Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 -III-

Before Humphrey: the first stage of English humanist interest to c.1440

In 1444, Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini received a letter from the English cleric Adam

Moleyns, the elegance of which surprised him. He responded with praise not only of

Moleyns but also of the person he had heard was responsible for the introduction of this dicendi ornatus:

Magne ob hanc causam referende sunt grates clarissimo illi et doctissimi principi Clocestrie duci qui studia humanitatis summo studio in regnum vestrum recepit qui sicut mihi relatum est et poetas mirifice colit et oratores magnopere veneratur. hoc enim nimirum fit ut plures Anglorum eloquentes evadunt quia quales sunt principes tales et cives esse consueverunt et imitantur servi studia dominorum.1

As Piccolomini himself went on to remark, great is eloquence: many have been persuaded by his claim for Humphrey as the father of ‘English humanism.’ In this century, it has been said that the Duke of Gloucester “taught his countrymen to look to Italy for inspiration” with the result that by 1460, “Englishmen were no longer looked upon as necessarily utter barbarians.”2 Others might dispute the impact of

Humphrey’s patronage - “the fire which he lit smouldered for a long time” - but his

Promethean feat is uncontested.1 Before him, the English had no spark of

‘humanism.’

Humphrey’s own contribution to English humanist interest is the subject of the next chapter; for the moment, I want to focus on the pre-history of that interest.

For, on my submission, Humphrey was neither isolated nor utterly unprecedented in

1 R.Wolkan, ed., Der Briefwechsel des Eneas Silvius Piccolomini I/i [Fontes Rerum Austriacarum lxi] (Vienna, 1909) ep.143 {p.325}. On Moleyns, see Weiss, pp.80-3, BRUO. 2 R.J.Mitchell, John Tiptoft (London, 1938) p.2.

48 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 his collecting of works by modern Italians. The evidence for this pre-history is necessarily sparse; it requires at times oblique methods to reconstruct it. From what we can detect, however, this first stage of interest consisted of two separate strands.

For one of these strands, the information is mainly garnered by taking our knowledge of Humphrey’s library and working back in time; for the other, the evidence comes from a couple of manuscripts that have been overlooked or misinterpreted. Neither strand, it should be added, involves John Whethamstede whose oft-stated claims to early interest in the studia humanitatis will be reviewed in the chapter’s final pages.

Even if the abbot of St.Albans is excluded from this first stage of interest, the first forty years of the fifteenth century provided rather more than “the background against which the rise of English humanism took place.”1 Indeed, the conclusion of this chapter is that Humphrey of Gloucester was not the alpha and the omega of humanist interest; he was, merely, as it were, one iota - although admittedly one written in littera notabilior.

What is at stake in this chapter is not just chronology; how ideas spread is also in question. The traditional narrative of humanist cultural transmission has concentrated on largescale, aristocratic collectors at the expense of less exalted figures, and has placed great importance on the influence of humanists who visited

England. The first of these tendencies will come under scrutiny in the middle sections of this chapter; the second will be discussed through the case study of Poggio’s

English years. That example will also serve to demonstrate the need to read humanist epistles with care: conventional interpretations have rarely appreciated fully the distorting effect of humanist rhetoric. Nowhere is this clearer than in their

1 B.L.Ullman, “Manuscripts of Duke Humphrey of Gloucester” in id., Studies in the Renaissance (Rome, 1955) pp.345-355 at p.345. Cf.Sammut, pp.52-3.

49 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 willingness to take humanist stereotypes of the English at face-value. By way of introduction, I wish briefly to discuss these caricatures.

Britain held a central - if unenviable - place in the early humanists’ mental cosmography.2 For Italians, these islands were axiomatically far away - penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos.3 As for the inhabitants themselves, to the traditional stereotype of their being terrible gormands the humanists added that they made even worse scholars.4 In the late fourteenth century, the vogue for dialectic had been seen by its Florentine opponents as an imported British disease.5 The island’s geographical isolation and its intellectual practices were not unrelated, at least in Salutati’s eyes: both demonstrated that it was barbarous.6 Even their scholars’ names sound uncouth, was the next generation’s contribution to this construction: Farabrich, Buser, Occam

... qui omnes mihi videntur a Rhadamantis cohorte traxisse cognomina.7 The early

1 Weiss, p.39. 2 Britanni and Anglici were, of course, used interchangeably. Few had the dubious advantage of Piccolomini’s experience which taught him that England was civilised when compared to Scotland: Pius II, I Commentari, ed.G.Bernetti, i (Siena, 1972) pp.14-5. 3 Vergil, Eclogue, I.66; employed, for example, in 1443 by Piccolomini [Wolkan, Der Briefwechsel, p.227] and in c.1460 by Griffolini in his dedication of Lucian’s Calumnia to Tiptoft [see D.Cast, The Calumny of Apelles (London, 1981) pp.203-4; see c.vii p.239 below]. Bruni used the phrase extremus mundi angulus, which is perhaps an echo of Bede’s fertilis angulus orbis: see Mehus, ep.V/4 (IV/22); cf. his Oratio in funere Iohannis Strozzae in J.D.Mansi, Stephani Baluzii ... Miscellanea, iv (Lucca, 1764) p.4. 4 For the topos of English dietary excess, apart from Poggio’s comments noted below, see da Fiano’s inelegant poem edited in R.Weiss, “A humanist invective against an unnamed English poet”, JWCI, x (1947) pp.153-5; V.da Bisticci, Le Vite, ed.A.Greco, i (Florence, 1970) p.312; for the early sixteenth century, see C.A.Sneyd, ed., A relation...of the island of England [Camden Society, no.37] (London, 1847) p.21; also J.R.Hale, The Civilisation of Europe in the Renaissance (London, 1993) p.52. 5 On this generally, E.Garin, “La cultura fiorentina nella seconda metà del ’300 e i ‘barbari britanni’”, La Rassegna della letteratura italiana lxiv (1960) pp.181-195; C.Vasoli, “Intorno al Petrarca ed ai logici ‘moderni’”, Miscellanea Medievalia, ix, ed.A.Zimmermann (Berlin, 1974) pp.142-54. 6 Salutati employs the Vergil quotation in both a letter [F.Novati, ed., Epistolario di Coluccio Salutati iii (Rome, 1896) pp.318-322] & De Laboribus I.1 [ed.B.L.Ullman (Zurich, 1951) I, p.3]. Petrarch, attacking a Sicilian dialectician, emphasises instead England’s island nature, on the basis of Pomponius Mela [Rerum Familiarum, I.75]. 7 Garin, pp.58-60. This comment was reiterated in the early 1480s by Antonio de Ferrariis Galateo: Epistole, ed. A.Altamura (Lecce, 1959) p.95.

50 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 humanists’ opponents may have been ‘scholastics’ but their rhetoric of enmity (and thus of self-definition) was against foreigners and, in particular, this island-race.1

The range of commonplaces, from over-indulgence to obscurantism, is deftly combined in a letter written from England by Poggio Bracciolini:

Homines ventri deditos et peni satis reperire possumus; amatores verum litterarum perpaucos et eos barbaros ac disputatiunculis et sofismatibus eruditos potius quam doctrina.2

On such comments severe interpretations of English scholarship have been based.

Yet, though Poggio was living among these men, his assessment was surely based more on the established stereotypes than on dispassionate sociological analysis. That he could write this suggests (it might be argued) some truth to the convention of the

English as obese pedants; at the very least, the stereotype may actually have coloured

Poggio’s perception of his English hosts. There is no doubt that such iconic images affected the way in which humanists described their contacts with Englishmen: when one of the barbarians showed early interest in Bruni’s works, the author commented that this man was mihi amicus et studiorum nostrum, quantum illa natio capit, ardentissimus affectator.3 Yet, even if humanists wrote such comments with no sense sense of irony whatsoever, their sense of superiority patently did not stifle cultural contacts. Barbarians could make unobjectionable colleagues or even employers; men with Rhadamantine names managed to be acceptable correspondents and dinner- companions. Indeed, the negative stereotypes may even have nurtured humanist

1 Outside the cabal of ‘humanists’, there was a counter-tradition of praise of England: so, Paolo de Campograsso, addressing Henry V in 1414 on behalf of John XXIII, described the island’s glories by reference to Bede, Bartholomeus Anglicus and John of Salisbury: Florence: Biblioteca Riccardiana, MS.784, fol.114-5. 2 Harth i, ep.7 {ll.25-7}. 3 Mehus, ep.II/18 (II/25); see below pp.65-6.

51 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 interest in the English, providing the civilised scholar with the challenge of educating the world’s extremities.1

Yet, before we too precipitously conclude that the barbaric caricature tends only to denigrate English learning, a caveat should be admitted: this same stereotype may also have informed some of the more positive comments about English learning made later in the quattrocento. For example, in a famous passage in his 1460 funeral oration on Guarino, Ludovico Carbone closes his list of the pedagogue’s illustrious pupils with a series of Englishmen. In part, these names were included because several of them were known to Carbone but, within the rhetorical tradition I have outlined, this list also neatly emphasises the impressive extent of Guarino’s teaching: the lamented humanist managed even to civilise barbarians. As Carbone opens the passage: Quot homines natura barbaros a loquendi barbarie liberavit eosque in patriam lingua et arte Latinos factos remisit! 2 The list’s emphasis on Englishmen might reflect well on the particular individuals, but any compliment paid to the

English nation is no more than back-handed. Similarly, Piccolomini’s positive comments about Adam Moleyns, in the letter with which this chapter opened, are suspect, and so too may even be the inclusion of three Englishmen in Vespasiano’s

Vite.1 Their preoccupation with unusually educated barbarians has something of the fascination of the freak show. Piccolomini’s implication that English intellectual standards had improved has more to do with Italian prejudices than a sudden

1 Decembrio, for example, plays on England’s distance when dedicating his Plato to Humphrey: Sammut, p.203 {l.6}; note also Surigone’s comments at Cambridge: Trinity, MS.B.14.47, fol.9-10v. 2 Garin, pp.398-400. On Carbone’s English acquaintances, see c.vii p.238 below. Similar comments to Carbone’s are made by Battista Guarini who said of his father’s school that it attracted pupils even ex Britannia ipsa quae extra orbem terrarum posita est [Guarino, Epistolario, iii, p.500]. For a similar phrase, Britannia ... nomen fere orbis alterius meretur, see Justus de Justis 1467 poem to John Chedworth: BL, MS.Cotton Nero.A.x, fol.10v [on Chedworth, see R.J.Mitchell, “English students at Padua”, TRHS, 4th ser., xix (1936) pp.101-118].

52 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 amelioration of English mental capability. So, if we wished to believe Englishmen were exceptionally committed to ‘humanism’ in the mid-fifteenth century, we would have to look beyond the comments of a Carbone or a Piccolomini. On the other hand, if we wished to claim that English intellectual life was markedly barbaric in earlier decades, we would to have go further than the remarks of a Bruni or a Poggio.

This issue is complicated further because, in some cases, we have to remember that the cultural distance between the humanists and Britain was not simply intellectual; it could also have a political element. By this I do not mean the pro-French sentiments of someone like Petrarch. Rather, for those scholars known as civic humanists, like Poggio, the difficulty was one not of policy but of constitution.

Now, consciousness of this separation may not have perpetually weighed down upon the humanists in their contacts with England - it is, for example, never mentioned in

Poggio’s letters from England. However, it did at times inform their comments to and about Englishmen. For example, Poggio’s attitude to the one English king he met,

Henry V, was less than wholly positive. In a letter to Antonio Loschi of 1424, he mentions the late king.2 The burden of the letter is how death destroys the great and bellicose - omnia consilia et conatus in ipso victoriarum cursu mors intercepit. In arguing this, Henry is employed as a topical example, alongside Braccio da Montone,

Ladislao of Naples and Giangaleazzo Visconti: hardly an auspicious bunch coming from the pen of Poggius Florentinus. The English hereditary monarch is equated

1 Wolkan, ed., Der Briefwechsel, p.325; in Vespasiano’s Vite, 2 vol.s (Florence, 1970-6) Iberians (including Portuguese and Catalans) are by far the most often mentioned foreign nation, but the English are the second most represented. 2 Harth ii, ep.1/2.

53 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 with Italian ‘despots’ and mercenaries against whom Florence had fought for libertas.1

For another example of republican hauteur, we need look no further than the letter of Piccolomini which opened this chapter. The final phrase - slaves follow the style of their masters - adds a cutting barb to an otherwise flattering letter. The presence of this element once again reminds us that humanist praise can be less ingenuous than at first it might appear. The effect of their sense of political distance on their contacts with the English will be touched upon in later chapters. For the moment, the focus is upon the criticisms which, as we have seen, can also be less than straightforward. The distortions that result from reading humanists’ comments at face value will be discussed in the next section.

Poggio in England, or the difficulties of spreading studia humanitatis

It has traditionally been assumed that the process of spreading ‘humanism’ was the work of those individual Italians who came to England, in particular the papal officials.2 It is less often explained how these individuals were meant to propagate

‘humanism.’ If it is by the assistance they gave to expediting manuscript circulation, then the Italians concerned have a demonstrable - though not exclusive - importance; but the insinuation of traditional surveys is that there was somehow something more which they could do. The traditional narrative appears to imagine these itinerant

Italians to be mini-Great Men, encapsulating and projecting ‘humanist values.’

Recent revisions of accounts of cultural diffusion have emphasised previous

1 Poggio also discusses English history in book II of De Varietate Fortunae where he narrates the downfall of Richard II and talks of Bolingbroke being declared king omni consensu: see edition by O.Merisalo (Helsinki, 1993) pp.110-2. 2 Weiss, pp.22-8 & passim.

54 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 inattention to the activity of receiving works.1 While such criticisms lie behind much of what will be said in this chapter, I want for the moment to concentrate on this other assumption of the conventional narrative: that the diffusion of cultural ideas is achieved primarily by personal agency.

To introduce my point, let me use an analogous case. The locus classicus of successful diffusion of ideas is, surely, the achievement of Paul of Tarsus.2 In the mid-first century AD, on his missions to the Gentiles, some men and women may have been inspired to emulate what they saw of Paul’s meekness, his chastity and, in fine, his Christian values. What, though, was most persuasive about his persona was perhaps either the sight or rumours of his miraculous powers. Those not fortunate enough to encounter him casting out evil spirits could be convinced of the faith by talking to him. Yet, while his presence gained converts, Paul stayed with any congregation for only a little while; in his absence, he still advised, encouraged and reprimanded the congregations through his epistles - and, indeed, through these writings, his influence continued after his death. In this case, evangelisation was achieved through a trinity of charisma, personal teaching and the written word: these, as far as I can see, are the basic techniques available to any process of cultural diffusion. In the case of the early evangelists, spreading their message to all, but especially the non-literate, their physical presence may have had especial importance.

