Reading Lucretius in the Renais Sance
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I TATTI STUDIES IN ITALIAN RE NAIS SANCE HISTORY Sponsored by Villa I Tatti Harvard University Center for Italian Re nais sance Studies Florence, Italy Reading Lucretius IN THE Re nais sance Ada Palmer Cambridge, Massachusetts London, En gland 2014 Copyright © 2014 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College all rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First printing This book was published with the assistance of the Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research at Texas A&M University. Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Palmer, Ada. Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance / Ada Palmer. pages cm. — (I Tatti studies in Italian Renaissance history) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-674-72557-7 (alk. paper) 1. Lucretius Carus, Titus. De rerum natura I. Title. PA6495.P35 2014 871'.01—dc23 2014002577 Contents List of Tables and Figures vii Preface xi 1. Religion Trampled Underfoot 1 Epicurus, Atomism, Atheism, and Skepticism in the Re nais sance 2. Unchristian Opinion 43 Lucretius’s First Re nais sance Readers 3. Between Fits of Madness 97 Ancient References and Proto- Biographies 4. The Lofty Madness of Wise Lucretius 140 The Re nais sance Biographies 5. The Poverty of the Language 192 The Lucretian Print Tradition Conclusion 233 Deceived but Not Betrayed Appendix A: Lucretius Manuscripts 243 Appendix B: Capitula 250 Appendix C: Lucretius Editions 258 Notes 265 Bibliography 335 A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s 3 5 5 Index 359 Tables and Figures Tables 2.1. Manuscript sizes and materials 48 2.2. Frequency of annotation in diff erent types of Lucretius manuscripts 50 2.3. Frequency of the types of nonphilosophical annotation in Lucretius manuscripts 56 2.4. Frequency of diff erent types of annotation in Lucretius manuscripts 74 3.1. Re nais sance Lucretius biographies 104 3.2. References to classical and medieval authors in biographies and quotation lists 136 4.1. Re nais sance Lucretius biographies and their revisions 142 5.1. Chronology of Lucretius editions and related works 194 Figures Following page 96 1. Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Vat. Lat. 3276, fol. 132v. De rerum na- tura V, showing rubricated capitula and inexpensive ink decoration. 2. Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Ott. Lat. 1954, fol. 98r. De rerum na- tura IV 1165– 1187, with anonymous Greek annotation providing the equivalents of the transliterated nicknames for lovers. vii viii Tables and Figures 3. Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Vat. Lat. 3276, fol. 94v. De rerum na- tura III 1033– 1050, with marginal annotation marking the names of famous men in the underworld. 4. British Library I. A. 23564 (1495), fol. aiiiir. De rerum natura III 112– 140, with Girolamo Borgia’s transcription of Pontano’s notes, marking the names of famous men in the underworld. 5. Piacenza Landi Cod. 33, fol. 51r. Illustration depicting the ostoma- chion of Archimedes. 6. Piacenza Landi Cod. 33, fol. 100r. Illustration depicting possible shapes of atoms, accompanying De rerum natura IV 647– 672. 7. Piacenza Landi Cod. 33, fol. 131r. The zodiac in alignment, illustrating De rerum natura V 691– 704, labeled “Figura totius mundi et ostensio orbito coelestium planetarum.” 8. Piacenza Landi Cod. 33, fol. 131v. Illustration depicting the sun’s orbit with variable center, illustrating De rerum natura V 691– 704, labeled “Demonstratio inequalitatis dierum et noctium propter varium solis cursum.” 9. Piacenza Landi Cod. 33, fol. 132r. Illustration depicting the relative positions of sun, moon, and Earth, illustrating De rerum natura V 691– 704, labeled “Demonstratio quanto luna vicinior sit terrae.” 10. Piacenza Landi Cod. 33, fol. 132v. The twelve winds, illustrating De rerum natura V 691– 704, labeled “Demonstratio duodecim ventorum.” 11. Piacenza Landi Cod. 33, fol. 133r. Illustration depicting the eight wind theory, labeled “Superior demonstratio octo ventorum est secundum Phavorinum Gelianum.” 12. Piacenza Landi Cod. 33, fol. 134r. Illustration depicting phases of the moon, labeled “Demonstratio quomodo luna crescens sive nova lumen a sole recipiat recedendo a sole orientem versus. ut patet inspicienti.” 13. Piacenza Landi Cod. 33, fol. 134v. Illustration depicting phases of the moon, labeled “De Anni Temporibus.” 14. Piacenza Landi Cod. 33, fol. 136r. Illustration depicting eclipses, illus- trating De rerum natura V 771. 15. Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Ross. Lat. 884, fol. 25r. Text of De re- rum natura in the hand of Niccolo Machiavelli, with his marginal note marking the description of the atomic swerve “motum varium Tables and Figures ix esse et ex eo nos liberam habere mentem” (that motion is variable, and from this we have free will). 