Those who were not in attendance that day and thus could not gaze upon the one speaking and concurrently hear the living voice of the one delivering the oration truly seem to me about to commend many things while they read the text.
Guarino Guarini da Verona, July 1418In a period of months from September 1417 to May 1418, Italian humanists introduced prestigious assemblies to their revival of classicizing panegyric.Footnote 1 At the Council of Constance, on 27 September 1417, Poggio Bracciolini (1380–1459) stepped before the largest assembly ever gathered in the Middle Ages and, in an innovative way, eulogized Cardinal Francesco Zabarella, a leading member of the Italian conciliarist faction. As soon as Poggio sent Guarino da Verona a copy of the oration, by January 1418, Guarino publicized it among his acquaintances and students.Footnote 2 In the church of Santa Maria Celeste in Venice, on 8 May 1418, a student of Guarino, Leonardo Giustiniani (ca. 1386–1446), eulogized Admiral Carlo Zeno before family, Doge, senators, and citizens. Once again, Guarino brought the oration to the attention of figures in his learned circle. By July 1418, Guarino wrote to Alberto della Sale to praise the eulogy and predict positive reactions from those who would read it.Footnote 3
The two eulogies indicate how dramatically funeral speaking had changed under the impulse of humanism. No longer did funeral speakers use a verse from Scripture to preach and prove a point; instead, they used the ethical deeds of their deceased subjects to inspire listeners to emulate heroic civic virtue. Guarino's letter to Alberto della Sale reveals the methods he used to teach Giustiniani the tenets of classical rhetoric. The oration was brilliant in a literal sense: full of light and excellent for its genre (luculenta oratio). In crafting the speech, Giustiniani had first demonstrated an ability to contrive appropriate topics (excogitatio locorum), then to arrange the topics in a most appealing order (pulcherrimum rerum ordinem), moving from a brief biography to Zeno's talent and virtues and finally to the glory he earned by civic service, and thirdly to embellish the speech stylistically with richness (ubertas) and variety (copia). For those not in attendance, Guarino offered a graphic description of Giustiniani's delivery of the speech, impressive for his memorization, cadence, and flow, as though the parts of the speech were links in a seamless chain. Guarino thus covered all five parts of classical rhetoric: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. Overall, the speech was notable for an Attic restraint in its conciseness and an ecphrastic vividness in its language, making it possible even for those who read the speech to visualize Venice's patriotic admiral.
Guarino applauded the transformation of public speaking and promoted both speeches for exemplifying the oratorical avant garde. The ability to deliver a classicizing panegyric represented one concrete benefit of a humanist education. Through Guarino's tutelage, Giustiniani had learned the principles of classical panegyric and practiced them in written compositions called progymnasmata (praeexercitamina) and imaginary speeches called declamations. The young humanist had then debuted his refined skills before a distinguished Venetian audience. But who read the orations of Poggio Bracciolini and Leonardo Giustiniani once they had been published? And how does the nature of that public compare to the public for other funeral orations and related panegyrics of living individuals and cities? This study addresses those questions by investigating information known about the codices and printed editions that preserve complete or partial copies of the two early, influential funeral orations. An examination of the bound volumes that preserve the orations opens a window into the contexts for their consultation.Footnote 4
Evidence for the diffusion of the orations first emerged from a close reading of the Iter Italicum, and the criteria employed here seek to remain faithful to Kristeller's colossal endeavor.Footnote 5 For Kristeller, Renaissance humanist manuscripts were those copied roughly from 1300 to 1600, though he treated both parameters elastically. For this study, the writing of relevant Renaissance manuscripts spans the period from the delivery of the orations (1417/18) to the middle of the seventeenth century. The codices had a life beyond that period as well, when the handwritten book became an object of collecting, an antique. Many of the collectors were generous members of society's elite who bequeathed their manuscripts to public libraries. That allowed Kristeller to find those that were incompletely or never cataloged.
In harmony with the history of the European Renaissance, manuscripts and printed editions overlap as resources for examining the public whom the two orations attracted. From around 1470, readers faced a happy choice not unlike the one they face today. In the Renaissance they could read the oration in a handwritten or printed book; today they can read scholarly and literary texts in printed or digital form. Manuscripts were a means to publish, even if they represented an older technology. The written manuscript remained a worthy competitor to its printed rival, much as in our time predictions of the disappearance of the printed book have proven greatly exaggerated. For a study of audience, manuscripts present advantages. They may include subscriptions with the name of the copyist and the date he completed his work, notes by those who came into possession of the codex, and traceable lines of provenance from owner to owner. The individual case studies and collective statistical data derive from catalogs of manuscripts and early printed editions, not from direct examination of all the codices and books cited. Manuscripts are not always forthcoming, however. More than one hand copied a codex, and more than one codex is a composite work gathering within a single binding once independent fascicles. That creates difficulty in pinning down the date and place of copying. Despite challenges, philologists can still dig through chronological layers of cultural information in the way that archaeologists do. Satisfactory dating of ancient shipwrecks derives from amphora types in use for a century or more. If a manuscript can be dated to the first half of the fifteenth century on the basis of its hands and it contains a speech delivered in 1428, then the range of its dating is narrowed from fifty to twenty years.
Poggio Bracciolini on Francesco Zabarella
There are at least fifty-three codices that preserve Poggio's oration for Zabarella. Kristeller's Iter Italicum cataloged thirty-six codices, while the incipit inventory of Bertalot and Jaitner-Hahner listed fourteen.Footnote 6 In terms of material composition, the vast majority of the codices with Poggio's oration are paper. Five of the codices, at most, are parchment: Siena H.VI.26 with a terminus post quem of 1420,Footnote 7 Balliol 125 copied for William Gray (d. 1478) in Cologne from around 1442 to 1444, San Daniele 97 copied for Guarnerio d'Artegna (d. 1466) by Battista da Cingoli between 1456 and 1461, Urb. lat. 224 copied by Niccolò de’ Ricci for Poggio himself before his death in 1459,Footnote 8 and perhaps Dresden App. 2282 ca. 1463.Footnote 9 One codex (Wrocław R.36) is mixed but predominantly paper, another (Marc. Lat. XI.80 [3057]) is mixed but predominantly parchment, and a third (Salamanca 64) has a parchment flyleaf. The parchment leaf may have once served as a wrapper for the codex or for one of its fascicles or as the original binding.
Just as the vast majority of codices were assembled from paper, so the vast majority were copied in the middle quarters of the fifteenth century. There are approximately forty-two codices that securely date to the fifteenth century, and at least thirty-four of those were finished by 1475.Footnote 10 Among the fifteenth-century codices, the following indicate the date for the completion of a text: Brussels II.1442 in 1427, Ottob. lat. 3021 in 1435, Madrid BN 11557 in 1436, Budapest Clmae 292 in 1445, Pesaro Oliveriana 44 in 1458, Schlägl Cpl. 136 in 1461, Dresden App. 2282 ca. 1463, and Seville 5–5–19 in 1469. Because Kristeller focused on the contents of the manuscripts, he supplied data to determine an initial terminus post quem: the earliest is 1420, there are ten in the second quarter of the fifteenth century, ten in the third quarter, and eight in the fourth quarter. Two manuscripts date to the seventeenth century. Both of those late manuscripts are related to the Zabarella family, and one formed the basis for a rare 1655 printed edition of Poggio's eulogy.Footnote 11 Gerolamo Aucupario printed the first edition of Poggio's Opera at Strasbourg in 1511, and he dedicated the book to Sebastian Brant. Aucupario's edition was reprinted at Paris by Jean Petit around 1512 and again at Strasbourg in 1513 by Thomas Vogler, who added more texts to the repertory. In 1538, Henricus Petrus republished Vogler's expanded collection at Basel. Most of the manuscripts have foliation from the fifteenth century, and the majority range from 51 to 300 folios. Two codices, Eichstätt 218 and Ravenna Classense 117, were paginated recently. A late manuscript now in Washington, DC (Library of Congress Phillipps 5819) has 8003 folios, with, as Kristeller wryly noted, “many numbers skipped.”