The studia humaniatis, of course, provided no rival ideology to Christianity; it did not offer a way of living nor was it so universal in its intended audience. Yet, a similar combination of techniques was arguably available to assist the dissemination

1 Eg., P.Burke, The Fortunes of the Courtier (Cambridge, 1995) pp.2-5. See also id., “The spread of Italian humanism” in A.Goodman & A.MacKay, ed., The Impact of Humanism on Western Europe (London, 1990) pp.1-22; id., “The uses of Italy” in R.Porter & M.Teich, ed., The Renaissance in National Context (Cambridge, 1992) pp.6-20. 2 E.P.Sanders, Paul (Oxford, 1991).

55 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 of humanist ‘values’ - with the proviso, naturally, that few humanists had St.Paul’s healing hands. To investigate further this process of cultural exchange, I wish to employ the example of a humanist who was certainly no saint but undoubtedly a devout Christian: Poggio Bracciolini.

It is customary to start discussions of direct humanist contact with England with Poggio’s residence here from summer 1419 to late 1422 or early 1423, but it could be objected that this is no place from which to begin.1 After all, Poggio was not the first character with humanist interests to visit England: if the 1360s Oxford education of Peter Philargus, the future Alexander V, is excluded on the basis that he was a Greek scholar rather than a ‘humanist’, the same can surely not be said of

Emmanuel Chrysoloras, who came here on a diplomatic mission in 1409.2 Equally, it could be questioned what ‘humanism’ exactly Poggio could have smuggled into this country: he had no corpus of his own writings to circulate nor does he seem to have

1 The dates of Poggio’s time in England sometimes cause confusion. He entered Beaufort’s service in November 1418 at Mantua, travelled back with him via Rouen, where he met Henry V in March 1419, and probably reached England that summer [G.L.Harriss, Cardinal Beaufort (Oxford, 1988) pp.97, 100; M.C.Davies, “Friends and enemies of Poggio: studies in quattrocento humanist literature” (unpublished Oxford DPhil thesis, 1986) pp.50 & 58 {ll.235-6} (a slightly earlier version in Rinascimento, 2nd ser., xxii (1982) pp.152-182)]. So, Poggio’s comment in June 1422 that he has been in England quattuor annis is an exaggeration (unless it is a later emendation to reflect the completed time he spent here) [Harth, I, ep.18 {l.30}]. His last letter from England is dated 25 June 1422, where, despite his usual talk of leaving England, he suggests that it will be at least two months before he sets out; his first from Rome, addressed to Leonardo Bruni, is dated 16 March 1423 [Harth ii, ep.1/10; Harth i, ep.20 is dated 12 February 1423 but, as Davies, “Friends and enemies”, pp.17-8, shows, this is Florentine style: i.e. by modern practice, it is dated 1424]. Poggio returned to Italy along the Rhine route and passed through Florence, albeit briefly [R.Sabbadini, Le Scoperte dei codici latini e greci [repr.] (Florence, 1967) i pp.83-4; Harth ii, ep.1/10 {ll.13-4, 39-40}]. This body of evidence would suggest that he left England between autumn 1422 and the first days of 1423. Possibly, then, Poggio’s ultimate decision to leave was taken after he heard the news of Henry V’s death. 2 R.Weiss, “The study of Greek in England during the fourteenth century” in id., Medieval and Humanist Greek (Padua, 1977) pp.80-107 at pp.103-5; R.Sabbadini, “L’ultimo ventennio della vita di Manuele Chrysolora”, Giornale Liguistico di Archeologia, Storia e Letteratura, xvii (1890) pp.321- 336. It is known that Chrysoloras visited Salisbury Cathedral during this visit but it has never been explained why [Harth i, ep.7 {ll.21-5}]: perhaps he sought an audience with the internationally respected bishop, Robert Hallam; if this is so, he must have travelled there in the very first months of 1409 as Hallam was at the Council of Pisa by 24 April [BRUO sub nomine; on Hallam, see below p.66].

56 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 come supplied with a travelling library of his fellow humanists’ writings.1 This, though, is hardly remarkable; ‘humanism’ in the late 1410s could be characterised (if it must) as a net importer of intellectual stimuli, liberating manuscripts from

Germanic safe-keeping, rather than disseminating as yet a wide range of original texts. Of course, that leading freedom-fighter for disrespected manuscripts, Poggio himself, found few tomes worth letting loose from English libraries but I have suggested elsewhere that this tells us more about his assiduity while here than about the state of English manuscript collections.2 While I do not intend to recapitulate that discussion of Poggio’s English activities, it is to our present purpose to outline the assumption on which such a re-interpretation is based. I grandiloquently claimed elsewhere that it is necessary to read both what is on and what is between the lines of the available evidence: by this I mean that, when employing ‘humanist’ sources to interpret the interaction between Italians and Englishmen, we must be sensitive to the conventions and stereotypes that suffuse those writings. I have already suggested how one such stereotype has distorted interpretations of English humanist interest; I want to look briefly at some of the other conventions which define Poggio’s letters to

Niccolò Niccoli, which are the main - well nigh the sole - evidence for the humanist’s time in England.

These epistles belong (with one exception) to an authorised selection of his letters which Poggio published in 1436 with a dedicatory letter.3 It was not a

1 Poggio while he was in England was supplied by his hosts with suitable reading matter: Chrysostom and Aristotle [eg. Harth i, ep.7]. Poggio did, however, have a collection of books by the time he left England [Harth i, ep.62 {ll.40-3}; on Poggio’s manuscripts from England, see A.C.de la Mare, The handwriting of Italian humanists I/i (Oxford, 1973) p.66; and on whether he found Petronius extracts here, ead., “The return of Petronius to Italy” in J.J.G.Alexander & M.T.Gibson, ed., Medieval Learning and Literature: essays presented to R.W.Hunt (Oxford, 1976) pp.220-254]. 2 “Virtue and Weiss”, pp.183-8. 3 Harth i; the exceptional letter is presented there as app.ii. No manuscripts survive, however, of the collection prefaced by its dedication: on the extant mss, see Davies, “Friends and enemies”, pp.1-27.

57 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 complete collection, in part because he did not have copies of some letters to hand, partly because he consciously excluded some epistles, including apparently some from England.1 Those which were included were explicitly intended to incite the reader to imitate priscorum eloquentia, although it is clear from the letters themselves that what was available for imitation was not only a literary style but also accompanying classical virtues. 2 In particular, Poggio’s continual letter-writing to

Niccoli, even from far away in England, is designed to demonstrate his amicitia and pietas. When they were originally written, these expressions of the author’s humanitas also had another, related intention: to please his correspondent. So, for example, Niccoli apparently made eager inquiries about the riches he had heard were in English libraries, and, accordingly, Poggio promised to peruse those collections - even if, as others claimed, he actually found little time for such research. Neither when the letters were composed nor when they were collected was the primary concern to present an accurate narrative of Poggio’s life; their information is filtered through a set of intentions, selected and presented with particular purposes in mind.3

However private they might seem, these sources are, like the vast majority of humanist epistolae, artfully designed.

Reading Poggio’s English letters without sensitivity to his rhetoric, it has been concluded that the keynotes of his time here were frustration and failure - which makes it all the more surprising that after leaving England, he considered a return-

Davies rightly warns against overstating the letterarietà of the epistolario [contrast Harth i, pp.cii- cvii], although of Poggio’s various collections, the letters to Niccoli was surely the most consciously designed. 1 Harth i, ep.1 {ll.12-20; 32-5} & app.v {esp.ll.15-17}; Davies, “Friends and enemies”, p.15 notes that Harth app.iii & iv were excluded from this collection. 2 Harth i, ep.1 {l.43}. 3 Davies, “Friends and enemies”, p.16.

58 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 visit.1 It has been said that “he failed to stimulate his English contemporaries” - not, naturally, because he was disinclined to convert for his cause but because the English were too immersed in apathy to assimilate his good news. Consequently, Poggio’s

English acquaintances lost an opportunity to change their mindsets.2 Such an interpretation, I would suggest, misrepresents the purpose of Poggio’s time here and, more generally, the process of cultural diffusion. In the first place, it makes assumptions about English reactions to Poggio that are, at best, unfounded in the evidence and, at times, contradicted by the information we do have. I wish now to turn round the sources and ask what they tell us about his hosts’ attitude to this little- known, middle-aged but sharp-witted Italian.

Let us start with his employer, Beaufort: why did he decide this scholar would be a useful addition to his entourage? Perhaps in 1418, while temporarily a cardinal and wishing to cut a figure on the international stage, Beaufort thought it expedient to employ someone intimate with the Roman curia and the Italian language. However, when they had returned to England, Beaufort did not require Poggio incessantly by his side: indeed, the Italian’s less than rigorous work-pattern gave him opportunity to write to Niccoli, inserting grumbles about his master’s absence.3 If Beaufort did not pay Poggio the compliment of solicitous attentions, other Englishmen appear to have been interested in employing his talents. After a couple of years in England, Poggio clearly hoped to increase his income by finding a new employer; despite comments to

Niccoli about wanting to return to Italy, he appears to have been very prepared to take another barbarian’s wages. Poggio keeps his allusions intentionally vague but he

1 Harth i, ep.21 {ll.8-10} & ep.64 {ll.2-4}. 2 Weiss, pp.20-1. 3 Harth i, ep.3 {ll.28-30} & ep.5 {l.9}.

59 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 seems to have found a ‘friend’ who hoped to lure him away from Beaufort’s service.1

Nor was this the only Englishman who showed Poggio favour: apparently another ecclesiastic offered him a place in his travelling-group on a journey to Rome.2

These offers of patronage suggest that Poggio’s talents did not go so unnoticed as his more depressed letters might imply. However, enjoying the company of someone who was a declared ‘humanist’ is quite a different proposition from being receptive to those ideas called ‘humanism.’ It may be, as it were, that

Englishmen liked Poggio for the wrong reasons - that they failed to follow what the traditional interpretation sees as his charismatic cultural leadership. Unfortunately, the evidence does not exist to decide this claim. Poggio’s conversations with his

English companions are completely lost to us; indeed, definite evidence about his

English acquaintances is confined to later letters he wrote in Italy. For example, we hear in 1424 that Nicholas Bildeston is homo perhumanus et familiarissimus mihi; eramus enim apud eundem dominum ambo et summa necessitudine coniuncti - so close, indeed, that Poggio had felt no need earlier to make reference to him.1 If, though, the later letters to English correspondents can stand as any guide to their discussions, it would appear that the Italian tended to proffer them unsolicited moral advice (and risked causing gross offence in the process).2 The epistles also include some discussion of humanist works but little sign that the Englishmen’s reading of them was shaped by Poggio’s leadership: on the contrary, at least in the case of

1 Harth i, ep.8 { ll.53-8} & ep.11 { ll.9-11}. 2 Harth i, ep.9 { ll.43-7}. The dating of this - 17 December 1421 - might suggest that the planned trip was related to the diplomacy surrounding the dispute over provision to the bishopric of London, on which see M.Harvey, “Martin V and Henry V”, Archivium Historiae Pontificiae, xxiv (1986) pp.49- 70. This was when Parliament was sitting and, thus, some of the bishops were present in London, including Nicholas Bubwyth who, on the same day as Poggio’s letter, granted an indulgence to his parishoners if they donated gifts to the English hospice at Rome [T.S.Holmes, ed., The Register of Nicholas Bubwith ii {Somerset Record Society, xxx} (London, 1914) p.412] - could this have been in preparation for a trip to Italy?

60 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 Richard Petworth, his interest in Poggio’s works seems to have arisen in the 1430s without the author’s interference. In other words, the limited evidence we have gives no hint that Poggio played the part of charismatic teacher of ‘humanism’ to the

English. Instead, those acts of cultural exchange that the historian can detect involved the transfer not of undiluted, intangible values but of manuscripts and of texts. In terms, then, of the Pauline trinity of modes of transmission, the written word was the most efficacious method of spreading knowledge of the studia humanitatis. This was not a task which was in the exclusive domain of the humanists; the English were not just passive recipients, as is shown by their seeking out texts for themselves.

Undeniably, ideas can be disseminated by face-to-face meetings, by those luminous moments of inspiration which can only occur during human contact.

However, in the specific case of Poggio’s English visit, it is doubtful whether either side was concerned to disseminate knowledge in their meetings: after all, Poggio’s brief was not to be a teacher - or, indeed, a student - while he was here. More generally, human contact (outside the classroom) is perhaps neither the most common nor the most efficient form of intellectual communication. In effect, the use of individuals is less as the embodiment of Renaissance ideals than as couriers distributing humanist works. If this sounds too workaday, it can be rephrased thus: in an age with few formal methods of book-distribution, the individual who placed a manuscript in his saddle-bag was integral to the dissemination of literature. If, then, these individuals are so important, we should investigate briefly the reasons that could lead them to travel between Italy and England.3

1 Harth i, ep.48 {ll.23-5}; on Bildeston, see below pp.69-70 & c.iv p.151. 2 On this and following point, see c.vii pp.242-7 below. 3 This topic, and especially the ecclesiastical elements, is well covered in Harvey, passim. See also P.O.Kristeller, “The European Diffusion of Italian Humanism” in id., Studies in Renaissance Thought and Letters, ii (Rome, 1985) pp.147-66.

61 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 There was certainly no lack of human traffic; the walls of Florence Cathedral and Westminster Abbey are testament enough that such exchanges existed from the fourteenth century. In the one church, there is Uccello’s belated funerary fresco to Sir

John Hawkwood; in the other, St.Stephen’s Chapel with its mid-century murals painted in the Italian style. Rarely, however, did exchange of individuals produce such high art - or, indeed, other cultural creations. Most contacts were more mundane, with men and women leaving their homeland for very practical reasons.

