Manuel Chrysoloras and the Early Italian Renaissance Thomson, Ian Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Spring 1966; 7, 1; ProQuest pg. 63 Manuel Chrysoloras and the Early Italian Renaissance Ian Thomson FROM AT LEAST the eighteenth century, when scholars first began to discuss the "Italian Renaissance" as a cultural phenomenon, the importance of Manuel Chrysoloras, the first notable pro- fessor of Greek in Western Europe, has been widely recognized. Writers such as Carlo Rosmini, Jacob Burckhardt, John Addington Symonds, and Remigio Sabbadini have given him deservedly honor- able mention as the teacher of a number of influential humanists, whose interest in classical studies did much to bring about the Renais- sance as a whole. It was not until 1941, however, that Professor G. Cammelli produced a full-length study of Chrysoloras' career and its effect upon the early Renaissance.1 This excellent work has made information on the external events of Chrysoloras' life, especially for the period 1397-1415, readily accessible. The purpose of this article is two-fold: first, to assess the extent of Chrysoloras' influence on his pupils and the nature of their admiration for him, with particular reference to Guarino da Verona; second, to suggest a possible motive for his coming to Italy which has received little or no attention from historians. Chrysoloras was not without honor in his own lifetime, as is well attested in the letters and orations of his pupils and friends. 2 Indeed, during the eighteen years between his arrival in Florence in 1397 and his death at or near Constance on April 15, 1415, his consider- able intellectual gifts and excellence as a teacher won him almost universal respect and inspired in some of his pupils a sense of gratitude that survived him for almost half a century. 1 G. Cammelli, I dotti bizantini e Ie origini dell'umanesimo, I: Manuele erisolora (Florence 1941). Before 1941, the most important work was R. Sabbadini: "L'ultimo ventennio della vita di Manuele Crisolora," Giornale ligustico 17 (1890) 321ff, which established the main chronology of Chrysoloras' life from 1395-1415. 2 See Carlo Rosmini. La vita e disciplina di Guarino Veronese (Brescia 1805) I 3-8; II 29ff; R. Sabbadini. La scuola e gli studi di Guarino Veronese (Catania 1896) 14-16, 213-20. 63 64 CHRYSOLORAS AND THE EARLY ITALIAN RENAISSANCE His most direct contribution to the Revival of Learning was made in the years 1397-1400, during which he taught Greek to a small number of humanists in Florence.3 These men not only set the cultural tone of their own city but were able eventually to make their influence felt all over Italy. It should be noted that since Petrarch and Boccaccio there had existed among the more intellectually radical scholars in Florence and throughout northern Italy at least a theoretical desire to learn Greek, but few of them did much about it.4 Guarino, we are told by the so-called Anonymous Veronese,5 was "urged by the wise men whose company he often sought" to learn Greek, but he was the first important scholar intrepid enough to visit Constantinople for that specific purpose. 6 Many scholars paid lip service to Greek as an in- teresting and harmless bagatelle, but the majority of professors and students were simply not interested or were actively averse. At the end of the fourteenth century only Coluccio Salutati, Palla Strozzi, Niccolo Niccoli and a few others-probably no more than ten in number-were really enthusiastic about learning Greek. Mere num- bers, however, are unimportant; what matters in cultural history is breadth of influence and contribution ultimately recognized. Leonardo Bruni, for instance, contributed to the spread of Greek culture by a series of important translations.7 He had cut his teeth as a translator of Greek with Latin versions of Basilius' Homilia and Xenophon's Hieron. By 1403 or 1404 he had produced a translation of Plato's Phaedon. The list continued to grow over the next three dec- 8 R. R. Bolgar, The Classical Heritage and its BenefiCiaries (Cambridge [Eng.] 1954) 403, gives the following list of Chrysoloras' pupils: "Guarino, Giacopo di Scarperia (sic), Roberto Rossi, Niccolo Niccoli, Leonardo Bruni, Carlo Marsuppini, Ambrogio Traversari 0), Vergerio, Uberto Decembrio, Poggio." (On p. 269 he notes that Poggio "had not been pro- perly speaking his pupil"). All but Guarino and Decembrio were pupils at Florence. 