DOCSLIB.ORG

Resources for the Study of Ancient Greek in France

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Resources for the Study of Ancient Greek in France RESOURCES FOR THE STUDY OF ANCIENT GREEK IN FRANCE Gerald Sandy Introduction The title of an article by L. Delaruelle, one of the doyens of the study of the development of Hellenism in France, succinctly defines the subject of this chapter: Comment on devenait Helléniste à la fin du XVe siècle.1 I shall extend the subject to encompass approximately the first third of the sixteenth century. This period, from 1458 when Gregorio da Città di Castello (Gregorius Tifernas) began teaching ancient Greek in Paris to 1530 when the Collège royal (Collège de France) was founded and its two chairs in Greek were established, saw the developments that were to establish France as the pre-eminent centre of Hellenic studies in western Europe by the second half of the sixteenth century. Although Petrarch's knowledge of ancient Greek never progressed beyond the most rudimentary stage, his unfulfilled desire for it remained passionate right up to his death in 1374. He transmitted his unrealized desire to Boccaccio. He in turn in the early 1350s hosted in his own residence in Florence a Greek-speaking Calabrian whom he and Petrarch had engaged to translate Homer into Latin, thereby initiating in a sense the teaching of ancient Greek in western Europe.2 It is because of these precise circumstances that the Greek intellectuals who fled from Constantinople a century later found a ready market for the manuscripts of classical Greek authors that they carried with them to Italy, especially to Venice. At the time of their arrival cultured Italian patrons were already commissioning agents to search out Greek manuscripts. Lorenzo de' Medici, for instance, instructed his principal agent, the Byzantine Greek Janus Lascaris, 1 Delaruelle 1935. Us origines du Collège de France (1500-1560) (Paris: Collège de France/Klincksieck, 1998), éd. M. Fumaroli, became available to me after I had written this chapter. It contains relevant chapters written by leading authorities. 2 Pfeiffer 1976: 13-15 and 25. See also Geanakoplos 1962 and 1976. 48 GERALD SANDY whom we shall later encounter in Paris, to buy good Greek manu­ scripts "at any price whatsoever."3 Others such as Francesco Filefo, a member of the Venetian embassy in Constantinople during the 1420s, and Giovanni Aurispa took advantage of their official post­ ings or private travels in the Greek East to acquire significant num­ bers of Greek manuscripts. Lorenzo's buying spree had been preceded by those of his grandfather Cosimo and by Pope Nicolas V, the lat­ ter of whom near the middle of the fifteenth century employed copy­ ists and scholars to form at a stroke the department of classical manuscripts in the Pontifical Library. The information in the preceding paragraph is familiar, readily available in much greater detail in coundess studies of humanism and the Renaissance. What is generally less well appreciated is that France in the sixteenth century displaced Italy as the pre-eminent centre of Hellenic studies in western Europe. Educated French peo­ ple of this period recognized that Hellenism had taken root in French soil within their own lifetime. Rabelais, writing in 1532, represents Gargantua as celebrating the event in a letter to his son, "Maintenant, toutes disciplines sont restituées, les langues instaurées: grecque, sans laquelle c'est honte que une personne se die sçavant." The reality that Rabelais celebrates comprises such manifestations as the print­ ing of the first Greek book in France in 1507, Girolamo Aleandro's arrival from Venice in the next year to teach Greek in Paris and Orléans, Janus Lascaris' mission to Venice in 1520 under the spon­ sorship of François I to recruit pupils for the king's abortive Collège de jeunes grecs and to acquire Greek manuscripts for the king, the publication in 1529 of Guillaume Budé's Commentani Linguae Graecae and above all the appointment by François I in 1530 of the first two lecteurs royaux in Greek to the newly founded Collège royal.4 Abel Lefranc imagines a particularly piquant scene, "Was it not a unique moment in history when Calvin, Ignatius of Loyola and Rabelais . 3 Pontani 1992 and Knös 1945. 4 M. Jean-Louis Charlet has reminded me that Greek characters appear at an earlier date in the Parisian edition of Niccolo Perotti's Rudimenta Grammatices (Paris: Gering, 1479) (Bibliothèque mazarine, No. 227). All the Greek characters in this edition appear on one page, folio lvo, and do not include accents or breathings, e.g. "Unde dicitur vox? απο του βοαω." They are not used elsewhere in this edi­ tion, even for Greek words, e.g. "Graeca vero in 'n' genus suum servant: haec Syren, hie delphin." The announcement of Jacques Toussain's appointment as lecteur royal is dated 29 November 1529 (Omont 1903). .