Hawkwood, for example, went to Italy to earn money as a condottiere and stayed to marry into the Visconti family; in 1407, one of his in-laws, Lucia, travelled in the opposite direction to live in England as wife and, all too quickly, widow of the earl of

Kent.1 Many, though, did not emigrate for life. Students journeyed between the two countries in search of enlightenment; others travelled in pursuit of enrichment.2

Business links included the Italian banks which had offices in London; in this category should also be counted the men who were sent on diplomatic missions between London and (most frequently) Rome - missions which could post them abroad either for years or merely for weeks.3

There may have been plentiful channels of contact, but this did not necessarily create a flood of manuscripts, let alone of humanist ones. Indeed, the most striking feature is how unlikely circumstances or personal inclination made such intellectual interchange. Eminent humanists might travel to England -

1 H.Bradley, “Lucia Visconti, Countess of Kent” in C.Barron & A.Sutton ed., Medieval London Widows (London, 1994) pp.77-84. 2 For Venetian students in 1390s Oxford, see A.Luttrell, “Giovanni Contarini”, JWCI, xxix (1966) pp.424-32, esp. p.430. On English students in Italy generally, see R.J.Mitchell, “English student life in early Renaissance Italy”, Italian Studies, vii (1952) pp.62-83; for records of English students at one university in the early quattrocento, see C.Zonta & I.Brotto ed., Acta Graduum Academicorum Gymnasi Patavini (Padua, 1922). 3 G.Holmes, “Florentine Merchants in England, 1346-1436”, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., xiii (1960) pp.193-208.

62 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 Piccolomini, say, or Gaspare Veronese - but there was no certainty that they would use their time to proselytise for studia humanitatis.1 Similarly, there is what can be called the ‘ex-pat’ problem: Italians might arrive with humanist texts, but circulate them only among the Italian community.2 Again, Poggio’s English years demonstrate that a long sojourn abroad was not the most effective way for an interested reader to circulate manuscripts. As is apparent from his letters, Poggio rarely received manuscripts from home and, so, could not distribute them.3 Likewise, a long-serving

English curialist like Andrew Holes (to whom we will turn later) might build up an impressive library but its circulation among his compatriots would be delayed until he eventually returned home. Equally, a visit could be too short to effect a transfer of books: the traveller could, for example, be in one Italian city too briefly to be able both to commission a manuscript and to receive the finished product.1

So far I have mentioned only what might be called exchange visits but representatives of each country could, of course, meet on neutral territory, for example, at the General Councils. Yet, perhaps we should not exaggerate even their use. Certainly, later in the century, Vespasiano travelling to the Congress of Mantua with books for sale, some of which were bought by Englishmen. It may have not been quite the same at the Council of Constance. For sure, there (as, later, at the

Council of Basel) recently found manuscripts of classical texts were transcribed and circulated. On the other hand, the corpus of original humanist works available - apart,

1 C.M.Ady, “Pius II and his experiences of England, Scotland and the English”, English Miscellany, ix (1958) pp.39-49; E.M.Sanford, “Gaspare Veronese”, Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, lxxxiv (1953) pp.190-209. 2 As was probably the case with the copy of Bruni’s Laudatio which Lazzaro da Padova translated into Italian in London in the first decade of the fifteenth century: see E.Levi, “I maestri di Francesco Novello da Carrara”, Atti del Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, lxviii (1907-8) pp.385-407 at pp.390-1; the translation is edited by F.Luiso, La vera lode (Florence, 1899). For a later example, see Florence: Biblioteca Riccardiana, MS.952. 3 Harth i ep.12.

63 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 say, from Poggio’s funeral orations and letters - was hardly substantial. It would not, then, be surprising if an English cleric like Richard Flemmyng or Nicholas Bubwyth failed to return home laden down with humanist texts. Similarly, some claim has been made for France as a mediator of humanist culture to England.2 While later in the century manuscripts certainly arrived in the Burgundian style, I can find little sign that these were preceded by any substantial number of French copies of humanist texts.

The preceding paragraphs may appear to draw a gloomy picture of the rarity of cultural exchange. Yet, if nothing else, the contacts created relationships which could last beyond the meeting - through correspondence. Now, letter-writing might often have been fitful and perhaps did not achieve the living conversation that was the Ciceronian ideal. Moreover, sending a parcel through an intermediary was possible but often slow and uncertain. Yet, manuscripts did travel this way; it is to those manuscripts we should now turn.

From Dante to Salutati

Just as there was a continuity of contacts from the fourteenth century on into the fifteenth, so there was a history of texts by Italians being sent to England. We should perhaps begin our discussion with works by the humanists’ predecessors. By predecessors, I do not mean the so-called (but certainly not soi-disant) ‘pre- humanists’ but those writers that were christened in the early quattrocento the novi poetae: Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio. It was the first Florentine humanists - that cabal of literati who sat at the feet of Petrarch’s friend, Salutati - who moulded their

1 See the examples of Archbishop Arundel’s servant and of Nicholas Bildeston discussed at pp.69n & 71 below. 2 Harvey, p.40, J.B.Trapp, Erasmus, Colet and More (London, 1991) p.10.

64 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 fellow-citizens into a triumvirate, defining themselves as much in relation to them as to the ancient world. Most notoriously, Bruni’s Dialogi ad Petrum Histrum reflect their ambivalence to the novi poetae: were they a source of civic pride or an intellectual embarrassment? Was, in particular, their anti-republican sentiment an acceptable political outlook?1 Clearly, if one wanted to read like a ‘humanist’, it would not be enough to peruse trecento texts: they would have to be studied in the prescribed fashion.

If these attitudes were born, fully formed, from Bruni’s head in the first years of the fifteenth century, their first English reception may have been little more than three or four years later. It was possibly in the first half of 1408 that Bruni wrote to

Niccoli asking him to arrange for the sale of a copy of the Dialogi to his friend, vir egregius Thomas Britannus. It is unclear whether this elusive Englishman ever took possession of the work: all that can be said with certainty is that there is no positive evidence for an English circulation of the dialogues.2 Such an exclusion left English readers as unguided as later travellers wandering through Florence without a

Baedeker. They were likely to take the wrong turn, following an unprescribed route to understanding a text. A case in point would be the Divina Commedia, the politics and classical scholarship of which Bruni’s Dialogi had criticised. The crowning achievement of “the wise poete of Florence” certainly interested some early fifteenth

1 The Dialogi are most accesible in Garin, pp.44-98; for a recent analysis, see D.Quint, “Humanism and modernity: a reconsideration of Bruni’s Dialogues”, Renaissance Quarterly, xxxviii (1985) pp.423-45. For the latest judgement on their dating, see R.Fubini, “All’uscita dalla Scolastica medievale”, Archivio Storico Italiano, cl (1992) pp.1065-1103. 2 Mehus, ep. II/18 (II/25). Any attempt to identify this Thomas is futile, doomed because of the uncertain date of this letter (Luiso [p.48] suggested Lucca, Feb-May 1408, presumably on the basis of its place in the collection) and further confounded by the possibility that Britannus actually refers to a Breton [cf. Poggio’s Facezie, ed.M.Ciccuto (Milan, 1994) p.372]. Leaving aside this last difficulty, if the dating is accepted and taking Bruni’s statement - mihi amicus - literally, it might suggest an English curialist, in which case the most likely candidate would be Thomas Polton, on whom BRUO, sub nomine and, on whose later career, Harvey, pp.11-2. At this time, there was also an English

65 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 century Englishmen: Bishops Hallam and Bubwyth, attending the Council of

Constance, found time, in between negotiating an end to the Schism and working to extirpate heresy, to involve themselves in commissioning from Giovanni Bertoldi da

Serravalle a Latin translation and commentary of the Commedia.1 This Latin version did Dante an inestimable service, making his work accessible to an international audience. Moreover, though there may have been no English translation of the

Commedia until the nineteenth century, Serravalle’s work certainly gained modest popularity here in the fifteenth century.2 Hallam died at Constance in 1417 but

Nicholas Bubwyth (d.1424) seems to have returned to England with a copy.3 In the following twenty years, Humphrey of Gloucester came by a manuscript - it is not clear whether it was this copy that Whethamstede perused.4 Neither or none of these survives but there is extant another manuscript which appears to have spent some time in England.5

embassy at Gregory XII’s itinerant court but there is no record of a Thomas in it: R.G.Davies, “After the execution of Archbishop Scrope”, BJRL, lix (1977) pp.40-74 at pp.63-9. 1 M.daCivezza & T.Domenichelli ed., Fratris Iohannis de Serravalle...translatio et comentum [sic] totius libri Dantis Aldigherii (Prato, 1891), working from *BAV, MS.Capponiano 1. Apart from the Egerton codex discussed below, another manuscript of this work survives in Hungary as *Eger: Föegyházmegyei Könyvtar, MS.P.V.1 [Iter, IV, p.302]. On Bertoldi, see DBI sub nomine; on Hallam and Bubwyth, see BRUO sub nominibus. Hallam had a certain reputation for learning: he was also the dedicatee of a poem by John Seward, on which see V.H.Galbraith, “John Seward and his circle” in id., Kings and Chronicles (London, 1982) pp.85-106. 2 P.Toynbee, “The earliest references to Dante in English literature” in Miscellanea di studi critici edita in onore di Arturo Graf (sl, 1903) pp.77-105 at p.103. 3 It is presumably his copy which was placed in his cathedral library at Wells and seen by Leland (who confusingly talks of a Latin verse translation): Collectanea (London, 1774) p.155. 4 Humphrey’s copy was given to Oxford in 1444 [Sammut, p.82 {no.256}] and was still there when Leland visited [Sammut, p.96 {no.15}]. On Whethamstede’s knowledge, see R.Weiss, “Per la conoscenza di Dante in Inghilterra nel Quattrocento”, GSLI, cvii (1936) pp.357-9; the assumption that Whethamstede used Humphrey’s copy [Harvey, p.40] is plausible but nothing more. 5 BL, MS.Egerton 2629. Its provenance is unclear (there is an erased ex libris at fol.387v): it is written in Italian late gothic hands and includes early marginalia in English hands. The chronologically first of these is discussed in a moment; there is also a small gothic hand which, at fol.86v, notes that romani pontifices have been infamous symoniacs - perhaps suggesting a Protestant reader. However, perhaps soon after his inspection of the work, it probably moved across the Channel. There are a few seventeenth century doodles in French (fol.105, 153, 181); also a sixteenth century humanist hand comments on the differences between Paris university and universitas osoniensis [sic] in Anglia [fol.5]. The same reader notes a few pages later [fol.27] an error made by Serravalle in discussing Caesar and concludes: iste scriptor in studiis humanitatis fuit asinus. He adds no marginalia after this

66 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 What could this commentary teach its audience? In truth, those English readers who let Bertoldi lead them through Dante’s work would have learnt nothing from him of the recent controversy over its political stance or scholarly standards.

Though it was written in the company of humanists, the commentary works in a different tradition, owing much to Bertoldi’s former master, Benvenuto da Imola.1 It does not engage with the Dialogi’s specific criticisms - it is, for example, more concerned with Cato Uticensis’ suicide than the length of his beard. And the one

English reader of the fifteenth century who has left us extensive marginal comments appears to follow Bertoldi’s concerns. While ‘humanist’ interest may have been in the depiction of classical figures, this reader noted Bertoldi’s references to ‘medieval’ history, commenting, for example, auctor hinc commendat domum regum Anglie and

Reges francie fuerant tiranni.2 Such remarks suggest political partisanship but not quite in the manner the republican Bruni would have expected.

So, a reading of the novi poetae might not have intuitively led an Englishman to an appreciation of ‘humanism’, but this was for lack, not of sufficient ‘modernity’, but of supplementary reading matter.3 Such a conclusion holds even for Petrarch who, of the three ‘new poets’, proved the most popular in England. For the humanists, Petrarch may have been (largely) above invective but he was not beyond reproach. Indeed, if the humanists were perpetrating a revolution it was one that ate its fathers and intellectual cannibalism was not merely the affectation of Bruni; Pier

Paolo Vergerio (the dedicatee of the Dialogi) could pen a eulogistic Vita Petrarchae, while elsewhere repudiating Petrarch’s own criticisms of Cicero’s political

point. This manuscript has a different verbum probatorium from Humphrey’s while its early move across the Channel makes it difficult to identify it with the Wells codex. 1 D.Parker, Commentary and Ideology: Dante in the Renaissance (London, 1993) c.3, esp. pp.60-9. 2 MS.Egerton 2629, fol.146v (nota quare Cato interfecit se; Purg.1), 170v (Purg.7), 208v (Purg. 20). 3 Contrast Weiss, p.22.

67 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 involvement. Yet, neither of Vergerio’s works reached England in the early fifteenth century.1 Petrarch’s texts, therefore, arrived in England, as it were, without the appropriate instruction manual. This, though, proved no bar to Englishmen collecting a fair range of Petrarch’s works in the early fifteenth century.2 There may have been an unhealthy propensity to read De Remediis utriusque fortune, Petrarch’s “most idiosyncratic and somewhat medieval” treatise; equally, though, by the 1430s,

Lydgate could compile a fairly full catalogue of the laureate’s works and while this might not reflect his own close knowledge of the texts, it may well be that many of them were already circulating here.3 Certainly, the surviving evidence shows that, by the 1430s, Petrarch’s epistolario, his De Vita Solitaria and his Latin version of the

Historia Griseldis were definitely all known here, as well perhaps as his De viris illustribus.4

By this stage, Petrarch had clearly entered the canon of English taste. Already in the last decades of the fourteenth century, Chaucer could think it plausible to characterise his clerk of Oxenford as admiring the laureate’s works: the literary image is one of fashionable learned reading.5 Similarly, when Nicholas Bildeston travelled to Italy in 1424 he asked his former colleague, Poggio, to arrange aliquos

1 Vita Petrarchae: A.Solerti, ed., Le vite di Dante, Petrarca e Boccaccio (Milan, [1904]) pp.294-302; letter to Petrarch, under the pseudonym of Cicero: L.Smith, ed., Epistolario di P.P.Vergerio (Rome, 1934) pp.436-450. Manetti’s lives of the three crowns did, however, circulate here at least in the late fifteenth century: see Oxford: Lincoln College, MS.lat.111, fol.219v-232. 2 The following interpretation differs from, but is heavily dependent upon, Prof.N.Mann’s important articles: “Petrarch’s Role in Humanism”, Apollo, xciv (1971) pp.176-183; “La prima fortuna del Petrarca in Inghilterra” in G.Billanovich & G.Frasso, ed., Il Petrarca ad Arquà (Padua, 1975) pp.279- 289; and especially his catalogue. 3 N.Mann, “The origins of humanism” in J.Kraye, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism (Cambridge: CUP, 1996) p.13. Lydgate’s list in Fall of Princes, bk.IV ll.108-126, is somewhat idiosyncratic and thus unlikely to be descended from one of the Latin vitae. Note, in particular, Cosmographie as the appellation for the Itinerarium, and the reference to the epistles only mentioning the Sine Titulo. 4 See Mann, no.19, 242, 8; by the early 1440s, Whethamstede was referring repeatedly to the De viris illustribus, on which see below p.88n. 5 “The Clerk’s Prologue”, ll.26-38 [The Riverside Chaucer, ed.L.D.Benson [3rd ed.] (Boston, 1987) p.137].