4 For the lack of response to Greek in Italy, see Denys Hay, The Italian Renaissance in its Historical Background (Cambridge [Eng.] 1961) 86-88. As for Petrarch, there is no doubt that he could have progressed beyond the Greek alphabet if he had really wanted to; see D. J. Geanakoplos, Greek Scholars in Venice (Cambridge [Mass.] 1962) 21 n.27. 5 A pupil of Guarino, otherwise unknown, who delivered a spirited defense of the latter in 1424. The speech was published by Sabbadini, "Documenti Guariniani," Atti dell'Acca- demia di agricoltura di Verona 18 (1916) 232-242. 6 Other Italians before Guarino went to Constantinople to learn Greek. In Guarino. Epistolario ed. R. Sabbadini, I (Venice 1915-1919) 1, of ca. 1405, we hear of two-Carlo Lottino and "Marcellus, a man long versed in Greek"-who were resident aliens. Lottino and Guarino exchanged letters in Greek to improve each other's grasp of the language. After Guarino, a fair number of other scholars, such as Filelfo (1420-27), visited Constanti- nople but did so only after the advantages of knOWing Greek had become obvious through the success of such men as Bruni and Guarino. 7 Cf H. Baron, Humanistic and Political Literature in Florence and Venice (Cambridge [Mass.] 1955) 114-125, "Bruni's development as a translator from the Greek." IAN THOMSON 65 ades, and embraced versions of Aeschines, Plutarch, Demosthenes, and Aristotle. Already by 1418 he was able to boast in a letter: Tam multa etiam ex Platone, Demosthene, Plutarcho, Xenophonte in latinum traduximus. 8 His most important translations were those of the Ethica (before 1416), foliUca (1438), and Oeconomica of Aristotle, Book 1 of the (pseudo-) Aristotelian Oeconomica being completed on March 3, 1420, and Book II being added between March 25,1420 and March 24, 1421.9 Roberto Rossi also translated Aristotle, although his work was not as influential as Bruni's. The only extant version by Rossi is that of the Analytica Posteriora. 10 It is worth noting, however, that in 1411 Guarino praised Rossi's translations of Aristotle and spoke of them as being in use throughout the "gymnasia" of Italy (Guarino, Epistolario 1.6.12-24). Rossi may also have turned his hand to other Greek authors, for in the dedication to the Analytica Posteriora he says: Nec quod restet Platonis, com (sic) transtulerimus quaedam et alii alia, si vita olim dabitur et transferendi facultas, negligemus. Tum etiam Thucy- didem ... atque dignissimos alios aggrediemur. Rossi may therefore have been somewhat more influential in his own time than has been sup- posed, but his real Significance in cultural history rests upon his collection of Greek manuscripts.ll In 1404 Pier Paolo Vergerio wrote his famous essay De ingenuis moribus et liberalibus studiis adolescentiae,12 the very title of which sug- gested a break with the traditions of mediaeval education. Vergerio proposed a return to the balanced, liberal curriculum of later Greek education-in effect, to the so-called enkyklios paideia, although he does not use that term-in which the individual's physical and mental aptitudes were to be equally developed. By giving physical education such prominence and by insisting that the cultivation of good morals 8 Leonardi Bruni Arretini Epistolarum Libri VIII, ed. L. Mehus, vol. II (Florence 1741) 231 (Ep. X.26). 9 For the date of the Oeconomica see Baron, op.cit. 120, 167-8. Other translations by Bruni were: Aeschines' Pro Diopithe (1406), In Ctesiphontem (1412), De falsa legatione (before 1421); Demosthenes' De Chersoneso (1405), De corona (1407), Olynthiacs I-III, De pace, De falsa lega- tione (last three before 1421) and two Philippics (before 1444); Plato's Gorgias (1409), Crito (1423/7), Apology (1424/8), Phaedrus (part, 1424), Epistulae (1427) and Symposium (part, 1435); Xenophon's Hellenica and Apologia Socratis (both paraphrased before 1440). See Bolgar, Classical Heritage 434-5. 10 Sabbadini reports that this translation is extant in the Marcian Library at Venice (codex Marcianus latinus 2.231) and dates it posterior to 1406 (Guarino Epistolario III.13). 