The rediscovery of classical texts

The European reading of the classical past is one of the strangest and most consequential stories in the history of culture. The Latin classics — the comedies of Plautus and Terence, the orations of Cicero, the histories of Livy and Sallust, the poetry of Virgil and Ovid and Horace, the De re publica of Cicero and the Bellum civile of Lucan — were never entirely lost; the auctoritates of the trivium and the quadrivium were the basic Latin reading of the school of York and the palace school of Charlemagne in the eighth and ninth centuries, and a working canon of classical Latin literature was available to every Latin student of the early Middle Ages. What was lost was everything else: the bulk of the Greek literature, the bulk of the technical Greek and Latin literature, the bulk of the post-classical Latin literature, and almost all the Latin historical, philosophical, and scientific literature of the late Republic and the Empire. To recover those texts, in the long twelfth and the long fifteenth centuries, was the project that the historians of the Renaissance have called the ad Fontes tradition, the going-back to the sources, and it is the precondition for the art, the philosophy, the science, the philology, and the politics of the European early modern period.

The medieval inheritance

The Latin West in the ninth century possessed, in working form, only a small fraction of the classical Latin inheritance. The library catalog of the cathedral of York of c. 790 lists about 120 books, of which the classical Latin authors are a minority: Cicero (the De officiis and the De senectute), Seneca (the De beneficiis and the De clementia), Plautus (twelve plays, of the twenty-one now extant), Lucan (the Pharsalia), Juvenal, Statius (the Thebaid and the Achilleid), Sallust, Ovid (the Metamorphoses and the Ars amatoria), Horace (the Odes and the Satires), Virgil (the Aeneid, the Eclogues, and the Georgics), Donatus (the De partibus orationis), and Priscian (the Institutiones grammaticae). The auctoritates of the trivium and the quadrivium were, of course, the basic Latin reading: the De arithmetica and the De musica of Boethius, the In categorias Aristotelis and the De interpretatione of Boethius, the De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii of Martianus Capella, the De rerum natura of Lucretius (in the Carolingian and ninth-century monastic copies of the poem), and the De institutione of Cassiodorus.

That inheritance was, in the long tenth and eleventh centuries, the working library of the paedagogia of the cathedrals and the monasteries, and it was the basis of the twelfth-century recovery of the classical past. The twelfth century was, on any reckoning, the moment of the second Latin reading of antiquity: the Chartres Plato of the Timaeus in the translation of Calcidius, the Chartres Consolation of Boethius, the Cistercian Sic et non of Peter Abelard, the Notre-Dame ars of Hugh of Saint-Victor and Richard of Saint-Victor, the Metalogicon of John of Salisbury, the De divisione naturae of John Scotus Eriugena in the Corbie tradition, the Didascalicon of Hugh of Saint-Victor (c. 1130s), the Timaeus of Calcidius, the De mundi fabrica of Bernardus Silvestris, the Anticlaudianus of Alan of Lille, and the long tradition of Latin humanist Latin of the Chartres school of Thierry of Chartres, William of Conches, and Bernard of Chartres. The twelfth century was, in the words of the historian R. W. Southern, the moment in which the Latin reading of the auctoritates was, for the first time since the late Empire, a humanist reading.

The twelfth-century translations

The most important single development in the recovery of the classical past was the twelfth-century translations of the Greek and Arabic works that the Latin West had not possessed. The translations were made in the great cultural centres of the period: in Toledo under the patronage of Raymond of Toledo, the archbishop of Toledo from 1125 to 1152; in Sicily under the Norman kings of the island; in Constantinople, where the Benedictine libraries of the Greek capital were a working source of the Latin recovery; and in Italy and Provence by the working members of the new cathedral schools. The most important of the twelfth-century translators were Gerard of Cremona (1114–1187), the Italian who settled in Toledo and produced the translatio of the Almagest of Ptolemy, of the De animalibus of Aristotle, of the De geometria of Euclid, of the De usu partium of Galen, of the Kitab al-shifa of Avicenna, and of the Colliget of Averroes; John of Seville (Johannes Hispalensis), who worked in Toledo and produced the translatio of the De anima of Aristotle, of the De caelo of Aristotle, of the De generatione of Aristotle, of the De anima of Aristotle, and of the De sphaera of John of Sacrobosco; Hermann of Carinthia (Hermannus Dalmata, d. 1160), who worked in Toledo and produced the translatio of the Planisphere of Ptolemy; James of Venice (Jacobus Veneticus), who worked in Constantinople and produced the translatio of the Metaphysica of Aristotle, of the De anima of Aristotle, and of the Analytica posteriora of Aristotle; Burgundio of Pisa (c. 1110–1193), who worked in Pisa and produced the translatio of the De fato of Proclus, of the De aeternitate mundi of Proclus, of the De partibus animalium of Aristotle, of the De motu animalium of Aristotle, and of the De generatione animalium of Aristotle; and Moses of Bergamo, who produced the translatio of the De generatione et corruptione of Aristotle and of the De plantis of Aristotle. The translations of the twelfth century were, on any reckoning, the most important body of philosophical, scientific, and mathematical work that the Latin West had ever seen.

