1. Introduction

Since the 1970s the field of Renaissance philosophy has experienced a Copernican revolution, as views of the Renaissance as the age of Plato have now given way to a renewed understanding of the importance and continuing influence of Aristotle. The work of scholars such as F. Edward Cranz, Charles H. Lohr, Charles B. Schmitt, Edward Mahoney, Jill Kraye, Eckhard Kessler, Bruno Nardi, and Antonino Poppi — who between them provided foundational repertories of Aristotelian editions and commentaries, in addition to wide-ranging studies and introductionsFootnote ¹ — established that humanists did not necessarily turn their backs on the Stagirite, whose works many of them read and appreciated (increasingly, alongside those of Plato). Furthermore, they showed that the engagement with Aristotle on the part of scholastic interpreters was far from being uniformly conservative or impervious to outside influences. Taken together, these studies have fostered a broadening of scholarly attention from Paduan Aristotelianism and Pietro Pomponazzi’s teaching in Bologna to a host of other Renaissance figures with strong Aristotelian interests, including Leonardo Bruni, Donato Acciaiuoli, Angelo Poliziano, Simone Porzio, Pier Vettori, Francesco Piccolomini; and, outside of Italy, Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples, Philipp Melanchthon, Theodor Zwinger, John Case, Frans Titelmans, Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, Bartholomaeus Keckerman, and Franco Burgersdijk.

Two factors tend to unite this disparate group of Renaissance interpreters. Firstly, they wrote almost exclusively in Latin, underlining the pan-European range of engagement with Aristotle — something that also continued in the overseas colonies and as far afield as China.Footnote ² Secondly, most of them had strong ties with the universities, either as students or, especially, as professors. It therefore makes sense that the best studies of Renaissance Aristotelianism have given strong attention to the movement’s international dimension.Footnote ³ Equally, Aristotelianism’s characteristics and achievements must be related to the university context, where it formed the backbone of the arts curriculum and permeated the study of the higher disciplines of law, medicine, and theology.Footnote ⁴ Although the field has benefited in recent years from a number of substantive advances in these areas, the work remaining to be done is overwhelming. Few of the commentaries listed in Lohr’s repertories have received an adequate analysis.Footnote ⁵ Other interpretive genres, particularly editions and translations, have hardly been examined at all. And scholars still know far too little about the approaches to and practices of learning in the Renaissance universities, despite both synthetic studies and others more strongly based on archival documentation.Footnote ⁶

Nonetheless, this focus on universities and on Latin writings is now starting to look rather narrow. Inadvertently it perpetuates the myth, inherited from both humanist and scholastic writers, that only Latin was able to provide the richness and sophistication necessary for serious learned discussion. And, while it has righted the tendency of many historians to ignore the Renaissance universities altogether, it has often led to overlooking other contexts that also merit attention. More generally it has given the impression that discussions of Aristotle were limited to a Latin-speaking, university-educated elite that operated within the context of an international Res publica litterarum. While this characterization is not wrong in and of itself, what it misses is the parallel set of developing national approaches to Aristotle, particularly in the vernacular. In Italy this phenomenon matured through a series of early sixteenth-century linguistic controversies concerning the value of Italian — the debate is known as la questione della lingua — and through the establishment of extra-university circles and academies, including the Orti Oricellari in Florence and the Accademia degli Infiammati in Padua. The outcome was a significant vernacular production on works of Aristotle and other philosophers, which in terms of manuscripts and printed editions far exceeds what scholars hitherto suspected, but which has been barely studied.

Literary scholars have of course been aware for some time of the cultural and philosophical value of vernacular works such as Baldassar Castiglione’s Il libro del cortegiano, Sperone Speroni’s Dialoghi, or even of short fiction.Footnote ⁷ But for a variety of reasons these have not so far entered into the list of works routinely considered under the banner of Renaissance Aristotelianism. Likewise, scholars have studied philosophical lectures that were delivered within the academies,Footnote ⁸ but accounts of Renaissance Aristotelianism have largely ignored this production. Only very recently have students of Aristotelianism begun to give academies and vernacular works their due, at the same time questioning facile and outdated distinctions between elite and popular culture, labels sometimes still applied (rather simplistically) to Latin and vernacular writings respectively. Of particular importance in recent years has been the work of the Italian historian of philosophy Luca Bianchi. Building on the pre–World War II insights of Leo Olschki and Wiktor Wasik, and following on from a helpful contribution on Giulio Landi’s Italian dialogue Le attioni morali (1564), in 2009 Bianchi published a wide-ranging article on the problems and research perspectives involved in the study of Renaissance Aristotelianism in the vernacular.Footnote ⁹ There he offers a valuable survey of the field, including the historiographical background to the study of vernacular Aristotelianism across Europe. He also points to some ways in which vernacular treatments of Aristotle are different from their Latin counterparts. In particular, he suggests that the usual distinction between commentaries and translations tends to fade among the vernacular works; that the various genres of commentaries (literal, by questions, paraphrases, etc.) often contaminate each other; and that the vernacular treatments of Aristotle can often significantly alter the original by severely reducing it or by introducing substantial new materials. Finally, Bianchi emphasizes the urgent need for a catalog of relevant works in the vernacular.

Since 2010 a collaborative research project between the University of Warwick and the Warburg Institute in London has been closing some gaps in what is known about vernacular Aristotelianism.Footnote ¹⁰ Focusing on Italy, it has produced an electronic, publicly accessible census of works, with the aim of listing all relevant manuscripts and printed editions of (pseudo-)Aristotelian translations, commentaries, compendia, dialogues, treatises, and other genres. The numbers involved are substantial: around 300 manuscripts and 250 printed editions roughly for the period from 1400 to 1650.Footnote ¹¹ The research group has also been studying a selection of the works themselves in order to understand, for instance, how philosophical and technical they are, what audiences they address, and how they respond to contemporary cultural developments. A particular insight deriving from this research is that the boundaries between Latin and vernacular Aristotelianism are considerably more porous than scholars had previously thought, and that the interactions between the two interpretive traditions were far more intense.

To illustrate the vitality and relationships of vernacular Aristotelianism, this article examines the work of Bernardo Segni, a Florentine and member of the Accademia Fiorentina who in the mid-sixteenth century translated and commented in Italian on a considerable portion of Aristotle’s philosophy. Giving close attention to his Ethics translation and commentary (1550, rpt. 1551), it first of all considers its sources and models, suggesting that the work has strong connections with the Latin tradition. It then analyzes Segni’s handling of the text itself and his interest in philological issues. The final section considers a particular philosophical problem of interest to Segni, the freedom of the will, which helps locate the work in a set of mid-sixteenth-century concerns. Throughout, this article emphasizes the interactions between Segni’s Ethica and earlier Latin interpretations (both translations and commentaries), in terms of sources, approach to the text, and discussion of philosophical problems.

