The I Tatti Renaissance Library is by now so well known to readers of this journal that it needs no introduction. Under the capable leadership of James Hankins, the series is gradually making available to a broad readership the writings of the Italian humanists, here at last presented in clear modern typeface, Latin text on the left side, accurate and readable English translations on the right. Two new volumes (numbers 74 and 75) make their appearance this year, meaning that the series, which began life with the new millennium, is fast approaching its 100th volume. This is a remarkable achievement, and one that bids fair in the long run to have a transformative effect on a field of study—Renaissance humanism—that has in recent times suffered from a lack of exposure on the wider stage of early modern scholarship.
Both of the new I Tatti volumes present fresh editions and translations of works by the fifteenth-century humanist Biondo Flavio of Forlì (1392–1463). Alongside his more famous contemporary Leonardo Bruni, Biondo was the most important practitioner of history writing in the early Italian Renaissance. Generally regarded as the founder of the field of study now known as medieval history (even if he did not, as is sometimes thought, coin the term media tempestas), Biondo was equally the innovator in other areas as well. He was most notably a pioneer in developing the techniques of historical investigation that today are loosely grouped under the rubric of antiquarianism.
Given Biondo’s obvious importance, it is a sobering thought to realize that until quite recently his four major works (The Decades, Rome Restored, Italy Illuminated, and Rome in Triumph) were available only in early editions, most commonly in the Opera Omnia published by Froben in 1531 and again in 1559. This situation has undergone a dramatic change in the past ten years or so, thanks not only to the I Tatti series, but also to other initiatives, including most notably the Edizione nazionale delle opere di Biondo Flavio currently being published in Rome. Indeed, the first volume under review here, comprising books 1–2 of Biondo’s Rome in Triumph, represents the fruits of collaboration between these two editorial initiatives. The Latin text established by Maria Agata Pincelli is a provisional version of her work for the Edizione nazionale, while the English translation, notes, and introduction by Frances Muecke belong to the I Tatti series.
The Rome in Triumph is one of Biondo’s most influential works. It represents the first modern attempt at a comprehensive description of the public institutions, customs, and private life of the ancient Romans. The treatment is divided into ten books. Books 1–2 cover religion, books 3–5 the institutions and practices of government, books 6–7 military organization, and books 8–9 everyday life in ancient Rome. Book 10 is mainly devoted to a description of Roman triumphal processions. The purpose of such a work was not simply a matter of erudition. The project had much broader ambitions, namely to resurrect classical Rome as a model civil society whose tried and proven principles were to serve as a guide to the political elites of fifteenth-century Italy (12).
The volume under review offers us the first two books of the Rome in Triumph. These are of particular interest in that they deal with Roman religion. Of all the areas of Roman life, religion constituted the most challenging subject matter for a humanist like Biondo. Having determined to profile Roman greatness, Biondo could not help but be disturbed as a Christian by pagan religious beliefs. The fact that the Rome in Triumph begins with this most difficult of subjects is instructive, just as it is instructive to observe how Biondo handles this delicate topic. One sees him desperately seeking to excuse the Romans, to mitigate their culpability by relativizing paganism in an almost anthropological key (38). He even finds a way to praise the Roman people’s sincerity in observing religious duties, implicitly contrasting such pietas with the hypocrisy prevalent among Christians in his own day (52).
This play of dialectic between the ancient Roman past and modern Italy becomes ever more explicit in the later books on political and military organization (e.g., Opera Omnia, 117). But there are also many signs of it right here in this volume (268, 276). Biondo’s impressive erudition is in fact being marshalled toward a goal: his systematic resurrection of ancient Roman society is intended to provide a benchmark for the much-needed reform of modern Italy, in a manner that would later be made famous by Machiavelli in works like the Discourses and the Art of War.
The Muecke-Pincelli volume inaugurates what will become the first edition of the Rome in Triumph to be published since 1559. When completed it will offer scholars across a range of fields the opportunity to explore what can safely be described as the least studied of Biondo’s major works. The I Tatti Italy Illuminated on the other hand—whose second and final volume now appears as number 75 in the series—happens to be the third independently executed edition of this work to see the light in the past decade. This is a tribute to the fact that this particular work of Biondo’s, dealing as it does with questions of national identity and culture, holds a special interest for our own times. A hybrid work, the Italy Illuminated can be read as a prototype of national history, as a catalogue of Italian intellectual achievements, and as a region-by-region geographical description of the Italian Peninsula, all rolled into one. Like Biondo’s other works, it also exemplifies the critical acumen with which Biondo approached his sources, his judicious selection of materials, and his independence with respect to local traditions.