11 See R. Sabbadini, Le scoperte dei codici latini e greci ne' secoli XIV e XV, I (Florence 1905) 15,63. 12 Translated by W. H. Woodward in Vittorino da Fe1tre and Other Humanist Educators (Cambridge [Eng.] 1905). S+G.R.B.S. 66 CHRYSOLORAS AND THE EARLY ITALIAN RENAISSANCE was the sovereign aim of education, Vergerio pointed the way that Barzizza, Guarino and Vittorino were to follow. Admittedly so far as intellectual training was concerned, his "revised" curriculum, con- sisting of syntax, dialectic, rhetoric, poetry, music, mathematics, astronomy, natural history, drawing, medicine, law, ethics, and theology, is little more than a rehashed list of the subjects of the mediaeval trivium and quadrivium; nor does Vergerio add any recom- mendations as to how these subjects should be taught, or for how long, or in what order. But he did show that a balanced education de- signed to produce a whole man was desirable; and the inspirational effect of this upon the great humanistic educators cannot be doubted. What was implicit in Petrarch was explicit in Vergerio. It is possible to argue, as Bolgar does (Classical Heritage 258) that V ergerio' s treatise owes nothing to the teaching of Manuel Chryso- loras and that "we may reasonably assume that he was putting on paper the principles that had guided him throughout his career," but there is no evidence to support such an assumption, except for a dis- puted dating of the De ingenuis moribus,13 Vergerio spent most of his life teaching logic, and never opened an independent school in which he could have implemented his ideas. It is more reasonable to regard the De ingenuis moribus as Vergerio's reaction to the teaching of Chrysoloras, especially since he is able to cite Greek authorities directly. It is hard not to sense an echo of Chrysoloras in Vergerio's citation of Aristotle, Politica 8.3: erant autem quattuor quae pueros suos Graeci docere consueverunt: litteras, luctativam, musicam et designativam, for these words contain in essence the Greek concept of education as mousike and gymnastike. Through Vergerio, then, Chrysoloras may be said to have given educationalists in the West a new and clearer in- spiration to implement the ideals of Greek education, which led to the translation by Guarino in 1411 of Plutarch's De liberis educandis and the remarkable experiments by Barzizza at Padua (1408-1420), Vittorino at Mantua (1423-1446), and Guarino at Venice (1414-1419), Verona (1420--1429), and Ferrara (1430--1460).14 13 C. A. Combi, Epistole di Pier Paolo Vergerio Seniore (Misc. Pub!. della R. Deputazione Veneta di Storia Patria, SER. IV, V [Venice 1931] p. xix, dates it 1392. W. H. Woodward, op.cit. 113, dates it 1404, and this is generally accepted. 14 These educators each interpreted Vergerio's general recommendations in his own way. Barzizza and Guarino lectured on ancient texts from a linguistic and literary standpoint. Vittorino attempted to cover all the subjects in Vergerio's list but did not teach all the sub- jects himself. Barzizza neglected physical education. but all three sought to inculcate good morals. IAN THOMSON 67 There can be no dispute, moreover, about the effect of Chrysoloras' teaching methods upon Bruni, for the latter's De studiis et litteris (ca. 1425)15 addressed to Battista Malatesta, daughter of the count of Urbino, was the first detailed exposition of the new pedagogic tech- nique that Chrysoloras had brought from Constantinople. This tech- nique stressed accurate pronunciation, the use of mnemonics, constant and regular revision of subject matter and the preparation of copious notes under the headings of method ice (grammar, syntax and vocabu- lary) and historice (what we should call "background material"). Bruni recommended minute attention to linguistic detail and imita- tion of classical models through the use of these techniques. Chryso- loras left no account of his methods, the culmination of centuries of Byzantine experience, but we know what they were from Bruni's treatise, and in even finer detail from Battista Guarino's De modo et ordine docendi et discendi,16 which was read and approved by his father Guarino in 1459. Guarino himself wrote nothing on educational method save for sundry recommendations scattered throughout his letters; the honor must go to Bruni for having been