Renaissance Humanism and the Papal Curia

front.qxdRenaissance Humanism
De curiae commodis
Christopher S. Celenza
Copyright © by the University of Michigan 1999
All rights reserved
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No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
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without the written permission of the publisher.
A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Celenza, Christopher S., 1967–
Castiglionchio the Younger’s De curiae commodis / Christopher S.
Celenza.
p. cm. — (Papers and monographs of the American Academy in
Rome ; v. 31)
ISBN 0-472-10994-4 (alk. paper)
1. Castiglionchio, Lapo da, d. 1381. De curiae commodis. 2.
Catholic Church. Curia Romana—History—To 1500. 3. Catholic Church
and humanism—History—To 1500. I. Title. II. Series.
BX1818.C45 1999
For Louis S. and Nancy Celenza, in gratitude
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front.qxd 10/18/1999 2:01 PM Page vi
Preface and Acknowledgments
This study began life as a Duke University dissertation in the History
Department, where I intended to write on the fate of the pre-Socratic tra-
dition in the Renaissance. In the course of research into this ‹eld in the
Vatican Library, I happened, through the suggestion of Prof. David
Wright, on something only very tangentially related to that ‹eld (if at all),
the unedited will of Cardinal Giordano Orsini. Through studying Orsini
and his sociocultural environment I came upon Lapo, whom Orsini
patronized, and Lapo’s prose capolavoro, the De curiae commodis. Even
though it was unrelated to my primary ‹eld of interest, I decided to
devote time to studying the work and its author. I was originally naive
enough to think it was a project I could complete on the side. Time
proved otherwise and it eventually seemed prudent to change dissertation
topics, even as I have continued research into my original area of interest.
My hopes for this work are twofold. First, I hope that it broadens, if
only modestly, the evolving and growing canon of Italian Renaissance
Neo-Latin literature, whose vitality and interest Paul Oskar Kristeller
and many others have signaled. If one considers Italian Renaissance stud-
ies from the perspective of the availability of primary sources (especially
Latin ones), my sense is that the discipline is now approximately where
classics was at the turn of the twentieth century: many important authors
have been edited once, many have not, few are translated into more than
one language, and the large majority of secondary but nonetheless inter-
esting ‹gures (like Lapo) perforce receive only cursory consideration. No
series for Renaissance authors have reached the levels of popularity and
completeness of the Loeb, Teubner, or Belles lettres series in classics or
the Patrologia Latina and Patrologia Graeca and the Corpus Christiano-
rum (and its Continuatio medievalis) in patristics and medieval studies.
This lack of availability of basic sources makes it hard to pro‹t from wel-
come theoretical developments in other disciplines. It is dif‹cult to write
front.qxd 10/18/1999 2:01 PM Page vii
about the sociology of Renaissance intellectuals, for example, without
having fairly complete and easy access to the majority of their extant
writings.
Second, I hope that my introductory monographic discussion of Lapo
and his cultural environment contributes in some degree to our under-
standing of the inner workings of Renaissance humanism during what
was one of its most interesting phases. Lapo’s liminal status is of pri-
mary importance here, I think. He was a talented and highly quali‹ed
humanist who before his death could not break into the inner circles of
important patron/client relationships. Instead of looking at the world of
early- to mid-Quattrocento humanism from the inside, we see it from
the perspective of an outsider who desperately wanted to break in.
This study has bene‹ted greatly from the time, energy, and patience of
many. I thank especially Profs. Ronald G. Witt and Francis Newton of
Duke University, Prof. John M. Headley of the University of North Car-
olina at Chapel Hill, and Prof. John Monfasani of the State University of
New York at Albany, all of whom, through careful readings and reread-
ings, improved this work considerably. I owe extra thanks to Professors
Monfasani and Witt for their generous support and mentoring through-
out my undergraduate and graduate career. What I have learned, I owe
to them. I also thank Profs. Walther Ludwig and Dieter Harl‹nger of the
University of Hamburg; both made many sagacious contributions to this
work. They also helped guide me through a second, related graduate
career in the study of the transmission of ancient texts. Die Forschung- geht immer weiter! Prof. Riccardo Fubini of the University of Florence
has been kind to share conversations on Lapo with me on a number of
occasions. The two readers for this press offered a number of extremely
helpful suggestions and criticisms, without which this would be a much
poorer work. Thanks also to Marcello Simonetta, for timely suggestions.