68 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 libros Petrarche for his purchase.1 On this journey, his request probably remained unanswered. However, at least by the late 1430s he owned - and was willing to part with - a copy of De Remediis.2 It is symptomatic of our ignorance that we know

Bildeston was a book-collector but can name at most only two volumes from his collection.3

Fortunately, we know more about the manuscripts of another English curialist from this period: Andrew Holes.4 He too showed some interest in Petrarch but this was not the main focus of his legendary manuscript-buying spree in Florence in the

1430s.5 Instead, like his colleague Parentucelli, Holes was keen to buy Salutati manuscripts - both ones that he had owned and ones that included his works.6

1 Harth i, ep.48 [p.140]. There is some confusion over the dating of this letter; both Harth and Goodhart Gordon date the letter to 20 November 1425, while Weiss, p.19, assumes it dates from 1424. There are several reasons to prefer Weiss’ dating. First, Harth i, ep.62 is dated 3 November 1425 and includes information which must postdate that in ep.48: for example, in ep.48 the idea is mooted of attempting to secure manuscripts from Monte Cassino [ll.19-22], while in ep.62 Poggio talks of the failure of the search of that library [ll.36-9]. A 1425 date would also demand the assumption of another trip by Bildeston to Rome, for which there is no evidence. After his 1424 trip, Bildeston was back in London by or on 7 January 1425 [London: PRO, E.101 322/10]. As this means he must have left the Curia soon after Poggio’s ep.48 and as we know he departed without taking his leave of Poggio [Harth ii, ep.11, ll.46-7 - Harth convincingly redates this letter to May 1425], it is unlikely that he did manage to buy any Petrarch manuscripts on this trip. This reconstruction of Bildeston’s movements means that, pace Weiss p.19n, Bildeston can not be the amicus meus quidam who Poggio also mentions as hoping to buy Petrarch works [Harth i, epp.49 & 50]. On the other hand, Bildeston did meet Poggio again on later trips to Rome: the latter is the scribe of a papal letter to which Bildeston was a witness in 1434 [CPL, 1427-47, p.503]. 2 *Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, MS.lat. 10209, which he presented to Duke Humphrey. On this manuscript see R.Weiss, “An unnoticed manuscript of Humfrey, Duke of Gloucester”, BodLR, v (1955) pp.123-4; E.Pellegrin, “Manuscrits de Pétrarque dans les bibliothèque de France”, IMU, iv (1961) pp.405-6; DH&EH, pp.8-9 {no.15}. As Weiss mentions, the copy of Vergerio’s Vita Petrarchae which now proceeds the main text was added after the manuscript left Humphrey’s library. The manuscript was in France by the beginning of the sixteenth century. 3 On the other manuscript, see c.iv p.151n below. 4 A.C.de la Mare’s identification of Holes’ marginalia in several manuscripts has greatly increased our knowledge of his collection; Prof.de la Mare has not published her findings but see M.Harvey, “An Englishman at the Roman Curia during the Council of Basle”, JEccH, xlii (1991) pp.19-38; see also BRUO sub nomine. 5 He owned a De vita solitaria written in England, now Oxford: Magdalen, MS. Lat. 141; he also had an Italian copy of the Familiarium Rerum Libri, part of which is Oxford: New College, MS.268. On these, see Mann, no.242 & 246; Harvey, “Englishman”, p.34. 6 Works of Salutati: BL, MS.Cotton. Caligula.A.xvi; BAV, MS.Urb.lat.694. Manuscripts owned by Salutati: Oxford: New College, MS.155 and possibly Oxford: New College, MS.272. On all of these see Harvey, “Englishman”, pp.32-3. For Parentucelli’s similar interest in Salutati manuscripts, B.L.Ullman, The Humanism of Coluccio Salutati (Padua, 1963) pp.180, 182-3; A.Manfredi, “Per la

69 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 However, from the surviving evidence, this is where Holes’ modern interests ended: there is no sign, for example, that Salutati’s pupils were represented in his collection.1 The bulk of his book-purchases seem to have been in canon law, fitting the description of him as both perennially reading ‘holy books’ and befriending that most pious of humanists, Giannozzo Manetti. If Vespasiano is to be believed, Holes, while in Italy, took up local habits and an impressive set of friends; but this did not necessarily make him a voracious reader of the latest ‘humanist’ works.2 Instead, like later English collectors, he defined his modern interests in particular relation to one figure.

In his reading of Salutati, however, Holes was not a trail-blazer. During his own lifetime, the Florentine Chancellor had thought of the English as an audience for both his projected edition of Petrarch’s Africa and for his own works.3 He counted among his acquaintances Thomas Arundel, who, deprived of the Archbishopric of

Canterbury, spent some of his exile in Florence. After 1399 and Arundel’s reinstatement, correspondence between the two seems to have been fitful.4 In 1403,

Salutati promised to copy for the Archbishop his recent work, De nobilitate legum et medicine, but it is not known whether this was made in time for Arundel’s servant to bring it back to England.1 This rare text may not, despite its author, have had an early

English fortuna; but a range of Salutati’s works were circulating here by the the time

Holes finally returned from the curia in 1445 and presented to Humphrey, Duke of

biblioteca di Tommaso Parentucelli” in P.Viti, ed., Firenze e il Concilio del 1439 (Florence, 1994) ii, pp.649-712 at pp.655-60. For Holes’ connexion with Parentucelli, see Harvey, p.83. 1 ‘Humanist’ classical interests are, however, displayed in Oxford: New College, MS.249, a set of Cicero’s orations, including Pro Murena and Pro Roscio Amerino, rediscovered by Poggio. 2 Vespasiano, Vite, I pp.311-3. 3 Novati, Epistolario, i p.252. 4 D.Vittori, “Salutati’s letters to the Archbishop of Canterbury”, Modern Language Journal, xxxvi (1952) pp.373-7. At BL, MS.Cotton.Caligula.A.xvi, fol.66, Salutati’s first letter to Arundel, discussing the rex depositus, is noted by both the scribe and early readers.

70 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 Gloucester his unique manuscript of De Laboribus Herculis.2 In the paper- (or rather parchment-) chase of references to the early reading of Salutati, many routes lead to

Humphrey, but the ducal library (like Holes’) was patently not the starting-point of interest. The selective survival of evidence, in this matter as elsewhere, has tended to overstate the duke’s influence. So, for example, it is through Humphrey’s supposed instructions to Lydgate on his Fall of Princes that we glimpse the popularity of

Salutati’s short Declamationes.3 The duke’s collection included a copy of these texts

- one which was made in England, most probably before reaching Humphrey.4 The significance of this is not only that these works clearly circulated elsewhere in

England before they reached Greenwich; this manuscript also includes a copy of De

Fato and De Seculo, written in Italy by one of Salutati’s scribes. In other words, as there is no reason to connect this manuscript with Holes, it would suggest that another Englishman was, in the same period, interested to purchase volumes closely associated with Salutati.

The other Salutati manuscript Humphrey owned was a collection of his letters: this was one of the few modern works that he felt able to donate to Oxford in

1439.5 It is not clear how comprehensive his copy was, but perhaps it was with that volume that Holes collated his own - and the now sole surviving from England -

1 Novati, Epistolario, iii pp.618-21. Ullman lists three extant mss of the work, of which the early provenance of only one is known: Humanism, pp.32, 279n. 2 BAV, MS.Urb.lat.694. 3 On this, see below, c.iv p.122. Salutati wrote in all three Declamationes but one of these on melius regnum sit successivum quam electivum exists in only one autograph copy: see B.L.Ullman, “Coluccio Salutati on monarchy”, Studi e testi, ccxxxv (1964) [Mélanges Eugène Tisserant, v] pp.401-11. 4 Manchester: Chetham’s Library, MS.Mun.A.3.131. 5 Sammut, p.70 {no.117}. Ullman [Studies, p.349, followed by Sammut, p.25] suggested that this volume may have been presented to Humphrey by Zanone di Castiglioni; however, I know of no evidence to support this proposition. The distinctive spelling here - epistole Collusii - is repeated, as Ullman noted [Studies, p.204], at BL, MS.Cotton.Cleo.C.v, fol.184v. This late fifteenth century manuscript, probably copied in Oxford, includes only three of Salutati’s letters.

71 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 substantial selection of Salutati’s epistles.1 The marginalia in this extant copy, with over ten readers leaving their mark, suggests that the manuscript received attention through the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries: it is a reminder that one copy is enough to achieve a fairly active circulation.

All the most popular of Salutati’s works, then, circulated here, as well as the

De Laboribus, but there were naturally lacunae in English knowledge with, for example, the De tyranno apparently not available.2 The effect of such gaps was, perhaps, to present to English readers a Salutati who was less ‘political’ than the one familiar to at least some of his Italian contemporaries. The contrast, though, should not be overstated. In his homeland, and across Europe, Salutati’s literary reputation was enhanced by the monastic penchant for De Seculo et Religione, his ‘medieval’ contribution to the de contemptu mundi tradition.3 Moreover, some of his works that did circulate in England had an inescapable political aspect. I will give two examples of this. First, in the surviving letter-collection, two of the epistles which early readers annotated have as their subject the Florentine plague of 1383.4 What attracted these readers may have been the persistent relevance of the subject and Salutati’s recurrent insistence that it was insane to attempt fleeing death. Yet, along with the memento mori refrain went a more specific purpose; as Salutati explained at length, he condemned the fashion for abandoning Florence in the time of plague as not only

1 BL, MS.Cotton.Caligula.A.xvi, fol.84, 94, 98v etc. Holes’ marginalia regularly suggest that his main interest was closely reading and collating a text in order to achieve an authoritative copy: cf. Oxford: New College, MS.268, fol.28v, 57v, 89 etc. 2 On De tyranno see C.Salutati, Tractatus de Tyranno, ed.F.Ercole (Berlin, 1914). It also appears that the Invectiva in Antonium Luscum did not circulate here: Oxford: All Souls, MS.94, a copy from Salutati’s scriptorium, appears to have been in France by the early sixteenth century and it can not be localised to Oxford until the following century; see Andrew Watson’s forthcoming Descriptive Catalogue of the Medieval Manuscripts of All Souls College, Oxford. 3 Ullman, Humanism, p.30; an English example would be the lost copy recorded in the Syon Abbey catalogue [ed.M.Bateson (Cambridge, 1898) pp.126-7]. 4 BL, MS.Cotton Caligula.A.xvi, fol.138v-146; Novati, Epistolario, ii pp.80-87.

72 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 irrational but also ungrateful to the patriae caritas.1 In other words, these letters which interested English readers may have been moralistic but they were simultaneously political.

The other example concerns one of the declamationes, the questio coram decemviris. Overall, the Declamatio Lucretiae might have gained greater popularity, but it seems that in England the two short works circulated and were read together.2

The purpose of the questio is, in part, to demonstrate the ability to argue in utramque partem. However, the power of eloquence provides not just the structural principle of the declamation but also its subject matter: the issue (one with a long pedigree ahead of it) is whether carmina famosa should be permitted in Rome. By selecting this topic, Salutati emphasises the potential civic importance - and dangers - of poetae. In other words, through this text, an English reader would not merely see humanist rhetoric in action; he would also gain some inkling of the issues that re-appear in the much less popular magnum opus, De Laboribus Herculis.

The partial nature of the reception of Salutati’s works in England did not, then, strip his reputation of a political element. At the same time, though, the connexion between Salutati and the next generation of ‘civic humanists’ might not have been as apparent to fifteenth century readers as it is to later historians. For sure,

Bruni or Poggio might feature in Salutati’s letters, but any sense of a community of scholars goes no further.1 There are no signs that in the early fifteenth century

Salutati’s works were accompanied by texts of the next generation in their English

1 Novati, Epistolario, ii p.84; on these letters, see R.Witt, Hercules at the Crossroads (Durham, NC, 1983) pp.280-1. 2 For example, in BL, MS.Royal 8.E.xii, where the marginalia are concentrated in these works, rather than in the De Seculo which precedes them. This declamation is edited by A.P.McCormick, “Freedom of speech in early Renaissance Florence”, Rinascimento 2nd ser., xix (1979) pp.235-40.

73 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 circulation. In part, this is a consequence of the vogue for manuscripts from Salutati’s own scriptorium which devoted codices to his works alone. In part, it must also be admitted, this reflects the lack of other ‘humanist’ texts to circulate. After all, Poggio, for example, did not produce his first dialogue until 1428; Ambrogio Traversari did not begin producing his translations of the Greek Fathers until the same decade.

When Salutati’s works were arriving in England, interest in him did not - to some extent, could not - lead inexorably to interest in his pupils and successors. The fashion was not for Florentine humanist writers but for a particular author - it was an individual rather than a general interest.

Reading back from the 1440s: the case of Bruni

So far, then, we have seen that Englishmen had access to some of the core reading of the humanists, even if they lacked the essential guidance to how they should read them in a humanist manner. The reception of Italian works could be characterised as atomised, lacking the sense of coherence that the humanists would have placed upon their activities. This atomised reception may also explain another surprising feature: the apparent lack of early English interest in the one Florentine humanist who was publishing works from the first decade of the fifteenth century - Leonardo Bruni. To investigate this curious oversight, I suggest we should use a technique which I have already applied briefly when discussing Salutati: we need to turn out attention to the evidence of Humphrey and of later decades, attempting to trace back from this later evidence signs of earlier interest in his works.

1 There are however no letters to either of these ‘humanists’ in BL, Cotton Caligula.A.xvi (although there is one to Roberto de’ Rossi: fol.151); but one of the letters in BL, Cotton Nero.C.v is addressed to Poggio: fol.185v-6.

74 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 There is little direct evidence for English acquaintance with Bruni’s work in the third and fourth decades of the century. Whethamstede, it has been stated, was the first Englishman to quote Bruni in his own writings - but this occurred (as we shall see in the final section of this chapter) later than is usually thought.1 Humphrey of

Gloucester, it has also been noted, had a penchant for Bruni texts and his gifts to

Oxford included seven volumes of his translations and original works.2 From this, it could reasonably be concluded, all interest of the later fifteenth century developed but the story may not be so simple as this suggests: there are a few shards of evidence that disturb this settled impression.