the first humanist to summarize Chrysoloras' ideas in a convenient form. Chrysoloras' work at Florence had yielded excellent fruit in Bruni, Rossi and Verge rio, not to mention such minor contributions to learn- ing as Jacopo Angeli da Scarperia's translations of Plutarch's lives of Brutus (1400) and Cicero (1410) and Ptolemy's ChorographiaP But his influence cannot be measured only in tangibles. Such men as Poggio, Traversari, Salutati, Marsuppini, Niccoli and Palla Strozzi acquired, in addition to some knowledge of Greek, a deeper understanding of antiquity and an increased confidence in themselves. It would be mis- taken to underestimate the force of this self-confidence in shaping the political and humanistic literature that glorified Florence as true heir of republican Rome and the champion of popular liberty in Italy. Those pupils who benefited from Chrysoloras' instruction at Florence naturally expressed their gratitude. One indication of the value they attached to him was the fact that his salary was raised on two occasions, the final sum in 1400 standing at 250 gold florins. More important, however, was the devotion they expressed in letters, the 15 Leonardus Aretinus, De studiis et liUeris ed. H. Baron, in Leonardo Aretinos humanistische und philosophische Schriften [Quellen zur Geistesgeschichte der Mittelalter und der Renais- sance] I (Leipzig 1928) 7-10. 16 Translated by W. H. Woodward, op.cit. 17 See Guarino, Epistolario III pp. 18, 30. 68 CHRYSOLORAS AND THE EARLY IT ALlAN RENAISSANCE literary form most favored by the humanists. Vergerio, for instance, in a letter of 1406,18 deplores the possibly permanent loss of Chryso- loras to students in Italy and refers to him as "the best and most learned man whom your city (Florence) had called from the heart of Greece to disseminate Greek studies in Italy" (Vergerio, Epistolario p. 244). Poggio, too, was conscious of a deep personal debt to Chryso- lor as and expressed as much in letters to other scholars. The same is true of the other Florentine pupils, with the possible exception of Niccoli.19 On the whole, however, the Florentines' praise of Chryso- loras did not run to luxuriance. They were grateful for his willingness to answer their call for a good teacher of Greek, and aware of the benefits they had reaped from his instruction, but they did not make a cult of him, as did Guarino. This may have been because they were a proud breed of men, over-partial to their own achievements and given to intellectual pretensions that often irritated the citizens of other states. But more probably their political pre-occupations had something to do with it. As Baron has pointed out, the dramatic struggle in the war against Giangaleazzo Visconti produced a series of humanistic works glorifying Florence and her political and cultural heritage. The Florentine attitude to great men varied with the politi- cal climate. For example, Salutati's treatise De Tyranno, written in 1400, was a defense of Julius Caesar and the rule of a single man, but the Invectiva in Antonium Luscum Vicentinum shows that within the next few years he had radically altered his opinions. 2o Again, in Bruni's Dialogus ad Petrum Paulum Histrum I Niccoli is depicted as a militant classicist with little time for Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, and Bruni himself seems ranged on Niccoli's side, whereas in the Dialogus II, com- posed about three years later, in 1403 or 1404, Bruni, Niccoli, and Salutati join in defending the Trecento tradition.21 As is well known, Bruni later produced lives of Dante and Petrarch in Italian. The im- mense pride felt by the Florentines in their cultural tradition may 18 Ep. 86 in Vergerio, Epistclario ed. L. Smith, in Fonti per la stcria d'Italia 74 (Rome 1934) 243-246. For the date, see Baron, Humanistic and Political Literature 107-113. 19 Niccoli seems to have been an ungracious man, who offended many of his contem- poraries (see Sesto Prete, "Leonardi Bruni Aretini Carmen," CW 56 [1963] 280-83). It is difficult to assess Niccoli, however, since he wrote very little. His only extant letter is one to Cosimo dei Medici of March 20, 1426 (published in Le Carte Strozziane del R. Archivio di Stato in Firenze SERIE PRIMA I [Florence 1884] 590). It was said that his jealousy drove Chrysoloras out of Florence, but G. Zippel, Niccolo Niccoli (Florence 1890) 75-91, maintains that Niccoli's malice was aimed at John Chrysoloras. 