A Family Operation. Zanone Da Castiglione, Bishop of Bayeux 1432-1459, and His Role As Mediator of Contacts Between Gloucester and Italian Humanists
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CHAPTER THIRTEEN A FAMILY OPERATION. ZANONE DA CASTIGLIONE, BISHOP OF BAYEUX 1432-1459, AND HIS ROLE AS MEDIATOR OF CONTACTS BETWEEN GLOUCESTER AND ITALIAN HUMANISTS Some time in 1437, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, requested Zanone da Castiglione, the bishop of Bayeux, who was then in his native Italy, to supply him with the latest publications of prominent human ists.1 In the following months, the bishop encouraged several authors to send their works to the English duke. Lapo da Castiglionchio and Antonio Pacini offered samples of their writings to Gloucester; mean while, Pier Candido Decembrio relied on the mediation of Zanone and his secretary, Rolando Talenti, to establish a connection with the duke that eventually led to Decembrio's employment as Gloucester's literary agent in Italy between 1439 and 1442.2 Yet the bishop not only brokered cultural contacts between Gloucester and the Italian humanist community, but he was also the main representative of the interests of the Castiglione family in Lancastrian Normandy: inter ests that had first been established during the 1420s by Zanone's powerful uncle, Cardinal Branda da Castiglione. Links between Zanone's political interests in Normandy and his activity as Gloucester's literary agent have been intimated by Walter Schirmer.3 The precise nature of these links, however, has hitherto not been explored; instead Zanone's brokerage between 'Renaissance' Italy and 'medieval' England has unquestioningly been presented as a self-explanatory manifesta tion of an all-encompassing process of cultural modernisation.4 By contrast to this established account, and in accordance with the inte grative approach employed in the investigation of Gloucester's liter ary patronage and political action, the following study focuses on a 1 DECEMBRIO, 'Epistolary', f. 31v, cited above, Part One, chapter nine, p. 109n. 2 VICKERS, pp. 351-6; WEISS, pp. 49-62; SCHIRMER, pp. 22-7; FOFFANO, 'Umanisti Italiani', passim; SAMMUT, pp. 23-53. Decembrio's relations with Gloucester are dis cussed below, Part Three, chapter eighteen, pp. 222-32. 3 SCHIRMER, pp. 23-4. 4 Ibid., pp. 22-5; WEISS, pp. 40-41, pp. 49-50. A FAMILY OPERATION 145 reconstruction of the intricate network linking England, Lancastrian Normandy and the Curia, that formed the context for Zanone's activity as a middleman between the English duke and the humanist community. The analysis departs from the assumption that Zanone's emergence as Gloucester's middleman in the autumn and winter of 1437 was immediately linked with the bishop's political objective, during this period, of protecting the dynastic interests of his family in Lancastrian Normandy. The central question concerns the advan tages Zanone accrued from his role of cultural mediator between Italy and England. The Castiglione of Castiglione Olona, near Varese, can be traced back to the eleventh century. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the family rose from the Lombard nobility into the ranks of the urban aristocracy of Milan. Retaining their roots in the con- tado, many members of the clan now obtained academic degrees and assumed leading positions in the Visconti government.5 It was Branda da Castiglione (c. 1350-1443), however, who first established his fam ily in the arena of international politics.6 A doctor in utnusque, Branda was already in his late thirties when he was called to the Curia in 1389; yet once he had arrived in Rome, his progress was unstoppable. Bishop of Piacenza in 1404, he was promoted to consistory as cardinal of S. Clemente in 1411. By that time Branda had found his true calling as a diplomat. Between 1410 and 1414 he served as papal legate at the court of king Sigismund in Hungary. The ensuing decade saw Branda's rise as leading papal representative in Germany and central Europe. An important participant at the Council of Constance, the cardinal, in the early 1430s, closely collaborated with Sigismund in shaping the imperial position at the Council of Basel, 5 LITTA, P., Famiglie Celebn Italiani (13 vols., Milan, 1819-74), iii, s.v. 'Castiglioni di Milano'. 6 The following biographical sketch is based on GIRGENSOHN, D., 'di Castiglione, Branda', DBI, xxii (Rome, 1979), 69-75; MOLS, R., 'Castiglione, Branda di', DHGE, xi (Paris, 1949), 1434-44; SOLDI-RONDININI, G., 'Branda Castiglioni nella Lombardia del suo tempo', Nuova Rivùta Stonca, lxx (1986), 147-58; FOFFANO, T., 'Breve nota suil' epistolario di Branda di Castiglione con due lettere inédite', Aevum, lii (1988), 302-9; id., 'Un carteggio del cardinale Branda di Castiglione con Cosimo de Medici', in AVESANI, R./FERRARI, M./FOFFANO, T. (eds.), Vestigia: Studi in Onore di Giuseppe Billanovich (2 vols., Rome, 1984), i, 296-314.; id., 'Tra Costanza e Basilea. Rapporti col mondo d'oltralpe del card. Branda Castiglioni, legato pontificio e mecenate della cultura', in IJSEWIJN, J./VERBEKE, G. (eds.), The Late Middle Ages and the Dawn of Humanism Outside Italy (Louvain, 1972), pp. 19-30; id., 'La costruzione di Castiglione Olona in un opusculo inedito di Francesco Pizolpasso', IMU, iii (1960), 154-87. .