2. Sources and Models

Primarily a historian and literary figure from an ancient Florentine merchant family, Segni (1504–58) is best known for his Istorie fiorentine and the Vita di Niccolò Capponi.Footnote ¹² His own biography has not yet been written.Footnote ¹³ It seems certain, however, that after around a year spent in Venice and Padua (where he met Alessandro dei Pazzi and Nicolò Leonico) in 1527,Footnote ¹⁴ and various other travels throughout Italy in later years, he entered the service of the Medici in 1535. Under Cosimo, Duke of Florence, he was sent on numerous diplomatic missions (including to the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand, brother of Charles V), and held various political offices. He was a member of the Accademia Fiorentina from 1541Footnote ¹⁵ and was in contact with the main cultural and intellectual figures of the period in Florence, including the philologist Pier Vettori.Footnote ¹⁶ Segni’s literary production is in need of fuller investigation, but his activity of translation included Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex.

In addition, Segni was one of several figures in mid-sixteenth-century Italy who dedicated themselves to translating a wide range of Aristotelian works into the vernacular. The 1540s especially saw several efforts in this direction. Benedetto Varchi lectured on the Ethics in the Accademia degli Infiammati in Padua (1540), but then, between 1543 and 1565, offered lessons on other Aristotelian texts in the Accademia Fiorentina.Footnote ¹⁷ Antonio Brucioli (ca. 1498–1566) published vernacular translations of Aristotle’s Politics, Physics, On the Heavens, On Generation and Corruption, Metereology, and On the Soul (1545–57).Footnote ¹⁸ Alessandro Piccolomini (1508–79) also had a vast and coherent program of making Aristotle accessible in the vernacular.Footnote ¹⁹ For moral philosophy the key example is his De la institutione di tutta la vita dell’huomo nato nobile et in città libera (1540).Footnote ²⁰ But Piccolomini actually started his interpretations of Aristotle with the De la sfera del mondo libri quattro (1540) and went on to publish on logic, natural philosophy, rhetoric, and poetics. Segni himself first worked on interpretations of the Rhetoric (1545–46), the Nicomachean Ethics (1547), the Politics (1548), and the Poetics (1548).Footnote ²¹ His paraphrase of On the Soul was published posthumously in 1583.Footnote ²² He is also said to have penned translations of the Physics, Parva naturalia, and On the Heavens,Footnote ²³ but these works do not seem to have survived, if indeed they were written. This essay focuses on L’Ethica d’Aristotile tradotta in lingua vulgare fiorentina et comentata per Bernardo Segni, first published in 1550 by Lorenzo Torrentino, the ducal printer in Florence, and reprinted in Venice by Bartolomeo Imperatore the following year. This work offers rich scope for comparison with earlier Latin counterparts. It also shows that scholars need to break free from the conventional approach to Renaissance Aristotelianism (and Renaissance philosophy more generally) by taking into account vernacular works such as this.

The text of Segni’s Ethica, published only twice — first in quarto, then in octavo format — is identical in the Florentine and Venetian editions, apart from differences in type and pagination. The 1551 edition, used throughout this study, contains 343 folios of text, including the frontispiece, a seven-page dedicatory letter, and a seven-page proem. It is followed by a ten-page table, “La Tavola delle cose più notabili dell’Ethica,” or “The Table of the most notable things in the Ethics,” which serves as a subject index.

The dedicatory letter, addressed to Cosimo, Duke of Florence, contains helpful indications about Segni’s method and understanding of the Ethics.Footnote ²⁴ Toward the beginning, for instance, after justifying the appropriateness of Cosimo as a dedicatee, Segni explicitly makes a parallel between his own work and one published under the dedicatee’s forefather. Alluding to Donato Acciaiuoli’s Latin commentary on the Ethics,Footnote ²⁵ Segni states: “It is true that this subject saw the light accompanied by the name of the first Cosimo, your great and honored ancestor, by a more learned intellect than I am, and perhaps in a more noble language. Yet your Excellency should not disdain to see it published today by me, however low my intellect may be, together with your most worthy and illustrious name, Cosimo II, in your mother tongue, which is so beautiful and universally loved. Perhaps it will lose something in the eyes of a few who will judge it to have been carved in a less worthy matter. But it will doubtless reacquire it in the minds of many, who will realize that this same matter will lead more people to participate in and benefit from it.”Footnote ²⁶ Segni thus underlines the value of his vernacular treatment of the subject. His comments on the dignity of the Tuscan language stop short of considering the study of Greek and Latin an obstacle, as Speroni (1500–88) had done in his “Dialogo delle lingue” of 1542. Yet like him, Segni insists on the need for vernacular versions if knowledge is to reach broader audiences and greater heights.Footnote ²⁷

Segni then outlines some main themes of Aristotle’s Ethics, distinguishing in the first place active from speculative happiness and claiming that the speculative kind is more noble than the active. However, Segni continues, since most people find the speculative kind unattainable, his discussion will center on practical, active happiness, which is the result of exercising virtues such as temperance, fortitude, and justice.Footnote ²⁸ Segni also emphasizes two important points about moral virtue: not only must it be actively exercised, rather than lying dormant, but it can only be produced freely, that is, not through compulsion. Segni thus sets up a calculated swipe at Lutheranism, with its assumptions that the will is not free and that faith alone is able to bring one to eternal happiness:

This passage deserves to be underscored, for an important aspect of Segni’s commentary is its strongly Catholic orientation, something that fits well with its historical setting, while the Council of Trent was taking place. Segni concludes his dedicatory letter by discussing the advantages brought about by following virtue and extends these especially to the life of the community. Here he exalts, in rather pompous and servile terms, the example and good laws of his dedicatee, who ensures that others follow him in virtue, honesty, industry, and the study of letters.

The dedicatory letter is followed by a proem in which Segni explicitly embraces the Greek commentators’ example of providing prolegomena.Footnote ³⁰ Segni’s discussion centers on the following topics: what philosophy is; its parts; the philosopher’s approach in communicating his teachings; the author’s, that is, Segni’s, order and approach to this specific work; and Segni’s intention.

The definitions that Segni offers in the first section are taken, he says, either from the subject, the end, or the order of philosophy, according to the rules for definitions in the Posterior Analytics. Segni then presents six alternate interpretations of what philosophy is, from Pythagoras and his view of philosophy as “love of wisdom” to Plato’s various definitions — “knowledge of things that exist,” “knowledge of human and divine matters,” “similitude by which man, in as much as is possible, becomes similar to God,” “meditation on death” — and finally to Aristotle’s pronouncement that philosophy is “the art above all arts and the science above all sciences.”Footnote ³¹ Segni does not attempt to reconcile these definitions or to identify which one, in his view, is best. He simply uses them to argue that philosophy is clearly the most excellent of all things that men can hope for in this life, whether one considers philosophy’s exalted subject, the status it has above all other endeavors, or its most noble end.