20 See E. Emerton, Humanism and Tyranny (Cambridge [Mass.] 1925) 25-70. 21 Cf Baron, Humanistic and Political Literature 124. IAN THOMSON 69 have detracted somewhat from their appreciation of Chrysoloras. It certainly saved them from the excesses of Guarino da Verona. Guarino did not begin his study of Greek until after Chrysoloras had ceased to be active as a teacher in Italy. In March or April of 1403, the latter had returned with the Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus to Constantinople.zz Guarino followed him shortly afterwards,z3 and studied under Manuel and his nephew John until about 1406.z4 Manuel was absent for part of the time,z5 but one cannot doubt that his was the guiding spirit of the school,z6 and that he made an overwhelming impression upon his young Italian student. By the end of 1407, Manuel moved permanently to the West 27 and Guarino returned to Italy in 1408. Thereafter, the two men seem to have remained in touch, al- though at probably sporadic intervals. The extant correspondence between them is limited to three letters,28 one in Latin from Guarino and two in Greek from Chrysoloras. It is known, however, that they met in Italy on at least two occasions.29 In the first of Manuel's Greek letters, dated January, 1412, he con- gratulates Guarino on his success in disseminating in Italy what he had learned in Greece, and refers to the EVYKptUtS rijs 7TaAauxs Kat vEas ·pw/LTJs30 which Guarino had received from him in October of the 33 Cammelli, 123. 23 Sabbadini, La sCHola e gli studi di Guarino 10-11, maintained that Guarino sailed with Chrysoloras and that he accompanied the imperial flotilla. But this view, still frequently repeated, was disposed of in Guarino, Epistolario III p. 5, where Sabbadini pointed out that a "magister Guarinus de Guarinis" appears in a list of witnesses to a Venetian document dated August 21, 1403 (E. Bertanza and G. della Santa, Maestri, smole e scolari in Venezia fino al 1500 [Venice 1907] 245, in Documenti per la storia della cultura in Venezia I); and Guarino himself says that he went to Constantinople at the expense and under the guidance of Paolo Zane (Epistolario II.758.25-33; 873.14-19). . 24 Except where otherwise noted, I rely for events in Guarino's life on Sabbadini, "Vita di Guarino da Verona," Giornale ligustico 18 (1891). 25 He was in Venice in December, 1404, spent most of 1405 in Constantinople, returned to Italy before January, 1406, and was home again by the end of that year (Cammelli, 140-142). 26 It is difficult to determine if it was a school in the regular sense. F. Fuchs, Die hoheren Schulen von Konstantinopel im Mitrelalter (Leipzig-Berlin 1926, repro Amsterdam 1964) sheds no light on the question. The school may, after all, have been only a coterie of scholars who gathered at the house of the Chrysolorae, and Guarino need not have been a pupil in the regular sense. 37 Cammelli, 140-145. 28 Guarino, Epistolario I, Ep. 7, 9 and 11, of October, 1411; January, 1412; and July, 1412, respectively. Ep. 7 opens: Quod si rariores Jortasse quam velles a me litteras acdpis ... 29 In Ep. 11, Chrysoloras talks of a meeting with Guarino, which Sabbadini guesses took place at Florence in April, 1411 (Epistolario III p. 18). The other meeting occurred when Guarino accompanied Chrysoloras on a journey from Bologna to Venice in July, 1414, re- ferred to in one of Guarino's commentarioli published by Sabbadini in La smola e gli studi 173. 30 Published in Scriptores historiae bizantinae (Paris 1655) 107. Actually a Greek work, it is sometimes referred to by the Latin title Epistulae III de comparatione veteris et novae Romae. 