If it is thought that the 1420s and 1430s were a time when Englishmen were oblivious to Bruni’s genius, then the following decades are all the more remarkable, for in the 1440s and 1450s a wide range of Bruni manuscripts was clearly circulating, particularly in Oxford. This, it might be claimed, demonstrates the influence of

1 Weiss, “Bruni”, p.443. 2 The volumes, listed in the Oxford inventories [Sammut, pp.60-84], can be tentatively identified as follows: Sammut no.48: librum Platonis = Bruni translation of Phaedrus (2o fo. at Baron, Bruni, p.128, l.1) - this short piece was probably followed by other translations of Plato. In January 1446, the university agreed to send Humphrey this manuscript, sub forma mutui [Ep.Acad., I, p.246]: it may never have been returned as the verba probatoria for the same work listed in the 1452 King’s, Cambridge list [Sammut, p.87, no.40] could plausibly be the 3o fo. of the same volume [cf. BL, MS.Add.11,898, fol.2 & 2bis] Sammut no.49: etica Aristotelis Sammut no.50: politeca Aristotelis Sammut no.227: libri Leonardi ?= Commentaria primi belli punici - on this, see below, p.92n. As the commentaries are a fairly long work, they probably appeared on their own in a manuscript. Sammut no.234: oracionem Eschinis = Bruni translation of Aeschines, which could have stood on its own [cf. Manchester: Chetham’s, MS.Mun.A.4.90 (Ker 8002)] or with other translations, eg. of Demosthenes and Homer [an early Italian copy of these translations - CUL, MS.Ii.i.38, was annotated by an Englishman: see fol.110] - could this have been a companion volume to no.236? Sammut no.236: vitam Marci Antonii = BL, MS.Harl.3426 Sammut no.243: ysagogicum moralis discipline = Bruni’s Isagogicon, perhaps with other original pieces by the same author, for example Oratio in hypocritas or the Vita Aristotilis - but not the collection of texts found in Oxford: Balliol, MS.315, on which see below In addition, Sammut no.242 included the Ethics controversy [V.Zaccaria, “Sulle opere di Pier Candido Decembrio”, Rinascimento, vii (1956) pp.13-74 at pp.58-60]; a copy of this was made in Oxford in the second half of the century, when, according to the contents-list at fol.iv, it was copied into Oxford: Magdalen College, MS.46.

75 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 Humphrey: for the most part, the circulation of texts is a result of his donations to

Oxford. However, it would perhaps be stretching belief, let alone book-bindings, to suggest that his seven manuscripts could have contained the full collection of Bruni texts available to Oxford readers. Though it is impossible to discern the complete contents of some of the duke’s volumes, it would seem unlikely, for example, that they included his translation of the Ps-Aristotle Economics, which was being copied in Oxford, probably in the early 1450s.1 In the same decade, Thomas Chaundler was able to make use of a copy of Bruni’s Laudatio Florentinae Urbis (and of

Decembrio’s Panegyricus) but it is by no means certain that he would have found that text in one of the Humphrey codices.2 In other words, it is at least possible that at some point before the third quarter of the century, there was another reader, or readers, introducing humanist texts to the university town.

Yet it could still be argued that this reflects the inspiration of Humphrey: the chronology allows for the possibility that this interest was a response to the presence of the humanist volumes in the 1444 donation. It was, it could be argued, the presence of Humphrey’s books that inspired the “curiosity for the antique” in characters like William Gray, who was at Oxford until 1442.3 It may well have been after seeing the 1439 donation of books (with its modest number of humanist texts) that Gray commissioned a humanist miscellany.4 However, this anthology does not appear to derive from a manuscript or manuscripts in Humphrey’s collection (either

Sammut also suggests no.230 includes Bruni translations of Plutarch, but this is very improbable, as MS.Harl.3426 includes the full corpus of his translations of that author. 1 Oxford: New College, MS.228. 2 It is possible that Bruni’s Laudatio appeared in Sammut no.227 (and, in that case, the Decembrio in Sammut, no.228); but, if this were the case, it could not have been the first item and it would remove the explanation for the presence of the Commentaria primi belli punici, which Whethamstede knew in the early 1440s. On Chaundler, see below, c.vii, pp.270-9. 3 Weiss, pp.86-7. 4 Oxford: Balliol College, MS.315(i). On Gray, see also below, c.vii, pp.238-9.

76 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 at Oxford or Greenwich). Rather, it was copied directly from a codex which bears no sign of the duke’s ownership but which must have been in Oxford from the end of the 1430s or the first years of the 1440s. It would seem, then, that Gray was able to call upon the resources of more than one collection when having his manuscripts constructed. Once again, we are led to the conclusion that there were other readers, interested in humanist works at the same time as the duke. If incitement to studia humanitatis was required, Oxford men could have found the requisite inspiration elsewhere than in Humphrey’s books.1

Yet, Gray’s activities are simultaneous with that of Humphrey’s, not prior to it: there are still no signs that humanist reading occurred without any possible influence of the duke whatsoever. Here the example of Bruni’s nova translatio of the

Ethics is important. The first evidence of knowledge of it in England comes, once again, from the duke of Gloucester: in 1432, Humphrey expressed his approval of the translation in a letter to its author.2 Once more, though, this piece of evidence should not be taken at face-value. An aristocratic library is perhaps not the first place one would expect to find this Schools text; Humphrey’s acquaintance with the translation might hint at a wider interest - interest which already existed fifteen years after its publication. Despite this possibility, it has been assumed that the Ethics “arrived slowly and late” into England.3 A brief survey of the extant manuscripts might seem to corroborate this impression: Humphrey’s two copies of the work, of which one was given to Oxford and the other to Cambridge, do not survive, nor do any others

1 It was also in the late 1430s that Petworth displayed interest in Poggio’s writings: see below c.vii p.242-4. 2 Sammut, pp.146-8; on this, see below, c.iv p.119. 3 D.Luscombe, “The Ethics and Politics in Britain in the Middle Ages” in J.Marenbon, Aristotle in Britain during the Middle Ages (Turnhout, 1996) pp.333-50 at pp.344-5.

77 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 that are definitely from the first half of the fifteenth century.1 There are, moreover, only a few copies from the second half of the century.2 Yet, those that do survive suggest, on my submission, that, by the 1450s at the latest, the translation had achieved canonical status. Not only was it being copied in Oxford and (most probably) Cambridge, but travellers to Italy, like Gray or Robert Flemmyng, were keen to buy copies while they were there.3 Indeed, those travellers’ concern to weigh down their bags with a work which they could readily have had copied back at home may help explain why so few (suspiciously few) English copies survive. The manuscript, for example, that Flemmyng bought from Vespasiano da Bisticci was textually corrupt but visually attractive, being written in a passable lettera antica with bianchi girari initials.4 In other words, such travellers were bringing back copies that were not just humanist, they also looked the part. Ironically, when Bruni’s

Ethics was first printed in Oxford in 1479, it was not in humanist typeface but the consequence of the new technology, as with the penchant for Italian manuscripts, was

1 For a possible exception, see CUL, MS.Dd.xii.44 (written by ‘John Hyl’). 2 For lost copies, see, for example, the 1470s catalogue of St.Catherine’s, Cambridge in M.R.James, A Descriptive Catalogue of Manuscripts in the Library of St.Catherine’s College, Cambridge (Cambridge, 1925) pp.4–7. 3 An Oxford copy is Oxford: New College, MS.228, copied in 1452. In Cambridge, BL, MS.Royal.9.E.i was transcribed with Aquinas’ commentary by ‘Thomson’ (fol.91v, 105v) for William Raynaldson, probably in the 1450s. This manuscript gives no sign that the twinning of nova translatio and commentary was thought to be an unusual act, suggesting perhaps that there were earlier copies of this combination. Gray’s copy is Oxford: Balliol College, MS.242; Flemmyng’s Oxford: Lincoln College, MS.21. 4 On the questionable quality of some of Vespasiano’s manuscripts, including the Donatus he sold to Flemmyng (now Oxford: Lincoln, MS.44), see A.C.de la Mare, “Vespasiano da Bisticci, historian and bookseller” (unpublished PhD thesis, London University, 1966) pp.100-7. De la Mare’s explanation there is that “knowledgeable clients” forced Vespasiano to produce accurate copies, but her later work could provide a different hypothesis. In A.C.de la Mare, “Vespasiano da Bisticci as producer of classical manuscripts in fifteenth century Florence” in C.A.Chavanneo-Mazel & M.M.Smith, ed., Medieval Manuscripts of the Latin Classics (London, 1996) pp.167-207, she suggests that Flemmyng may have bought manuscripts from Vespasiano at the Congress of Mantua: is it possible that in the rush of providing the codices for his customers at the Congress, the bookseller has to rely on corrupt prototypes?

78 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 to make manuscripts of this popular work - especially manuscripts in gothic script - obsolete.1

This brief excursion into the later fifteenth century has, I hope, demonstrated that a simple head-count of surviving manuscripts is liable both to underestimate and to post-date the interest in humanist texts. Furthermore, while our evidence centres upon the fortunate survival of information about Humphrey of Gloucester, this does not mean that all activity centred upon him. Studying this subject on the duke’s terms, as it were, underestimates the significance not only of other early collectors but also of areas of reading which were beyond the princely ken. Humphrey’s interests were not evenly distributed across the whole range of humanist writings; the works of Bruni and of other Florentine humanists were an especial focus of his attention. While this might be accounted nothing less than good taste, it would be a mistake - one is tempted to call it an Humphroidian slip - to concentrate unduly on their version of ‘humanism.’ Indeed, I would argue, the most notable early interest was not primarily in the circle of Bruni but, rather, in ‘Paduan humanism.’

The second strand: the Barzizza formulary

Gasparino Barzizza has been described as “a transitional figure”, whose teaching at the university of Padua in the first decades of the fifteenth century was only in part humanist.2 This living bridge may have displayed, in his series of dictaminal tracts and form letters, some interests different from those of Niccoli’s circle, but he was also certainly a member of the humanist coteries, being famed for his Ciceronian

1 H.Chandler, A Catalogue of editions of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics (Oxford, 1868) no.11 {p.18}. 2 C.G.Nauert, Humanism and the culture of Renaissance Europe (Cambridge, 1995) p.46.

79 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 scholarship.1 Moreover, he practised what he had learnt from Cicero in letters and in orations (often written to be delivered by other people but always circulated under his own name). It was some of these works that received a markedly early circulation in

England. One manuscript, written perhaps in Bologna in the second half of the 1420s and (at least in part) by an Englishman, was brought back to this country and early in its life reached the library of St.Mary’s Abbey, York.2 However, probably before it settled there and perhaps in the late 1420s or early 1430s, it was transcribed into an

English collection of ecclesiastical and diplomatic documents, including the Treaty of Troyes. In this manuscript, the humanist works were manifestly thought to have a practical purpose.

The York codex opens with some of Barzizza’s orations to contemporary princes, intersperses these with university speeches and follows them with a range of private letters between Barzizza and his younger relatives (with the father repeatedly berating his offspring for not responding to his eloquent epistles). The collection, however, is not just a family affair: also included are speeches which met with the pedagogue’s approval, sometimes even being misattributed to him.3 Nor are the

Florentine humanists completely forgotten here, with Bruni’s Oratio Heliogaboli, for example, included, as well as works representing their predecessors, Salutati and

Petrarch. However, the geographical focus of this collection is further east, divided between Padua - Barzizza’s long-term work-place - and Bologna - where he spent

1 R.G.G.Mercer, The teaching of Gasparino Barzizza (London, 1979) pp.73, 132; G.Pigman III, “Barzizza’s studies of Cicero”, Rinascimento, xxi (1981) pp.123-163. 2 BL, MS.Harl.2268(i). The copy from this is BL, MS. Cotton Tib.B.vi, which is discussed in the same appendix entry. The Bolognese connexion raises the possibility that the compiler of the York manuscript was a student at that university - R.J.Mitchell, “English law students at Bologna in the fifteenth century”, EHR, li (1936) pp.270-87 can provide no firm evidence on the matter. 3 Eg., BL, MS.Harl.2268, fol.42v; misattributed pieces: ms.cit., fol. 22, 65v-66. Note also that Loschi’s commentary on Cicero’s orations, the preface of which is included (fol.35v-38v), impressed Barzizza: Mercer, Barzizza, p.33.

80 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 some of his later years.1 In the process, a series of lesser-known humanists are introduced to English readers: for example, the Sicilian Giovanni Campiano or

Gaspare Bonizo of Perugia.2 Nor are all the authors bona fide Italians: two of the pieces are by a “Walascus de Lisbona.”3 Moreover, added to all these ‘humanist’ texts are the orations made to Martin V by the English ambassadors at the end of

1425.4

Manifestly, both the original intention and the later use of this collection was as a formulary. Its contents may reflect the canon of taste as laid down by Gasparino

Barzizza himself. In its production, the scribe provided for many of the letters detailed titles which suggest that they were being employed as form letters inspiring amicitia or, indeed, its opposite: one epistle warns a friend away from contact with a detestable character. Early readers seem to have taken the collection in similar vein: in the York manuscript several fifteenth century readers noted in the margin the

1 Mercer, Barzizza, p.135. 2 The importance of Campiano has recently been noted by L.Gualdo Rosa in ead. ed., Censimento dei codici dell’epistolario di Leonardo Bruni (Rome, 1993) pp.xiii-xiv; he is not mentioned in DBI. This correspondent of both Aurispa and Bruni appears from these pieces to have been a teacher at the University of Bologna from at least the mid-1410s. For the identification of Bonizo, see BL, MS.Harl.2268, fol.39v-41; he is not mentioned in G.B.Vermiglioli, Biografia degli scrittori Perugini (Perugia, 1828), nor in DBI. He appears from one of the orations here to have had connexions with the studio of Florence. However, his circle of acquaintances was, from the evidence of *Würzburg: Universitätsbibliothek, MS.M.ch.f.20 [on which see H.Thurn, Die Handschriften der Universitätsbibliothek Würzburg 3/ii (Wiesbaden, 1981) pp.14-16], primarily Bolognese. He was also, perhaps, a correspondent of the Vasco of Lisbon encountered in this manuscript: there are letters from a Valesius of Portugal to Gaspar Perusinus in *Naples: Biblioteca Nazionale, MS.IV.B.36 [on which, see Iter I p.394]. Note also that Bonizo delivered an oration on behalf of the king of Portugal, which survives in the Würzburg manuscript, fol.77v-78r. 3 It has been suggested that “almost every humanist initiative” with Portuguese connections involved Vasco Fernández de Lucena: J.Lawrance, “Humanism in the Iberian peninsula” in A.Goodman & A.MacKay, ed., The Impact of Humanism on Western Europe (London, 1990) pp.220-258 at p.236, and on Fernández, see N.Espinosa Gomes da Silva, Humanismo e Direito em Portugal no século XVI (Lisbon, 1964) p.114n. However, nothing in this manuscript can be associated with the supposedly omnipresent Fernández, whose place of origin and date of birth do not permit an identification with this Valascus: Fernández is thought to have been born about c.1410 in Andalucia, while this Lisbonensis was clearly writing humanist letters at Bologna in 1417. As the ‘Velasco di Portogallo’ remembered by Vespasiano was also at Bologna in this period, perhaps our Vasco of Lisbon should be identified with that character [Vite, ii, pp.83-9]. 4 MS.Harl.2268, fol.78v-88v.

