Humanist Hermeneutics and the Language of Relics

chapter 38 Ancient Texts and Holy Bodies: Humanist Hermeneutics and the Language of Relics

Hester Schadee

During the Church Council of Constance (1414–18), the humanist and apostolic scribe Poggio Bracciolini, unemployed since the deposition of Pope John xxiii in 1415, used his newfound leisure to launch a search for ancient manuscripts. Aided by his fellow former curial employees Bartolomeo da Montepulciano and Cencio de’ Rustici, Poggio trawled through monastic and cathedral librar- ies in France, Germany, and Switzerland.1 His discovery, at Saint Gall, of a trove of ancient texts constitutes an emblematic episode of early Renaissance humanism, recently recounted with dramatic flair by Stephen Greenblatt.2 The item most valued at the time was probably not Lucretius but the complete text of Quintilian’s Institutes of Oratory.3 Poggio’s friend, the Florentine humanist Leonardo Bruni, hailed this find as follows:

1 For Poggio’s life, the standard account remains Ernst Walser, Poggius Florentinus. Leben und Werke (Leipzig: Teubner, 1914); see also the Poggio entries in Emilio Bigi and Armando Petrucci, in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, vol. 13 (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1971); Martin Davies, in Encyclopedia of the Renaissance, ed. Paul Grendler, vol. 1 (New York: Scribner’s, 1999); and Hester Schadee, Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy, ed. Marco Sgarbi, online (Springer, 2014). On Poggio’s stay in Constance and his quest for manuscripts, see Remigio Sabbadini and Eugenio Garin, Le scoperte dei codici latini e greci ne’ secoli xiv e xv, vol. 1 (Florence: Sansoni, 1967), esp. 77–78; and nn. 2 and 3 below. 2 Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (New York: Norton, 2011), reviewed by Anthony Grafton, “The Most Charming Pagan,” New York Review of Books, 8 Dec. 2011. 3 According to Greenblatt, who links Poggio’s discovery of Lucretius to a new, secular, and scientific worldview. On the reception of Lucretius, cf. Enrico Flores, Le scoperte di Poggio e il testo di Lucrezio (Naples: Liguori, 1980); Giuseppe Solaro, Lucrezio. Biografie umanistiche (Bari: Dedalo, 2000); pts. 2 and 3 of the Cambridge Companion to Lucretius, ed. Stuart Gillespie and Philip Hardie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); and Alison Brown, The Return of Lucretius to Renaissance Florence (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 2010). For the appreciation of Quintilian, see Michael Winterbottom, “Fifteenth-Century Manu scripts of Quintilian,” Classical Quarterly 17, no. 2 (1967): 339–69; John Monfasani, “Episodes of Anti-Quintilianism in the Italian Renaissance: Quarrels on the Orator as a Vir Bonus and Rhetoric as the Scientia Bene Dicendi,” Rhetorica 10 (1992): 119–38; and Joachim

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Quintilian, who used to be maimed and mutilated, will recover all his members through you. I have seen the headings of the books; he is whole, while we used to have only the middle section and that mangled. Oh won- drous treasure! Oh unexpected joy! Shall I see you, Marcus Fabius [Quintilianus], whole and uninjured, and how much will you mean to me now? For I loved you even when you were “cruelly deprived of your mouth, of your mouth and both your hands, and your ears were torn off your temples, and your nose cut off in a shameful wound”; I still loved you for your beauty. Please, Poggio, satisfy this deep desire of mine as quickly as possible, so that if kindness means anything, I may see him before I die.4

The passage is arresting, and not just for the urgency of Bruni’s plea. No less striking is how Bruni describes the manuscript of Quintilian in terms that also, or indeed primarily, apply to bodies, namely “membra” (members), “capita” (headings), and “media pars” (middle). He continues the body metaphor with a quotation from the Aeneid, in which Virgil describes the hacked-up corpse of Deiphobus, encountered by Aeneas in the underworld (“cruelly deprived of your mouth…your hands, your ears,” etc.).5 The theme of this body metaphor is mutilation, yet Bruni’s words also imply an aspect of integrity, and the possibil- ity of reconstruction. For the humanist has no problem directly addressing the Roman orator, and furthermore asks Poggio to ensure that he will see Quintilian whole again. This description of the body of a venerable person who is himself dead, while his mutilated fragments remain, calls to mind the relics of Catholic saints. Indeed, it is not unheard of for humanists to name fragmented ancient texts the “reliquiae” of their authors, for instance Petrarch, who claims that he

Classen, “Quintilian and the Revival of Learning in Italy,” Humanistica Lovaniensia 43 (1994): 77–98. 4 “Quintilianus enim prius lacer atque discerptus cuncta membra sua per te recuperabit. Vidi enim capita librorum, totus est, cum vix nobis media pars, et ea ipsa lacera superesset. O lucrum ingens! O insperatum gaudium! Ego te, o Marce Fabi, totum integrumque aspi- ciam? Et quanti tu michi nunc eris? quem ego quamvis lacerum crudeliter ora, ora manusque ambas, populataque tempora raptis auribus, et truncas inhonesto vulnere nares; tamen propter decorum tuum in deliciis habebam. Oro te Poggi, fac me quam cito huius desiderii compote, ut si quid humanitas impendeat, hunc prius viderim, quam e vita decedam.” Leonardo Bruni, Epistolarum Libri viii, ed. Lorenzo Mehus, intro. James Hankins (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2007), 4:5; my trans., adapted from Phylis Walter Goodhart Gordan, Two Renaissance Bookhunters: The Letters of Poggius Bracciolini to Nicolaus De Niccolis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974), app. 2. 5 Virgil, Aeneid 6.495–97.