70 CHRYSOLORAS AND THE EARLY ITALIAN RENAISSANCE previous year (Guarino, Epistolario 1.7). It appears that Guarino had been distributing copies of this work-a comparison between Rome and Constantinople, designed in essence to foster good relations be- tween the East and West-throughout Northern Italy. Chrysoloras was signally grateful for this service, but Guarino probably felt that he was only fulfilling the demands of pietas. Most humanists felt obliged to spread the fame of their friends and teachers as widely as possible.3! For that reason, Guarino rarely missed an opportunity, both during and after Chrysoloras' lifetime, of reminding his fellow scholars in letters, conversation, orations, and lectures of their debt to Chrysoloras.32 It is noteworthy, however, that in his correspondence, in which the bulk of these tributes appears, Guarino seldom refers to Chrysoloras specifically as a teacher of Greek, but rather as the one man most re- sponsible for the restoration of the "best studies" to Italy. By "best studies" (optima studia), the "rebirth of letters" (renata humanitas) and other such expressions the humanists-and Guarino was no exception -generally meant that critical approach to the content of ancient literature and the close, prescriptive study of classical Latin 33 which we associate with the Revival of Learning. At first sight, then, Guari- no's praise seems paradoxical, for Chrysoloras' reputation in cultural history rests upon his success as a teacher of Greek. It is known that he never mastered Latin as well as did some of the Greek emigres later in the fifteenth century,34 and certainly could never have taught it at a professorial level to Italians. Guarino must have been thinking more 31 Cf Guarino, Epistolario 1.7.68-70: Est vero benignum et plenum ingenui pudoris fateri per quos proftceris, ut conterraneus meus Plinius ait, an echo of Pliny, NH Praefatio 21. Examples of this sentiment in humanistic literature could be multiplied. 32 See in particular Guarino, Epistolario I, Ep. 7, 25, 27, 47, 49, 54; II. Ep. 861,862,863,864, 865, 866, 867, 892, 893. 33 Among the humanists the prescriptive study of classical models was more marked in Latin scholarship than in Greek, pOSSibly because there was no dominant model for Attic prose, such as Cicero was bound to be for classical Latin. It is true, as Geanakoplos points out in Greek Scholars in Venice 292, that the Greeks in Italy" emphasized reading, memoriza- tion and imitation of the style of the original texts" and that Plato, Aristotle and Plutarch emerged as the authors most generally imitated; but the Atticizing movement did not appear in Italy until the Greeks had established themselves there by the middle and latter part of the fifteenth century. With the exception of Guarino and Filelfo, the early humanists confined their writing of Greek to a few safe snippets-usually direct quotations-with which to decorate their Latin letters; and even the few samples of Original Greek com- position by Guarino and Filelfo strike one as influenced by the habits of Latin syntax and markedly un-Attic. 34 The one extant Latin letter by Chrysoloras is poorly composed (Sabbadini, "L'ultimo ventennio della vita di M. c." 330). In Lombardy he produced a Latin version of Plato's IAN THOMSON 71 of the good effect that Chrysoloras had exerted upon classical studies in general. He believed, undoubtedly, that Chrysoloras had given the Italians much more than a narrow specialty. Further, he believed that a proper understanding of Latin could not be achieved without a knowledge of Greek. To illustrate both of these points, three quota- tions will perhaps suffice. The first is from a letter written by Guarino in 1452: Quae illius (Chrysoloras) cura et diligentia latas adeo sparsit per Italiae regna radices grandesque et uberes fructus disseminavit, ut Italorum studia immo vero Latinitatis disciplina cuncta quae dudum per inextricabiles vagabantur um- bras et errores, Chrysolorae ductu et luminis accensione illustrata et directa perdurent (Guarino, Epistolario 11.861.45-49). The second occurs in a letter to his son, Niccolo: Longa itaque desuetudine infuscatus ante latinus sermo et inquinata dictio Chrysolorinis fuerat pharmacis expurganda et ad- moto lumine illustranda (Guarino, Epistolario 11.862.68-70). The third quotation is from a letter of Guarino's youngest son, Battista, and it shows, incidentally, how thoroughly he had absorbed his father's veneration for Chrysoloras: Nam cum graecas ipse (Chrysoloras) doceret, a qUibus nostrae, ut Quintilianus ait, e.1Jluxere tunc demum nostri veram latinarum cognitionem habere easque cognoscendo exercere et in lucem re- vocare coeperunt (Guarino, Epistolario 1I.863.134-137). It