The most important of the twelfth-century translations was, in its long-term effect, the translatio of the Philosophia of Aristotle. The Aristotelian corpus that the Latin West received in the long twelfth and long thirteenth centuries — the Organon (the Categoriae, the De interpretatione, the Analytica priora and posteriora, the Topica, and the Sophistici elenchi), the naturalia (the Physica, the De caelo, the De generatione et corruptione, the De anima, the De partibus animalium, the De motu animalium, the De generatione animalium, the De plantis, the De meteorologica, the De mundo, and the Problemata), the practica (the Ethica Nicomachea, the Politica, the Oeconomica, and the Rhetorica), the theoretica (the Metaphysica and the De anima), and the De poetica — was the philosophical working library of the Latin West for the next three hundred years, and the translatio of the Aristoteles Latinus was the most important intellectual event of the long thirteenth century.

Petrarch, Boccaccio, and the humanist recovery

The second Latin reading of the classical past was, in its mature form, the project of the Italian humanists of the long fourteenth century. Petrarch (1304–1374), the founding figure of the humanist movement, was, as the historian of the Italian humanism Ronald G. Witt (In the Footsteps of the Ancients, 2000) and Nicholas Mann (Petrarch, 1984) have shown, a serious Latin philologist as well as the great poet of the Canzoniere. Petrarch was, in his own self-understanding, the heir of Cicero and Seneca; the Familiares (Rerum familiarum libri, in twenty-four books) and the Seniles (Rerum senilium libri, in eighteen books), the two great collections of his Latin letters, were, in the classical epistolographic form of the Ciceronian letter, the working documents of his humanist project.

Petrarch’s work as a hunter of classical manuscripts was, in its long-term effect, the most consequential thing he did. The Codex Vaticanus Latinus 3358 of Cicero’s letters, the Codex Laurentianus Plut. 76.31 of Catullus and the Codex Vossianus Lat. O. 38 of the Corpus Catullianum, the Codicetto Laurenziano of Cicero’s De oratore and the Codex Vaticanus Latinus 11433 of Cicero’s De legibus, the Codex Vindocinensis 144 of Plautus, the Codex Ambrosianus of Sallust, the Codex Archiginnasio of Lucan, the Codex Coloniensis of Lucan (in Cologne), the Codex Albonensis of Juvenal, the Codex Vaticanus Latinus 1610 of Horace (the Vaticanus Latinus 1610, the Codex Antiquissimus of Horace), the Codex Mediceus 75.5 of Statii Silvae and the Codex Poggianus of Statius, the Codex Marcianus of Statius in Venice, the Codex Patavinus of Apuleius, the Codex Vaticanus Latinus 1591 of Apuleius, and the Codex Bambergensis of Apuleius were, in the long twelfth and long thirteenth centuries, the basic Latin working library of the humanists.

Petrarch’s Canzoniere, his Secretum (the dialogue with St Augustine on the moral life, written in 1342–1343), his De vita solitaria (c. 1346), his De otio religioso (c. 1347), and his De remediis utriusque fortunae (c. 1366) were the classicising texts of the early Italian humanism, and the Familiares and the Seniles were the most ambitious of the humanist epistolae of the long fourteenth century. Boccaccio (1313–1375), the pater of the Decameron (c. 1353) and of the Genealogia deorum gentilium (1360s), was the second founding figure of the humanist movement, and the Codice Hamiltoniano 90 of the Decameron and the Codice Magliabechiano II.II.8 of the Decameron were the basic working texts of the Decameron of the next two hundred years.

Greek refugees and the Council of Florence

The most important development of the long fifteenth century was the recovery of the Greek language and the Greek literature. The Greek language had been almost entirely lost to the Latin West in the long eighth and ninth centuries, and the working knowledge of the Greek language in the early Quattrocento was, on any reckoning, almost zero. The Council of Ferrara–Florence of 1438–1439 — the Council of Ferrara–Florence of the Pope Eugenius IV and the Greek patriarch Joseph II — was the moment at which the Greek scholars of the Basilian and the Thomist tradition came to the Latin West in substantial numbers, and the Council of Florence was the institutional context of the most important of the Greek-to-Latin translations of the period.

The most important of the Greek scholars of the long Quattrocento were Manuel Chrysoloras (c. 1355–1415), who held the first chair of Greek at the University of Florence in 1397–1400 and who produced the Erotemata (c. 1484, posthumous) of the Greek grammar and the translatio of the De officiis of Cicero and of the Epistolae of Plato; Theodore Gaza (c. 1400–1475), who produced the translatio of the De historia animalium of Aristotle and the Grammatica introductio of the Greek grammar; George of Trebizond (1395–c. 1472), who produced the translatio of the De legibus of Plato and the Rhetorica of Aristotle; John Argyropoulos (c. 1415–1487), who held chairs of Greek at Padua (1440s) and Florence (1453–1471) and who produced the translatio of the De anima of Aristotle, of the Metaphysica of Aristotle, of the De caelo of Aristotle, and of the Problemata of Aristotle; Demetrius Chalcondyles (c. 1423–1511), who held chairs of Greek at Padua, Florence, and Milan; and Andronicus Callistus (c. 1400–1478), who held chairs of Greek at Bologna and Rome.