Sections 2 and 3 are not especially remarkable. Segni rehearses standard fare such as the division of philosophy into active and speculative branches, and maintains that active philosophy considers the good that can be performed by a single person (ethics), a few people (economics, in its root sense of the management of a household, or oikos), or the many (politics).Footnote ³² In discussing which of these three is superior, Segni has no hesitation in assigning that place to ethics, since it conjoins active and speculative philosophy and even becomes a kind of supernatural and divine philosophy. When he discusses Aristotle’s approach, Segni points out that Aristotle’s demonstration of his teachings starts from the effects rather than the causes. Here he rehearses Aristotle’s own classic distinction between to hoti and to dioti, that is, phenomena and what causes them, and views ethics as concerned with what is “contingent, variable, and uncertain.”Footnote ³³ He follows these considerations with remarks on the authenticity of the Ethics (which is affirmed) and a compressed description of Aristotle’s life, which emphasizes the Stagirite’s unusual, indeed singular, intellectual range.

The last two sections of the proem are far more discursive and notable, outlining Segni’s approach and intention. Segni’s approach can best be appreciated through two interesting passages. In the first, Segni states that “As to the method and order of presentation that I have followed in explaining this branch of philosophy, I say that I have read most of the commentaries written on it. I have used now one, now another, both adding and deleting as I saw fit. I did not wish to be tediously long or too concise and obscure. I have therefore in some (but not all) passages recast Aristotle’s teaching in the form of a syllogism. I have not done this everywhere, for fear of being too tedious, but I have provided an example of what it would be possible to do [throughout the text].”Footnote ³⁴ Segni maintains therefore that part of his technique has consisted of an adaptation both of the commentaries he has used and of a syllogistic outlining of Aristotle’s text. Although he does not elaborate on this second point, it suggests that he was aiming for a straightforward, philosophical treatment of Aristotle’s Ethics. This interpretation is supported by his later comments on his own intention.

Segni writes at greater length on his favored commentaries, implicitly providing clues about his penchant for the syllogism. In this section Segni exalts specific interpretations of the Ethics, singling out for special praise Donato Acciaiuoli’s commentary:

This important passage testifies to Segni’s deep engagement with the earlier commentary tradition. He identifies four commentaries as deserving particular mention. That by Eustratius (d. 1120), a twelfth-century Byzantine interpreter, is in fact a composite Greek commentary whose various parts stretch over almost a millennium of interpretation. (The parts actually written by Eustratius are only those on books 1 and 6.) First translated into Latin by Robert Grosseteste (1168–1253), who also annotated the work, in the mid-thirteenth century, the commentary had a very rich manuscript tradition, aided by the approval of Albertus Magnus (1200–80) and Thomas Aquinas (1225–74), both of whom called Eustratius “the Commentator.” A new and successful translation, which received several printings, was offered by Giovanni Bernardo Feliciano (ca. 1490–after 1552), also known as Regazzola, in 1541.Footnote ³⁶ Eustratius shares with Segni a dedication to reconstructing Aristotle’s syllogisms, and various sections of the composite commentary attempt a comparison between the ideas of Aristotle and those of Plato (and a reconciliation of both with Christianity).

Thomas’s Sententia libri Ethicorum is a literal commentary from ca. 1270–72: it generally eschews theological issues and concentrates on a sustained explanation of the text. Considered by many medieval and Renaissance scholars as an example of great clarity, the Sententia had a particularly strong influence in Italy well into the sixteenth century. (Elsewhere in Europe, its lack of quaestiones proved a handicap to its diffusion.) Like many humanists of his time, Segni explicitly praises its lucidity, marvelling that Thomas’s interpretations were so insightful when the translation he used was so obviously corrupt.Footnote ³⁷

Of the Northern European commentators, Segni mentions only Walter Burley (ca. 1275–1334/35), whose Expositio super libros Ethicorum (1334–41) was printed several times during the Renaissance.Footnote ³⁸ The Expositio, associated with Burley’s lectures in Oxford, is less of a straightforward explanation of the text than is Thomas’s. In addition to a very strong emphasis on the divisio textus, that is, the division of each section of text into relevant subsections, it includes numerous dubia in the text (some of them bordering on theological issues), although no formal quaestiones. At least in printed form, it also displays numerous dichotomous diagrams of the kind Segni favored.

But Segni reserves a special commendation for Acciaiuoli’s commentary, declaring that it includes the best elements of the works above, particularly those by Eustratius and Thomas. Acciaiuoli (1429–78) wrote his commentary on the basis of the lectures on the Ethics delivered by Johannes Argyropoulos (ca. 1415–87), a Greek emigré, in the Florentine university in 1457–58. Those lectures took their starting point from Leonardo Bruni’s translation of the Ethics (1416/17), but Argyropoulos subsequently wrote his own translation, and it was this one on which Acciaiuoli’s commentary was based when it first appeared in 1478. Although it is written by a humanist, Acciaiuoli’s Expositio displays very little interest in issues of style. Perhaps because of its association with Argyropoulos’s classroom, it tends to emphasize philosophical problems and to make heavy use of earlier commentators, for example, Burley, Averroes (1126–98), Albertus Magnus, and Eustratius, but also Thomas. It also outlines the text through syllogisms, in a way reminiscent of Eustratius.Footnote ³⁹

The final section of Segni’s proem explains his intention — more specifically, why he bothered accompanying his commentary with a new translation. He makes this clear from the outset, indicating: “But my goal in producing this translation was to benefit those who lack a knowledge of Greek and Latin and therefore could not otherwise benefit from this teaching.”Footnote ⁴⁰ In this paragraph the Florentine commentator sets up an explicit contrast with the Latin writings of the Neapolitan humanist Giovanni Pontano (1426–1503). Although he does not deny his learning, Segni is less than impressed with his approach, since “Pontano … discussed [moral] habits, not by translating but by imitating what Aristotle wrote here. This approach may make things easier for the author and more pleasurable to his readers, but I judge the effect to be a loss of authority for the writer and of usefulness for the readers.”Footnote ⁴¹ Segni doubtlessly refers here to Pontano’s numerous dialogues on moral topics, works such as De fortitudine, De prudentia, De liberalitate, which depend both on Aristotle’s Ethics and on other ancient writers, including Plato, Cicero, and many others.Footnote ⁴² He makes a strong contrast between what is easy and delightful, on the one hand, and what is authoritative and useful, on the other. Segni clearly accords primacy to the latter two elements: “usefulness derives, not so much from those writings that display sweetness of speech and rhetorical art, but rather from those that leave these [rhetorical] colors aside and pay strict attention to the essence of the topic they are discussing.”Footnote ⁴³

By so doing, Segni reengages with the discussion of the 1480s among Ermolao Barbaro (1454–93), Antonio de Ferrariis (Il Galateo, 1444–1517), and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–94) on the appropriateness of considerations of style within philosophical works. He places his flag firmly in Pico’s camp, who had argued that in philosophy substance was more important than style. And he implicitly distances himself from both Pontano and from Segni’s contemporary Agostino Valier (1530–1606), who championed Barbaro’s view that it was necessary to unite philosophy and eloquence.Footnote ⁴⁴ Segni’s position returns in his concluding comment to the proem, where he offers, as a further motivation behind his translation enterprise, his stance toward the Tuscan tongue: “I have considered this resolution of mine worthy of approval for yet another reason, namely that I desired to adorn our language, which in all Italy is considered most beautiful and noble, with this work. For although it already speaks very clearly and usefully in both Greek and Latin, I expect that it will maintain its splendor and be useful to many as much in this [Italian] language as in those.”Footnote ⁴⁵ What Segni clearly does not do, however, is to follow Leonardo Bruni (1370–1444), who had argued that the Ethics is a work of great eloquence and should therefore be translated with a great attention to style.Footnote ⁴⁶

A brief note is in order on how Segni proceeds in the rest of his work. Segni offers a linear, progressive treatment of the Ethics. For each chapter of each book, he provides a translation, indicated in italic script, followed by a commentary that is in smaller, roman type.Footnote ⁴⁷ The commentary cross-references the Ethics and other works of Aristotle, solving problems, sometimes responding implicitly (and, much more rarely, explicitly) to the opinions of other commentators, and occasionally inserting quotations from poetry (especially Dante) and references to historical events. Throughout the work a few tables and diagrams outline the text and aid in understanding its divisions. At the end of each book a table offers a brief outline of the main points covered.