81 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 theme of particular letters.1 In the other manuscript, attention is even more selective: in certain places, a reader has remarked bona epistola and, in another, nihil valet.2

English readers who perused either of these volumes may have been looking for the latest guidelines on epistolary style, but that was far from all that they would have learnt. They could, also, for example, have found detailed information about recent Italian history; they would also have discovered - what was both unavoidable and intentional in an humanist formulary - an account of what it was to be virtuous.3

In the first place, the most obvious value celebrated is the power of eloquence. By its nature, such an anthology was a demonstration of the pervasive use of speaking well, although it might seem that, for the most part, this was a skill that was being employed in a private or educational context. However, the wider political importance of eloquence is an explicit theme of several of the pieces here. It is reflected not just in the items on, or references to, rex oratorum et Romane eloquentie, Cicero.4 It is also elucidated in pieces like Giustiniani’s funeral oration on the Venetian admiral, Carlo Zeno:

Vidit sane, vir sapiens, quantum ad gloriam atque laudem haec litterarum ornamenta conducant. Quod cum philosophiam potissimum ac oratorium munus, tum ad bene beateque vivendum, tum eciam ad publicam hominum utilitatem conferre intellexisset...5

If, though, eloquence was an essential skill for political life, it was only part of the necessary training. For Barzizza, as for Vergerio, it was axiomatic that the different

1 Dictaminal interests at St.Mary’s, York are also represented by BL, MS.Add.24,361, fol.44v-51v, which comprises non-humanist Regule Dictaminis by T.Mark. None of the hands that appear there is identifiable with those in MS.Harl.2268. 2 BL, MS.Cotton.Tib.B.vi, fol.187v-8, 170. 3 On dictamen and political thought, see Q.Skinner, “The Vocabulary of Renaissance Humanism” in A.Brown, ed., Language and Images of Renaissance Italy (Oxford, 1995) pp.87-110. 4 The phrase is Vasco of Lisbon’s at MS.Harl.2268, fol.38v. 5 Ms.cit., fol.25v [printed in cf. RIS n.s., xix, p.143]. This section also includes a reference to the importance of oratory in Britain. On this speech, see J.MacManamon, Funeral Oratory and the Cultural Ideals of Italian Humanism (London, 1989) pp.88-91.

82 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 liberal disciplines were mutually dependent.1 As he wrote to his son, one can never become an orator without knowing civil and canon law; but, as Gaspare Bonizo commented, the institutio oratorie was best employed in the service of the law.2 This harmony between the various subjects might, at times, seem strained: different pieces here argue for the pre-eminence of different subjects. On one page, medicine is claimed to be the most useful skill:

Multas quidem artes majores nostri nobis relinquerunt a quibus non solum ad singulos homines verum etiam ad ipsas Urbes plurima commoda atque ornamenta persaepe accesserunt. Sed nescio an ex omnium artium numero ulla existat a qua plura ad nos pervenerint conmoditates quam ex hac nostra que ab aliis phisica ab alijs vero medicina est appellata.3

On the next, it is the two laws - civilis scientia - that are praised above all:

sentiebam ... nullam prorsus humanae sapientiae partem existere quae magis quam haec nostra civilis facultas a nobis colenda esset. Quid enim est quod dignius possit a Regibus, atque a civitatibus tractari? Quid est quod studiis humanitatis propius accedat?4

Inter-faculty disputes could be endless, and orators like Barzizza could have been called upon to support any and every subject. Yet, the overall impact of collecting these differing opinions into one anthology is surely to reinforce the importance of all the studia humanitatis. More importantly, the various faculties are judged by the same criteria - that of public use. Some might have attacked the medieval Schools for navel-gazing, but for Barzizza, university education has its sights set on the body politic. As the Florentine humanists would have concurred, contemplation was essential preparation for the active life.5

1 Mercer, pp.18, 119-120; for a different interpretation of Pier Paolo Vergerio, see D.Robey, “Humanism and education in the early Quattrocento”, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, xlii (1980) pp.27-58, esp. p.46. 2 MS.Harl.2268, fol.75, 49 [the first of these is printed at Bertalot, Studien, ii, p.81]. 3 Ms.cit., fol.62v [printed with textual differences at Furietti, p.51]. 4 Ms.cit., fol.63 [printed at Furietti, p.67]. 5 For similar statements by Barzizza, see Mercer, Barzizza, p.109.

83 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 If this formulary presents very pronounced views on education and its political importance, it has little to say about the sort of state in which a graduate would act. The natural assumption of the texts is that the usual place of action will be a city-state, but that might be either a republic or a monarchy. Barzizza was from a pro-Visconti family and his orations show him praising princes, but in tones heavy with didacticism. Filippo Maria Visconti, for example, is exhorted to ensure that he is unsurpassed in the royal virtues which Barzizza defines as justice, clemency and fortitude.1 This particular selection of the virtues may have surprised an English reader, but they would have found another basic tenet of Barzizza’s political thinking quite familiar: there is a repeated stress in his orations to princes on the necessity of taking counsel. There is, though, a difference of detail; where the English talk of

‘good counsel’, Barzizza emphasises the necessity of employing the consilium sapientum. Of Filippo Maria Visconti’s achievements, he concludes:

Que ceteri fortasse cum audiunt magis alieno quam tuo consilio facta esse dicunt Ego vero facile illis concedam te nihil neque in hijs rebus neque in alijs quod magnum sit sine consilio hominum sapientum et tibi fidelium gessisse Sed hij videant ne in quo se arbitrantur egregias tuas laudes extermare meo maxime tue glorie serviant aut enim summa virtus est aut propinqua summe omnia ex consilio sapientum agere.1

In other sections of the formulary, there is equal praise of non-monarchical city- states. Indeed, the repeated claims of Florence’s success in defending liberty are some sort of mantra in these orations. Marco Canetoli, addressing the Council of Pisa manages to bring in praise of the victoriosissimus potentissimusque populus florentinus and of their tanta libertas tanta atque humanitas; they are ready to defend

Italy against all tyrants. Canetoli cuts short his eulogy:

1 Ms.cit., fol.4v, cf. fol.60v [printed at Furietti, pp.39, 34]. This choice of three virtues is slightly unusual - see Q.Skinner, Foundations of Modern Political Thought (Cambridge, 1978) i pp.126-8;

84 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 Sed quo pergo quero illius civitatis brevi ore complecti quas ille poeta nostri temporis Aretinus nec magno in opere cladare quivit...2

Clearly, the Englishmen who came by these volumes did not need to have Bruni’s works to hand in order to know their import.

The margins of the York volume furnish proof that several English readers did come by these letters and speeches but, on the other hand, two manuscripts hardly makes a publishing sensation.3 This early interest in the occasional writings of

‘eastern’ humanists could not be claimed, on the available evidence, to have flowered later in the century. A similar collection of speeches does seem to have reached here but that was one compiled by an Italian scribe; it does not appear that English students at Italian universities spent their time, as their German peers did, producing anthologies of humanist orations and epistles.4 Instead, the English interest in

Barzizza moved, in the 1440s, towards his form-letters and dictaminal tracts which

Gray, for example, had copied during his European travels.5 Brought back to

England, these were copied and, at Christ Church Canterbury, imitated.6

However limited the duration and impact of the early interest in Paduan humanism, it does reveal two important features of early humanist interest. In the first place, it shows that beyond the circles that bought up Florentine literature, there was a very practical interest in humanists as masters of style. At the same time, this

Barzizza gives a more exhaustive list of royal virtues at ms.cit., fol.61v. On Barzizza’s political loyalties, see Mercer pp.29, 110. 1 Ms.cit., fol.4 [printed at Furietti, p.37]. 2 Ms.cit., fol.32. For similar praise of Florence by Barzizza, see ms.cit., fol.21[printed at Furietti, p.71]. In both cases, the scribe adds a marginal note pointing out the subject matter of these sections. 3 I have not been able to consult *Bruxelles: Bibliothèque Royale, MS.II 1443, the contents of which seems close to these two manuscripts. 4 The speeches are listed on the flyleaf of Cambridge: Trinity College, MS.0.9.8. On German miscellanies, see Bertalot in Studien, i pp.1-82. 5 Oxford: Balliol College, MS.132, copied into *Winchester: Winchester College, MS.41. In England in the early 1450s, Richard Bole copied De Elocutione - now Oxford: Balliol College, MS.123, fol.168-177v. The prototype for his copy - and thus the date of this text’s arrival in England - is lost. 6 +Tokyo: Imperial University Library, MS.A.100.1300 on which, see below c.vii p.247.

85 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 example corroborates the assertion that dictamen and political discussion were closely linked. Yet, though readers could hardly ignore the political comments in these manuscripts, as in the Florentine works, there was no guarantee that they would read them attentively. Indeed, the example of Whethamstede shows one - admittedly idiosyncratic - Englishman consciously ignoring the political import of the texts that he read.

Belated ‘early’ interest: John Whethamstede

No conventional narrative of the first stages of the English reception of ‘humanism’ would be complete without some reference, however slighting, to John

Whethamstede, abbot of St.Albans.1 In his works have been found both “the first example of Renaissance literature in England” and “an illustration of some of the difficulties inherent in the reception of Italian Renaissance culture here.”2 Such assessments, however disparate their conclusions, share an assumption that

Whethamstede’s works display his “ambition to be remembered as a humanist.”3 Yet, detailed research of his works has suggested what is, after all, unsurprising:

Whethamstede was not even trying to progress towards ‘humanism.’4 His florid

Latin, for example, was not a failed attempt to compose according to the canons of humanist taste but a successful deployment of certain venerable principles of construction.5 Again, it is not insignificant that Whethamstede, who employed a

1 On Whethamstede, see C.E.Hodge, “The Abbey of St.Albans under John of Whethamstede” (unpublished Ph.D thesis, Manchester University, 1933); Weiss, pp.30-8; Schirmer, pp.72-90; D.R.Howlett, “Studies in the works of John Whethamstede” (unpublished D.Phil thesis, Oxford University, 1975). 2 Hodge, “The Abbey of St.Albans”, p.186; Weiss, p.31. For a review of ‘conventional’ assessments, see Howlett, “Whethamstede”, pp.118-120. 3 Hodge, “The Abbey of St.Albans”, p.165; cf. Schirmer, p.78. 4 The next couple of sentences follow Howlett, “Whethamstede”, c.vii. 5 On the florid style, see also E.F.Jacob, “‘Florida Verborum Venustas’: some early signs of euphuism in England”, BJRL, xvii (1933) pp.264-290.

86 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 graded range of scripts, showed no interest in imitating the new humanist letter- forms. Whethamstede was no intellectual fashion-victim, aping all the latest Italian styles. Far from it: his interest in humanist works was, on my submission, tightly defined by his own purposes. Moreover, what interest there was manifested itself fairly late in his career - so late, indeed, that Whethamstede could arguably be disqualified from this chapter on chronological grounds.

These assertions beg the question how Whethamstede ever came to be judged

“fascinated by and actively interested in the humanist movement.”1 Leaving aside the misinterpretation of his prose style, Whethamstede’s humanist credentials rest primarily on the bibliographies which he compiled for each entry in his multi-volume encyclopedia, the Granarium.2 These listings have been thought to demonstrate knowledge of an impressive array of both ‘modern’ and refound classical works. As to the latter, there are few signs that Whethamstede was acquainted with any very rare or recently rediscovered works.3 However, winnowing these lists for ‘modern’ works produces a richer harvest. In the first place, he was (perhaps unusually) acquainted with some of the writings of all three novi poetae,with a particular penchant for Boccaccio, on whose De Genealogiis Deorum Whethamstede also modelled another of his works, the Palearium.4 Of more recent works, there is one

1 Weiss, p.31. 2 For extant mss. of the Granarium, see below p.91n & p.93n; excerpts also survive in Cambridge: Gonville & Caius, MS.230/116 & Bod., MS.Bodl.585. On this work, see Hodge, “The Abbey of St.Albans”, pp.177-86. 3 Weiss, pp.35-6 gives a short list of “rarities” Whethamstede supposedly knew, but his own footnotes suggest that his knowledge was mainly derived from common florilegia. 4 On Whethamstede and Bertoldi’s translation of Dante’s Commedia, see above p.67 and on his possible knowledge of De Monarchia, see M.Harvey, “John Whethamstede, the Pope and the General Council” in C.Barron & C.Harper-Bill, The Church in Pre-Reformation Society (Woodbridge, 1985) pp.108-122 at p.118. Of Petrarch, he certainly knew De viris illustribus; as well as De Genealogiis [on the use of which in Palearium, see Hodge, “The Abbey of St.Albans”, p.186], Boccaccio’s De Claris Mulieribus and De Casibus Virorum Illustrium are cited in the Granarium [Weiss, p.36n, gives lists of references for all of these, except the De Casibus, for which see eg. BL, MS.Cotton Nero.C.vi, fol.139ra]. He also knew Dionisio da Borgo San Sepolcro’s commentary on Valerius Maximus, e.g.,

87 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 reference to Salutati’s De Fato et Fortuna.1 More surprising perhaps is

Whethamstede’s knowledge of Andrea Fiocchi’s De Potestatibus Romanorum in its complete form (which is more than many of his Italian contemporaries read).2 He also had before him a copy of Leonardo Bruni’s Commentaria primi Belli Punici, a work for which there is no other definite evidence of its English circulation in the fifteenth century.3 Whethamstede summarises this work at length in what is an unique honour for an humanist, an article devoted to its author. However, elsewhere in the Granarium, the citations are predominantly to Bruni’s less original works, his translations of Plutarch. In fact, it is as translators of the Parallel Lives that several humanists are most often mentioned.1

There are obvious difficulties in assuming these references are an accurate guide to Whethamstede’s reading: for one thing, bibliographical citation does not necessarily presuppose close acquaintance with a text. What is more, the abbot’s referencing is sometimes wayward: if Whethamstede was taken at his word, one could assume that Bruni had produced (excluding the Cicero) eleven Plutarch lives, including one of Metellus Numidicus.2 In reality, Bruni translated no more than seven vitae, nor did Plutarch ever write a life of Metellus; Whethamstede’s references create confusion by their occasionally misleading formulation and their

BL, MS.Cotton Tib.D.v, fol.166rb, 170vb. However, he may not have known, as suggested by Weiss, p.32n [followed by A.Sammut, “Tra Pavia, Milano e Oxford” in R.Avesani et al., ed., Vestigia (Rome, 1984) ii pp.613-22 at p.615] the Leontio Pilato translation of Homer; the references are now thought to have derived from the Ilias Latina [Iter, vi, p.588b]. If this is so, it removes the need to imagine Whethamstede used the Visconti library while in Italy in 1423. 1 BL, MS.Cotton Tib.D.v, fol.159ra. 2 A copy of this work in Thomas Candour’s hand survives: BL, MS.Cotton Otho.A.vii, fol.8-58. This codex does not seem to be identifiable with Humphrey of Gloucester’s [Sammut, p.79 {no.219}; cf. ibid, p.196, l.27], which has a different verbum probatorium. However, the secundo folio given in the Oxford lists is problematic, as retire does not appear in the first pages of Fiocchi’s work. 3 BL, MS.Arundel 11, fol.92-99v, on which see Weiss, “Bruni”, pp.443-8. Perhaps Humphrey of Gloucester owned a copy of this work: the verbum probatorium of the libri Leonardi he gave to Oxford in 1444 [Sammut, p.80, no.227: -terpres] occurs in the preface to the commentary [cf. H.Baron, Bruni, p.123, l.14].