seems that both Guarino and his son thought that the Latin and Greek languages, not merely their literatures (which is certainly what Quintilian meant in De Institutione Oratoria I.1.12), are more intimately related than modern philologists would concede; but this does not invalidate the point that to them Chrysoloras appeared to have made possible a fuller under- standing of the Latin tongue itself. It was natural for Guarino to see the spread of Greek as marking the dawn of a new era in Latin studies and to invest Chrysoloras with a special significance, as not merely having supplied a knowledge of Greek, but also the humanizing spirit and sovereign stimulus needed to rouse Italian scholarship out of its long sleep. Republic, but the style had ro be improved by Uberro Decembrio and later by Pier Candido Decembrio (Cammelli, 16, 123). The later Greeks Theodorus Gaza, Musurus, Bessarion, Lascaris, and Georgius Trapezuntius were excellent Latin scholars (Geanakoplos, Greek Scholars in Venice 299). The latter, for example, had only primorum elementorum confusa cog- nitio in 1418 (Guarino, Epistolario II.707.36-37) but by 1434 knew enough Latin to produce his impressive Rhetoricorum libri V (publ. Basle 1522). 72 CHRYSOLORAS AND THE EARLY ITALIAN RENAISSANCE Guarino's insistence that Chrysoloras had been the harbinger of a new age did not go without notice. In the first place, his prestige as a scholar enabled him to command the attention of the educated public. Although his letters were not collected and edited for publication in his own century, they were nevertheless passed around as models of style and collectors' items.35 Any praise of Chrysoloras contained in them was thereby assured of a fairly wide circulation. This helped to keep the name of Chrysoloras alive in the later fifteenth century and brought it again to the fore in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when Guarino's letters began to be collected and published in small batches.36 Second, and perhaps more important, is the fact that from 1436 at least, Guarino was the most influential teacher in Italy, if not in Europe.37 He was in a unique position to pass on his reminiscences to large numbers of young students who could never have seen or met Chrysoloras. Some of these pupils were inevitably affected by Guarino's admiration for Chrysoloras and referred to him in their own writings. For example, Janus Pannonius describes him thus in his Sylva Panegyrica ad Guarinum 135-139: Vir fuit hic patrio Chrysoloras nomine dictus, candida Mercurio quem Calliopaea crearat, nutrierat Pallas, nec solis ille parentum clarus erat studiis, sed rerum protinus omnem naturam magna complexus mente tenebat. These lines, written in 1454 when the poet was still a young man, seem remarkably like an echo of Guarino's words in the lecture room or around the supper table. Examples of such tralatitious praise of Chrysoloras are not uncommon in the writings of Guarino's pupils. 35 Guarino, Bpistolaria III pp. vii-x. 36 Ibid. pp. i-iii. 37 For the popularity of his teaching at Ferrara, see Janus Pannonius, Sylva Panegyrica ad Guarinum (Venice 1553) 320-321: and 339-341 : Curritur ad bifidi suavissima jlumina fontis, atria nec capiunt studiasas ampla catervas Omnis conditio, sexus simul omnis et aetas accelerant, plebi stipatur curia, mixti primaevis cani, maribus sedere puellae. Lodovico Carbone says much the same in his funeral speech on Guarino published by E. Garin in La letteratura italiana: Storia e testi, XIII: Prosatori latini del quattrocento (Milan 1952) 382-416 (see especially pp. 392, 394). IAN THOMSON 73 Shortly after Chrysoloras' death, Vergerio suggested to the Venetian Niccolo Leonardi, a physician with humanistic leanings, that their common friend, Guarino, ought to write a formal commemoratio of the great Byzantine. Guarino, however, claimed that his own powers were unequal to such an undertaking, and referred it to Verge rio himself (Guarino, Epistolario 1.25). Verge rio composed a very fine epitaph,38 and the Venetian Andrea Zulian wrote a funeral speech which had a wide circulation and is extant in many manuscripts.39 The lack of some worthwhile memorial to Chrysoloras, however, weighed upon the consciences of his pupils and friends for many