The Greek-to-Latin translations of the long Quattrocento were the largest body of translations of the period. The Laurentian Library of Florence, the Vatican Library of Rome, the Biblioteca Marciana of Venice, the Biblioteca Ambrosiana of Milan, the Library of the University of Bologna, and the Library of the University of Padua were the working libraries of the Greek manuscripts in the Italian peninsula. The most important of the translators of the period were Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), who produced the translatio of the Plato opera omnia in 1484 (printed in Venice in the same year), of the Enneades of Plotinus (1492, printed in Florence), of the De mystica theologia of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, and of the Liber de causis (a translation of the De elementatio theologiae of Proclus); Lorenzo Valla (1407–1457), who produced the translatio of the Historiae of Herodotus (1452, printed in Venice in 1474), the translatio of the Hippiatrica, and the translatio of the De linguae Latinae usu (the Elegantiae); and Guillaume Budé (1467–1540), who produced the translatio of the De victu of Galen, of the De tuenda sanitate of Galen, of the De remediorum materia of Dioscorides, and of the De Hippocratis libris of Galen.

Poggio, Valla, and the new philology

The most consequential development in the recovery of the classical past was the new philology of the long Quattrocento. The new philology was, in its first form, the work of Poggio Bracciolini (1380–1459), the Florentine humanist who had spent the years 1414–1418 in the Council of Constance and the Council of Basel and who, in the long winter of 1416–1417, made his way to the Benedictine monastery of St. Gall in the Alemannic forest and discovered in a tower library the Codex Sangallensis 870 of the De rerum natura of Lucretius. The discovery of the Lucretius is one of the most consequential events in the history of the European reading of antiquity; the Codex Corvinianus 144 of Lucretius and the Codex Vaticanus Latinus 3276 of Lucretius are the basic working texts of the modern Lucretius tradition.

Poggio’s other recoveries were, in their long-term effect, almost as important: the Codex Vossianus Lat. F. 4 of the De re publica of Cicero (in the library of the cathedral of Cologne in 1417), the Codex Poggianus of Statius, the Codex Poggianus of Sallust, the Codex Poggianus of Varro, and the Codex Poggianus of Quintilian. The Codex Laurenzianus Plut. 47.21 of Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria (in the Library of the Augustinians of St. Gall in 1416) was the basic working text of the humanist rhetorica of the long Quattrocento, and the Codex Vaticanus Latinus 10941 of Cicero’s De oratore (in the Library of the cathedral of Lodi in 1421) was the basic working text of the humanist oratoria of the period.

The most consequential of the humanist philologists was Lorenzo Valla (1407–1457), the Roman humanist who had held chairs of rhetoric at Pavia (1431), Milan (1431–1433), Piacenza (1435–1436), Genoa (1440–1444), Naples (1440s), and Rome (1455–1457), and who had produced the Elegantiarum libri sex (the Elegantiae, 1444, printed in Rome in 1471), the Collatio Novi Testamenti (the Adnotationes on the Greek New Testament, 1442–1444, printed in Paris in 1505), the De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione (the De falso credita, 1440), and the De libero arbitrio of the contra Boethium. The De falso credita — the demonstration that the Donation of Constantine was a forgery — was one of the most consequential of the humanist philological achievements of the period. The Donation had been the working document of the medieval papacy’s claim to temporal sovereignty in Italy; Valla showed, by the philological and historical analysis of the text, that the document was a forgery of the eighth or ninth century, and the demonstration was, in its long-term effect, the most consequential piece of humanist philology of the long Quattrocento. The Collatio Novi Testamenti — the comparison of the Vulgate of St Jerome with the Greek New Testament, in 31 books — was, in its long-term effect, the working text of the next generation of the humanist biblica of the long Quattrocento.

Consequences

The rediscovery of the classical texts was, in the long term, the precondition for the Renaissance in the strict sense: for the Petrarchan humanitas of the long fourteenth century, for the Valla philology of the long fifteenth century, for the Ficino Plato of the long 1480s, for the Erasmian Novum Instrumentum of 1516, for the Copernican De revolutionibus of 1543, for the Vesalian De fabrica of 1543, for the Galilean Discorsi of 1638, for the Newtonian Principia of 1687, and for the Wolfian Logic of 1729. The long twelfth-century translatio studii from the Greek and the Arabic and the long fifteenth-century translatio studii from the Greek manuscripts of the Basilian tradition were, in this sense, the institutional and intellectual contexts in which the European early modern period was made.