Even a modest project such as this could never have been completed
without the Iter Italicum of Paul Oskar Kristeller. I pay tribute to that
great work and thank Professor Kristeller for kindly responding to my
inquiries and providing encouragement for this and other projects. I
thank also the staffs of all of the European libraries in which I worked
gathering manuscript information on Lapo, especially those of the Bib-
lioteca Nazionale and the Biblioteca Riccardiana in Florence and the Bib-
lioteca Apostolica Vaticana in Vatican City. Thanks to my parents, Louis
S. and Nancy Celenza, to whom I dedicate this work, and to my sister,
viii Preface and Acknowledgments
front.qxd 10/18/1999 2:01 PM Page viii
Mary-Frances. And thanks to my wife, Anna Harwell Celenza, for every-
thing.
For ‹nancial support, it is a pleasure to thank Duke University, for a
graduate fellowship in medieval and Renaissance studies for 1989–92;
the Fulbright Foundation, for a Fulbright to Florence in 1992–93; the
American Academy in Rome, both for a Rome Prize in postclassical
humanistic studies in 1993–94 and for accepting this book into their
Occasional Monographs series; and the Deutsche Forschungsgemein-
schaft along with the Frei- und Hansestadt Hamburg, for a graduate fel-
lowship at the University of Hamburg’s Graduiertenkolleg Textüber-
lieferung for 1994–96. Since 1996 I have enjoyed generous ‹nancial and
intellectual support as well as fruitful working conditions as a faculty
member of Michigan State University, which I gratefully acknowledge.
Preface and Acknowledgments ix
Contents
Chapter 2. The Literary Environment: Genealogies 30
Chapter 3. Politics and Persuasion, Bureaucracy
and Behavior 57
Lapi Castelliunculi De curiae commodis Dialogus 102
Lapo da Castiglionchio’s Dialogue
On the Bene‹ts of the Curia 103
Bibliography 229
Abbreviations
Works other than those listed here are cited in full the ‹rst time they
occur in the book and thereafter by short author-title abbreviations for
which full publication information can easily be found in the bibliogra-
phy. Classical texts are cited according to either the most recent Oxford
Classical Text edition or the most recent Teubner edition. Their titles are
abbreviated according to the abbreviations in The Oxford Classical Dic- tionary, 3d ed., ed. S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth (Oxford, 1996),
xxix–liv.
Nationale
Bresslau H. Bresslau. Handbuch der Urkundenlehre für Deutschland und Italien. 3d ed. 2 vols.
Berlin, 1958.
Lives, Lapo da Castiglionchio the Younger
(1405–1438), and the Art of Italian Renais-
sance Translation.” Illinois Classical Studies 22 (1997): 121–55.
CHRP The Cambridge History of Renaissance Phi- losophy. Ed. C.B. Schmitt and Q. Skinner.
Cambridge, New York, 1988.
D’Amico J. D’Amico. Renaissance Humanism in Papal Rome: Humanists and Churchmen on the Eve of the Reformation. Baltimore and
London, 1983.
Fubini R. Fubini. “Castiglionchio, Lapo da, detto il
Giovane.” Dizionario biogra‹co degli Ital- iani 22 (1979): 44–51.
front.qxd 10/18/1999 2:01 PM Page xiii
Hoffman W. von Hoffman. Forschungen zur Geschichte der kurialen Behörden vom Schisma bis zur Reformation. 2 vols. Rome,
1914.
Iter P.O. Kristeller. Iter Italicum: A Finding List of Uncatalogued or Incompletely Cata- logued Humanistic Manuscripts of the Renaissance in Italian and Other Libraries. 6 vols. Leiden and London, 1963–95.
Luiso F.P. Luiso. “Studi su l’epistolario e le
traduzioni di Lapo da Castiglionchio
iuniore.” Studi italiani di ‹lologia classica 8
(1899): 205–99.
Müllner, Reden K. Müllner. Reden und Briefe italienischer Humanisten. Vienna, 1899. Reprint, with an
introduction by H.B. Gerl, Munich, 1970.
O MS Vatican City, BAV Ottob. Lat. 1677
Par. Lat. 11,388 MS Paris BN Lat. 11,388
xiv Abbreviations
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. Chapter 3 has a twofold theme: Lapo’s self-
presentation as a papal propagandist and, linked to this, his defense of
wealth in the De curiae commodis. Chapter 4 presents concluding
thoughts, and chapter 5 offers an introduction to the text and transla-
tion.
Lapo was born in 1406 into a family of the feudal aristocracy, whose
name remained intact but whose ‹nancial situation was not what it once
ch1.qxd 10/18/1999 2:02 PM Page 1
had been.1 The family’s most famous fourteenth-century member was
Lapo the Elder, an acquaintance of Petrarch, noted jurist, and major par-
ticipant in the events leading up to the 1378 revolt of the Ciompi.2 His
lifelong defense of the rights and privileges of the aristocracy led during
that crisis to the burning of the family estate and to his exile.3 Although
Lapo the Elder died in 1381 in Rome, Lapo the Younger must have
grown up in the shadow of his family history.