Both in his general approach, and in various elements of the dedicatory letter and proem, Segni displays a strong, but not slavish, attention to the earlier Latin tradition. A first observation concerns the genre of the Ethica, for Segni’s work is the first to provide a full Italian equivalent to a weighty Latin treatment of the same work. Whereas earlier authors had offered vernacular translations, paraphrases, compendia, extracts, or even some comments on the Ethics,Footnote ⁴⁸ Segni was the first writer to give a full vernacular interpretation of Aristotle, including both translation and chapter-by-chapter commentary, in a style that had already been modeled by numerous Latin interpreters, for example, Acciaiuoli. This lends support to and also partly explains Segni’s open admiration for various earlier commentaries.

A second point is more directly related to Segni’s dedicatory letter and proem. While scholars know about and have also quoted Segni’s declarations in praise of various earlier interpreters,Footnote ⁴⁹ they have not noted the extent to which Acciaiuoli’s commentary serves as a model for the introductory matter to Segni’s Ethica, or, indeed, for the rest of the work.Footnote ⁵⁰ The parallels are striking. Some of them are explicit: as mentioned above, Segni makes an allusion to them in his dedicatory letter, when he refers to Cosimo, Duke of Florence, as “Cosimo Secondo,” apparently because Acciaiuoli’s work had been dedicated to the first Cosimo. But others are more implicit references to Acciaiuoli’s example, such as the proem’s exploration of the six main definitions of philosophy. This discussion is lifted from Acciaiuoli’s own proem, in which these matters are discussed at length, just as Acciaiuoli too had remarked on the differences between speculative and practical philosophy.Footnote ⁵¹ Furthermore, Segni follows the general design of Acciaiuoli’s work: commentary and translation accompany each other,Footnote ⁵² both of them prefaced by a dedicatory letter and a proem. Acciaiuoli’s commentary is a chapter-by-chapter exposition of the Ethics, interleaved with the text, exactly like Segni’s.

Nonetheless, Segni does not depend slavishly on Acciaiuoli’s example. For instance, when Segni in his prologue refers to the differences between ethics, economics, and politics, he appears to be following the line of Thomas Aquinas and Acciaiuoli, according to whom politics is superior to ethics inasmuch as it considers the good of the many as opposed to the good of the single individual. In fact, however, he veers away from this interpretation at the very last moment, declaring that, “This conclusion would certainly be true if the kind of happiness considered by this philosophy were only the active one; however, the happiness addressed in these books of the Ethics is speculative as well, and this kind is without a doubt more noble than the active kind. Ethics concerns in its last section the good and speculative happiness that can belong either to a single man, or to a few, and probably not to many. For this reason alone, ethics is more excellent than the other [branches of philosophy]; indeed, from this point of view it seems to become supernatural and divine philosophy.”Footnote ⁵³ Here Segni was not, as Rolandi claimed, proposing a new vision of the relationship between ethics and politics. Rather, he was alluding to the view, championed by other commentators such as Albertus Magnus and John Buridan (ca. 1300–after 1358) — and also repeated in the 1547 Roman lectures of the controversial philosopher Antonio Bernardi Mirandolano (1502–65)Footnote ⁵⁴ — that ethics provides the principles that are then applied by politics, so that ethics is in fact superior to politics, inasmuch as theoretical subjects are superior to practical ones.Footnote ⁵⁵ Segni is rather unsuccessful in trying to marry two very different understandings of this complicated and fraught issue, but his approach neatly confirms his later explanation of the methodology he has adopted in his interpretation of relying on a miscellany of commentaries.

Vernacular commentaries such as Segni’s cannot therefore be seen in isolation, for they drew on and responded to issues that were present (and, in fact, still alive) in Latin philosophical discussions, whether these were printed commentaries or commentaries circulating in manuscript. This is also true of Segni’s other translations and commentaries on Aristotelian works. His work on the Rhetoric,Footnote ⁵⁶ for example, which roused the ire of the great Florentine scholar and university professor Pier Vettori (1499–1585) — who grumbled that Segni had borrowed some of his materials and conjectures without authorization — must be seen in the context of Vettori’s 1548 commentary on the same work.Footnote ⁵⁷ Roberto Ridolfi considered the animosity between the two men as a possible cause for the delay in the publication of Segni’s own interpretation, which had been ready since 1545.Footnote ⁵⁸ But Segni also made an attempt to correct some of his readings of the Rhetoric on the basis of Vettori’s new publication.Footnote ⁵⁹ Likewise, Segni’s rendering of the Poetics was surely influenced by the Latin interpretations on it by Francesco Robertello (d. 1567), also published in 1548, and Alessandro Pazzi (1483–ca. 1530), whose work appeared posthumously in 1536Footnote ⁶⁰ — not to mention the Latin paraphrase by Angelo Poliziano (1454–94).Footnote ⁶¹

Furthermore, Segni cannot be well understood without attention to new Greek editions of Aristotle’s texts. Vettori’s edition of the Greek text of the Rhetoric was surely not the only one to influence Segni’s interpretations: the same is likely of Vettori’s Greek edition of the Ethics in 1547.Footnote ⁶² Connections and influences of this kind make research on the diffusion of Aristotle in the vernacular richer and more complicated, but in fact they confirm that, while aiming to reach a broader audience, vernacular commentaries could also have philological and philosophical thickness. This was something they achieved by imitating and interacting with works in Latin and Greek. Vernacular commentaries were testing the waters, but to do so relied on proven models, which they attempted to transpose into a new medium.Footnote ⁶³ Segni’s example suggests that they also had space to innovate and to claim some independence.

3. Texts and Vernacular Philology

Having explored some of Segni’s general sources and interpretive models, it is now time to examine more closely how he handles Aristotle’s text. To do this one must both study the translation that accompanies Segni’s commentary (an issue on which Segni himself offers little information) and the scholarly developments in relationship to the text of the Ethics that took place not long before the appearance of Segni’s Ethica.