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Recovery of Manuscripts
    Cultural heritage The Recovery of manuscripts David RUNDLE ABSTRACT Manuscripts were the cornerstone of humanism. They had been the main vector for transmission of the ancient texts and culture in the Middle Ages. Most of them had nonetheless been lost or forgotten in remote libraries. In order to recover the ancient Greek and Latin texts they favoured, humanists went on a European quest to find these manuscripts. From Italy, at first, humanists travelled all across Europe, visiting convents and libraries, in search of the lost works of Tacitus, Cicero, etc. building and securing the antique legacy of European culture. Portrait of Poggio holding a manuscript on the first page of the Ruins of Rome (Biblioteca apostolica Vaticana, Urb. Lat. 224, fol. 3). This treatise dedicated to another prominent manuscript hunter, the pope Nicholas V, is a meditation on the loss of Roman culture. Manuscripts were humanism’s lifeblood, its inspiration and its purpose. The production of new books in a new, or revived, style of Latin and with a new, or revived, presentation on the page was central to their activities. But before they could even be conceived, there needed to be classical texts to be imitated. Behind the humanists’ practices lay an agenda of manuscript recovery all across Europe. They were conscious of themselves as cut off from the classical past and set themselves the challenge of discovering works which had not been seen—they said- —by scholars for centuries. In writing of their achievements in doing this, they exaggerated both their own heroic endeavours and the dire state that preceded them.
    [Show full text]
  • Images of Homeric Manuscripts from the Biblioteca Marciana1
    2008 Annual Conference of CIDOC Athens, September 15 – 18, 2008 Christopher W. Blackwell IMAGES OF HOMERIC MANUSCRIPTS FROM THE BIBLIOTECA MARCIANA1 Christopher W. Blackwell Classics University or Organization: Furman University Address: 3300 Poinsett Highway Greenville, SC 29609 USA E-Mail: [email protected] URL: http://chs.harvard.edu/chs/homer_multitext Abstract This paper describes the manuscript Marcianus Graecus Z.454 (=822), the “Venetus A” and the work of capturing high-resolution digital images of its folios. The manuscripts is a masterpiece of 9th Century “information technology”, combing a primary text, the Homeric Iliad, with secondary texts in the form of scholiastic notes, and other metadata in the form of critical signs. Thus the images of this manuscript provide wide access to an invaluable window into two millennia of the history of the Homeric tradition. INTRODUCTION In May of 2007 an international team of Classicists, conservators, photographers, and imaging experts came together in the Biblioteca Marciana—the Library of St. Mark—in Venice, in order to bring to light a cultural treasure that had been hidden away for over 100 years. The Venetus A manuscript of the Iliad (Marcianus Gr. Z. 454 [=822]), the 1 The following paper is about a collaborative project, of which I am one of four primary editors. We have worked together to produce a number of presentations and publications connected to the project over the past year, including the forthcoming book: Recapturing a Homeric Legacy: Images and Insights from the Venetus A Manuscript of the Iliad. For this reason, this paper should be considered to be co-authored by Casey Dué, Mary Ebbott, and Neel Smith.