The bulk of the manuscripts have no decoration or embellishment. The most luxurious is likely Urb. lat. 224, which has a historiated initial depicting Poggio and marginal headings by his son Iacopo (1442–78). At least seven have a table of contents, and in six cases the table is old (Arundel 70, Milan Ambrosiana Trotti 348, Oxford D'Orville 59, Perugia F. Vecch. H.78, Marc. lat. XI.80 [3057], and Salamanca 64 where the old table is on the parchment flyleaf).Footnote 12 Yale Osborn a.17 has a red title and a coat of arms (fol. 4),Footnote 13 while Madrid BN 11557 and Milan Ambrosiana Trotti 348 have an old binding. Milan Ambrosiana Trotti 348, Ravenna Classense 117, and Schlägl Cpl. 136 have initials. The Schlägl manuscript has one inhabited initial and several smaller initials.Footnote 14 Urb. lat. 1169 and D'Orville 59 have red titles and initials. San Daniele 97 also has red titles and space for three-line initials, but by the time of the codex's copying, Guarnerio d'Artegna may have lost his income as vicar general for Aquileia and could not afford to pay for them.Footnote 15
More codices were written by several hands than were written by a single scribe. Among the codices with several hands, Berlin Lat. fol. 557 has a text copied by Daniel Furlanus, Arundel 70 has many works copied by Hans Pirckheimer (ca. 1415–92),Footnote 16 and Seville 5–5–19 has portions written at Augsburg by the notary Stephanus Marchfart, by Simon Enthofer, and by Ulrich Gossembrot, secretary in the imperial chancery under Johannes Roth. Hernando Colón found and purchased the Seville codex on a trip through Germany in 1531.Footnote 17 The diocesan priest Wenceslaus de Glacz copied Schlägl Cpl. 136 at Prague in 1461, and the Bohemian humanist Johannes von Rabenstein (1437–73) then made notes in the codex.Footnote 18 After Battista da Cingoli finished copying San Daniele 97 in antiqua, Guarnerio d'Artegna had to make corrections, especially for spelling errors. Iacopo Bracciolini added headings in the margin of the parchment codex copied in antiqua by Nicolaus Riccius, likely in the Florentine shop of Vespasiano da Bisticci. Petrus de Traiecto, who worked in the shop of Vespasiano, copied Francesco Griffolini's Latin translations of the letters of Ps.-Phalaris onto paper quinternions of Wrocław R.36.Footnote 19 Eichstätt 218 has, among its several fascicles, texts copied by the priest Johannes von Eyb (d. 1468) while a law student in Padua and by his humanist cousin Albrecht von Eyb in Germany. The fascicle with sermons of Zabarella and Poggio's oration for the prelate was traced to Padua and copied around 1426.Footnote 20 Single scribes have also been identified. Agostino Santucci (1393–1468) began to compile texts for Pesaro Oliveriana 44 at Padua from 1420–25,Footnote 21 Ludolphus de Frisia wrote portions of Brussels II.1442 while studying law in 1427 at the University of Pavia,Footnote 22 and Venceslaus de Alamania Alta finished writing Ottob. lat. 3021 in 1435.Footnote 23
Over ninety percent of the codices whose place of writing is known come from Italy, though they were at times copied by non-Italians, as Ludolphus de Frisia, Venceslaus de Alamania Alta, and Hans Pirckheimer demonstrate. A codex likely copied by a Spanish student at the Collegio di Spagna in Bologna in 1436, Madrid BN 11557, supplies clues to the house in which it was written: “Johannes Jo.” and a monogram “A.S.Y.R.A.X.” A second subscription copied by the prior of the convent of Santiago de Uclés late in the eighteenth century suggests that the Johannes in question is Master Juan Butiyer. In the sixteenth century, the codex passed to Martín Pérez de Ayala (1504–66), a professor of theology with humanist interests at the University of Granada and later a bishop in three Spanish dioceses.Footnote 24 The Dutch scribe Theodericus Werken de Abbenbroeck may have copied for William Gray a parchment manuscript with the oration while Gray was studying in Cologne (ca. 1442–44).Footnote 25 Scribes at times only identify themselves by their initials, for example, “A. R.” in Gotha Chart. B.61 from ca. 1467,Footnote 26 and “Chr. V.” on the flyleaves of Marc. lat. XI.59 (4152).Footnote 27
Twenty-six of the codices are today preserved in Italian libraries or the Vatican library, while twenty-seven are outside Italy, with the largest concentration in Germany (ten). Among known owners of a codex from the Renaissance era, Italians and then Germans again predominate. Tabaleno (“Tabelione”) di Marco di Ser Nicollino da Rimini and perhaps a priest or notary named Baptista owned Ravenna Classense 117 in the mid-fifteenth century,Footnote 28 while Guarnerio d'Artegna had his San Daniele codex copied while serving as parish priest there and Cesare Dultone da Padova, OFM, owned Yale Osborn a.17 in 1556.Footnote 29 In the sixteenth or early seventeenth century, Horatius Sanctinus left a possessor's note in D'Orville 59.Footnote 30 A distinctive group of letters attributed to Agnelius Salernitanus (Aniello Salernitano), aspiring humanist of the mid-fifteenth century from the kingdom of Naples, was bound together with excerpts from Poggio's eulogy and other texts into a composite codex now in the Vatican. The letters in the second fascicle of the codex and their author were not terribly erudite: Aniello may have studied the humanities in order to teach them locally, he may simply have been a fan of the movement attempting to convince other young people to study them, or he may have used the codex to practice his skills by writing imaginary letters. The first fascicle of the codex with the fragmentary copy of Poggio's speech probably belonged to the Salernitan physician Vinciguerra Issapica or someone from his family. A faded coat of arms still visible on the first folio matches that on the tomb of Polissena Issapica in Salerno.Footnote 31
Some codices or individual fascicles quickly became family journals or heirlooms. As early as 1420 in Padua, Agostino Santucci began to enter rhetorical texts in his personal codex (Oliveriana 44), and Giovanni Pontano left to his daughter Eugenia a codex now in the Vatican Library.Footnote 32 German students studying at Italian universities have previously been identified as key transmitters of humanist learning north of the Alps. Venceslaus de Alamania Alta and Hans Pirckheimer assembled tomes for their studies that have a relationship to other codices.Footnote 33 The humanist Johannes von Rabenstein made notes in a codex copied at Prague by Wenceslaus de Glacz. Marc. lat. XI.80 (3057) has been characterized in its origins as a textbook for study purposes.Footnote 34 Famous Renaissance collectors of codices who had a copy of Poggio's oration include the church prelates Bishop William Gray (ca. 1414–78), Cardinal Domenico Grimani (1461–1523),Footnote 35 and Cardinal Angelo Colocci (1474–1549). Colocci inherited the property of Pomponio Leto in Rome and Leto's custom of hosting humanist discussions in the gardens.
Kristeller once proposed a norm for determining the origin of humanist miscellanies. In the absence of explicit attribution, one could posit that the owner of the codex was the author of the codex's rarest texts.Footnote 36 Applying that norm, checking the Iter Italicum's indices for frequency of appearance, and using other clues available, here are possible owners of some codices or of portions of a composite codex:
Owners who obtained codices after 1600 are indicated at times by the library fondi: Chigi (traced remotely to Agostino Chigi, 1465–1520, and proximately to Cardinal Fabio Chigi, later Pope Alexander VII, 1655–67), Ottoboni (whose first nucleus came from Marcello Cervini, d. 1555, and whose holdings were consolidated by Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, d. 1691), Arundel (Thomas Howard, 1585–1646, earl of Arundel whose collection of books and manuscripts included a large lot from the Pirckheimer library),Footnote 41 D'Orville (Jacques Philippe D'Orville, 1696–1751, the Dutch professor of History, Eloquence, and Greek at the University of Amsterdam),Footnote 42 Magliabecchiano Strozzi (Senator Carlo Strozzi, 1587–1670, whose family library was ceded after the death of all male heirs to Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo and then divided between the Fondo Magliabecchiano of the Biblioteca Nazionale and the Fondo Strozziano of the Biblioteca Laurenziana),Footnote 43 Alfter (Bartholomäus Joseph Blasius Alfter, 1729–1808, Catholic theologian and historian whose extensive collection on the history of his hometown of Cologne was divided between the archives there and the state archives in Darmstadt),Footnote 44 and Scioppiano (Kaspar Schoppe, 1576–1649, papal diplomat and Machiavelli scholar whose manuscripts passed to Giovanni Michele Pierucci and his descendants and finally to the Laurenziana in 1816). From the late eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, affluent owners included Giacomo Nani (1725–97) in Venice, Antonio Piazza (1772–1844) in Padua, Marchese Lodovico Trotti-Bentivoglio (1829–1914) and his wife Maria in Milan, James Marshall Osborn (1906–76) in New Haven, and Thomas Phillipps (1792–1872), self-described “Vellomaniac” whose monster collection of over 60,000 manuscripts once had five of the fifty-three known manuscripts.Footnote 45 The great ecclesiastical library of the Camaldolese monks in the Veneto, San Michele di Murano, had a manuscript with the oration, and, appropriately enough, the Zabarella family at one time owned two codices with the eulogy.