These developments can be described under three headings: new Greek editions, new Latin translations, and new versions of the Greek commentaries — leaving aside, for the sake of brevity, new Latin or vernacular commentaries. The Greek text of the Ethics had first been printed in the last volume of Aristotle’s Opera omnia edition produced by Aldus Manutius in 1495–98.Footnote ⁶⁴ In 1531 Simon Grynaeus (1493–1541) published another edition, which was revised in 1539 and reprinted several times.Footnote ⁶⁵ The first printing advertised only the name of Erasmus (ca. 1469–1536), who had written a prefatory letter to John More, son of Thomas More.Footnote ⁶⁶ The 1540s saw several further efforts. In 1540 an edition of the Ethics appeared in Paris with no indication of who had prepared it.Footnote ⁶⁷ It was followed, in 1545 at the latest, by an edition (reprinted several times) put together by Johann Sturm (1489–1553) and Juan Luis Vives (1492–1540).Footnote ⁶⁸ As already noted, 1547 saw Vettori’s Greek edition of the Ethics.Footnote ⁶⁹ This was not, however, the last of the philological efforts in this half-century to establish a reliable Greek text. Another edition of Aristotle’s works appeared in 1548, this time in three volumes.Footnote ⁷⁰ It was followed by another, two-volume edition in 1549, whose authorship remains to be studied.Footnote ⁷¹

The decades right before the appearance of Segni’s Ethica were also rich in new (and old) Latin translations of the Ethics. Apart from undated manuscript versions that have yet to be examined in any detail, the printed ones include the three translations edition, with the interpretations by Grosseteste, Bruni, and Argyropoulos, put together by the French humanist Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples (1460–1536) in 1497.Footnote ⁷² This edition went through at least sixteen reprints until 1542. It was followed by the rendition of the French Benedictine Joachim Périon (1498–1559), who authored a particularly successful (if controversial) translation of the Ethics, first printed in 1540 and revised in several later editions.Footnote ⁷³ Bernardino Trebazio (d. 1548) presented a new translation, bordering on a paraphrase, in 1547.Footnote ⁷⁴ Jacques Louis d’Estrebay (1481–1550) and Giovanni Bernardo Feliciano coproduced another one in 1549,Footnote ⁷⁵ quite possibly a revision of Feliciano’s independent effort a year earlier.Footnote ⁷⁶

Scholars also devoted considerable energy to preparing new editions and translations of the Greek commentators. As mentioned above, the standard translation of these works had been that by Grosseteste, which continued to be influential despite its circulation being limited to manuscript form: no printed editions are known. The first Greek-text edition of Eustratius and other Greek commentators on the Ethics appeared in 1536 thanks to Aldus.Footnote ⁷⁷ It was followed by Feliciano’s Latin translation, which first issued from Aldus’s press in 1541. It was reprinted several times up to 1662.Footnote ⁷⁸

With this background in mind one can study Segni’s approach to the text of the Ethics. A good example is provided by his treatment of book 5, chapter 5. Aristotle has been explaining the various kinds of justice, principally distributive justice — whereby honor and wealth, for instance, are divided among members of the community according to merit — and corrective, or “commutative” justice. The latter takes place both in the sphere of economic exchanges and in that of requiting wrongs done.Footnote ⁷⁹ In chapter 5 Aristotle dedicates a long and interesting passage to issues of geometric proportion in justice, asking, for instance, whether justice consists in a like-for-like exchange or requital, as maintained by the Pythagoreans. Segni entitles this section “Del giusto Pittagorico detto il Contrappasso, che consiste in proportione di ragione” (“On the Pythagorean Notion of Justice, Called Contrappasso, Which Consists in Reasonable Proportion”) and in rendering the first paragraph makes specific reference to the doctrine of the contrappasso, typically interpreted as like-for-like requital:

Aristotle here refers to the Pythagoreans’ supposed identification of justice with like-for-like retribution, as if justice were coextensive with the approach of Rhadamanthus, the god of the underworld charged with punishing the wicked for their sins. Aristotle rejects this view, since a just punishment must take into account not only the misdeed itself, but a host of other factors such as the status of the offender or offended, and whether or not the misdeed was committed willingly. Aristotle then discusses how ideas of justice are embedded in economic transactions, and how money provides a means of establishing proportions rather than exact equalities.

Several elements of Segni’s translation, as well as of his commentary, are worthy of attention. First, Segni consistently translates the Greek antipeponthós (reciprocity, return, or requital) with contrappasso. Thus, in the first line, which in the revised Oxford translation reads “Some think that reciprocity is without qualification just,”Footnote ⁸¹ Segni has “Ma e’ par’ a certi, che il contrappasso assolutamente sia giusto” (“But some think that the contrappasso is just in an absolute way”). The choice of contrappasso is, as soon becomes apparent, a conscious reference to Dante, so much so that Segni states in his commentary: “In my translation of this term as contrappasso, I have followed the authority of the most excellent poet Dante, who uses it in canto 28 of the Inferno in the person of Beltramo dal Bornio [i.e., Bertran de Born], who states: ‘Thus is the contrappasso seen in me.’”Footnote ⁸² Segni then goes on to state that “Our jurists call this contrappasso the ‘law of retaliation’ [pena del taglione], such that the punishment should fit the crime.”Footnote ⁸³ In other words, contrappasso corresponds in Segni’s view to a situation in which a crime should receive its appropriate punishment according to the pronouncements of Roman law. Dante’s Inferno contains many situations in which sinners are punished in a way corresponding approximately to their misdeeds.

Segni’s explicit evocation of Dante is part of a more general strategy of interpretation, in which Segni quotes extensively from Florence’s preeminent poet.Footnote ⁸⁴ This approach is probably connected with the strong tradition of lecturing on Dante in the city of Florence and the Accademia Fiorentina.Footnote ⁸⁵ It is doubtless one of the signals of how Segni was trying to appeal to a specific audience. More than that, however, Segni justifies his use of the term contrappasso on the assumption that Dante derived this word from Aristotle. In this case, indeed, the Latin translations of the Ethics available to Dante read “Videtur autem aliquibus et contrapassum esse simpliciter iustum” (“It seems to some that the contrapassum is just absolutely”).Footnote ⁸⁶ In turn, this use is supported by Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae, IIa IIae, Quaestio 61, article 4.Footnote ⁸⁷

Although it is in a sense unsurprising that Segni finds ways of supporting Dante’s linguistic choices, this passage gives a sense of how close (or not) Segni remains to his usual sources. The deliberate reference Segni makes to the Dantean expression means that he departs from the Latin translation of the Ethics on which he usually depends. Here it is germane to examine Argyropoulos’s translation of the passage on which Acciaiuoli’s commentary is based. Instead of contrapassum, Argyropoulos translated repassio, which in turn was slightly different from Bruni’s repassum.Footnote ⁸⁸ Grosseteste’s contrapassum is an obvious Latin calque of the Greek term antipeponthós: both Bruni and Argyropoulos, instead, supply a (however rare) Latin equivalent. Secondly, when he explains that the contrappasso is in essence the same as “la pena del taglione,”Footnote ⁸⁹ Segni is not, as usual, following Acciaiuoli’s commentary, since Acciaiuoli makes no reference to this detail, but instead depends on other sources, possibly the gloss of Cristoforo Landino (1425–98) on Inferno 28.139–42 in the Comento sopra la Comedia,Footnote ⁹⁰ or earlier commentaries on the Ethics such as that of Niccolò Tignosi (1402–74), who refers to the “poena talionis” explicitly.Footnote ⁹¹ He may also have been aware of Périon’s translation and comments on this passage.Footnote ⁹² The dependence on Argyropoulos and on Acciaiuoli is quickly reestablished, however, in what follows: the couplet translated by Segni is something he attributes, like Acciaiuoli, to the Greek poet Hesiod.Footnote ⁹³ Likewise, a few lines later Segni indicates that he has neglected to translate a few words in the sentence containing “al Giusto distributivo”: “Here there are several words in the Greek text that I have not translated, for they are repetitive and in any case do not add anything new. In this I have followed Argyropoulos’s translation, since I believe that he had a better text than those around today.”Footnote ⁹⁴