16. Detail of Machiavelli’s note on Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Ross. Lat. 884, fol. 25r. 17. Naples Naz. IV E 51, fol. 66r. De rerum natura III 405– 426, with notes of Pomponio Leto, including the capitulum “Animam nativam & mortalem esse” and note “opinio non christiana” at 417. 18. Naples, Naz. IV E 51, front of inner fl yleaf. Pomponio Leto’s index of the vocabulary that he noted in the margins of the manuscript, listed by page number. 19. Naples Naz. IV E 51, fol. 71v. De rerum natura III 661– 685, with notes of Pomponio Leto, including the marginal labels “Contra pythago- rani . .” and “Contra platonem . .” 20. Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Ott. Lat. 2834, fol. 1r. De rerum na- tura I 1– 27, white vine decoration and notes of Pomponio Leto or his circle. 21. Utrecht, University Library. X fol. 82 (Rariora), fol. aiiir. A copy of the 1486 Verona edition, showing I 112– 149, with “Clyo” printed by I 119, the capitulum “Nihil de nihilo gigni,” and handwritten notes of Pom- ponio Leto. 22. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München Cod. lat. mon. 816a, fol. 27r. A manuscript that belonged to Piero Vettori, showing the notes “tenuis bissilabum” (tenuis scanned as two syllables) at De rerum natura II 232, and “Absurditas in sententia” (absurd in my opinion) beside the discussion of the atomic swerve at II 244. 23. The Bodleian Libraries, the University of Oxford, Auct. 2 R 4.50 (1500), p. 15. The 1500 print edition, showing De rerum natura I 509– 545, a copy formerly owned by Donato Giannotti, with marginalia discussing Aristotle. 24. The Bodleian Libraries, the University of Oxford, Byw. P 6.13 (1565– 1566), handwritten end fl yleaf 1. A copy of the 1565– 1566 edition of Lucretius, showing manuscript quotations from Cicero, Cornelius Nepos, Vitruvius, and Ovid. 25. The Bodleian Libraries, the University of Oxford, Byw. P 6.13 (1565– 1566), handwritten end fl yleaf 2. Manuscript quotations from Quintil- ian, Statius, and Serenus. x Tables and Figures 26. Title page of Inc. 5271, Houghton Library, Harvard University. A copy of the 1495 edition, possibly used by Avancius in preparing the 1500, with quotations from Eusebius- Jerome, Cicero, Varro, Macrobius, and the Wormwood passage, De rerum natura I 936. Preface f you were told that reading this book could send you to Hell, Iwould you keep reading? If you believed that heresy was contagious, that you could acquire a lethal mental illness from contact with incorrect ideas, would you choose to study them? Would you cross dangerous mountain ranges searching for unorthodox texts, and spend years work- ing to correct and copy them? Would you publish such a book, and put your name on the title page as you turned one copy of a dangerous conta- gion into a thousand? Would you risk prosecution for it? And would you go through all this to preserve a book whose fundamental claims you thought were wrong? Reading Lucretius in the Re naissance was no light undertaking, yet many hundreds of scholars chose to read him, defying social stigma and inviting very real danger by choosing to study and propagate a sci- entifi c theory that most of them did not believe in. These scholars saved and studied Lucretius’s work, and with it the theories of the ancient at- omists, which would prove critical to the development of modern sci- ence. How such readers read Lucretius, and why they read him, shaped the text and its distribution, and so shaped how heterodoxy really circu- lated in the premodern world— not on the conspicuous stage of heresy trials and public debates, but in the classrooms, libraries, studies, and bookshops where quiet scholars met the ideas that would soon transform the world. xi xii Preface When Lucretius fi rst came to my attention as a factor in the history of thought, I was working not yet on the Re nais sance, but on the French Enlightenment, on Diderot, Sade, Spinoza, and the most radical face of the eigh teenth century. The broad, synthetic treatments of Enlightenment radicalism that I read in graduate school would occasionally, in passing, claim that the spread of Lucretius in the Re nais sance was an important infl uence on the Enlightenment, but they usually cited nothing more specifi c than the fact that Voltaire and Montaigne read and praised Lu- cretius. That did not satisfy me. If I was to accept a causal connection between Diderot’s Encyclopédie and Poggio bringing a grubby, half- illegible verse epic back to Florence in 1417, I wanted every link in that chain. In the intervening years, several excellent studies of Lucretius’s early modern infl uence have fi lled in much that was previously obscure. We are confi dent now that Poggio’s discovery of Lucretius was a turning point in the path toward modern thought, and that Lucretius’s return to Florence made a powerful impact, whose ripples we can detect touching many corners of literature, science, religion, and philosophy over the fi f- teenth through eigh teenth centuries. Building on these works, my own study traces how Lucretius’s infl uence managed to spread so successfully in an intellectual world so hostile to his core ideas.