Newberry Library It is of great intereit to watch a script develop- ing, to see it pass under this or that influence and to it from hesitation transition. .see emerge a state of or In its perfected form a_script may be an object of admiration; it does not necessarily become an object of curiosity. The several stages in the earlyhistory of the so-called "Carolingian" minuscule have long occupied the attention of scholars because they are difficult to relate. Problems of a similar order arise in connexion with the revival in humanist circles of the. "Carolingian" minuscule which took effect in the fifteenth The formal humanistic - century. and cursive hands were necessarily slow in achieving recognition. In this stage they exhibit great variation in detail, according to the character of the "Carolingian" ex- emplar before the transcriber. In the next stage a set of norms is to be seen emerging; and, in the final stage, the hands may be seen reaching their highest point of development after the invention of printing. Hence any Italian manuscript signed and dated before the introduction of printing into Italy in 1465, is important. Only partial lists of such manuscripts have been made, and no comprehensive collection of dated facsimiles exists. Both are needed before any serious account can be given of the calligraphical revolution that provided the Western countries with the alphabet they use today in all their books and newspapers. In the meantime we are grateful to Sig. de Marinis for the rich collection of plates in La Biblioteca Napoletana dei Rei d'Aragona (Milan, 1947,3 vols. published), though the dated exhibits here shown are mostly after 1465.

What the study requires is a list with commentary, of dated mss. of the period from, say, 1365 to 1465, to have written in the several centres that can be shown permanently influenced the development of schools Page 2

of writing. There is a list of 28 Florentine mss. written 1408-1465 in S. Morison, "Early Humanistic Script" The Library (Transactions of the Biblio- graphical Society, London, Series 4) XXIV (1943) pp. 26-29; and J. P. Elder, "Clues for dating Florentine Humanistic MSS" in Studies in Philology (Chapel Hill, N. C. ) XLIV, 1947, pp. 127-139, provides a list of 25 dated mss. written by Antonio di Mario from 1419 to 1453; 14 by Gherardo di Giovanni del Ciriago, dated between 1450-1472; 20 by Antonio Sinibaldi, dated between 1461-1491. These three scribes exemplify the stages in the growth of the script, and Elder sums up at pp. 130-136 the main divisions of its career as transitional humanistic (1375-1425), the middle period (1425-1465), and the perfected style (1465-1490). In the course of his article Elder asks the question "Whether Morison is correct in assigning so much credit for this change to the Florentine humanists? " This is a pertinent question which, however, it would be rash to answer before the necessary dated manuscripts have been assembled and studied. Meanwhile it may be of use to draw attention to a small group of manuscripts's igned by the one scribe, dated between 1433 and 1445.

The group consists of a Suetonius Vitae Duodecim Caesarum dated 1433 in the Grenville Kane collection at Princeton; another Suetonius in the McLean collection at Cambridge, dated 1443; a Leonardo Bruni De Primo bello Punico in the Lewis Collection at the Free Library, Philadelphia, dated 1444. To these three recorded specimens it is now possible to add a fourth, hitherto unrecorded: an Aulus Gellius Noctes Atticae in the Wing Collection at the Newberry Lib- rary, Chicago, dated 1445. All four manuscripts are signed, as well as dated, by the scribe: MILANUS BURRUS. None of the colophons, unfortunately, Page 3

includes a reference to the scribe's native city, or place of residence or work. Burrus makes no entry into Paolo d'Ancona and Erhard Aeschlimann's Dic- tionnaire. He mayor may not have been a professional though his script is certainly of professional quality, and he must have been highly esteemed to be employed on a book as elaborately decorated as the Kane Sue- tonlus. That he worked in Florence is improbable if onlybecause the Fitzwilliam Suetonius and the Phila- delphia Bruni bear the device of the ducal family of Visconti of Milan whose library was notably added to by Filippo Maria, the third duke. Miss Dorothy Miner, who has described the decorations in the Princeton and Philadelphia manuscripts, assigns them to the Lom- -bard School of illuminators, and it would be natural to thinkthat the scribe belonged to the same province.