88 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 regular misattribution of translations to Bruni.3 Patently, any simplistic citation index would misrepresent the abbot’s humanist reading. On the other hand, some allusions to humanist scholarship could easily be missed altogether as, for example,

Whethamstede sometimes refers to Plutarch translations without citing a translator at all.4 Moreover, it is possible that some works Whethamstede read are not remembered in the lists; in a few cases, indeed, the space in the presentation copy for the bibliography remains blank.5 However, when the bibliographies do appear,

Whethamstede seems to have been fairly conscientious in revising them. Indeed, it has not before been recognised how closely the continual revision of these book-lists allows us to chart the ‘progress’ of Whethamstede’s humanist reading.

It is sometimes assumed that Whethamstede’s life reached a turning-point with his 1423 visit to Italy, where (so it is thought) he sipped at the fount of

1 Full citation of the relevant references are given below. 2 As Dr.Hodge imagined: “The Abbey of St.Albans”, p.219. 3 V.R.Giustiniani, “Sulle traduzioni latine delle ‘Vite’ di Plutarco nel quattrocento”, Rinascimento, 2nd ser., i (1961) pp.3-62; all Bruni’s Plutarch translations are in BL, MS.Harl.3426. 4 At some points, Whethamstede cites Plutarchus de paribus contentioneque parium (see, e.g., the article on Plutarch - BL, MS.Cotton. Tib.D.v, fol.140ra-vb - where this is listed as the last of his four works. It is also used in bibliographies; such a citation is marked below by the symbol: +). The specific allusions which in each case follow this curious title demonstrate that Whethamstede has in mind the vitae parallelae, rather than (what is the only other possibility) the comparationes parvae, which had been translated by Guarino in 1424 [R.Sabbadini, La Vita di Guarino Veronese (Genoa, 1891) p.50]. In the short history of Plutarch’s Vitae in the Latin West before the 1440s, I can find no precedent for Whethamstede’s usage [see R.Weiss, “Lo studio di Plutarco nel Trecento” in id., Medieval and Humanist Greek (Padua, 1977) pp.204-226; R.Sabbadini, Le Scoperte dei codici...: nuove ricerche (Florence, 1914) p.182; Giustiniani, “Sulle traduzioni”, passim]. Rather, I would posit that Whethamstede consciously coined this title, probably following Bruni’s clause in the Vita M.Antonii preface: ille [Plutarchus] praestantissimos e Graecis Romanisque delectos in paria et contentiones distribuit [Baron, Bruni, p.102, ll.8-10]. Moreover, Whethamstede (who, if nothing else, was blessed with a methodical mind) has criteria for when to apply the various forms of reference: the translator is mentioned when the citation is to the protagonist of a vita, while the de paribus formula is reserved for cases when a minor character from a vita is being discussed. 5 The capriciousness of the bibliographies is well demonstrated by the example of the articles on the Gracchi. In the presentation copy of part I, BL, MS.Cotton Nero.C.vi, the article (fol.111-114va) lacks its bibliography, which only survives in the ‘working’ copy, BL, MS.Arundel 11, fol.68-73; the citations include Bruni’s translation of Plutarch’s Vita Graccorum. However, the Gracchi also merit an article in the second part of the Granarium but, although the presentation copy BL, MS.Cotton Tiberius.D.v, fol.79va, includes a bibliography, Bruni is not mentioned there.

89 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 Renaissance culture.1 However, on my submission, it was probably fifteen to twenty years later that Whethamstede read humanist texts in any quantity; if this were a response to his Italian journey, it constitutes an excessively delayed reaction. This is not to say that the Granarium was only begun in the late 1430s. On the contrary, the encyclopedia was an organic work; it developed over time. As a copy of the second and third parts was presented to John, Duke of Bedford, a version must have been in existence before his death in 1435; but the partially surviving redaction incorporates documents from 1439. Such an evolutionary process also explains why

Whethamstede at some point gave Humphrey of Gloucester parts one to three of the

Granarium, but then felt it necessary to provide a further gift of excerpts of parts three and four.2 While the dukes’ copies have perished, the extant manuscripts do allow some insight into the Granarium’s development. The first part of the encyclopedia occupied, in its final form, two large presentation volumes, but of these only one (covering the letters A to I) survives. There is, though, another codex which contains excerpta paucula de prima parte granarij. This selection of articles (ranging from Antipater to Ydolatria) appears to have been a working copy, in which additions and corrections have been recorded. The relevant revised articles appear in the presentation volume, although further changes were made even at that late stage.

Both these manuscripts date from after the end of Whethamstede’s first abbacy in

1 See Howlett, “Whethamstede” p.118. 2 On these gifts, see Howlett, “Whethamstede”, pp.9, 11; Sammut, p.78 {no.s 202-4}; the St.Albans lists presented by Howlett are edited in R.Sharpe et al., ed., The Benedictine Libraries: the shorter catalogues (London, 1996) B88 & 89. The development of the Granarium reflected in these gifts calls into question the narrow dating of the work suggested by Howlett. While the surviving presentation copies date (as Howlett shows) from after 1439, there were clearly earlier redactions and the Humphrey copy may well have reflected this earlier stage. For extant extracts of one early (ante- humanist) version, see below p.93n.

90 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 1440.1 By then, Whethamstede had certainly had access to some humanist texts for several years: in 1437, Pietro del Monte, the papal collector, had sent him a manuscript of latinised Plutarch lives.2 Perhaps that gift can be identified more closely as a set of Bruni translations, for it is his versions that are cited in the working copy.3 Yet, though Whethamstede was familiar with this element of Bruni’s scholarship, he may not, by 1440, have been acquainted with any original writings.

The working copy includes the article on Leonardus but it is, along with the following (out of sequence) article, in a fascicule of its own; what is more, the Bruni entry is in a script not seen elsewhere in the manuscript. In other words, all the evidence suggests that this entry, with its précis of the Commentaria primi Belli

Punici, is a slightly later addition.4 Similarly, in the case of Fiocchi’s De Potestatibus

1 Presentation volume: BL, MS.Cotton Nero.C.vi (Howlett, “Whethamstede” p.174 suggests the scribal marginalia means that this manuscript was not a ‘presentation copy’ but a ‘master copy’ but with the care taken over writing and illuminating the codex, I would suggest it was thought of as, if nothing more, a volume to be presented to the monastic library); working copy: BL, MS.Arundel 11. Howlett, “Whethamstede”, p.175 demonstrated that MS.Arundel 11 was produced at St.Albans but he did not note Whethamstede’s involvement in the Granarium extracts. The example of the article on civitas shows a corrected version in MS.Arundel 11 (fol.99v-106) being copied into MS.Cotton Nero.C.vi (fol.40vb-46va) and then further revised. The mss. must date after 1440, when Whethamstede resigned the abbacy, as he is called in the title to both of them Johannes de Loco Frumentis olim Abbas; he resumed the abbacy in 1452. The evidence of revision occurring in MS.Arundel 11 raises the possibility that Whethamstede himself is writing some of the emendations, in a manus velox not noted in Howlett’s discussion of the abbot’s scripts [“Whethamstede” pp.170-5]. It is at least suggestive that a similar annotating cursive hand appears in MS.Arundel 11, eg. fol.14 (interlinear), as at MS.Cotton Tib.D.v, fol.174v, BL, MS.Egerton 646 [Whethamstede, Pabularium poetarum], fol.55v, & BL, MS.Add. 26,764 [Whethamstede, Palearium poetarum], fol.12v, 19 & passim. 2 Weiss, “Piero del Monte”, pp.399-406. Schirmer [p.76n] misidentifies this volume as Guarino’s rendition of Plutarch’s de assentatoris et amici differencia. 3 Bruni translations cited are: BL, MS.Arundel 11, fol.22 (M. Antonius), 34 (Cato Uticensis), 73 (Gracchi), 124v (Paulus Emilius), 126v (Q.Sertorius). The first two are repeated at BL, MS.Cotton Nero.C.vi, fol.21, 39 and are joined by fol.131va (+Demosthenes). A curious reference is added in MS.Cotton Nero.C.vi at fol.69rb: De Demetrio Magnesio Grece historie scriptore famoso vide in Leonardo Aretino ubi tractat de Gestis dictis & factis Aristidis egregii Oratoris. Bruni does discuss Aelius Aristides in his ep.VIII/4, but no mention is made there of Demetrius of Magnesium, nor is the historian mentioned in Plutarch’s life of the other Aristides (translated by Barbaro). There are two alternative explanation: either Aristidis is a mistake for Demosthenis [Plutarch, Vita Demosthenis, xv, xxvii, xxviii] or (perhaps more likely given the wording) the final phrase should refer to Aristotle. Apart from this last possibility, all the works cited would have appeared in a manuscript similar to Humphrey’s BL, MS.Harl.3426. 4 BL, MS.Arundel 11, fol.92-99v, discussed and partially quoted by Weiss, “Bruni”, pp.443-5. If the wording of the article’s opening - urbis florencie cancellarius steterat - is taken literally, Whethamstede must have assumed that Bruni was dead, but a post-1444 date does not necessarily

91 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 Romanorum, the presentation volume includes a reference to the work, but there is no citation at the appropriate point in the working copy.1 So, it would seem that

Whethamstede’s knowledge of humanist works was widening only during the 1440s.

Such a conclusion is supported by the evidence of the 1440s presentation volume of the secunda pars, which survives in complete, if damaged, form.2 This manuscript is a richer repository of references to humanist sources, perhaps in part because the texts available were more relevant to this section’s subject-matter. The majority, as before, are references to translations by Bruni (including now his version of Xenophon’s Hiero), but, as has been mentioned, these citations are artifically increased.3 Not only are there a few cases which, if read literally, credit Bruni with translating Plutarch lives which never existed, but there are also vitae whose translation is misattributed to Bruni.4 Some of these mistakes occur in the text, but

follow: malicious rumour of Bruni’s demise reached England in the late 1430s [see c.vi p.194 below]. The Bruni article may survive in a form different from that which finally appeared in the presentation volume; in the pars secunda there is a cross-reference to this article [vide etiam de isto Hierone ... in prima parte huius operis in verbo Leonardus (BL, MS.Cotton Tib.D.v, fol.83rb)] but, in fact, the extant version has no mention of the translation of Xenophon’s Hiero. 1 BL, MS.Cotton Nero.C.vi, fol.60rb (consulatus) cites Fiocchi and cross-references to tribunus; this latter article appears at BL, MS.Arundel 11, fol.135v-6v, with no mention of Fiocchi. 2 BL, MS.Cotton Tib.D.v. Once again, Whethamstede is olim abbas; Howlett suggests that its date is “probably slightly later than MS.Nero.C.vi” but there is little evidence beyond the logical assumption that part II would be written up after part I [“Whethamstede”, p.175]. Of the secunda pars a set of extracts also survives as BL, MS.Arundel 391; this codex, alone of the Granarium mss., has an explicit referring to Whethamstede as abbas - in other words, it probably dates from before 1440. Interestingly, there is no mention here of humanist texts; compare, for example, the versions’ article on Demosthenes: MS.Arundel 391, fol.40v-41v and MS.Cotton Tib.D.v, fol.43rb-47rb. MS.Arundel 391 has no sign of Whethamstede’s putative manus velox. 3 BL, MS.Cotton Tib.D.v, fol.9ra & rb, 73rb, 146vb, 173va (Cicero Novus); 27va (Cato Uticensis); 47rb (Demosthenes); 61vb (Paulus Emilius); 64rb (+Demosthenes); 83rb, 169vb (Xenophon, Hieron); 114rb (+Q. Sertorius); 138va (Pyrrhus). In the bibliography to the article on Plutarch is mentioned (albeit as less important than John of Salisbury) Leonardus Aretinus in hiis suis libellis quos de greco in latinum traduxit ex opusculis suis [ms. cit., fol.140vb]. 4 ‘Ghost’ lives: MS.Cotton Tib.D.v., fol.114ra where Metellus Numidicus is mentioned, surely alluding to Bruni’s translation of Vita Pauli Emilii; fol.142va talks of a Bruni life, de pomponio scriptore egregio qui Rome licet natus fuerit attici tamen meruit cognomen... (ie. Titus Pomponius Atticus) which must be a reference to Cicero Novus. Misattributed lives occur at MS.Cotton Tib.D.v., fol.12vb (Aristides); 27ra, 158ra (Cato Censorius): both of these were translated by Francesco Barbaro [Giustiniani, “Sulle traduzioni”, p.27]. Also, ms. cit., fol.142va (Pompeius Magnus) which is also referred to without mentioning a translator at fol.19va(+), 90rb(+) & 186vb: this must be the translation by Iacopo Angeli da Scarperia [Giustiniani, “Sulle traduzioni”, p.34], of which no English copies

92 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 others are to be found in the margins. Indeed, a significant number of references to humanist works appear outside the main body of the text. So, it is in these additions that reference is made to Guarino’s translations of Plutarch; likewise, the one mention of Lapo da Castiglionchio is written over an erasure in a bibliography.1 In both cases, however, other works of these scholars gain marginal mentions, but only as the work of Bruni.2 It is as if citation of the Florentine chancellor were a formulaic method of referring to a modern Italian work; or, rather, the formula often takes a humanist text to equal a Bruni translation of Plutarch. For, there is a series of cases where original humanist works are assumed to be merely latinised versions of the