Segni’s comments on this point may suggest that he was simply and slavishly following Argyropoulos’s Latin translation.Footnote ⁹⁵ There is more to this, however, than meets the eye. The offending clause had been present both in Bruni’s rendition of this passage and in Périon’s controversial 1540 translation.Footnote ⁹⁶ In 1543 the anonymous editor of Feliciano’s translation of the Greek commentators on the Ethics (possibly Périon himself) had criticized Feliciano’s omission of this phrase. He supplied the missing Greek in the margin and maintained that the Greek interpreter, Michael of Ephesus, had done well to keep this phrase in place.Footnote ⁹⁷ Vettori’s 1547 Greek edition had silently omitted this phrase, a decision followed by modern editors of the text.Footnote ⁹⁸

Students of Segni’s works have tended (with the exception of Bionda) to belittle his philological ability and knowledge of Greek. This is understandable, since an analysis suggests that Segni’s translation of the Ethics mainly depends on that of Argyropoulos.Footnote ⁹⁹ Yet one should recall that Argyropoulos’s translation was considered the gold standard in Segni’s time, as suggested also by Vettori’s comments.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Furthermore, Segni does not follow it in every detail and gives some attention to the Greek text, which he was probably at least able to make out.Footnote ¹⁰¹ Segni was doubtlessly helped by Feliciano’s translation of Eustratius, and particularly by the 1543 edition, which provided philological scholia. He must have known about Périon, since his contacts with Vettori, though sometimes tempestuous, made him aware of developments in philology throughout Europe. Thus, without claiming that Segni was a brilliant philologist or deeply skilled in Greek, one must give credit to his informed acquaintance with the major commentaries (and translations) that had shaped interpretations of the Ethics up to his day, and recognize that in these areas he was quite au fait about recent scholarly developments in the study of the Ethics, even in Latin and Greek.

4. Philosophy

So far this essay has argued that Segni’s Ethica reflects an intense, if understated, engagement with the Latin commentary tradition. This is reflected in its interpretive structure and in its handling of Aristotle’s text. It is now time to turn to Segni’s exploration of specific philosophical issues in order to see whether similar patterns are at work there. The discussion will center on Segni’s treatment of one of the thorny problems of his time, the freedom of the will. Although this issue had come to the fore most forcefully in the debate between Luther and Erasmus, it was, of course, a longstanding point of contention and often brought into collision the concerns of theologians and philosophers.

Aristotle’s Ethics explores various aspects of the will, including weakness of the will (akrasia), whereby someone wishing to act virtuously is not able to remain firm in his purposes.Footnote ¹⁰² The concern in this essay has more to do, however, with freedom of choice and to what extent this may be limited by various factors and circumstances. Relevant passages in the Ethics include the end of book 1 — where Aristotle distinguishes the sensitive and vegetative from the intellective functions of the soul and identifies an area that sometimes resists the guidance of reason — and especially book 3, where the examination of moral virtues is preceded by a series of observations on the will.

Segni does not raise the issue of the freedom of the will at the end of book 1, where some earlier commentators, including Tignosi, had anticipated it. Instead, he reserves his analysis for book 3, starting with chapter 4.Footnote ¹⁰³ There he supports his views on the freedom of the will by noting, along with Aristotle, that society assumes wicked behavior to be a matter of individual responsibility. Behavior of this kind cannot be attributed to the intellect, for it would be unfair to punish failures of that function, nor is there a straightforward correspondence between intellect and action. Like a father with his son, the intellect suggests to the appetitive part of the soul what should or should not be done. In turn, this part of the soul is free to follow or not the intellect’s guidance. As evidence of the will’s freedom Segni appeals to Dante’s statement in Paradiso 5.19–22 that “In his liberality, the greatest gift that God made in creation … was the freedom of the will.”Footnote ¹⁰⁴

The topic is taken up again and at greater length in chapter 5. In his commentary Segni abandons his usual procedure of interpreting the text bit by bit. At the start he offers a brief summary of Aristotle’s text, in which he teaches that “the virtues and vices are located within our will” and that there is a “difference within our free will concerning habits and actions.”Footnote ¹⁰⁵ Here Segni is referring to Aristotle’s position according to which, although people are responsible for forming certain habits, they are so in a different way from that in which they are responsible for certain actions. Very quickly, however, Segni’s discussion takes a different turn and goes back to a concern already raised in the preceding chapter and discussed by Aristotle in the last section of chapter 5. He asks in particular, given the importance of knowing what is a good or evil end, what the origin of such knowledge is: does it come from God, from celestial influences, or from the complexion of our parents? Here the Florentine humanist branches out freely from the Ethics as he addresses each possibility in turn.

Segni’s treatment of God’s role starts with considerations about divine foreknowledge and whether or not human actions are therefore predetermined. In a rare acknowledgement of outside authorities he praises the solution offered by Boethius (ca. 480–ca. 524) both in his commentary on the De interpretatione and in his Consolation of Philosophy, since both divine foreknowledge and human freedom are maintained. He invokes Dante (Paradiso 20.130–32) as a further authority.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ On the point of celestial influences Segni maintains, again following Dante (Purgatorio 16.73–75), that these are capable of inclining the soul in a certain direction, but not of determining its choices. This observation then gives rise to a discussion of astrology; Segni asks whether it is really men’s fault if they give in to anger, love, or melancholy under the influence of Mars, Venus, or Saturn. Segni answers that the fault lies not in the planets, but in ourselves, since we are too weak to counter their influence.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ As to the disposition of our parents, this can only affect our sensitive and material nature and not our will, “which, according to the theologians and the best philosophers, is not bound up with the body as its instrument.”Footnote ¹⁰⁸ Indeed, the will is able to command the sensitive appetite.

But Segni gives his longest consideration to a further point, not raised in his initial comments on this chapter but anticipated (as mentioned above) in his dedicatory letter, namely, the Lutheran position on the freedom of the will:

Segni does not resort to naming names, referring only to the opinions of “some modern theologians,” but his allusion is unmistakable. These modernists, who appeal to the writings of the Apostle Paul and St. Augustine (354–430) and deny the freedom of the will, can be none other than Luther and his followers. It is interesting that Segni presents their arguments quite fairly, without becoming embroiled in discussions about how faith itself arises. When he offers the contrary opinions of the “sacred theologians,” placing their arguments in a more standard philosophical framework, the solution offered is less than satisfactory, since the concurrent cause does not have the same valence in both cases presented. One would expect, according to this argument, man to be only a passive participant, or even an observer, in the production of good works, since God has this function when it comes to evil ones.