But this is a speculation upon which the evidence of the Chicago Aulus Gellius has some bearing. In the first place, while this manuscript is ornamented with decorated initial letters of some merit, it is obviouslynot intended for the library of any member of a ducal family, and does not appear to have been the possession of any notable collector or scholar. The book was formerly in the Bibliotheca Molza in Modena which was dispersed before 1939. The manuscript is not listed by'commentators: M. Hertz who edited the Berlin text in 1885, or C. Hosius of Leip- zig, who edited the Teubner text in 1903, or J. Rolfe of the University of Pennsylvania, whose English translation, made in 1927 for the Loeb Library, is the latest edition. They naturally mention the tran- script made by Niccolb dei Niccoli, later purchased by the great Magliarbecchi, and now in the National Library in Rome. So far as I know Niccoli's codex has not been reproduced in whole or in part. This needs to be done. Page 4

The facsimiles of Niccoli's autographs that we have are numerous enough, however, to permit- us to disregard any suggestion that his script set the style the for Chicago Aulus Gellius; or, it may be added, for the other three manuscripts signed by Milanus Burrus. Indeed, the calligraphical saliences of the whole group, it seems reasonable to say, do not point in the direction of Florence.

The scribe is highly competent and well instructed. He writes, effortlessly, ahumanistic minuscule which is regularly and well formed, spaced and paragraphed. The scribe, indeed, may be judged to have achieved a high degree of excellence, especiallywhen it is borne in mind that he was in practice during the "middle period", as Elder would rightly describe it, of the humanistic revival of the "Carolingian" alphabet. Milanus Burrus had sound understanding of the canonical humanistic minuscule, He proves his knowledge of the humanistic canon by using the ligature d in fully-formed style. He also has NOd'1 VM. A proof that he was working in the early or middle period is the a which is almost single-bodied; g is a source of trouble to him, not because he is incompetent, but because the canonicity of g had not in his time been settled. There were two schools of thought about g in Florence during the Renaissance as there were in Burgundy during the "Carolingian" period. Milanus, like his predecessors, cannot make up his mind, at least in his two copies of Suetonius and in his Gellius, what to do with the lower bowl, and sometimes angular- izes the link connecting it with the upper bowl. Hence he uses g$$g. The substroke of h is, of course, rounded, i. e.

The canonical purity of Milanus' minuscule almost induces the critic to assign the whole codexto the lat- Page 5

ter half of the century. As a pointer to the provenance of the codex the minuscule yields nothing; for, if the whole were judged by a single typical folio of the minuscule, a judge might well assign it to Florence. But Milanus' books are specimens not only of minuscule writing; their titles, initial lines and terminal lines and colophons are expressed in majuscules. What maybe inferred from these? and, in particular, what is the significance of the scribe's habit of ligaturing his majuscules?

Florentine scribes before or after 1465 are seldom found adopting this convention, for that is what Milanus made of it. The title over the list of contents of the Newbgrry Gellius is set out thus:

%rVLfCELLl1 TABVLA P LiBRaRVM 4' CAPIYy,

LORV NVfº-ERv,Lt cE, oRt)IhEW ALPHABV--ff

LT? ERASdVAS : je ""

Such majuscules, or ligatures, do not appear to have been customary in the scriptorium of Vespasiano da Bisticci, or in any of the Florentine bookshops. How is it, then, that the minuscule should be canonical and so professionally accomplished and the majuscules on the other hand, look relatively unconventional and provincial; and that in 1445? The only parallel to the majuscular habits of Milanus Burrus to be seen in E Florence occur in I and occasionally a round and Y with curved downstroke, which may be found in the work of Antonio di Mario, before Milanus Burrus wrote out the Gellius. The f with the centre point seems to be the only Byzantine convention carried into Page 6

humanistic script as practised in Florence. Greek scribes had been for centuries in the habit of pointing all the mainstrokes of their capitals. As the trick may be found in the writing of di Mario and others, that Milanus should adopt is not necessarily significant.