Greek. This applies not only, occasionally, to Bruni’s Cicero novus, which

Whethamstede was not alone in taking to be a translation; it is also the case with

Guarino’s vita Platonis, with Sicco Polenton’s vita Senecae and (a fitting irony) with

Bruni’s vita Aristotilis.3

Whether the errors in the bibliographies reflect a real misunderstanding of the texts on Whethamstede’s part or lapsus calami in the final additions to a large work, the effect of the excessive allusions to Bruni is to mask the change in

Whethamstede’s reading. For, the marginalia suggest that, late in the stages of

survive. The one translation of his which certainly did circulate here is the Ptolemy, Cosmographia: see Oxford: Magdalen College, MS.37(ii). 1 MS.Cotton Tib.D.v., fol.94rb (Cesar [Guarino]); fol.159ra (Sulla [Guarino]); fol.161rb (Solon [Lapo]). 2 MS.Cotton Tib.D.v., fol.140 (Guarino’s Vita Platonis: Leonardus Aretinus in illo parvo libellulo quem di vita ipsius traduxit ex plutarcho); fol.168 (Lapo’s translation of Vita Themistoclis). 3 On the Cicero novus: MS.Cotton Tib.D.v, fol.9 (vide in Leonardo Aretino Cancellario Florencie in libelluo [sic] illo quem ipse de vita Tulli ex plutarcho legitur traduxisse), 146vb, 173va, but cf. ms. cit., fol.73rb (vide in leonardo aretino in libellulo suo qui intitu[latur] Cicero novus). Cf. BL, MS.Harl 3426; on the modern debate over the Cicero Novus, see Griffiths, Humanism, pp.177-8. For the other examples: MS.Cotton Tib.D.v., fol.15va (Aristotle); 140ra & 156vb (Seneca). There is also a curious reference in the margin of fol.168: De Transibulo et lici Atheniensis filio qui quomodo plures vix potuerunt ab uno solus a triginta tirannis primam propriam liberavit in tempore suo vide et in leonardo tam dicto in illius parvis libellulis quas de ipsorum gestis traduxit ex Plutarcho. If this were a reference to a work by Bruni, it would fit best the Commentarium rerum graecarum but the reference to Thrasybulus’ father and the description of a small work suggests that this is actually an allusion to Cornelius Nepos’ De Excellentibus Ducibus Exterarum Gentium.

93 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 producing this manuscript, Whethamstede was introduced to a wider range of humanist works. When the main text was written, Whethamstede appears to have known the Bruni translations, Fiocchi’s tract (both of these also being mentioned in the pars prima) and Plutarch versions by Francesco Barbaro and Jacopo Angeli da

Scarperia. It may be that some of the marginal additions might reflect forgetfulness but to explain them all that way comes close to imagining that Whethamstede suffered from both serious amnesia and sudden ennui at the thought of reading new works. More likely is that, after finishing the main text, Whethamstede became acquainted with works by Guarino, Lapo and Sicco Polenton, as well as some more

Bruni. It is in the very last stages of producing his Granarium that Whethamstede crammed himself with new humanist knowledge.

What can explain this eleventh-hour access to a broader range of recent texts?

Perhaps a series of manuscripts suddenly arrived in his study, or perhaps he went to a library which he had not seen before. If the former, none of the manuscripts has apparently survived; if the latter, the most likely collection would be, of course, that of the Duke of Gloucester. Humphrey seems to have allowed scholars access to his library at Greenwich, but, equally, the vagueness of dating the presentation volume of the secunda pars (1440-1452) would allow the possibility that Whethamstede saw the relevant books in Oxford: in other words, his increased humanist knowledge may have followed Humphrey’s last and greatest donation to the University.1 If this hypothesis is accepted, it has serious consequences for Whethamstede’s claim to be an early reader of humanist works; to these conclusions I will turn in a few moments.

So far this discussion has unravelled the Granarium’s sometimes knotty citations to reveal the range of new texts Whethamstede read, albeit belatedly. Yet,

94 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 what is perhaps more remarkable is not the extent of but the limits to the abbot’s humanist interests. If Whethamstede had ever intended his bibliographies to run through the gamut of humanist works circulating in England, he would signally have failed. The Granarium may register a couple of rare humanist works but far longer is the list of texts available, but unmentioned by Whethamstede. Naturally, the later it is assumed he was becoming acquainted with these works, the lower the proportion of texts in circulation that are cited by Whethamstede. However, even if (to give

Whethamstede the benefit of the doubt) the benchmark of available texts is set at circa 1440, what is omitted from the Granarium is remarkable. To give some examples: first, there is no sign that Whethamstede was acquainted with the works found in the York formulary. He includes an article on Jerome of Prague without making reference to Poggio’s well-known letter on the heretic’s death; there is also a short entry on Heliogabalus but no allusion to Bruni’s Oratio Heliogaboli.2 Perhaps, in these instances, Whethamstede was simply unaware of the works that were deposited in other Benedictine houses, but ignorance can not explain the full range of omissions. As we have seen, Whethamstede repeatedly cites Bruni’s translations, but there is one notable exception: under the heading of St.Basil he does not refer to the

Latinised Ad Iuvenes, even though this work often circulated with Bruni’s versions of

Xenophon and Plutarch - for example, in Humphrey’s copy. If Whethamstede was a reader of the Duke of Gloucester’s manuscripts, it is also remarkable that the

Granarium’s discussion of Isocrates shows no acquaintance with his speeches which had been recently translated and dedicated to the duke.1 Another work written for

Humphrey, del Monte’s dialogue, De Vitiorum inter se Differencia, is the one

1 On Humphrey’s liberality with his books, see c.iv pp.152-7 below. 2 BL, MS.Cotton Nero.C.vi, fol.21va (Heliogabalus); fol.144vb-145vb (Jerome).

95 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 humanist dialogue which we know for certain Whethamstede owned: but I can find no mention of it in his encyclopedia.2 All in all, it would seem probable that, in at least some of these cases, they are excluded because Whethamstede wished not, rather than could not, cite them.

Such partiality might seem incongruous in an ‘encyclopedia’ but the out-size volumes of the Granarium never claimed to be all-encompassing. There are very clear limits to the work’s remit: its interests are largely historical and historiographical, arranged mainly under biographical entries, with the utility of the articles on recent ecclesiastical affairs heightened by the inclusion of transcripts of documents.3 In contrast, the texts I have just mentioned are all what might be called the rhetorical exercises of the humanists, which were not relevant to Whethamstede’s aim. What instead interested the abbot was the ‘factual’ knowledge that he could learn from works like the Latinised Plutarch or the commentaries on the first Punic war. It is no accident that Bruni’s own entry in the first part of the Granarium remembers him (as did the city of Florence) as primarily an historian.4 Whethamstede read modern works not for the sake of modernity but specifically to improve his knowledge of the past. In this at least the traditional interpretation is correct: “what interested him most ... was not so much the formal beauty of Bruni’s Latinity as the information to be found [in his works].”5

The conventional understanding proceeds to conclude that Whethamstede’s concentration on the content instead of the form of humanist works entailed losing an

1 BL, MS.Cotton Nero.C.vi, fol.25ra-va (Basil); BL, MS.Cotton Tib.D.v, fol.179vb-180 (Isocrates). 2 R.Weiss, “Piero del Monte”, pp.405-6. 3 Harvey, “John Whethamstede”, passim. 4 On Bruni’s reputation as an historian in Florence, see Griffiths, Humanism, pp.174-5. 5 Weiss, “Bruni”, p.443.

96 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 opportunity to assimilate humanist ‘values.’1 This conclusion assumes, it might be quibbled, that a whole value-system can be exported between the leaves of a manuscript, like a pressed flower which would miraculously return to life in the hands of a sensitive reader. However, leaving that aside, let us briefly consider what

‘values’ Whethamstede could have adopted from the Bruni texts in front of him.

First, if he was not the “omnivorous reader” that is usually assumed, but (as I have suggested) inwardly digesting a fairly abstemious diet of humanist works, there were narrow limits to the range of ‘values’ he could have savoured.2 There is no sign, for example, that Whethamstede had access to a copy of either the Laudatio or to the

Dialogi ad Petrum Histrum, so he can not be expected either to have recognised the civic pride that Bruni advertised or to have adopted the Florentine rewriting of

Roman history.3 If there was such a thing as a ‘spirit of the Renaissance’, that aqua vitae reached Whethamstede in rather diluted form. On the other hand, some of the attitudes in the works he did read would surely have had the taste of familiarity. The preface to the Vita M.Antonii, for instance, argues for the value of having Greek history translated into Latin, an attitude with which, if his frequent references to these works have any significance, Whethamstede would have fully concurred. It is also difficult to imagine how the abbot could have disagreed with the claims in the preface to the Vita Q.Sertorii that the ancients far surpass nostra tempora.4 At the same time, there is at least one significant area of difference. Both the Cicero Novus

1 Ibid.; Weiss, pp.37-8. 2 Weiss, “Bruni”, p.443. 3 The surviving entry on Caesar is notably even-handed: BL, MS.Cotton Nero.C.vi, fol.174vb-175va. On the other hand, running through the Granarium seems to be a pro-imperial commitment: see, for example, the fairly praising article on Octavian at MS.Cotton Tib.D.v, fol.123vb-125rb or his statement that Rome has been ruled by Emperors since Caesar: sicque [Romani] reguntur usque in presentem diem det deus quod sic regi mereantur sine fine [MS.Arundel 11, fol.131]. For Whethamstede’s lack of interest in Florence, see below. 4 Baron, Bruni, pp.102-4, 123-5.

97 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 and the preface to Xenophon’s Hiero celebrate the ideal of the scholar-statesman.

Yet, this sense of political interest or commitment does not transfer into

Whethamstede’s encyclopedia. Indeed, Whethamstede explicitly places political matters beyond his area of expertise. In the first part of the Granarium, there is an entry for the term civitas, which opens:

CIVITAS est duplex: una quae ex lignis componitur & lapidibus & facit ad hominum in ea habitantium communitiones. Alia est quae ex civibus constituitur sive hominibus qui adinvicem easdem habent leges consimilesque vivendi ritus. De qua civitate quia tam Plato quam eciam Aristotiles quam plura inserverunt in scripturis suis non presumo ulterius aliquid adicere ymo intendo potius divertere calamum ad civitatem primam de ipsaque secundum suam originalem fundationem paucula pertractare.1

A twelve-page article follows discussing various cities’ origins through their names’ etymology. Here as elsewhere, what is apparent are the self-imposed limits on

Whethamstede’s area of research. With rhetorical humility, Whethamstede refused to discuss issues which had become topical among some humanists. Perhaps he did this unconscious of the political import of the texts before him; on the other hand, if, in this respect, he did not assimilate a trend of Italian scholarship, it is by no means certain it was because he was “unable to appreciate” it.2 To recognise the limits of an author’s interests is one thing, to ascribe them to mental sluggishness quite another.

Just as he was interested in particular texts, so Whethamstede was concerned with

1 BL, MS.Cotton Nero.C.vi, fol.41; contrast the different gloss on the opening distinction made by Bruni in De Militia: C.Bayley, War and Society in Renaissance Florence (Toronto, 1961) p.371 (ll.20-2). Whethamstede’s article is arranged in alphabetical order; at fol.43rb it goes straight from Famagosta to Gaza: in other words, it leaves out Florence (but not, later, its rival, Milan [fol.44rb-va]). Oxford is also absent from the list (London and York are the English cities mentioned). A parallel case to this non-political article is the short entry on respublica (ms.cit., fol.150vb-151ra) which confines itself to discussing Roman processions. 2 Cf. Weiss, “Bruni”, p.444.

98 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 specific aspects of those works. He was practising that (perhaps not honourable but certainly time-honoured) scholarly tradition: source-mining.1

Whethamstede’s use of humanist works might, then, seem to support the interpretation that characterises the English reception as “cautious acceptance, appropriation and transformation.”2 This, though, sounds too timid: the reaction of a scholar like Whethamstede’s was surely born less of diffidence than self-confidence.

His non-political use of these texts does not mean that he failed to recognise their novelty, merely that what he found more notable was their acceptability to an established outlook.

This re-interpretation of Whethamstede’s work has important ramifications. I have suggested that the abbot’s foray into humanist-reading occurred only in the 1440s and that it is best explained by his having access to Humphrey’s library, either when it was at Greenwich or at Oxford. Now, the traditional interpretation would place much store by the assumed close relationship between the abbot and the duke. Certainly, the two met several times, with Humphrey having an especial attachment to the abbey of St.Albans; Whethamstede, meanwhile, admired Humphrey’s political skills, if his comments after the latter’s death are any guide.3 Whether, though, their

‘friendship’ was as close or as intellectually stimulating as is sometimes suggested is open to question.1 In other words, it may not be that Whethamstede influenced

Humphrey’s intellectual interests, rather that Humphrey’s collection of fashionable

1 This lack of political interest contrasts with the abbot’s interest in the “constitutional history” of the 1450s detected by Howlett: “Whethamstede”, pp.99-116. 2 D.Gray, “Some pre-Elizabethan examples of an Elizabethan art” in E.Chaney & P.Mack, ed., England and the Continental Renaissance (Woodbridge, 1990) pp.23-36 at p.25. 3 Humphrey, for example, spent Christmas 1423 at St.Albans and was hosted by the prior, as the abbot was in Italy at the time: Annales Amundeshami, ed.H.Riley {Roll Series, 28} (London, 1870) i, p.4.

99 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 manuscripts provided the abbot - quite possibly after they left the duke’s library - with a wider range of reading.

The consequence of this is that, if what I have described as the first stage of

English interest involves those strands which occur independently of Humphrey in the 1420s and 1430s, then Whethamstede’s interests must surely stand outside them.

Instead, his interests are an early example of the impact of the second stage, with the increased availability of works facilitated by an aristocratic benefactor. Humphrey’s penchant for receiving book-gifts accelerated the circulation of humanist manuscripts but it clearly did not, as it were, jump-start it. There were already strands of interests

- in particular Florentine authors and in humanist texts as formulary-fodder - and these continued through the century. Yet, if Humphrey’s involvement in ‘humanism’ has been traditionally exaggerated, it remains the case that his patronage undeniably transformed English interest. In the next chapter, the duke’s encounters with humanists and their manuscripts will be appraised, if not (as is the convention) praised; the re-interpretation will provide a study in myth-understanding.

1 Whethamstede’s book gifts to Humphrey [on which de la Mare, pp.35-40] should perhaps be seen as political, rather than simply intellectual, acts - on this aspect of book-giving, see c.iv pp.113-4 below.

100 Extract from D. Rundle, ‘Of Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997

101