years. Guarino, for example, wrote in July, 1416, to Giacomo dei Fabbri: "Many a time I have set myself to write a splendid work in praise of this man ... for I think it unfair and a mark of ingratitude that he whose industry helped us not merely to speak but to speak with eloquence, should be immersed in silence ... but I am overwhelmed by the amount there is to say and the importance of the subject, and I give up." He goes on to praise the funeral speech by Zulian, and concludes: "After Zulian, silence would seem the better course, unless one had a mind to unfold in detail the life of the aforesaid Manuel from the cradle up" (Guarino, Epistolario 1.54). No one, however, wrote the projected biography, perhaps because details of Chrysoloras' earlier life were lacking,40 but more likely because most scholars did not consider him important enough to warrant a detailed biography. It is perhaps surprising that Guarino never fulfilled his own suggestion. Poggio shared something of Guarino's hero worship of Chrysoloras, and as late as June, 1455, was still sufficiently disturbed by his own failure to write at length in praise of Chrysoloras that he confessed to Guarino: "As to your writ- ing of a rumor that I had composed a laudation of the late brilliant and learned gentleman, Manuel Chrysoloras-I wish it were true !"41 38 Guarino, Ep. 1.54, 77-84: Ante aram situs est dominus Manuel Chrysoloras, eques Constantino- politanus ex vetusto genere Romanorum qui cum Constantino imperatore migrarunt : vir doctissimus prudentissimus optimus, qui tempore generalis concilii Constantiensis diem obiit ea existimatione ut ab omnibus summa sacerdotio dignus haberetur. XVI Kalendas maias conditus est anno Incarnati Verbi MCCCCXV. Sabbadini notes in his apparatus criticus that the actual inscription reads Chrissolora miles for Chrysoloras eques and die XV aprilis conditus est MCCCCXV for XVI Kalendas maias conditus est anna Incarnati Verbi MCCCCXV. Poggio also wrote an epitaph for Chrysoloras (lovii Elogia [Venice 1546] p. 16). 39 It was published by Don A. Calogera. Raccolta d'opuscoli XXV (Venice 1728-57) 325ff. &0 Perhaps for the same reason. Cammelli concentrates on the period after 1397, in which year Chrysoloras was in his mid-forties. The Vita Chrysolorae by Pontico Virunio in Chryso- loras' Erotemata (Venice 1502) is so short as scarcely to merit consideration. &l Poggii Epistulae ed. T. Tonelli, III (Florence 1832) 178. In the same letter, Poggio says: Laudas-sem ilium (Chrysoloras) cum defunctus esset Constantie; ego autem otiosus essem, si licuisset 5* 74 CHRYSOLORAS AND THE EARLY ITALIAN RENAISSANCE Guarino did, however, make some reparation by collecting a series of works about Chrysoloras, which he edited and disseminated in 1452 under the title of Chrysolorina. 42 This collection helped to preserve the fame of Chrysoloras, as did the fact that his Erotemata, a Greek gram- mar that followed the usual method of question and answer, con- tinued to be widely used until well into the sixteenth century. Its first printing was at Venice in 1484, but it had been used in manuscript long before that; in fact, until the publication of Constantine Lascaris' Erotemata at Milan in 1476, it had been the sole Greek grammar in general use in Italy.43 In a letter to Verge rio in 1415 Guarino remarks that Chrysoloras had provided the perfect example to follow in leading "the good and blessed life," and even advances the extravagant notion that if Homer had been fortunate enough to have had Chrysoloras as his hero in the Iliad instead of the bloodthirsty and uncouth Achilles, he would have been inspired to write a better poem (Guarino, Epistolario I.27.28-29 and 45) ! Ludicrous as this may seem to us, Guarino probably meant it seriously, for he subscribed to the ancient and mediaeval notion that the aim of literature is moral edification and for that reason inter- preted the Aeneid and the Homeric epics allegorically. Thirty-eight years later, Guarino's devotion had not been diminished, for in com- plimenting his son Battista on a literary sketch of Chrysoloras he says: "You set him before my eyes in such a way that as I behold Manuel's stature, expression, beard, complexion, mannerisms, and the whole set of his body, I almost shout for joy,