From the perspective of social standing, there are very few luxury manuscripts commissioned by wealthy Renaissance patrons. Four of the manuscripts are certainly parchment. Those four and at least two others were likely written by a professional scribe. Another codex (Yale Osborn a.17) has a coat of arms. From the perspective of contents, no manuscript has Poggio's eulogy as its sole text. Nine of the manuscripts may be labeled homogeneous: seven have only works of PoggioFootnote 46 and two have works related to the Zabarella family. The preponderance of manuscripts are the ubiquitous Renaissance miscellanies, for which scholars of late have proposed sub-types such as humanist miscellanies, Gothic miscellanies, and university miscellanies.Footnote 47 Using funeral orations in the miscellanies as an initial clue, one group has eulogies primarily from a Venetian and Paduan context — Poggio had described Zabarella at Constance as civis Paduanus and both Gasparino Barzizza and Guarino likely introduced their students to the oration as a model of sound rhetorical practice.Footnote 48 Siena H.VI.26, one of the four parchment codices, has seven funeral orations, including a rare oration by the Franciscan Ludovico da Pirano (ca. 1383–after 4 Nov. 1446) on Francesco Corner, which may indicate Ludovico's involvement in assembling the codex. It was surely owned by a fellow Franciscan, Antonius Burgundus, and remained in the possession of the Franciscans in Ferrara into the eighteenth century.Footnote 49 A second cluster of miscellanies combines works from the Veneto and works from Florence and may reflect shared concerns for Church reform and republican ideology. At least eight codices, finally, reflect a Florentine and Tuscan environment that helped to shape their contents. Most miscellanies share common features; they were written on paper in non-formal scripts over a period of years by more than one scribe. Miscellanies were often working codices, begun during one's years of studies and consulted thereafter for models of appropriate style and content. Codex Magl. Strozzi VIII.1435, written by several hands and completed early in the sixteenth century, has, in addition to a strong Florentine cluster consisting of the six funeral orations by Poggio, Bruni's oration on Nanni Strozzi, Alamanno Rinuccini's oration on Matteo Palmieri, and Cristoforo Landino's oration on Donato Acciaiuoli, the most copied of all Italian Renaissance funeral orations, that by Leonardo Giustiniani for the Venetian Carlo Zeno.Footnote 50
Leonardo Giustiniani on Carlo Zeno
There are at least 115 manuscripts with Giustiniani's eulogy for the Venetian admiral. Kristeller's Iter Italicum cataloged ninety-two, while the incipit inventory of Bertalot and Jaitner-Hahner listed fifty-one.Footnote 51 The wide circulation of the oration is likewise indicated by its printing at least nineteen times, beginning in the fifteenth-century with the opera of Leonardo Giustiniani's son Bernardo and the compendium of orations edited by the Britannico brothers. The Dominicans Gregorio and Benedetto Britannico prepared that collection of occasional orations for the press that their brothers Angelo and Giacomo operated in Brescia.Footnote 52
The vast majority of the codices are once again composed of paper. Seven or eight parchment codices are known: three that also have Poggio's oration (San Daniele 97, Siena H.VI.26, perhaps Dresden App. 2282) as well as BL Cotton Tiberius B.VI written by an English hand, Vat. lat. 1541, Glasgow Hunter 301 (U.6.19) conserving various writings of Giustiniani and perhaps written at Florence,Footnote 53 Ambrosiana Sussidio H 52 once owned by Giovanni Melzi, and Padua Seminario 46, which belonged to Carlo Zeno's grandson, Iacopo, bishop of Padua and author of the biography of his grandfather that occupies most of the luxury manuscript.Footnote 54 There are at least twelve codices that mix elements of paper and parchment (for example, Laurenziana Ashb. 278 has two parchment flyleaves, BNCF Naz. II.VIII.129 has the rear cover in parchment, Foligno Jacobilli C.IV.10 had two parchment leaves now preserved separately, Ambrosiana C 141 inf. has two parchment folios at the beginning and a coat of arms, Munich Clm 522 has a final parchment folio, Pisa Santa Caterina 37 has parchment flyleaves, Udine Arcivescovile 49 has paper and parchment fascicles from the fifteenth and twelfth centuries).Footnote 55 Harley 2268 wins the prize for most unusual combination of parchment and paper: “the outer folios of quires 1–12 are parchment, as are also the middle folios of quires 1–4, 11, 12, and the outer and middle folios of quires 22–27.”Footnote 56
The bulk of the codices (103) again come from the fifteenth century or the transitional years from the fifteenth to the sixteenth century. The rare later manuscripts are often composite codices with fascicles from the fifteenth and succeeding centuries. Within a generation of its delivery at Venice, the oration was studied and taught in various parts of the peninsula. Several fifteenth-century manuscripts supply a date for the writing of a text: Padua Univ. 541 in 1434, Ottob. lat. 3021 and Riccardiana Ricc. 421 in 1435, Viterbo Capitolare 13 in 1441, BNCF Rossi-Cassigoli 372 at Rome in 1446, Munich Clm 78 in 1451–52 and additions to 1481, Marciana Zan. lat. 496 (1688),Footnote 57 Glasgow Hunter 301 (U.6.19) and Palat. lat. 1592 in 1453, Elbłag Miejska Q.78 in 1455 (now lost), Vat. lat. 1541 and St. Pölten 63 in 1456, Pesaro Oliveriana 44 in 1458, Marc. lat. XI.100 (3938) in 1459, Munich Clm 5335 in 1460, Pisa Santa Caterina 37 in 1461 and additions in 1471, Dresden App. 2282 and Venice Archivio di Stato Storia ven. 159 in 1463, Ottob. lat. 1184 in 1467, Berlin Lat. octavo 148 in 1470,Footnote 58 Munich Clm 76 and Vienna Lat. 3315 in 1471, and Giustiniani-Recanati V.13 (98) in 1489.
A composite codex in Basel has one fascicle with a terminus post quem of 1 October 1411, has other fascicles written by several German hands, and has the Giustiniani oration in a fascicle written in antiqua, in all likelihood by a professional scribe. The codex is said to be of German origin. From 1447–52, the Italian physician Enrico Amici (d. 1471), then practicing in Basel, owned the codex; he may have commissioned an Italian scribe to write the fascicle in antiqua.Footnote 59 Another composite codex now in Oxford, Bywater 38, belonged originally to Francesco Barbaro, who late in life bound together his notebooks, including one with Guarino's autograph translation of Plutarch's Dion that the master gave his student in 1414 (fols. 2–27v). Working from 1452 to 1454, Barbaro added a table of contents to the collection (fol. 1v). All the hands that contributed to the codex are Italian, most are Humanist, a few are Gothic, and a few imitate Guarino's style of writing. The Giustiniani oration was copied by Hand N.Footnote 60
There are twenty-two manuscripts with a terminus post quem in the second quarter of the fifteenth century, sixteen manuscripts with a terminus post quem in the third quarter of the fifteenth century, and five manuscripts with a terminus post quem in the last quarter of that century. The numerous editions of the Britannico collection, Sermones funebres necnon nuptiales, may have curtailed copying by hand. There are two instances of handwritten and printed texts bound together in the same volume (Blickling Hall 6844, Trier Incunabel 1219).