    [Show full text]
  • Lapo's Life and Work
    ch1.qxd 10/18/1999 2:02 PM Page 1 CHAPTER 1 Lapo’s Life and Work In the years that preceded the more or less permanent reentry of Pope Eugenius IV into Rome, the Renaissance humanist movement was in the middle of an interesting phase. At that time a large component of its members consisted of intellectuals who lacked ‹xed institutional places. Humanism—this new ars whose curricular focus was the studia humani- tatis—had still to ‹nd its place in society and was dependent largely on patrons. One practitioner of this new art was the Florentine Lapo da Cas- tiglionchio the Younger, who died in 1438 at the age of thirty-three. One of his most interesting cultural bequests to us is a treatise that he wrote in the year of his death, entitled De curiae commodis, or On the Bene‹ts of the Curia. In this dialogue, Lapo offers us a portrait of the papal curia that is written elegantly, learnedly, earnestly, and even angrily. It is a human document that is alive with information not only for intellectual historians but for social and cultural historians as well. The goal of this study is to discuss this dialogue in its intellectual and social contexts. A critical edition of the Latin text along with an annotated English transla- tion follows the discussion. This ‹rst chapter offers an examination of Lapo’s life and work, fol- lowed by a brief look at the historiography on the dialogue. Chapter 2 deals with the literary context of the dialogue and examines a compli- cated passage on the virtues, which I believe can serve as an interpretive key for the piece as a whole.
    [Show full text]
  • Curial Humanism Seen Through the Prism of the Papal Library
    CURIAL HUMANISM SEEN THROUGH THE PRISM OF THE PAPAL LIBRARY Massimo Miglio The multifaceted historical perception of Italian humanism, especially with regard to the Quattrocento, that has evolved in the last several years makes it necessary to define humanism’s diverse identities as articulated in the main cultural centers of Italy, such as Milan, Venice, Padua, and Naples.1 For this reason, it is also necessary to attempt to define the characteristics of humanistic culture that developed at the papal court and to evaluate its ever evolving nature because of the particular personalities of some of the popes (Nicholas V, Pius II, Paul II, and Sixtus IV, for example) but, above all, because of the unique socio-cultural composition of the Roman court, which was made up of laymen, clerics, and intellectuals from different regions of Italy and Europe. These individuals were simultaneously called upon to address issues that were both religious and secular. The Roman court was unquestionably atypical with respect to other courts. This uniqueness was due to its mingling of the spiritual with the temporal, to its having to assert itself vis-à-vis the city of Rome and the Papal States as well as all of Christendom, to its being strongly rooted in the social reality of Italy, and to its international composition even though the papal court, contrary to popular belief, was composed primarily of Italians; between 1471 and 1527 around 60% of the court personnel were Italian. The Roman court and the papal Curia (I should note, however, that the Curia constituted only part of the Roman court) were at this time the court par excellence.
    [Show full text]
  • Scribes and Scholars (3Rd Ed. 1991)
    SCRIBES AND SCHOLARS A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature BY L. D. REYNOLDS Fellow and Tutor of Brasenose College, Oxford AND N. G. WILSON Fellow and Tutor of Lincoln College, Oxford THIRD EDITION CLARENDON PRESS • OXFORD Oxford University Press, Walton Street, Oxford 0x2 6DP Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bombay Calcutta Cape Town Dares Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madras Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi Paris Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Oxford is a trade mark of Oxford University Press Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Oxford University Press 1968, 1974, 1991 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press. Within the UK, exceptions are allowed in respect of any fair dealing for the purpose of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of the licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms and in other countries should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Scribes and scholars: a guide to the transmission of Greek and Latin literature/by L.