But the title shown above is noteworthy on other grounds. In the word AVLI, the ligaturing of A and V, the insertion of I over the limb of L, the insertion of 0 in the body of C are tricks very rarely seen in Florence. The treatment of the word COMMENTARI O is far more remarkable. Apart from the ligaturing of M and E, and N and T, the form of M is eccentric. It is an H with a middle perpendicular branch dropped from the cross bar. This is the most significant peculiarity of the whole alphabet and provides a clue of some value. There is another peculiarity in the word COMMENTARIO; the second M is not only ligatured with E, but the middle branch is placed in the upper instead of the lower half of the M, thus inverting the character. Wherever Milanus could achieve variety in capitals he did so without scruple. At /A J- He has at least ten types of M: -1 +q HM M, There may be an artistic reason against two normal branched M's in conjunction. Nevertheless; in the word, as Milanus has written it, a horrible shape has emerged. That is to saya shape, unortho- dox and uncanonical, has been regularly obtruded into the titles, though only rarely into the minuscule. In the mind of Milanus the form of capital letters used for the writing of titles had not been canonized and he was free to consult his. own personal preferences. These were highly individual and almost wilful. Thus he provides Dd, Hh, in lines of capitals, or in proper names set out in capitals; or, as in his Suetonius, mixed YßýSandJ1fODJ-rj. capitals and minuscules: Page 7

These habits are not to be found in Florentine work and must derive from a wholly different centre of learning. Whether the influence to which Milanus Burrus was exposed was direct or indirect is a question. Of all the scribe's peculiarities the most is his [Tj This form is frequent in his conspicuous . titles and occurs, with nine or more other varieties, in his alphabetical index.

Now Sri is an ancient Byzantine design. It may be seen for instance in the legend over the Theotokos in the XI century "John" panel in the south gallery. ofHaghiaSophia, and those who have not inspected it de visu can see it in the fine reproduction, pl. XXI in Mr. Thomas Whittemore's third report on the Mosaics of Haghia Sophia (Oxford, 1942). In the mss. the character occurs in the XII century. As an example, plate 35 in P. Franchi de' Cavalieri's Codicum Graecorum (Bonn, 1910) "Specimina provides an interesting illustration. It is a XII century liturgical lesson from the gospel of St. Mark with a title in majuscules to that effect. The initial letter of the evangelist's name is in the form of a bi with a medial point in the centre of the branched stroke in the centre. That the trick of branching the middle stroke of M was continued by Greek scribes prac- tising after Milanus Burrus' time maybe seen from a text of St. Nilus, dated 1565 and shown in Cavalieri's plate 50. Is it possible that Milanus either wrote, was trained, or was employed in a centre historically dependent upon Greek culture? Where then, in Italy, may the Byzantine M be found? Not, it is safe to M say, in Florence, for the does 'not, to my observation, appear there. The only example of writing of the period, which I have noted, that bears any relation to the Byzantine habits of Milanus Burrus occurs in a Statius written at Pisa by Nicolaus de Camilius in Page 8

1419, now in the collection of Major Abbey. The text is written in a typical humanistic hand of the first f quarter of the XV century, with d'r ligature, long as a terminal character. The signed and dated colophon to this book is strongly marked with Byzantine conventions. It was written fourteen years earlier than Burrus' first book, the Suetonius of 1433.

býLCT NiA FELC N`/ },E 11,4 }CL. DECxhiVLO NOTFJCVLS Aý ýS PISAS_., 1ýC CCCXV1I11 KOVFu;_

"Colophon of Major Abbey's Statius, Pisa 1419

Pisa, ' Dr. Hans Baron tells me, is known to have enjoyed business and other relations with the East. An oriental strain in the humanistic script, of what J. P. Elder would call the "middle period", i. e. 1425- 1465, seems to have influenced more than one centre of humanist activity. But it seems unlikely that such an influence would have originated in a place situated like Pisa.