Only three codices are paginated, and one codex (Marc. lat. XI.9) combines foliation (56 folios) and pagination (375 pages). In the last century, Ludwig Bertalot added foliation in pencil to Parma Palat. 262. Fully seventy-two of the codices range in number of folios from 51–300: fourteen have 51–100, nineteen have 101–50, eighteen have 151–200, twelve have 201–50, and nine have 251–300. There is a significant drop-off for longer codices (seven) and for codices with less than fifty folios (four). The shortest codex of all, still in the family, is Venice Giustiniani-Recanati V.13 (98), which has two orations on six unnumbered folios. Johannes Antonius Urbinas, a citizen of Padua, finished copying that codex on 5 January 1489.Footnote 61
Once again, few of the manuscripts have any decoration, suggesting that the majority were working codices for students and not luxury codices for libraries. Most have several hands, indicating that the codices remained useful to a variety of persons for a period of years. Berlin Lat. quarto 507, written in northern Italy in the fifteenth century by a Humanist cursive hand, has been characterized as a scholar's copy.Footnote 62 At least twelve manuscripts have an old table of contents (Augsburg II.lat.1.quarto.33, Ferrara II.135, BL Harley 2268, BL Cotton Tiberius B.VI, Milan Ambrosiana Sussidio H 52, Oxford Bywater 38, Pisa Santa Caterina 37, Salamanca 64 on a parchment flyleaf, Trier 1879/74, Udine Arcivescovile 70, Regin. lat. 1583, Venice Correr Morosini-Grimani 248, and perhaps Vallicelliana F.20). Sixteen codices have one or more initials, at times of a simple sort (for example, Brescia Querin. B.VI.4, Gotha Chart. B.61, BL Add. 11760, BL Add. 15974, BL Cotton Tiberius B.VI, Lucca Statale 1436, Milan Ambrosiana D 93 sup., Padua Seminario 46, BAV Vat. lat. 2936, and Munich Clm 5335 in red, while BAV Palat. lat. 1592 and Arundel 70 alternate red and blue). The most elaborate are Udine Arcivescovile 49, which has historiated and smaller red and blue initials, Munich Clm 522, which has a historiated initial and others in color, Vat. lat. 1541, which has one initial in gold with white vine-stem border, and Correr Morosini-Grimani 248, which has one in the Florentine style. Udine Arcivescovile 49, BL Cotton Tiberius B.VI, San Daniele 97, Trent Capitolare 42, and the Castiglioni-Cibrario codex (now lost) have titles in red or colored ink, while Berlin Lat. quarto 507 has its old binding.
Codices known to be written by several hands outnumber those written by one hand by a margin of over 2:1. Scribes or scholars who contributed to a manuscript with several hands include Guarino, Rinuccio Aretino, Guarnerio d'Artegna, Battista da Cingoli, Antonio Delani d'Alba and Gabriel de Alexandris de Pergamo,Footnote 63 Guillelmus Rustichellus a Pisis,Footnote 64 Daniel Furlanus,Footnote 65 Gabriel de Busco, Johannes Heller (ca. 1414–78),Footnote 66 Giovanni Bernardo Dalle Valli and Hartmann Schedel (1440–1514),Footnote 67 Johannes Maria de Berneriis,Footnote 68 Benedetto Ovetari, Johannes Tröster,Footnote 69 Hans Pirckheimer, Hartmann Schedel again and perhaps his brother Hermann (1410–85),Footnote 70 Ambrosius Alantsee,Footnote 71 and Luca Fabiani. Fabiani was a copyist and secretary for Marsilio Ficino, who owned and annotated a composite codex now in Rome. Ficino showed greater interest in the manuscript's philosophical and esoteric texts than its rhetorical ones.Footnote 72
Scribes who copied an entire codex include Agostino Santucci and Venceslaus de Alamania Alta for manuscripts that also have Poggio's oration. Scholars have identified the hands of Petrus Lunensis,Footnote 73 Girolamo da Pistoia,Footnote 74 Paulus Verceligena,Footnote 75 Johannes Divitis,Footnote 76 Bartholomaeus Fabius Mutinensis in 1463,Footnote 77 Tommaso Baldinotti,Footnote 78 and Johannes Antonius Urbinas. The primary scribe of Casanatense 868, writing in Semigothic script, seemed a true fan of the oratory of Guarino, copying the Giustiniani oration with fifteen or more of Guarino and attributing to Guarino Giustiniani's funeral oration for Giorgio Loredan. A scribe named Ludovico copied into fascicles of a composite Vatican codex a miscellany that includes a wedding oration by Filippo Podocataro. The helpful Ludovico advised readers he did the copying and Filippo the composing. The Podocataro brothers were born in Cyprus, studied at Guarino's school in Ferrara, and earned degrees at the University of Padua. Filippo conducted important embassies for Crete, while Ludovico became physician to the pope and a cardinal in Rome.Footnote 79 A few scribes only supply their initials: “A. L.” around 1446,Footnote 80 “Tho. G. S.” working from 1461 to 1471 in Pisa,Footnote 81 “Io. Ny.” in 1471,Footnote 82 the professional scribe “S. M.” working in Florence at the end of the fifteenth century,Footnote 83 the professional scribe “M. C.,”Footnote 84 and the mysterious “Iop R.” who continued to copy texts well after the death of the less mysterious Giobbe Resta.Footnote 85
A university student at Pavia, who called himself Brangotus, parodied the formality of notarial subscriptions when he added his own satiric version to a Marciana codex during the celebration of Carnival in 1435. The subscription accompanies a ribald comedy lampooning elaborate university graduation and poet laureate rituals, Master Chef Zaninus, that Ugolino Pisani wrote and staged for the pre-Lenten festivities. Pisani may also be the author of the subscription since he more than once expressed his contempt for the arrogance of the faculty at Pavia.Footnote 86
At least forty-seven codices were written in Italy, while seven are known to have been written in other places. At least fourteen foreigners copied a manuscript while in Italy, generally for university or rhetorical studies. Trier 1879/74 has German handwriting on Italian paper. Today, there are fifty-five manuscripts with the oration in Italian libraries, fourteen in the Vatican Library, and forty-six in non-Italian libraries. Among Italian cities, Venice has twelve manuscript copies, Florence has seven, and Milan has six. Among non-Italian libraries, eighteen are located in Germany, nine in Great Britain, and six in Austria. The majority of those known to have owned a codex with Giustiniani's speech between the years 1418 and 1650 were Italian. And the known owners who were students of rhetoric outnumber the collectors of manuscript books. Physical evidence of luxury production includes the seven parchment codices, the six codices with a coat of arms, and the codices written by a professional scribe, which number between eleven and fifteen.
Given that Giustiniani's speech emphasized ideals of Venetian patriotism and presented Zeno as a humane military leader, several civil servants owned a copy. The papal secretaries Rinuccio Aretino and Girolamo da Pistoia helped to copy their manuscripts, and Rinuccio tapped his secretarial pool to assist him.Footnote 87 Benedetto Ovetari da Vicenza had his codex with him when he served as secretary to the king of Cyprus.Footnote 88 Chancellors like Petrus Lunensis and Giacomo Corradetti, following the model set by Coluccio Salutati, made humanist studies a tool for effective diplomacy.Footnote 89 Together with his circle of friends, Giovanni Melzi had a codex with the speech while he was active in politics in Sforza Milan. Congenial and collective ownership also characterize a codex of Archangelus and his friends (aficionados of Greek) now in the Vatican. The practice of shared ownership typified the scriptorium of Bartolomeo Fonzio and goes back at least to Leonardo Giustiniani himself. All were inspired by the Greek adage that Erasmus awarded first position in his collection: “all possessions are common to friends.”Footnote 90 While podestà at Verona from 1431–38, Antonio Delani could consult his humanist miscellany, which likely served an analogous purpose to handbooks for the podestà from the fourteenth century. Between 1433 and 1435, Guillelmus Rustichellus a Pisis helped copy a codex while working in Lucca. Using the services of a notary from Pisa, Piero di Ser Gerardo del Pitta, an unnamed owner sold the codex in 1466 to another Pisan notary, Piero Roncioni.Footnote 91 The fairly rapid sale, with guarantees that the seller's name remain anonymous, may indicate that a codex brought needed revenue to an embarrassed owner strapped for cash or outlived its usefulness or found itself in the hands of an owner in poor health.
