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Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 -III- Before Humphrey: the first stage of English humanist interest to c.1440 In 1444, Æneas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Republics and Tyrants: aspects of quattrocento humanist writings and their reception in England, c. 1400 – c. 1460’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1997) © David Rundle 1997 his collecting of works by modern Italians.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.