    [Show full text]
  • The Renaissance, and the Rediscovery of Plato and the Greeks
    Click here for Full Issue of Fidelio Volume 12, Number 3, Fall 2003 The Renaissance, and The Rediscovery of Plato And the G by Torbjörn Jerlerup t was in the Midland between the ‘ famous rivers Po and Ticino and IAdda and others, whence some say our Milan derives its name, on the ninth day of October, in the year of this last age of the world the 1360th.”1 For the people who lived in the Italian city of Milan or in one of its surrounding villages, it might have looked like an ordinary, but cold, autumn morning. It was Friday. The city council and the bishop of Milan were probably quarrelling about the construction of a new cathedral in the city. The construction would not start for another 25 years. The university professors and the barbers (the doctors Alinari/Art Resource, NY of the time), were probably worried Domenico di Michelino, “Dante Alighieri Reading His Poem,” 1465 about rumors of a new plague, the (detail). The Cathedral of Florence, topped by Brunelleschi’s Dome, third since the Great Plague in 1348, appears to Dante’s left. and the townspeople were probably complaining about taxes, as usual. The Great minds of ancient Greece farmers, who led their cattle to pas- (clockwise from top): Homer, Plato, ture, were surely complaining about Solon, Aeschylus, Sophocles. the weather, as it had been unusually unstable. 36 © 2003 Schiller Institute, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission strictly prohibited. The Granger Collection of Plato EIRNS/Philip Ulanowsky Greeks The Granger Collection If they were not too busy with their cows, they perhaps caught a glimpse of a monk riding along the grassy, mud-ridden path that was part of the main road between the cities of Florence and The Granger Collection Milan.
    [Show full text]
  • Recapturing a Homeric Legacy
    Hellenic Studies 35 Recapturing a Homeric Legacy Images and Insights From the Venetus A Manuscript of the Iliad Other Titles in the Hellenic Studies Series Plato’s Rhapsody and Homer’s Music The Poetics of the Panathenaic Festival in Classical Athens Labored in Papyrus Leaves Perspectives on an Epigram Collection Attributed to Posidippus (P.Mil.Vogl. VIII 309) Helots and Their Masters in Laconia and Messenia Histories, Ideologies, Structures Recapturing a Archilochos Heros The Cult of Poets in the Greek Polis Master of the Game Competition and Performance in Greek Poetry Homeric Legacy Greek Ritual Poetics edited by Casey Dué Black Doves Speak Herodotus and the Languages of Barbarians Pointing at the Past From Formula to Performance in Homeric Poetics Homeric Conversation The Life and Miracles of Thekla Victim of the Muses Poet as Scapegoat, Warrior and Hero in Greco-Roman and Indo-European Myth and History Amphoterōglossia A Poetics of the Twelfth Century Medieval Greek Novel Priene (second edition) Plato’s Symposium Issues in Interpretation and Reception Poetic and Performative Memory in Ancient Greece Heroic Reference and Ritual Gestures in Time and Space http://chs.harvard.edu/chs/publications Center for Hellenic Studies Trustees for Harvard University Washington, D.C. Distributed by Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England 2009 Recapturing a Homeric Legacy : Images and Insights From the Venetus A Manuscript of the Iliad Edited by Casey Dué Copyright © 2009 Center for Hellenic Studies, Trustees for Harvard University All Rights Reserved. Published by Center for Hellenic Studies, Trustees for Harvard University, Washington, D.C. Distributed by Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England Printed in Ann Arbor, MI by Edwards Brothers, Inc.