Members of the clergy and religious orders are well represented among owners of codices with Giustiniani's oration. By 1481, Pope Sixtus IV had acquired for the pope's library one of the luxury codices, ornamented with a gilded initial in a white vine-stem border (fol. 1).Footnote 92 A luxury codex in the pope's library makes sense, but it seems less decorous that the Franciscan friar Antonius Burgundus owned a parchment codex with the speech.Footnote 93 Antonius's fellow Franciscan, Giacomo della Marca (1393–1476), procured a codex with the oration for his new library at the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Monteprandone. In 1462, out of concern for the protection of his books, Giacomo obtained a bull from Pius II punishing by excommunication anyone who borrowed a book and did not return it.Footnote 94 As a popular orator, the Dominican Gioacchino Castiglioni (d. ca. 1472) kept Giustiniani's oration among his own papers as a guide to preparing the funeral orations he was frequently asked to deliver. When Castiglioni died unexpectedly, his fellow Dominicans, Paolo Folperti da Pavia and Graziadio Crotti da Cremona (d. 1517), collected his orations and letters, some on scraps of paper (super cedulas), and copied them into two codices that were placed in the libraries of the Dominican convents of Chieri and Asti. Both manuscripts were still in those convents when Tommaso Verani published extensive excerpts from them in 1790.Footnote 95 The Benedictine abbey of Sts. Eucharius and Matthias owned Trier 1879/74, and the monks of Camaldoli had copies at their monastery of San Michele di Murano. The Augustinian canons are represented by individual members such as Gabriel de BuscoFootnote 96 and Michele Orsini, who later became a bishop,Footnote 97 and by the monastery of St. Pölten in Austria. The Jesuits came into the possession of codices for the libraries of their colleges where humanist writings may have assisted the teaching of Latin and rhetoric.Footnote 98 The Carmelite Battista Panetti likely obtained his codex with Giustiniani's eulogy from Ludovico Carbone, leading humanist in Ferrara and official orator for the duke. By collecting humanist works, Panetti transformed his convent library of San Paolo in Ferrara and saved precious codices from loss.Footnote 99
The diocesan clergy of the Renaissance collected Giustiniani codices as well. Guarnerio d'Artegna had Battista da Cingoli make him a better copy of the oration from one that Guarnerio had another scribe copy, and then Guarnerio had to go over the better version to correct it.Footnote 100 The Pistoian priest and poet Tommaso Baldinotti (1451–1511) participated in the circle of scholars patronized by Lorenzo de’ Medici until Baldinotti's father and brother became involved in a plot to murder Lorenzo in 1485. He wrote vernacular and Latin elegies, and autographs like Corsini 583 betray his clear Humanist cursive hand.Footnote 101 The German priest Johannes Heller began collecting Italian humanist texts during his studies in Padua (1443–50) and was among the first to circulate them in Germany. Heller gave to the cathedral of Freising his miscellany with the Giustiniani oration, Munich Clm 6721.Footnote 102 The German humanist Johannes Tröster (d. 1487) likely gave his codex to the Parish Church of St. Ulrich adjacent to the Cathedral of Regensburg, and the codex later passed to the monastery of St. Pölten (cod. 63). Tröster joined the humanist circle of Enea Silvio Piccolomini and later held benefices in the dioceses of Mattsee and Regensburg. In his travels to Italy, he collected manuscripts for his own library, some of which he gave away in 1481 to Johannes Pirckheimer.Footnote 103
Bishops functioned as potential channels of humanist currents to areas of northern Europe. The English bishop Thomas Bekynton (1390?–1465) may have used his spare time at the Council of Basel to update his library. A Cotton manuscript may reflect Bekynton's efforts to collect and follow classical models for the writing of public letters. It has materials related to public correspondence (fols. 5–135), a humanist miscellany copied largely from Harley 2268 and including Giustiniani's oration (fols. 135v–96), and an old table of contents (fols. 1–4). Aggressively advancing his career, Bekynton (Beckington) served as chancellor to Duke Humfrey, secretary to King Henry VI, and bishop of Bath and Wells (1443–65). He also sought to improve educational standards among the clergy by endowing colleges for their instruction.Footnote 104 From his castle of Chiemsee in Salzburg, Bishop Bernhard von Kraiburg (1412–77) helped to make Germany the richest repository of humanist texts outside Italy, including a miscellany with Giustiniani's oration now in Munich (Clm 5335).Footnote 105 Kort Rogge (Conradus Roggo, ca. 1420–1501) was born in Stockholm and studied at the University of Perugia (1455–60) where he obtained a manuscript with humanist texts such as Giustiniani's eulogy. He later served as bishop of Strängnäs (1479–1501), and he left his codices to his cathedral library. It seems fitting that the book, which traveled from Perugia to Sweden, at some point in its history suffered water damage.Footnote 106 Fabrizio Marliani (1440–1508), bishop of Tortona and Piacenza and courtier to the Sforza, let Tristano Calco consult his manuscript with the speech to assist Calco's historical research.Footnote 107 The cardinals who collected a codex for their libraries — Domenico Capranica,Footnote 108 Bessarion, Domenico Grimani, Angelo Colocci, Guglielmo Sirleto, Ascanio Colonna — seem imitators of the pope and precursors of the monster collectors from the eighteenth century on. They have a secular counterpart in the businessman turned courtier Hans Jakob Fugger.
Marsilio Ficino was ordained to the priesthood at age forty and spent much of his life translating and commenting on the works of Plato, Plotinus, and the Hermetic corpus. As such, he bridges from ecclesiastical owners of the manuscripts to the humanists and students who played a role in conserving Giustiniani's speech. A humanist is credited with collecting Hamburg Philol. 325a (quarto), and the Milanese humanist Lancino Curti (ca. 1460–1512) owned a miscellany centuries before it emigrated to America with the help of Ludwig Bertalot.Footnote 109 Giustiniani's oration aptly found a place among the texts in manuscripts owned by the Venetian scholars Marino Sanudo il Giovane (1466–1536) and Gian Vincenzo Pinelli (1535–1601). Sanudo's codex, Venice Correr Morosini-Grimani 248, was written in antiqua and has an initial in the Florentine style. Pinelli's codices, Milan Ambrosiana D 39 sup. and N 340 sup., survived possible pilfering by one of his servants, possible confiscation by the Venetian government, jettison by pirates, sale at auction pitting the Jesuits against Cardinal Federico Borromeo, and Borromeo's subsequent winnowing of his newly acquired books.Footnote 110
From the beginning, students played the key role in conserving the text of the speech. Francesco Barbaro, student of Guarino in Venice, had the speech of his fellow student in one of his prized notebooks that he consulted throughout his life and bound together at life's end. Connections to the pedagogy of Guarino and Barzizza sustain the diffusion of the speech throughout the fifteenth century. At Padua in the 1420s, Agostino Santucci began collecting rhetorical exemplars that included Giustiniani's eulogy. The codex that Venceslaus de Alamania Alta put together at Padua supplied a model for at least two other codices. Likewise, the texts that Johannes Heller amassed at Padua toward mid-century have ties to several other codices, and the Paduan citizen Johannes Antonius Urbinas made a personal copy in 1489. Another scholar proud to hail from the Veneto, Iampetrus Venetus, owned a codex now in Paris.Footnote 111 In those same years, a similar well-endowed textbook served the needs of students like Hans Pirckheimer, who learned rhetoric in Bologna from Guarino's student, Giovanni Lamola, and also studied at the University of Padua. The Paduan scriptorium of Lauro Palazzolo (ca. 1410–64) churned out two massive miscellanies with many of the same texts that Pirckheimer collected.Footnote 112 In addition to the university towns of Padua and Bologna, Perugia and Pavia also produced such miscellanies. At Pavia, the wily young Brangotus parodied the formulae of notaries, and Johannes Maria de Berneriis copied many texts also found in the Codex Bollea, split into two pieces and sold by Bertalot before the outbreak of World War II.Footnote 113 Foreign universities profited as well. Paulus Verceligena may have taken a miscellany to Poland, and a miscellany (Harley 2268) that has rhetorical texts related to Padua and Bologna, some of which were later copied into a Cottonian codex, ended up in the library of St. Mary's monastery at York and then in the library of the Cambridge Master Orwyll.Footnote 114
Using Kristeller's norm of a very rare text as a clue to the genesis of a miscellany, here are a few possibilities:
The appetite among society's elite for collecting humanist miscellanies is reflected in late ownership. Individual owners after 1650 include John Covel (1638–1722) who spent a number of years in Constantinople and environs, served as Master of Christ's College Cambridge beginning in 1688, and sold his manuscripts in 1716 to Edward Harley (1689–1741), second earl of Oxford whose heirs sold the manuscripts to the nation in 1753,Footnote 125 Giambattista Recanati (1687–1735), who gave most of his manuscripts, including some from the Gonzaga family, to the Marciana in 1734,Footnote 126 Cardinal Giuseppe Renato Imperiali (1651–1737),Footnote 127 Imperiali's librarian Giusto Fontanini, titular archbishop of Ancyra (1666–1736),Footnote 128 Apostolo Zeno (1668–1750), who financed his historical studies by selling his poetry and libretti,Footnote 129 Iacopo Morelli (1745–1819), a priest who became librarian of the Marciana in 1778 and left his books and manuscripts to the library,Footnote 130 Carlo Morbio a portion of whose manuscripts were auctioned off after his death in 1881, and the Counts Onigo of Treviso whose codex was once thought lost but actually belongs to the Bibl. Capitolare of Treviso (I.177).Footnote 131 The huge collection of Thomas Phillipps (1792–1872) is again well represented by multiple codices, and American collectors such as Dean P. Lockwood and Phyllis Goodhart Gordan (d. 1994) brought codices with the speech across the Atlantic.Footnote 132
An even greater number of indicative fondi find a place on the Giustiniani list: Magliabecchiano Strozzi VIII.1435, also conserving Bruni's oration on Nanni degli Strozzi and belonging to the Strozzi family library expanded by Senator Carlo Strozzi and ceded in 1786 to Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo by Maria Caterina Strozzi after the death of all male Strozzi heirs, a Harburg Castle manuscript from the former residence of the Oettingen-Wallerstein princes, a Blickling Hall codex in the stately home rebuilt by Sir Henry Hobart after he had bought the property from the heirs of the Boleyn family in 1616,Footnote 133 Laurenziana Ashburnham 278 at one time owned by Marchese Paolino Gianfilippi (no. 400) and bought in 1847 by Lord Bertram (1797–1878), fourth earl of Ashburnham,Footnote 134 BNCF Rossi-Cassigoli 372 obtained by the library in 1894 four years after the death of the Pistoian collector Filippo Rossi Cassigoli (1835–90),Footnote 135 Glasgow Hunter 301 (U.6.19) bequeathed in 1783 by the anatomist and Physician Extraordinary to Queen Charlotte, William Hunter (1718–83),Footnote 136 BL Arundel 70 given by Henry Howard, the duke of Norfolk, to the Royal Society in 1667 and sold to the British Museum in 1831, BL Cotton Tiberius B.VI from the manuscripts collected by Robert Bruce Cotton (1571–1631), given to the nation by his grandson in 1700 and damaged with others in a 1731 fire, and two codices from the Harley fondo of the British Library, collected by Robert (d. 1724) and Edward Harley (d. 1741) and sold to Parliament in 1753. There is a codex from the collection of Antonio Piazza in Padua, a codex from the Bourbon collection in Parma, and a codex from the Corsini family library in Rome that numbered Cardinal Filippo Gualtieri among its benefactors and Neri Corsini as its founder in 1754.
Vatican fondi are represented by codices from the Palace Library of Heidelberg that Maximilian of Bavaria presented to the popes in 1623 in exchange for subsidies in his war against the Protestants, the Royal Library of Christina of Sweden (1626–89) whose executors sold it to the Vatican in 1690,Footnote 137 the Ottoboni library acquired by Benedict XIV in 1748,Footnote 138 the collection of the Borghese princes acquired in 1891 primarily to save the books originally from the papal library in Avignon, the library of Cavalier Giovan Francesco De Rossi that the Jesuits safeguarded in the name of the Austrian emperor until they deposited the collection in the library in 1921, and the Chigi library received as a gift from the Italian government in December 1922. Finally, there are important Venetian libraries whose fondi are represented: a codex from the collection that Emmanuele Antonio Cicogna (1789–1868) donated to the Venetian city government in 1865 in exchange for a pension for his sisters and then deposited in the Museo Civico Correr,Footnote 139 another in the same library from the collection of the Morosini-Grimani family,Footnote 140 and a codex still in the hands of the Giustiniani-Recanati family that recently belonged to Alvise Giustinian.Footnote 141
A few of the codices have contents that can be considered homogeneous. Padua Seminario 46, Munich Staatsbibl. Clm 76, Venice Zan. lat. 408 (2029), and Vienna Lat. 3315 all have a sylloge of works on Carlo Zeno that feature Iacopo Zeno's biography of his grandfather. The dedication copy for Pope Pius II, now Yale Beinecke cod. 2, had only the biography and omitted Giustiniani's oration and two letters that complete the compilation.Footnote 142 Venice Giustiniani-Recanati V.13 has just two orations and reflects interest by descendants in Leonardo Giustiniani as an author. Glasgow Hunter 301 has only Giustiniani's oration and his translations from Greek. The lost Milanese codex once in the possession of Luigi Cibrario and then the Archivio di Stato in Milan was copied from the works of Gioacchino Castiglioni found among his personal papers after his sudden death. The manuscript had over twenty funeral orations by Castiglioni, many of which are known only from later cataloging of the codex.
The vast majority of the manuscripts are humanist miscellanies, in no way homogeneous from the point of view of contents but homogeneous as educational textbooks, bringing together paradigms of persuasive letter writing and speech making. As one might expect for a famous speech on a Venetian subject, Giustiniani's oration is frequently paired with other funeral orations from Venice and Padua. The codices combine Giustiniani's eulogy with those of Andrea Giuliano for Chrysoloras, Pietro Donato for Zabarella, Gasparino Barzizza for Iacopo da Forlì, and George of Trebizond for Fantino Michiel. The pattern holds for Veneto speeches in manuscripts that mix Venetian and Florentine models. Giuliano's eulogy is included most consistently, followed by Donato's for Zabarella, Barzizza's for Iacopo, and Francesco Barbaro's panegyric for Alberto Guidalotti. Collectors commonly added Leonardo Bruni's oration for Otto de’ Cavalcanti and Poggio's oration for Zabarella. The miscellanies with a more restrictive, Florentine focus feature along with Giustiniani's eulogy the funeral orations of Poggio for Niccolò Niccoli and Bruni for Otto. There are manuscripts that suggest other possible commonalities. Munich Clm 5335, St. Pölten 63, Kremsmünster 10, and Venice Correr Cicogna 797 all have Giustiniani's eulogy for Zeno, Leon Battista Alberti's satiric eulogy for his dog, and the Observant Franciscan Apollonio Bianchi's correspondence or short funeral speeches. The Cicogna manuscript served as exemplar for the others, and all four may be related to Bianchi and his cultural activities.Footnote 143
Composite codices comprise a significant block: Basel F.V.6, Oxford Bywater 38, Berlin Lat. fol. 667, Ferrara II.135, Milan Ambrosiana D 93 sup., Ambrosiana N 340 sup., Rome Vallicelliana F.20, Trent Capit. 42, BAV Regin. lat. 1612, Udine Arcivescovile 49, Venice Marc. lat. XI.9, Marc. lat. XIV.45 and Stuttgart Poet. et Philol. folio 14. At times binding together individual student notebooks, a composite codex indicates a dynamic process that is mirrored in the number of codices with several hands, to which texts were added over time. BL Harley 4094 began in the second half of the fifteenth century as a repository for humanist texts and became in the first quarter of the sixteenth century a repository for further orations and for recipes. A Stuttgart codex into which Konrad Stettfelder copied a poem of Johannes Faber de Werdea in 1486 has the Giustiniani oration on paper with watermarks that date to the mid-eighteenth century.Footnote 144 Paris Ital. 353 was first copied in the fifteenth century in Chancery script and reused in the second half of the sixteenth century to describe the efforts to raise a sunken galeone at Venice in 1560. At least in the oration for Giustiniani and the description of the salvage effort, the Paris manuscript had the sea for its focus.Footnote 145
Conclusion
Educational concerns shaped many manuscripts that preserve the funeral speeches of Poggio and Giustiniani. The handwritten books assisted students seeking to master the art of rhetoric. Thanks to the meticulous scholarship of James Hankins, comparisons are possible among the funeral eulogies for Zabarella and Zeno and two of Leonardo Bruni's panegyrics, one for Florence around 1404 and another for Nanni degli Strozzi around 1428. All four belong to the epideictic genre of rhetoric. Bruni's praise for the city of Florence was more ideological and less aristocratic than the other three. All four were remarkably popular in their own time and guided other speakers.Footnote 146 The raw numbers of surviving copies suggest that even the admired epideictic orations fall short of the great humanist bestsellers, works on humanist education and ethics, and that Giustiniani wrote the most popular encomium of the Renaissance. His total of 115 Latin manuscripts and nineteen printed editions left Bruni's sixty-five Latin manuscripts of the Strozzi eulogy a distant second. Poggio's oration for Zabarella survives in fifty-three Latin manuscripts, and Bruni's panegyric for Florence had, among the four, the smallest total of forty-three Latin manuscripts. In all four cases, there was almost no concern to assure a wider public by translating the oration into the vernacular. The speeches were exercises in “letters” (litterae), and translation would water down their achievement.