Segni’s comments need to be understood within an interpretive tradition on these passages. Although several of the Latin commentaries are surprisingly silent on the issue,Footnote ¹¹⁰ the Greek commentaries had already emphasized (without, however, elaborating on) the freedom of the will.Footnote ¹¹¹ The classic treatment of the problem was, as Segni acknowledged, Boethius’s commentary on Aristotle’s De interpretatione, followed by his more elaborate solution in The Consolation of Philosophy.Footnote ¹¹² In these passages Boethius is especially at pains to explain that divine foreknowledge does not determine human choice. Although the issues of fate and providence had of course been a common topic of discussion already much earlier, and continued to attract the attention of both theologians and philosophers in later centuries,Footnote ¹¹³ they became a more prominent feature of some discussions of the Ethics, especially starting with Albertus Magnus. His Super Ethica (1250–52), which consists of lectures and questions on the Ethics, addresses, for instance, the problem of whether or not people can really be the agents of good actions. He solves the issue by acknowledging the role of a general (but not special) kind of divine grace, while at the same time emphasizing human agency and responsibility.Footnote ¹¹⁴ Albert gives specific treatment to the question of whether or not human behavior is determined by God’s foreknowledge.Footnote ¹¹⁵ He also asks what the role of the stars and the circumstances of our birth might be in relation to character and predisposition, for instance, toward anger or concupiscence. In all cases he responds by strongly underlining the human freedom to resist external influences, which are not considered determining.Footnote ¹¹⁶

These problems continued to receive attention in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Although Tignosi does not, like Albert, make reference to theological considerations or dwell on the effects of divine foreknowledge, he does argue against the possibility that heavenly bodies can determine human behavior. He states clearly that “Many astrologers believed that heavenly influences constrain us; they make us believe that we are of necessity bound to act according to the circumstances of our birth. It is enough to say that, when the sensitive appetite is inclined by a particular evil desire, it is able to attract the will to itself; yet neither the appetite nor celestial bodies can force it or impose any necessity upon it.”Footnote ¹¹⁷ Simone Porzio (1496–1554), an important philosophical teacher of the sixteenth century whose writings were well known in the Florentine Academy and to Segni, also made similar points in his An homo bonus vel malus volens fiat.Footnote ¹¹⁸

Segni’s viewpoint in book 3 can be instructively compared with his commentary on book 7, chapter 3, where he explores the extent to which an incontinent person acts with knowledge when he follows what is wrong.Footnote ¹¹⁹ This issue was discussed by many Aristotle commentators, who particularly sought to understand what went awry in the case of someone who was aware of what was right, but in the end acted against it. Given Socrates’s views on virtue as knowledge, the problem was particularly acute for those who wished to advance a Platonic (or semi-Platonic) perspective. Discussions took place within the framework of what was called the practical syllogism. This moved from a universal premise to a specific minor one, leading in the end to a specific conclusion and action. One of Aristotle’s own examples is: every sweet thing must be tasted (major premise); this is sweet (minor premise); therefore, this must be tasted (conclusion).Footnote ¹²⁰

When an incontinent person goes wrong, the fault cannot lie in recognizing the universal premise, since that is a feature of the intemperate person. Instead, as Saarinen suggests, incontinence (akrasia) tends to be explained within the Aristotelian tradition in one of three ways: the minor premise may be ignored (this tends to be Thomas’s position); the premises may not be connected properly; or the conclusion may be correct, but not be followed (Burley).Footnote ¹²¹ Segni gives almost exclusive prominence to yet another factor, strongly emphasized by Acciaiuoli: the construction of the practical syllogism itself.Footnote ¹²² Borrowing an example from Burley and the Greek commentators, he focuses on the case of adultery.Footnote ¹²³ Here there are two possible practical syllogisms:

Both syllogisms start from different universals but share the same middle term, or minor premise: the mistake on the part of the incontinent person is that of placing the conclusion involving sin under the wrong major premise. This error occurs, according to Acciaiuoli, because of a struggle (pugna) between the rational part of the soul and concupiscence (cupiditas), in which the latter overcomes the former.Footnote ¹²⁵ Saarinen is probably right to see an influence of commonplace Platonic elements in this view of reason and evil desire in conflict,Footnote ¹²⁶ although the vehement role of concupiscence is also strongly supported by Burley and others,Footnote ¹²⁷ and the metaphor of internal struggle is something one also finds in the Greek commentators and St. Paul.Footnote ¹²⁸

In Segni one suspects an additional Augustinian element in his reference to Petrarch’s famous expression “Et veggio il meglio, et al peggior m’appiglio” (“I know what is better, yet hold fast to what is worse”).Footnote ¹²⁹ But in fact Segni gives this occurrence an intellectualist turn: the fault consists in a misguided concentration on the particular rather than the universal. Thus Petrarch “only meant to indicate that he was aware that the universal (i.e., the condition of being in love) was a bad thing, but nonetheless he followed the particular, which made him stay in love through the pleasure of the senses.”Footnote ¹³⁰ Segni concludes by agreeing with Aristotle that scientia does continue to operate even in the actions of the akratic individual — also because, after committing a wrong action, he returns to a full knowledge of the proper practical syllogism. He gives less prominence than Acciaiuoli, however, to the strong actions of concupiscence. Nor does he get involved, after the example of John Buridan or John Mair (1467–1550), in a complex discussion of the role of the will.Footnote ¹³¹ Rather, he tends to stay close to the tenor of Thomas’s position in his Sententia libri Ethicorum, which admits aspects of guilt, but gives prominence to the roles of ignorance and “transitory false evaluation” in the akratic person.Footnote ¹³² Presumably a different approach would have opened the door to the Lutheran arguments he had opposed in book 3.Footnote ¹³³

In treating both the freedom and the weakness of the will, therefore, Segni makes intelligent interventions. His contributions again reflect a strong awareness of the Latin and Greek commentators on the relevant issues, stretching back to the arguments of Boethius and Augustine. To these he adds a layer related to contemporary theological controversies. This explicit engagement with Lutheran positions is something that especially tends to characterize vernacular works on Aristotle during this period, including both the evangelical-leaning writings of Antonio Brucioli (ca. 1498–1566) and the strongly Catholic-Reformist ones of Antonio Scaino (1524–1612).Footnote ¹³⁴ One also wonders whether Segni’s strong pronouncements were meant in part to allay suspicions that members of the Accademia Fiorentina had Lutheran (or, more generally, Protestant) sympathies.Footnote ¹³⁵ This supposition may, however, be unnecessary if Abigail Brundin is right in thinking that “heterodoxy was not only tolerated, but perhaps even encouraged by the Duke.”Footnote ¹³⁶