Most of the data of Lapo’s life have to be reconstructed from his self-
collected letters and the prefaces of his various works,4 where the pre-
ponderance of what we ‹nd consists of references to his humanistic
career. The 1430s, consequently, are the years about which we know the
most.
At some point in the early 1430s he spent time in Bologna, perhaps
working for a family-owned banking concern.5 Humanistic studies, how-
ever, were without doubt his ‹rst love; what little we know of Lapo’s life
has to do for the most part with his continuous search for humanistic
employment. For Lapo, as for most humanists, this type of search was
conducted on the basis of what would today be called networking.
2 Renaissance Humanism and the Papal Curia
1. This overview relies, but is not exclusively based, on Fubini. For the date of Lapo’s birth, see Fubini, 44.
2. See M. Palma, “Castiglionchio, Lapo da,” Dizionario biogra‹co degli Italiani 22 (1979): 40–44; P.J. Jones, “Florentine Families and Florentine Diaries in the Four- teenth Century,” Papers of the British School at Rome 24 (1956): 182–205, at 191–92; M. Becker, Florence in Transition 2 vols. (Baltimore, 1967–68) 2:136–37, 144–46, and ad indicem; G. Brucker, Renaissance Florence: Society, Culture, and Religion (Goldbach, 1994), ad indicem. Lapo the Elder authored a number of in›uen- tial juridical works, but his most important work with respect to the information it holds about fourteenth-century Florentine elite mentalities is his letter to his son Bernardo; see Lapo Castiglionchio the Elder, Epistola o sia ragionamento di Messer Lapo da Castiglionchio, ed. L. Mehus (Bologna, 1753).
3. Palma, “Castiglionchio,” 42. 4. See the lengthy excerpts of these works in Luiso; there is a more complete edi-
tion, unfortunately unpublished, in E. Rotondi, “Lapo da Castiglionchio e il suo epis- tolario” (Tesi di laurea, Università di Firenze, Facoltà di magistero, 1970–71), cited in Fubini, 51. Since this thesis, however, is unavailable for photocopying or loan from the Biblioteca della Facoltà di Magistero (even on written request), I shall cite Lapo’s letters either from Luiso’s excerpts or from the Codex Ottobonianus in the BAV (Ottob. Lat. 1677), henceforth cited as O, with occasional recourse to the Parisinus (MS Paris BN Lat. 11,388), henceforth cited as Par. Lat. 11,388. Another important manuscript source for the letters is MS Como, Biblioteca Communale 4.4.6, for which see Iter, ad loc.
5. He may also have been in Bologna at some point in 1427, when a Florentine cat- asto record shows him as being absent from Florence (Fubini, 45).
ch1.qxd 10/18/1999 2:02 PM Page 2
Toward this end, perhaps the most important person whom Lapo
encountered and with whom he studied was Francesco Filelfo.
Born in Tolentino, Francesco Filelfo (1398–1481) was an immensely
learned humanist scholar who went to Constantinople for six years in the
1420s to study Greek, in the same fashion as Guarino Veronese and
other early humanist pioneers had done. He was a professor from 1429
to 1434 at the Florentine studium, where he ran afoul of Niccolò Niccoli
and Carlo Marsuppini. Subsequently—or perhaps consequently—he
antagonized the Medici (of whom Niccoli and Marsuppini were strong
allies) after Cosimo returned from exile to Florence in 1434.6
The alienation of Filelfo, Lapo’s teacher and friend, from the main
source of humanistic patronage in Florence is certainly one of the under-
lying reasons why Lapo was compelled to seek his fortunes elsewhere. In
1435 Lapo engaged in an interesting but abortive attempt to win
Medicean favor, dedicating to Cosimo his translation of Plutarch’s Life of Themistocles. Given the extensive discourse on exile in this Life and
the fact that Cosimo himself was newly returned from exile, we can see
this as a bold maneuver on Lapo’s part, as he ‹nds a way to level the
playing ‹eld with Cosimo in a manner otherwise unthinkable.7 In any
case this did not result in any subsequent connections between Lapo and
Lapo’s Life and Work 3
6. After his Florentine period came to its end with Cosimo’s return, Filelfo moved to Siena. He was there until 1439. Thereafter he went on to become perhaps the sin- gle dominant personality in the humanist culture of Milan. Only in 1481 was he rec- onciled to the Medici, dying in Florence in July of that year. See in general A. Rabil, Jr., “Humanism in Milan,” in Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms, and Legacy, ed. A. Rabil, Jr., 3 vols. (Philadelphia, 1988), 3:235–63, at 249–52. For Filelfo’s life, see C. de’ Rosmini, Vita di Francesco Filelfo da Tolentino, 3 vols. (Milan, 1808); D. Robin, Filelfo in Milan, 1451–1477 (Princeton, 1991); eadem, “A Reassess- ment of the Character of Francesco Filelfo (1398–1481),” Renaissance Quarterly 36 (1983): 202–24; G. Gualdo, “Francesco Filelfo e la curia ponti‹cia: Una carriera man- cata,” Archivio della Società Romana di Storia Patria 102 (1979): 189–236. On Milanese culture in the second half of the ‹fteenth century, see E. Garin “L’età sforzesca dal 1450 al 1500,” Storia di Milano 7, no. 4 (1955–56): 540–97.