    [Show full text]
  • The Revival of Greek Studies in the West I 14Th – 15Th Cent
    The Revival of Greek Studies in the West I 14th – 15th cent. Ioannis Deligiannis Democritus University of Thrace • Introduction – Greek in the Middle Ages • The Early Humanism (14th cent.) • 15th cent. – Greek language teaching and learning methods • Chrysoloras’ Erotemata • Guarino da Verona and Battista Guarini • ms. Vat. Urb. Gr. 121 – Italian humanists who studied and/or translated Greek • Guarino Guarini da Verona • Leonardo Bruni • Vittorino da Feltre • Sassolo da Prato • Francesco Filelfo • Lapo da Castiglionchio the younger • Francesco Griffolini d’Arezzo • Lorenzo Valla • Marsilio Ficino • Angelo Poliziano • Other Italian translators Greek in the Middle Ages • Middle Ages Europe: Greek not generally known. • Interest in Latin translations of Greek texts: – Boethius (5th ex. – 6th in.): Aristotle. – John Scottus Eriugena (9th cent.): Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Maximus the Confessor. – Burgundio of Pisa (12th cent.): John of Damascus, John Chrysostom, Galen. – James of Venice (12th cent.): Aristotle. – Henricus Aristippus (12th cent.): Plato, Euclid, Ptolemy, Aristotle, Gregory of Nazianzus. • 13th cent: a better acquaintance with Greek. • Southern Italy remained the main bridge between Greeks and Latins. • Bartholomew of Messina: Aristotle. • Robert Grosseteste: revision of Burgundio’s translation of John of Damascus, and translations of other works of his, of Dionysius the Areopagite, Aristotle; articles from the Suda Lexicon. • Roger Bacon: wrote a Greek grammar for Latins, significant for the revival of the Greek studies in the West. • William of Moerbeke: translation of Aristotle or revision of existing translations; literal and faithful; classic in the 14th cent. He also translated mathematical treatises (Hero of Alexandria and Archimedes), commentaries of Simplicius, Proclus, etc.
    [Show full text]
  • The Empedoclean Opening
    Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-57032-9 - Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom David Sedley Excerpt More information chapter 1 The Empedoclean opening 1. cicero’s letter Lucreti poemata ut scribis ita sunt, multis luminibus ingeni, multae tamen artis. sed cum veneris, virum te putabo si Sallusti Empedoclea legeris, hominem non putabo. Writing to his brother in 54 bc, Cicero supplies two unique testimonies (Ad Q. fr. ii 9.4). In the first sentence he echoes Quintus’ admiration for Lucretius’ poem, thus providing the sole allusion to the De rerum natura likely to be more or less contemporary with its publication. In the second, he attests the publication of an Empedoclea by a certain Sallustius, presumably a Latin translation or imitation of Empedocles (compare Cicero’s own near-contemporary use of the title Aratea for his translation of Aratus). But even more striking than the two individual testimonies is their juxtaposition. Modern editors have taken to printing a full stop after sed cum veneris, understanding ‘But when you come ...(sc. we will discuss it).’ This suppresses any overt link between the two literary judgements: the first breaks off abruptly with an aposiopesis, and the second, juxtaposed, is to all appearances a quite independent observation. On the equally natural and more fluent reading that can be obtained simply by revert- ing to the older punctuation,1 as printed above, with a comma instead of the full stop, the letter is an explicit comparison between the DRN and the Empedoclea: Lucretius’ poetry shows, as you say in your letter, many flashes of genius, yet also much craftsmanship.
    [Show full text]
  • And Fifteenth-Century Italy
    Quidditas Volume 6 Article 9 1985 Latin and Vernacular in Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-Century Italy Paul Oskar Kristeller Columbia University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/rmmra Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, History Commons, Philosophy Commons, and the Renaissance Studies Commons Recommended Citation Kristeller, Paul Oskar (1985) "Latin and Vernacular in Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-Century Italy," Quidditas: Vol. 6 , Article 9. Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/rmmra/vol6/iss1/9 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Quidditas by an authorized editor of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. Latin and Vernacular in Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-Century Italy* by Paul Oskar Kristeller Columbia University The subject of this essay concerns Dante only indirectly and in part. Never­ theless I hope to be able, among other things, to ex plain Dante's historical position and hi influence on the Italian Renai sance. I cannot avoid partially repeating what I wrote in ome of my previous studies, es pecially in my early article on the Italian prose language. 1 Some of my prior obse rvations, which seemed new to me a t the time, have since been widely accepted; but some new ources and literature have been added in the meantime, 2 and on some points I have changed my opinion or paid attention to new points of view. The subject i too broad and complex for one essay. But while many studies may pertain to my topic, no comprehensive reference works or bibliographies could erve as a firm ba i or staning point.