The centre in question would rather seem to be on the eastern seaboard of Italy, perhaps Venice, more probably. Ravenna. But neither city possessed at that time a centre of humanistic studies. The remaining city on the Adriatic having an appropriate history and situation, and the funds to maintain a school of writers, was Ancona. This considerable port is an episcopal See whose Cathedral was erected on the basis of a Greek cross, and exhibits, so the guide-books say, other marked evidences of Byzantine influence. Page 9

In theXVicenturyAncona boasted a thriving com- merce. One- of the most conspicuous and patriotic of its citizens in the first half of the centurywas Ciriaco Pizzicolli. He was born in 1390 and is known to us as Ciriaco d'Ancona. He was an astounding figure, a merchant, and a merchant's son, rich, " active, curious, avid, above all, for details of the ancient world, a born traveller who had to see for himself, and that more than once, every place between Ancona and Constantinople, and south to Rhodes and Egypt. At 30 he was syndic of Ancona, rebuilt the port and strengthened it against the Turks. That was in 1420.

He was in Rome in 1424, in Byzantium in 1425. This was the year and that the place in which he learnt Greek, a capital event in his, or any man's life. He loved to quote Greek in his letters, as his correspond- ence with Traversari proves. The acquisition gave himan irresistible appetite for commercial voyaging in Macedonia, Cyprus and Syria, collecting antiques and inscriptions etc. as he went. In 1432 he was in. Rome again and later in the year he went to see Cosimo de' Medici at Florence. He was in Rome in 1434, was a close friend of Pope Eugenius IV and, in spite of his deep fear of the Turks, read Herodotus toMahomet II. He was awesterner who could never overcome his admiration for the Byzantines. He played a great part behind the scenes in the abortive union of the Western with the Eastern Church; he made a vast assemblage of inscriptions collected from every ancient city in the known world. He was himself a scribe; even a good scribe, certainly a leading scribe. It would be like him deliberately to sponsor and spread a script that would be half Roman and half Byzantine. Ciriaco died in 1455. Such was the man who made a centre of humanism in a place 132 miles N. E. of Rome and 110 N. W. of Florence. Page. 10

Interest in him has increased in recent years since -Christian Huelsen's La Roma Antica di Ciriaco d'Ancona (Rome, 1907), but there is still much to be discovered about one who may be called, without ex- aggeration, the founder of archeology. Sig. Domenico Fava's "La mostra di codici autografi in onore di Girclamo Tiraboschi" in the- Acca- . which appeared demie & Biblioteche d'Italia VII (Rome, 1932-3) illustrates a page from a ms. in Ciriaco's hand. More important is the same writer's article "La Scrittura libraria di Ciriaco d'Ancona" which appeared in the in di "Scritti di Paleografia & Diplomatica onore Vincenzo Federici (Florence, 1945). Here for the first time is a survey of seven dated, or datable, mss. in Ciriaco's hand; Sig. Fava provides 11 facsimiles which abundantly enable the reader to verify the author's observation that his scripts, though humanistic, are strongly influenced by Byzantine models. To be precise, Ciriaco ligatures many other capitals besides CE and AE. In his first dated ms., Fasti a of Ovid signed and written in his best neo- Carolingian hand in 1427, he makes use of M in the initial line of the first book (Fava, pl. 13). The same character occurs in the titles to a Miscellanea Latina copied out in a fast cursive by Ciriaco at a time that cannot, alas, be specified. Sig. Fava shows (p1.15) a folio from the text of Ditis Cretensis Inbello troiano, H in the first line of which is present. The Ciriaco Miscellanea is also notable for our purpose on account of its contents. Besides copying Ditis Cretensis on the Trojan War, Ciriaco also wrote out extracts of Livy, Cicero, Iosephus, Justin; and, significantly, Aulus Gellius.

