Professor of medieval history at the University of Lyon, and the author of some twenty articles about the Aretine monk and humanist Girolamo Aliotti (1414–80), Cécile Caby here analyzes in depth his life and works as keys to understanding Quattrocento humanism. Reacting to Georg Voigt's dismissal of Aliotti as a secondary figure, Caby stresses his career as typical of a large number of humanists. This “self-portrait” is based largely on Aliotti's 880 extant letters, which embody the cultural networking in which humanists engaged when requesting or offering recommendations of themselves and colleagues. He also composed three Latin dialogues, a dozen orations, and a few occasional poems—but he never mastered enough Greek to translate ancient texts. Aliotti is also significant as a humanist who took orders and soon experienced the conflict between the constraints of monastic obedience and his humanist ambitions.

After an introduction to Aliotti and his world, Caby offers six long sections on the following topics: humanist compositions, letters of various genres, the author as cleric and humanist, Aliotti's De Monachis Erudiendis (a dialogue on monastic education), his exodus from the curia, and his relations with his native Arezzo. After a brief epilogue, the volume ends with an appendix of thirty letters, a bibliography, an index of manuscripts and archival documents, an index of people and places, and a table of the illustrations. The setbacks in Aliotti's career resemble those experienced by his contemporary Lapo da Castiglionchio (1404–38), who, unfortunately, lived only half as long. Both men envisioned the papal curia as a potential haven for men of letters, and after Lapo's death Aliotti circulated copies of his dialogue along with some of his own works. Yet in an age when pontifical authority was being challenged by church councils and secular Italian states, the institution was far from stable. More importantly, the vicissitudes of mortality, often aggravated by plagues, took their toll. Thus, Aliotti lost two powerful patrons in close sequence: in 1439 Ambrogio Traversari, general of the Camaldolese order, and in 1445 Bartolomeo Zabarella, the archbishop of Florence.

Fundamental to Caby's study is the sociological dimension of Quattrocento humanism. Caby analyzes the rhetoric and strategies of Aliotti's correspondence, which he assiduously collected. (Together with other works, the letters were published in Arezzo in 1769 by the Benedictine abbots Giovanni Maria Scaramagli and Paolo Redi, in the two-volume Epistolae et Opuscula; but although they expurgated portions of some texts, extant manuscripts preserve these passages and other works.) Her observations on Latin epistles complement the findings of Paul McLean's 2007 Art of the Network, which examines vernacular correspondence of the Florentine Quattrocento. (Caby is the author of the 2012 article “Réseaux sociaux, pratiques culturelles et genres discursifs.”)

It would be misleading to portray Aliotti as a purely venial office-seeker, for he took his religious vocation seriously, despite its many inconveniences. After taking vows, in 1431, he sought various benefices—many of which proved temporary and insufficient—until, in 1446, he was made abbot of Santa Fiora, near Arezzo. There he organized the library, and implemented reforms by allying his congregation with the reformers of Saint Justina. Defending his principles, in 1474 he resisted the interference of Giuliano de’ Medici in his projects. As a humanist in orders, Aliotti sympathized with the anticlerical views of Leonardo Bruni and Poggio Bracciolini: the former's oration Contra Hypocritas (1417) impressed him, and the latter gave him a role in his dialogue Contra Hypocritas. Like Poggio and other humanists, Aliotti circulated unfinished works among colleagues for their suggestions. What's more, Aliotti composed three Ciceronian dialogues in the tradition of Bruni and Poggio: De Felici Statu Religionis Monasticae (1432), dedicated to Gabriello Landino, the uncle of Cristoforo and a Camaldolese student of Traversari; De Optimo Vitae Genere (1439), dedicated to Bartolomeo Zabarella; and De Monachis Erudiendis (1440), dedicated to Pope Eugenius IV. (Concerning this last work, Aliotti complains in a letter that a fellow monk used sheets from a draft of his work as toilet paper!)

After his death, Aliotti was commemorated by a Latin inscription in the abbey, but his reputation was soon eclipsed, and later Italian scholars like Gamurrini, Armellini, and Mazzuchelli knew little about him. (Elisa Tinelli's 2016 critical edition of his De Optimo Vitae Genere offers further insights into Aliotti and his fortune, as well as a text of his dialogue, complete with translation and commentary.) His posthumous fame was finally secured by the two volumes of Epistolae et Opuscula (1769) published by Gabriele Maria Scarmagli and Paolo Redi, his successors as the Benedictine abbots of Santa Fiora.