7. See Celenza, “Parallel Lives,” for a further elaboration of this argument. Recently Marianne Pade has begun excellent systematic work on Renaissance Plutarch translations. See her “Revisions of Translations, Corrections and Criticisms: Some examples from the Fifteenth-century Latin Translations of Plutarch’s “Lives’,” in Etudes classiques IV: Actes du colloque “Méthodologie de la traduction: de l’An- tiquité à la Renaissance,” ed. C.M. Ternes (Luxembourg, 1994), 177–98; and eadem, “The Latin Translations of Plutarch’s Lives in Fifteenth-century Italy and Their Man- uscript Diffusion,” in The Classical Tradition in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. C. Leonardi and B.M. Olsen (Spoleto, 1995), 169–83.
ch1.qxd 10/18/1999 2:02 PM Page 3
the Medici. Later, in 1438, when Lapo was in Ferrara with the papal
curia at the council, he would refuse to meet with Cosimo when Cosimo
came to town, perhaps because of Cosimo’s earlier failure to support
him.8
In 1435 Lapo went with Filelfo to Siena, where he met with an in›uen-
tial circle of leaders in the humanist and Maecenean community. There
he came into contact with Angelo da Recanate, with whom he remained
a fast friend. At that time Angelo was the secretary of Cardinal G.
Casanova, and in the summer of 1435 Lapo too came into the service of
this cardinal, encouraged by Angelo.9
In af‹liating himself with Cardinal Casanova, Lapo must have hoped
to come into the orbit of Eugenius IV, as his letter of self-introduction to
the cardinal makes explicit. Humbly presenting himself to Casanova,
Lapo mentions that he has been preparing translations to dedicate to the
pope. Knowing, however, of his own lowly status, he realizes that he
needs a highly placed mediator to intercede for him.10 During his period
of service to Cardinal Casanova, Lapo dedicated to Eugenius IV his
translations of Plutarch’s Life of Solon as well as Lucian’s De ›etu and
De somnio.11 In a contemporary letter to the pope, preparing him, as it
were, to receive the coming translations, Lapo ›atters Eugenius for his
4 Renaissance Humanism and the Papal Curia
8. For the refusal to meet Cosimo, see Lapo’s letter to G. Bacci, 14 March 1438 (Rotondi, “Lapo da Castiglionchio,” 275; Fubini, 46). The dedicatory preface is edited in Celenza, “Parallel Lives,” 148–52; there is a partial translation in J. Hank- ins, “Cosimo de’ Medici as a Patron of Humanistic Literature,” in Cosimo ‘il Vecchio’ de’ Medici, 1389–1464: Essays in Commemoration of the Six Hundredth Anniversary of Cosimo de’ Medici’s Birth, ed. F. Ames-Lewis (Oxford, 1992), 69–94, at 87; see also Hankins’s discussion loc. cit. In the dedication Lapo writes, “and if I see that this work [i.e., the translation] is approved, I confess that I shall apply myself to more and greater work in your name. Be well” [et me si haec probari abs te percepero, plura ac maiora tuo nomine aggressurum esse pro‹teor. Vale] (Celenza, “Parallel Lives,” 152).
9. For Angelo’s encouragement, see Luiso, 212 (“Quare, cum ›agitante Angelo tuo vel nostro potius . . .”). Lapo was employed as a letter writer (Fubini, 46–47).
10. “Iampridem mihi proposueram, quibuscumque rebus anniti atque ef‹cere pos- sem, summo Ponti‹ci grati‹cari; ob eamque causam, cum accepissem illum his nostris studiis admodum delectari, et quaedam ex graecis interpretatus essem, ad eum mittere statueram. Verum ad id mihi dux quidam et princeps opus erat qui pro me hoc onus laboris of‹ciique susciperet, eaque ad summum Ponti‹cem deferret meque sanctitati suae commendaret ac ei omnem statum fortunasque meas et studia declararet. Hunc mihi diu perquirenti tu solus occurristi qui ad id ita idoneus visus es, ut, si ex omnibus unus mihi deligendus sit, neminem profecto habeam qui tecum aut studio…