Each of the three recent editions of this fascinating work deserves high praise, though for different reasons. It is in fact the case that there is little or no duplication, little or no overlap between the three. Each editor has made a different choice, for example, in respect to the vexed questions posed by Biondo’s text. Unlike Rome in Triumph, Italy Illuminated underwent extensive revisions and ran through several versions down to Biondo’s death. This considerably complicates the task of any modern editor. Catherine Castner’s Biondo Flavio’s “Italia Illustrata” (2005–10) represents the simplest solution. She reproduces the Froben Latin text of 1559, rearranging the sequence of the chapters, but otherwise respecting the integrity of the work. An elegant English translation appears on facing pages, along with references to copious and diligently compiled notes. The Castner edition/translation/commentary is probably the best place for a novice to begin study of Biondo’s Italy Illuminated.
Jeffrey White’s I Tatti edition, however, possesses its own virtues and will henceforth be a necessary port of call both in respect to the Latin text and the translation. To put it rather bluntly, White’s edition is by far the more scholarly of the two. Unlike Castner’s, it respects Biondo’s admittedly somewhat idiosyncratic sequencing of the regions. More importantly still, White has made a distinctive choice regarding the Latin text: he has decided to follow in the main the first edition prepared for the press by Biondo’s son and published in 1474. He has enhanced this reading by collating it with several manuscripts, marking variants and making corrections where necessary. Finally, White also includes the “Additions and Corrections” on which Biondo was working down to 1462, but never completed. These are appropriately published here as an appendix and accompanied by a translation and notes.
White modestly admits that his textual work on the Italy Illuminated has not resulted in anything like a definitive version—i.e., a text that would be as close as possible to what Biondo intended. The best that can be said—and it is a great deal—is that the I Tatti edition represents an improvement over the Froben reading, and consequently over Castner’s. To date White’s is the most reliable edition of the complete Latin text that we have. It needs to be noted, however, that there is a third edition of the text underway that does aim to resolve the considerable philological difficulties posed by Biondo’s revisions and successive rewritings. This is the impressive work undertaken by Paolo Pontari for the Italian Edizione nazionale. Two volumes have so far appeared, the first containing an exhaustive introduction, the second presenting a critical edition of the first three regions (Liguria, Etruria, Latina): Blondus Flavius, Italia illustrata (2011–). When completed, the Pontari edition will clearly be the most correct from a philological point of view, but it will be a tool for the high-powered specialist rather than for the more casual reader, as it requires competence in both Latin and Italian.
The value of editorial projects such as those being discussed here is that they bring us into direct contact with the little-known and too-often neglected works of the Italian humanists. But the texts themselves would remain dead letters were we not to proceed to the next stage of inquiry, namely to the work of synthesis and interpretation that is the hallmark of modern scholarship. The collective volume A New Sense of the Past takes a significant step in that direction, offering a series of investigations into Biondo qua historian. What precisely were the methods and techniques that he developed to delve into the Italian past? How did these differ from those deployed by his predecessors, or indeed from those of his contemporaries?
Appropriately, the contributors to the volume are, with one exception, the same specialists charged with producing the various editions of Biondo’s works. Paolo Pontari, Jeffrey White, and Catherine Castner all address Italy Illuminated: Pontari offers a global interpretation of the work as an inquiry into the formation of Italian national identity; Castner explores the work’s fortuna, while White discusses the thorny issue of Biondo’s revisions. Fulvio Delle Donne, whose daunting task involves producing an edition of Biondo’s massive Decades for the Edizione nazionale, focuses on the successive stages of that work’s composition. Angelo Mazzocco usefully compares Biondo’s treatment of Venetian history to the official histories of the city written by its native sons. Fabio Della Schiava discusses the results of his preliminary investigations for a critical edition of the Rome Restored. He is both generous and clear in explaining how his edition will differ from Anne Raffarin-Dupuis’s recently completed Rome restaurée (2005–12). Frances Muecke offers us glimpses into the reception of the Rome in Triumph. Rounding out the collection are a general introduction by Mazzocco, a consideration of how one contemporary (Johannes Hinderbach) read Biondo, and a reexamination of the latter’s views on the origins of the Italian language. An especially complete bibliography and accurate indexes to proper names and manuscript sources help make this volume an indispensable companion to the emerging modern editions of Biondo’s works.