5. Conclusion

Given that Segni’s translations were approved by the Accademia Fiorentina, of which Segni was an active member (he also served as consul in 1542),Footnote ¹³⁷ and given that his Aristotelian works were printed by the ducal printer Lorenzo Torrentino — who was appointed to support the publication of works related to the AccademiaFootnote ¹³⁸ — it is fitting to conclude this essay with a few considerations about the Ethica’s audience. The Florentine Academy attracted a socially and culturally variegated group of individuals, although historians disagree on the effect that this had on a common cultural approach.Footnote ¹³⁹ Sunday afternoon lectures, held in the Sala del Papa of Santa Maria Novella, could attract a particularly broad and numerous audience.Footnote ¹⁴⁰ Private lectures were also offered by Academicians on Thursdays, in the spaces reserved for the university (studio).Footnote ¹⁴¹

There is no exhaustive or reliable list of the lectures that took place in these two settings, and it is unlikely that Segni would have offered lectures directly on the text of Aristotle.Footnote ¹⁴² Nearly all of the lectures mentioned in the standard histories of the Academy are on literary works, as in most other Italian academies. Yet the Florentine Academy, like that of the Infiammati in Padua, also had a significant strand of interest in philosophical issues. These could easily be explored by commenting on particular problems posed by poetic passages. The lectures by Giovan Battista Gelli (1498–1563) and Benedetto Varchi (1502/03–1565) in particular testify to this approach, even though it sometimes proved controversial.Footnote ¹⁴³ Segni’s translation and commentary therefore seem to fit in with at least one of the main vectors of interest in the Academy, that is, a joint consideration of literature and philosophy. This approach did not avoid issues such as the relationship of Greek, Latin, and Italian, the influence of the stars,Footnote ¹⁴⁴ or the freedom of the will.Footnote ¹⁴⁵ Surviving lectures also show a strong interest in the works of Greek commentators and of more recent ones such as Porzio.Footnote ¹⁴⁶ The place of philosophy is also witnessed by a series of publications from the Torrentino press, including various Latin Aristotle commentaries — De sensu by Mainetto Mainetti, De anima by Tignosi — and a translation into Italian, by Varchi, of Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy.

Segni’s audience can be best appreciated by comparing it with that of Tignosi’s Ethics commentary. The medical doctor from Foligno, a teacher of medicine and philosophy in the Florentine studio, wrote his Commenta in Ethicorum libros in Latin ca. 1460. He seems to have had a mixed audience in mind, and he therefore adopted a mixed approach. On the one hand, Tignosi is clearly interested in exploring philosophical problems and clarifying the syllogisms underpinning Aristotle’s arguments. For instance, at several points he discusses the problem of the will and the various faculties of the soul. However, many of Tignosi’s explanations are on a fairly low and elementary level. His audience clearly included neophytes in philosophy, most likely youngish would-be humanists who had little or no formal training in the subject. On the other hand, Tignosi’s commentary also appeals to literary and historical interests. Perhaps in order to sustain his readers’ and listeners’ interest, he quotes from classical poetry and provides both ancient and contemporary historical examples. On this front too, however, the audience’s preparation appears to have been variable. For instance, Tignosi explains simple matters such as the identity of Rhadamanthus as one of the three judges of the underworld, supplying the names of the other two.Footnote ¹⁴⁷ Although Tignosi bases himself on Bruni’s humanist translation, he does not attempt to give his commentary a humanist gloss by discussing textual issues or by writing in classical Latin. Too literary for philosophers, and not literary enough for humanists, this commentary landed Tignosi in hot water: his readers’ reaction forced him to issue a spirited defense.Footnote ¹⁴⁸

On many of these matters Segni offers something similar but also quite different. Like Tignosi, he does not see the need to write in a literary style about a philosophical work. Yet he accepts that a combination of literary and philosophical appeal is desirable and does not reduce either of these elements to its lowest denominator. He follows Argyropoulos’s translation, which is more philosophically rigorous that Bruni’s, and assumes that his audience is able to follow fairly complex philosophical and theological arguments. Again like Tignosi, he appeals to his readers’ literary tastes, through numerous references to Dante (and sometimes Petrarch) and to historical events, including contemporary ones. But Segni does not stop there: he is aware that some manuscripts and translations are more reliable than others. He assumes that his audience will be interested in the value of competing Latin translations and philological points.Footnote ¹⁴⁹ In short, his audience (like that of Gelli and Varchi) is more mature and more highly educated than Tignosi’s. Segni also operates in a context in which philosophy and letters are no longer treated as strictly independent domains. All of these features are certainly tied to the developments in literary and philological studies that had taken place in Florence since the activity of Angelo Poliziano, particularly in the early 1490s, and of his followers, for instance in the Orti Oricellari.Footnote ¹⁵⁰

The potential disparities within both Latin- and Italian-speaking audiences are notable. One often assumes that Latin works appealed to a higher, more elitist, and better-prepared audience than their vernacular counterparts. But these respective readerships were in fact very uneven. Latin works could appeal to all kinds of different readers, depending on the genre and the style in which they were written. Likewise, vernacular works could be embraced by sophisticated readers who were in all likelihood equally capable of following Latin interpretations. In the second half of the sixteenth century, Aristotelian works in the vernacular would enter into the libraries of great Latin interpreters of the Stagirite such as Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605), who owned not only the Latin and Greek versions, but also the vernacular interpretations of the Ethics and Politics by Segni and Scaino.Footnote ¹⁵¹

In conclusion, Segni seems to be an able manipulator of his source materials, adapting them and his presentation to the tastes of his audience. He compares translations, gives at least some attention to the Greek text, and is aware of philological problems that might affect his interpretations. In terms of commentaries he claims to follow Thomas and Acciaiuoli, but is in fact ready to introduce perspectives from other commentators when it suits him. He is not unfamiliar with the medieval tradition or with the classical world and offers a commentary that is directed to a better-educated audience than some of his Latin counterparts. Possibly in a nod to the French tradition initiated by the Latin commentaries of Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples, Segni is not hesitant to make explicit references to religious doctrine, although he does not quote scripture or refer to biblical figures nearly as often as Lefèvre and his disciple Clichtove. In addition, Segni’s commentary includes a notable visual element in his employment of figures and tables. The figures and diagrams are not really original to him, since they go back a long way to the thirteenth-century manuscript tradition. A more innovative element, however, is the presence of tables, which in many ways prefigures elements of Ramist tables later on in the century.Footnote ¹⁵²

Thus, from the philosophical, philological, interpretive, and visual points of view, Segni’s Ethica presents its readers with a number of interesting surprises. The teaching and publishing programs of the Accademia Fiorentina (and of other academies) continue to require investigation, but the importance of the vernacular element within the landscape of Renaissance Aristotelianism is becoming increasingly clear, as this and other recent studies can confirm.Footnote ¹⁵³ Although scholars have done well to emphasize the importance of Renaissance Aristotelianism, this movement was not confined to Latin, university-based works: those written in the vernacular also deserve to be inventoried and studied in detail. More generally, scholars need to pay closer attention to the interactions between vernacular and Latin Aristotelianism. Just as the category of vernacular humanism now makes perfect sense,Footnote ¹⁵⁴ so the label of Aristotelianism will need to be understood anew, as embracing both Latin and vernacular works.