The dating of the manuscript exemplars, whether by scribal subscription or terminus post quem, indicates that the mid-fifteenth century marked the golden age for copying humanist panegyrics. Only five of the codices with Bruni's panegyric of Florence antedate 1440 (ca. 12 percent), telling for a speech written around 1404. The percentages are similar in the cases of Poggio (ca. 80 percent from 1425–75) and Giustiniani (ca. 88 percent). Early on, Poggio promoted his oration in correspondence to prove that he understood classical techniques for panegyric, and Guarino promoted Giustiniani's oration to prove that he taught classical techniques well. There is a falloff in manuscript copying after the introduction of printing, but it does not cease. At least seven manuscripts of the Poggio and Giustiniani orations have a terminus post quem of 1475, and Zabarella's relatives continued to make handwritten copies in the seventeenth century, in one case to aid printers.
Patterns of Renaissance ownership, whether owners read the works or did not, mirror the broader alliance of hereditary nobility, elite clergy, and haute bourgeoisie that generally exercised oligarchic rule in Italy's principalities, despotisms, and republics. The nobility and higher clergy represent from 27–33 percent of the public, whereas at least two thirds of the known owners come from the lower clergy, members of religious orders, and the haute bourgeoisie, particularly professionals involved in positions of public service such as notaries or chancery officials. Bruni's two panegyrics, with their extended emphasis on the genius of Florentine republicanism, had a utilitarian value for anyone asked to deliver a panegyric there. When rummaging for material on the topic of a Florentine's birthplace, speakers could pull their codex with Bruni's panegyric oration off the shelf and give a concise summary of Bruni's praise for the beauty, the government, and the territorial rule of the city. Fully half the copies of Poggio's oration for Zabarella ended up in the hands of secular and religious clergy, exactly where Poggio would want it as he strove to reform their morals. The clergy did not disdain Giustiniani's speech since religious, priests, bishops, cardinals, and a pope owned approximately 58 percent of the manuscripts. There is also a slight differential for Giustiniani's oration between the parchment codices (7–8) and the number of professional scribes (11–15), suggesting the possibility that wealthy patrons wanted a copy so badly that they were willing to settle for one that a scribe wrote on paper.
Geographical distribution confirms that humanism fundamentally was an Italian phenomenon. Bruni's two panegyrics achieved success overwhelmingly in Italy (from 90–100 percent), and especially in Florence and Tuscany (ca. 45 percent for the panegyric and 53 percent for the Strozzi eulogy). Likewise, over 90 percent of the copies of Poggio's oration, delivered at Constance, were copied in Italy, including at least four by non-Italians, and approximately 87 percent of the copies of Giustiniani's speech also have an Italian provenance, with a heavy concentration in the Veneto region. Giustiniani's speech did have a public in lesser numbers beyond the Veneto and the Italian peninsula, in large part because Gasparino Barzizza and Guarino da Verona chose to teach the speech as a model almost immediately after it was delivered.
Paul Oskar Kristeller posited that the Italians of the Renaissance diffused their cultural program in two ways: by teaching foreign students, especially those who matriculated at Italian universities, and by organizing textbooks of exemplary materials for letter writing and speech making.Footnote 147 German students embraced the new learning they encountered at universities in northern Italy (Pavia, Padua, Bologna) and carried home their weighty tomes filled with examples of humanist prose and poetry. The geography of German interests follows, in large part, the patterns of Romanization in ancient times, flowing along the Danube and Rhine Rivers. And one can generally trace that stream of interest back to its source in the rhetorical education offered by Guarino or his student, Giovanni Lamola. Lamola's students and those influenced by his students in Germany included Johannnes Roth, Hans Pirckheimer and his family, Johannes Heller, Johannes Tröster, the Schedels, and the von Eybs. Of the eight or nine copies of Poggio's oration that non-Italians are known to have possessed, German speakers had seven; in Giustiniani's case, six German speakers and one Swede had their own copies.
There are telling clues buried in the statistical data to argue that education functioned as a principal motive for the copying of the two eulogies. If one tallies the known number of manuscripts with the orations of Poggio and Giustiniani that were in the hands of students or professional humanists, they amount to over 25 percent of the total ownership. Once familiar with the craftsmanship of the speeches, humanists kept a copy to aid their teaching of classical rhetoric and their writing of classicizing orations. Likewise, doctors comprise a distinct professional sub-grouping (30 percent of the haute bourgeoisie for Poggio and 20 percent for Giustiniani), and at least some of the physicians acquired manuscripts with the speech during their university training. The material characteristics of the manuscripts confirm their use as texts for study: the vast majority are paper miscellanies written by more than one hand over a period of years. Rinuccio Aretino kept adding to the contents of his tome for up to thirty years. From 1451 to 1458, Giovanni Bernardo Dalle Valli entered texts into Munich Clm 78, and, until 1481, Hartmann Schedel and other German hands continued to add texts to the manuscript once Schedel had come into its possession. While often found in large compendia, the Bracciolini and Giustiniani speeches, in contrast to incunabular editions of later public orations, are never published alone. There was cross-pollination between Florence and Venice, even if Bruni was more popular in Tuscany and Giustiniani in the Veneto. While the first generation of humanist educators, Barzizza, Guarino, and their compatriots, quickly embraced the speeches, the second generation that included Lamola solidified their popularity at mid-century.
Humanist miscellanies will always frustrate simplistic efforts at analysis. Some of the texts copied into a miscellany perforce reflect serendipity, put there to demonstrate the acquired skills of the compiler and mirror his particular interests. However, a core of the works consistently included in multiple codices may well represent a sort of evolving textbook of contemporary rhetorical models that traces its roots to the teaching of Barzizza and Guarino and early included speeches of Giustiniani, Bruni, and Poggio. The notion of a textbook seems one explanation for the fact that Arundel 70 and Munich Universitätsbibliothek Folio 607 have the same anthology of texts copied by German Gothic hands, have the same number of lines per page, and have the identical text of the Naumachia of Ciriaco d'Ancona, but neither one was copied from the other. They were both copied from a common exemplar whose anthology of contemporary texts likely served as epistolatory and oratorical models.