Here is evidence, therefore, that the founder of the science of archeology was incidentally a scribe, the majuscules of whose hand were strongly influenced Page 11

H, by Byzantine models, including and that he was interested in Aulus Gellius before Niccoli made his partial transcription in 1431 and before Guarino completed work on his establishment of the complete text. Moreover, Ciriaco was not a poor man. He could well afford to employ scribes to write out books for him. When in 1445 Milanus Burrus completed his manuscript of Aulus Gellius, Ciriaco was 55 years old, not, perhaps, the time of life that he would care to sit down, as he did in 1427, to copy in full and in professional style, the whole of Ovid's Fasti. Sig. Fava knows nothing of any scriptorial activities so late in his career. It is far more likely that if he felt the continuing need for a complete text he would have commissioned it. And. the Noctes Atticae is just the sort of book he would continue to read when he could no longer travel. The Noctes is of immense and permanent interest to one curious about the nuances of words and pronunciation, the history of language and the diversity of manners. It is more than likely that Ciriaco would desire to possess a complete text of it. He was in Florence with Cosimo de' Medici in 1432. Did he make use of the opportunity to see the fine Aulus Gellius completed by Antonio di Mario three years earlier? Could he have interested Burrus or a collector in Milan in Gellius? We do not know, but we can point to Ciriaco's Byzantinism and the adoption, however indirect, 'by Burrus of Byzantine capitals. For both of them humanistic writing was not viewed as a revived Latin script of "antique", in fact of "Carolingian" ancestry, but an "antique" of Graeco-Latin ancestry.

Such are the guesses (they are no more) encouraged by the Newberry codex. It is well-written, simply decorated. It is to be doubted if the scribe who wrote the very fine Greek Cursive was the scribe of the Page 12

Latin text. That he was a native of Ancona or Pisa is hardly likely. Since this paper reached the present stage, Baron has published his "Aulus Genius in the Renaissance and a manuscript from the school of Guarino". (Studies in Philoloav, XLVI I I, 2, April, 1951) which corrects a number of my speculations as to Burrus' place of work.

I had thought that the shapes of Milanus' numerals might be significant. The closest models to them that I know are those in No. 12 of plate L in G. F. Hill, "The EarlyUse of Arabic Numerals in Europe" In Archeologia-' (London, LXII, 1910). These are from a German portable sundial of brass, now in the British Museum. It is dated 1453. No Italian scribe or medallist, to judge from Hill's plates, at work I even in the 14th century, ever used the for 4, or C for 5. These are cisalpine shapes; both appear in Burrus' colophon. I had thought it possible that he might have been a Dalmatian, and perhaps educated in the northern Habsburg dominions. I had a vision of this Burrus, a D. P. from Dalmatia (all of which was conquered by the Turk in 1420)fleeing toAncona. But Baron proves that Borro was awell known Milan- ese name and that although the name. Milano is very unusual among Italian families it does occur among the Borro. Baron reasonably infers that our scribe was a member of the Milan family. He finds, alas for my vision of Burrus as a member of Ciriaco's circle, no evidence that either he, or the Newberry codex, ever left northern Italy. The 1445 Gellius bears a coat of arms which J. Wolf of the Department of Genealogy identifies as of the Finardi of Bergamo. My Dalmatian accordingly fades from the scene. There is left a member of a highly respected Milan - ese family who wrote, probably in Milan itself or its environs, a competent Roman hand deliberately Page 13

Inflected with Byzantine elements. The questions re- "Roman-Byzantine" maining are 1) why he adopted this style, and 2) whether he was a member of a school of writers employing this style. To answer these questions it is necessary to assemble more data about humanistic manuscripts of the period.

I have just used the words "Roman-Byzantine" as indicating a series of alphabetical conventions, notably the ligaturing of capitals, the insertion of vowels in the body of consonants, the narrowing of the bodies of letters etc. which became the standard in Byzantine Greek. Such characteristics are also to be found in Roman inscriptions, both Greek and Latin, before and after Constantine made peace with the Church. They to be found in . are also manuscripts of the VIII century, e. g. at Luxeuil in the South East of France, and Corbie in the North. A fresh wave of this Byzantine treatment of capitals is to be found in the XII The before the . century. question now put reader is the origin and extent of the third wave of the Byzantine influence observable in the XV century. It would be serviceable if readers of this paper would note anyByzantine characteristics that theymay see in collections to which they may have access, or in existing facsimiles.