    [Show full text]
  • The Diffusion of Sextus Empiricus's Works in the Renaissance
    The Diffusionof SextusEmpiricus's Works in theRenaissance LucianoFloridi Introduction:An AnnotatedList of ThreeKnown Latin Translations In discussingthe recoveryof Pyrrhonismduring the fifteenthand six- teenthcenturies, it seems that any analysis of the influenceof Sextus Empiricus'sworks on Renaissanceculture has to be based on a careful investigationof whatprimary and secondarysources were availableat the time,and who knewand madeuse of suchsources. For this purpose scholars have,since the second half of the nineteenth century, located and studiedfive Latintranslations of SextusEmpiricus's works. This has recentlyled to the reconstructionof a familyof manuscriptsconsisting of threecopies of a late medievaltranslation. T : Paris,Bibliotheque Nationale, Ms. Lat. 14700, s. XIII, mbr.,misc., 396 fols.:(ff. 83r_132v) (P)Irroniarum Informacionum libri.' This is themost widelyknown Latin translation of the Outlines.Because of its closenessto the originalGreek text,it was used by HermannMutschmann for the constitutiotextus in his criticaledition of Sextus's works.2Discovered and describedby CharlesJourdain, it was furtherstudied by ClemensBaeumker and Mutschmannhimself,3 who listedit as "Tr.l." in his still fundamental 1 For detailed descriptionsof the Ms. see M. Leopold Delisle "Inventairedes manuscritslatins de Saint-Victor,"BibliothUque de l'Ecole des Chartes,30 (1869), 40; G. Lacombe (ed.), AristotelesLatinus Codices (Rome, 1939), I, 544-45; and Paul Oskar Kristeller,Iter Italicum(Leiden, 1983), III, 235a. 2 Cf. Sexti EmpiriciOpera, recensuitHermannus Mutschmann ... addenda et cor- rigendaadiecit I. Mau (Leipzig, 1958). 3 Charles Jourdain,"Sextus Empiricuset la philosophiescolastique," in Excursions historiqueset philosophiquesa' traversle moyenage (Paris, 1888), 199-217; Clemens Baeumker, "Eine bisher unbekanntelateinische Ubersetzung der Ynotuirvomov des SextusEmpiricus," Archivfiur Geschichte der Philosophie,4 (1891), 574-77 (he does not 63 Copyright1995 by Journal of the History of Ideas, Inc.
    [Show full text]
  • The Reception of Ancient Drama in Renaissance Italy Francesca Schironi
    Part III The Renewal of Ancient Drama 7 The Reception of Ancient Drama in Renaissance Italy Francesca Schironi Introduction The first reception of Classical drama in a modern language occurred in sixteenth‐ century Italy. Italian neoclassical drama not only served as a basis for the development of European drama—as it provided the theoretical framework and models which were then perfected by the Elizabethan and French dramatists—but also represented a very rich cultural phenomenon in itself. Without aiming to offer a complete analy- sis of theater in Renaissance Italy, I will here give an overview of its most important characteristics, focusing on why neoclassical drama originated in Italy, on the theo- retical debates that this new genre ignited, and on the main trends and themes of Italian “neoclassical” tragedy and comedy as well as their place in the larger Italian cultural milieu. From this survey, I will omit tragedies and comedies written in Latin in the previous centuries, such as Albertino Mussato’s Ecerinis (1314), a tragedy based on Seneca as a model (especially Octavia) and depicting the cruel deeds of Ezzelino III da Romano (1194–1259) against Padua. Even if Latin humanist plays were important predecessors, Italian neoclassical drama was a new phenomenon, which stemmed mostly from the rediscovery of the Latin and Greek originals at the end of the fifteenth century. I will also omit discussing pastoral plays such as Angelo Poliziano’s Orfeo (c. 1472–1480) or Giovan Battista Guarini’s Il pastor fido (c. 1580), which are based on Classical myths and are the predecessors of Italian opera.1 The “Rediscovery” of the Classics in Italy The development of neoclassical drama in Europe was a consequence of the “rediscovery” of Classical literature in humanistic and early Renaissance Italy.
    [Show full text]