chapter 3 Textual Criticism

3.1 Introduction

In order to establish a reliable text to base his version on, Manetti collated the Vulgate with his Greek sources. This way, he could detect corruptions, mistranslations and writing errors in the Latin text. The divergences between his Vulgate and his Greek sources are overwhelming: whereas Manetti’s Greek manuscripts all belong to the Byzantine text-type, the Vulgate was probably based on manuscripts from other families.1 Understanding Manetti’s method of textual criticism is relevant for two rea- sons. In the first place, it contributes to our knowledge of the history of Biblical scholarship. The way Manetti used and weighed his sources throws new light on the development of new philological methods in the fifteenth-century and on the humanistic approach to the sacred text. Manetti’s text-critical choices may have been influenced by other scholars he admired, notably Jerome, Bessarion and Valla. A comparison with these works will show to what degree Manetti depended on them for his decisions and where he was original. Secondly, once Manetti’s Vorlage is known, his translation method can be analysed more accurately. Most of the alterations he made with regard to his Vulgate are not, strictly speaking, new translation choices: they can be explained by variant readings in his source texts. The more significant changes can almost always be traced back to a variant reading in the Greek tradition. But even changes that at first sight seem to be merely stylistic often turn out to be based on a variant reading in the Greek, for instance slight changes with regard to word order or the tense of verbs, or the addition of a particle or conjunction. Manetti’s textual criticism has not yet been studied systematically, but some general remarks have been made in previous studies. In his analysis of Manetti’s translations, Botley wrote that both Manetti and Valla “seem to have had a high opinion of the readings of the Greek text, and this results in a tendency to conflate the text of the New Testament at the expense of the Latin tradition.”2 John Monfasani, by contrast, was under the impression that Manetti “acted

1 Metzger and Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament, 105; Bogaert, “The Latin Bible,” 514. 2 Botley, Latin Translation in the Renaissance, 95.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2016 | doi: 10.1163/9789004324374_005 textual criticism 65 conservatively, usually preserving the reading of the Vulgate.” He came to this conclusion after comparing a sampling of passages, among which the comma Johanneum.3 Botley and Monfasani compared Manetti’s translation with Valla’s notes and with modern editions of the Greek and Latin New Testament, but not with his own Greek sources, Pal.gr.171, 189 and 229, or with his Vulgate, Pal.lat.18.4 Fur- thermore, they took no account of Manetti’s revisions in Pal.lat.45, which also occasionally concern text-critical changes. The below discussion of Manetti’s method of textual criticism includes all the relevant manuscripts in his library.5 Although Manetti’s textual criticism has been compared with Valla’s before, I study them together in order to evaluate the quality of their scholarship. Valla is usually given much more credit for his work on the New Testament than Manetti, but I believe that Valla is not always judged objectively. For example, Perosa decided to eliminate anomalies in the Greek of the Collatio, because he assumed that Valla could not have made mistakes of the kind he found in the manuscripts. Perosa even based some of his conclusions concerning the transmission of the text on the ‘errors’ in the Greek. But Pagliaroli recently discovered similar anomalies in other notes written by Valla.6 By comparing Valla’s notes with Manetti’s translation, I hope to contribute to a fair picture of the scholarship of both. This chapter is structured as follows. In sections one and two, I analyse Manetti’s method of textual criticism by systematically comparing his version with his copy of the Vulgate, Pal.lat.18, and with his Greek sources, Pal.gr.171, 189 and 229.7 This analysis allows me to determine whether Manetti relied on the Greek tradition rather than on the Latin, as Botley believed, or conservatively preserved the reading of the Vulgate, as Monfasani wrote. We will see that some of Manetti’s deliberations are visible in the marginal notes in Pal.lat.18 and in his revisions in Pal.lat.45. In section three, I investigate to what degree Manetti was influenced by Jerome, Bessarion and Valla.

3 Monfasani, “Criticism of Biblical Humanists in Quattrocento Italy,” 33. 4 Botley mentioned a marginal note in Manetti’s copy of the Vulgate at Matthew 6:13, but he did not compare other readings of this manuscript with Manetti’s translation. Botley, Latin Translation in the Renaissance, 95. 5 As far as they have been identified. On Manetti’s library, see above, pp. 27–30. 6 Pagliaroli, L’Erodoto del Valla, 63, n. 3. 7 See Chapter Two, pp. 30–36.