What lessons would the two orations offer students and other readers? First, the portraits of Zabarella and Zeno underlined the lifetime value of a humanist education. The deeds and virtues of both proved the genius of an educational program that Pierpaolo Vergerio conceptualized and Guarino and Barzizza institutionalized. The education was geared toward phases in maturation. Zabarella began to study letters, that is, master Latin grammar, as soon as he was old enough. When Zabarella had to choose an area of specialization in the university, he chose law because it was a discipline that brought society benefits. In between, during adolescence, the future professor and cardinal pursued the humanities because they taught him moderation, disciplined him to control his libido, and motivated him to embrace a commitment to chastity. Throughout his life he devoted leisure time to the reading of ancient literature, making him a proponent of the liberal arts in deed. Similarly, Carlo Zeno began his schooling during boyhood with letters. As he matured, he combined training in arms with study of music. He intended to equal the feats of Themistocles as an admiral but surpass the Athenian admiral in his mastery of music. Like Zabarella, Zeno chose to specialize his training and contribute to the public welfare through a military career where he proved as valuable for his counsel as he did for his performance in combat.
Poggio and Leonardo Giustiniani celebrated civic heroes who made their avocation a vocation. Embracing the Ciceronian ethic that we are not born for ourselves alone, Zabarella devoted himself after graduation to the teaching of law. So generous was his personality that he seemed a common parent to all his students. Zeno rejected self-indulgence, particularly when free from military campaigning. He used the leisure time to renew his study of good letters. Zeno focused on two disciplines he deemed crucial: moral philosophy that taught the art of good and holy living and the service (munus) of oratory that brought common benefit to fellow citizens. Well into his eighties and after retirement from active duty, he returned to liberal studies so that any advice he offered be sound and any service he rendered be selfless.
Both speakers used their subjects to illustrate the value of a comprehensive education in the liberal arts. Although Zabarella specialized in law, he built those studies on the foundation of the humanities and moral philosophy. Zabarella embraced the precepts of ancient rhetoricians because he was convinced that public speaking was crucial to the common good. So successful was he in the study of rhetoric that his speech was like a river flowing with an abundance of apt diction and reliable recommendation. He focused his philosophical study on ethics because sound moral judgment enabled a life of integrity. His legal commentaries made the obscure comprehensible and multiplied the benefits of his knowledge beyond the classroom. Zabarella exemplified the merits that Cicero had posited for jurisprudence. Law was the bond that secured rights in society, the foundation of liberty, and the wellspring of justice. Zeno stood apart from other learned Venetians. Where they attained proficiency in a specific art, he was outstanding across the board. Giustiniani used three comparisons to Lucius Lucullus to demonstrate the breadth of the admiral's education and the fruits it had borne. In hospitality to the learned, including Guarino, Zeno proved the equal of Lucullus who had befriended the philosopher Antiochus of Ascalon. In his considerable aptitude for memorizing, Zeno proved superior to Lucullus. And in retiring to a life of study, he proved himself a Lucullus redivivus. Comparisons to Lucullus came easy for Giustiniani because, two years earlier under Guarino's tutelage, he had translated Plutarch's life of the Roman general.Footnote 148 Zeno also proved to be more clement than Julius Caesar. Whereas Caesar restored his political enemies to Rome but not to freedom, Zeno restored personal enemies to life and liberty. That action epitomized the oddly humane way that Zeno waged war, a thread Giustiniani wove through his eulogy.
Both speakers used their funeral orations to celebrate learned integrity, the principal yield of a humanist education. The two speeches were structured to convey the message: they first covered historical deeds (de vita) and then moved to ethical character (de virtute). Zabarella made the linkage explicit when he endorsed the Socratic maxim that human beings will progress in virtue if they behave as they wish to appear. Poggio celebrated Zabarella at the Council of Constance as a Churchman who exemplified integrity (probitas) and denounced hypocrisy. That allowed Poggio to draw a sharp contrast between the upright Zabarella and most of his fellow bishops and cardinals. The motivation for his promotion in the hierarchy was altogether unusual and appropriate. The usual path was through wealth or personal ambition or noble ancestry or suasion by the powerfully connected. The pope chose to advance Zabarella on the basis of interior virtue that was purely his own. It was a felicitous choice, meeting a dire need for a bishop who was wise, virtuous, and an exemplar of holy living. Once promoted, Zabarella provided a second contrast. Unlike most of his fellow clerics, he chose not to drink from the cup of Circe and, as Horace wrote, grovel before a courtesan's commands. The remarkable thing about Zabarella was that he remained the same person he was before promotion. He dedicated himself to his ministries and thought nothing more preferable than to take up the cause of the oppressed. He cheated himself to support those in need.
Poggio orchestrated his treatment of Zabarella's actions at the Council of Constance in a moving crescendo to his integrity. He helped to choose Constance because it was a city above the factions. When John XXIII wavered about attending, Zabarella told him that he was going because he had given his word. At the Council, Zabarella endeavored to root out division and reconcile enemies. When he spoke, he said what others were loath to say publicly. His final speech to the assembled fathers stood out for its forcefulness: he exhorted, he warned, he rebuked. In the peroration he expressed a willingness to pour out his spirit for the cause of Church unity. And he did. Shortly after the dramatic speech, Zabarella capitulated to the wishes of intimate friends and sought a cure for a nagging illness at the nearby baths. When he arrived, he could barely breathe. But he cut the treatment short to rejoin the conciliar debate and promote the cause of European peace. He succumbed to the disease and relentless efforts for unity. For Poggio, Zabarella was the antithesis of the nefarious, unethical, and seditious men who populated the meeting halls of the Council. Unlike them, Zabarella's undivided focus was the salvation of all believers afflicted by schism in the Roman Church.
Giustiniani portrayed Carlo Zeno as an honorably humane commander. When still an adolescent (age 24), Zeno received a lucrative position as a cathedral canon in the city of Patras. He resigned the position to engage in a contest (duellum) with an unnamed Apulian. Because Zeno emerged the victor, by the laws of warfare, the foreigner was a prisoner and slave, but Zeno chose to give him his freedom as well as his life. Late in life, Zeno was sent with a small band of soldiers to conciliate a throng of insurgents living in the Comascan Alps. That marauding band had never been subjugated by the force of arms. Zeno chose to fight and defeat them in a new sort of war waged with the mollifying virtues of compassion, respect, and leniency, to which he added the persuasive art of eloquence. Throughout his life, Zeno earned his renown (gloria) among the best citizens of the Venetian Republic. In the penultimate war that Venice fought against Genoa, the War of Chioggia, Zeno made enormous sacrifices. He was wounded and lost an eye, but he crushed the enemy and suppressed insurrection among Venetian mercenaries. Zeno proved another Scipio: when Genoese attacking forces directly threatened the homeland, he took the war to Genoa. One glance at Zeno's scar-riddled corpse as it lay naked on the bier confirmed his courageous commitment to Venice. But his courage never outran conciliating virtues. At critical moments, Zeno offered to the governing oligarchy his sage counsel and to the Republic's sworn enemies his generous clemency. Zeno's prudent benevolence won the war and the peace.
Those who read and studied the two funeral orations would come away with an informed understanding of their celebratory rhetoric, historical focus, and vivid portrayal. In every commonwealth, deeds of integrity mattered. By quoting ancient sources, Poggio made explicit his reliance on Roman inspiration. Horace supplied his allusion to the cup of Circe that fueled human libido, but Cicero stood out among his classical authors. Poggio gleaned from Cicero the image of the flowing river of Zabarella's eloquence, the contention that dedication to good and holy living was as important as scholarly erudition, and the guiding conviction that we are not born for ourselves alone.Footnote 149 Zabarella's authenticity set him apart from his clerical peers: he lived the values that he advocated. Giustiniani was hardly averse to Ciceronian ideals, apparent in his celebrating humanitas in war, clemency to the undeserving, and breadth of knowledge in all the liberal arts. The young Venetian added Greek ideals that he had learned from studying under Guarino and translating Plutarch. Zeno was an admiral superior to Themistocles in his musical proficiency, and Zeno was equal or superior to Lucullus in intellectual abilities, commitment to learning, and patronage for humanist scholars.Footnote 150 Giustiniani added a peculiarly Venetian note when he observed that, while in Patras, Zeno used every opportunity to navigate far and wide. He did so because great men traveled to learn, and mastery of nautical training had bred an empire for Venice. For both humanists, in keeping with their embrace of ancient cultural ideals, eloquence was the supremely beneficial civic art. The numbers of manuscripts and printed editions of their two funeral orations provide grounds to commend them for their own rhetorical integrity.
