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Content IMITATION IN RENAISSANCE CULTURE
AND
HUMANIST PEDAGOGY
by
Gideon Omer Burton
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF TH E GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY O F SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR O F PHILOSOPHY
(English — Rhetoric, Linguistics, and Literature)
August, 1994
Copyright 1994 Gideon Om er Burton
UMI Number: DP23188
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This dissertation, written by
............GIDEON OMER _BURTON.............
under the direction of h.is... Dissertation
Committee, and approved by all its members,
has been presented to and accepted by The
Graduate School, in partial fulfillment of re
quirements for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
.
Dean o f Graduate Studies
Date . . J y i y . 1994.
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE DISSERTATION COMh
Chairperson
........................
.
UXORA CARISSIMA PATIENTISSIMAQUE
A c k n o w l e d g e m e n t s
My bibliography records my scholarly debts but does not adequately represent them
all. Foremost, I must acknowledge Professor Lawrence D. Green who has served as my
dissertation advisor and mentor in an extraordinary capacity. Having initiated me into that
archival and rare book research that has given substance to this study, Professor Green set
a level of scholarly expectation requiring me to be answerable to primary texts in Latin and
to the wealth of important scholarship extant in non-English European languages. Not only
has he generously shared books and bibliographies with me, but his critical assessments and
editorial assistance have kept me focused, honest, and respectful of my own limitations and
those of my sources and resources.
To one of Professor Green’s former students, Edward E. Erdmann, I am indebted
for his 1988 dissertation, Rhetorical Imitation and English Renaissance Literature. His
bibliography saved me enormous time and his study became a point of departure for my own.
Frederick Rener’s treatise, Interpretatio: Language and Translation From Cicero to Tytler
deserves special mention as well, for it provided me at an early point an historical
appreciation of the relations between imitation, translation, grammar, and rhetoric. I would
also like to acknowledge James J. Murphy, whose Hermagoras Press now makes readily
available primary sources so essential to my topic and so difficult to come by, such as Izora
Scott’s Controversies Over the Imitation of Cicero in the Renaissance. I also owe thanks to the
friendly and helpful staff of the William R. Clark and Henry H. Huntington libraries in Los
Angeles and San Marino, California, and to the graduate school of the University of
Southern California for the fellowship that allowed me the luxury of uninterrupted study.
I would like to acknowledge and thank certain teachers who have been responsible
for introducing me, in a formative and inspirational manner, to the pleasures of language,
literature, imitation, and rhetoric, respectively: Richard McAllister, Susannah E. Kesler,
Richard Harmston and Grant Boswell. I am also indebted to Sandy Westover for both her
tutoring in Latin and for her interest in Renaissance language instruction, and to my peers
in the rhetoric program at the University of Southern California who have shared their
research, criticism, and friendship, Jameela Lares and Linda Mitchell. I also thank my
students who have endured the experiments in imitation I have required of them, and certain
friends from outside the academy who remind me of the world beyond books, T. Reed
McColm, Jeffrey L. Parkin, Shauna Siebers, and Kim Colton. To my sons, Perry and Adam,
I owe the time I have stolen from them; and to my wife, Karen Mello Burton, I owe infinite
thanks for her patience, her support, and her willingness to roll her eyes occasionally at all
this academic pretense.
V
T a b l e o f C o n t e n t s
Preface ...................................................................... vi
Introduction............................................................................................................................ 1
Part One: Cultural and Linguistic Contexts for Imitation in the Renaissance
1. Motives for Imitation: The Revival of Latin in the Renaissance...................... 27
2. The Preeminent Renaissance Model: Cicero Imitandus .................................... 87
3. Servile Ciceronianism and E rasm us .........................................................110
Part Two: Methods in Humanist Pedagogies of Imitation
4. Literary Analysis as Preparation to Im itate.............................................................147
5. Translating and Transforming Literary Sources...................................................... 189
6. Imitation in Renaissance Pedagogy ............ . ........................................................ 225
Part Three: Linguistic and Rhetorical Conditions upon Imitation
7. "Proper” Im itation......................................................................................................305
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................. 339
Bibliography:
Primary Sources ....................................................................................................... 343
Secondary Sources.....................................................................................................354
Appendix A .................. 369
Appendix B ............................................................................................................................370
v i
P r e f a c e
My motives for studying imitation in the Renaissance are pedagogical. Long before
I was aware of the rich history of imitative practice I was converted to its efficacy as a young
writing student. An influential teacher, Richard Harmston, used imitation to teach me and
his other high school sophomores to write poetry. Rather than rules, he gave us
mimeographed copies of poems by Wallace Stevens or William Carlos Williams for us to
study briefly, then imitate closely. Somehow — almost mysteriously it seemed — we came
to imbibe qualities of the poems we imitated, qualities that showed up later in our original
compositions. Simply put, imitation worked. By imitating, we writing students acquired a
variety of subject matter to write upon, a stock of formal methods for approaching subject
matter, and a sense of confidence that carried over into our own compositions. I was elated
by the practical success of imitation, but disappointed to discover later that such effective
methods are virtually unknown in the field of contemporary writing theory.
The absence of imitation in contemporary composition theory is unsurprising given
the values that inform the production of writing today. The romantically derived emphases
on originality and personal expression have achieved such dominance, and the anxieties
attending modern concepts of intellectual property have become so pervasive, that to depend
at all upon another author’s work is to be shamefully derivative if not criminally plagiaristic.
In this modern light, imitation is not simply undesirable, but illegitimate.
But it was not always so. As a student of rhetoric and its history, I discovered that
imitation held a central position in classical and Renaissance rhetorical education. Imitation
was a principal method of language acquisition, a primary vehicle in moving students from
competency to proficiency in oral and written composition, and it was the means by which
pedagogues inculcated the literary, cultural and moral values they prized in their literary
models. Imitation had a very practical, technical, and specific focus — requiring a
philologist’s appreciation of the propriety of words and acquaintance with the entire gamut
of linguistic systems that comprise literature. At the same time imitation held a general
social significance — it engendered "cultural literacy" in its broadest sense: literary
knowledge that was tied to the social power of eloquent communication.
Eloquence may now be a forgotten ideal, but rhetoric is not a forgotten subject.
Rhetoric today enjoys something of a renaissance in academia and informs a variety of fields
centering on discourse, its production and interpretation: language acquisition, literary
theory, cultural studies, communication studies, composition, etc. I believe the history of
rhetoric offers not only an intellectual template that informs our own investigations about
language, culture, and discourse, but also a set of practices that may be worth reviving in
their own right. I see, for example, the integration of writing and reading provided by
pedagogies of imitation in Renaissance rhetorical education as a solution to problems facing
a fragmented college curriculum today. Wayne Booth has articulated the desirability of such
integration in a volume fittingly titled, Composition and Literature: Bridging the Gap: "What
is most important is that students be asked not just to study the texts but to do something
like the text, to practice the rhetoric the texts exhibit, and then to reflect . . . on that
practice."1 Booth, known as a rhetorician, spoke in unnecessary ignorance of the centuries-
1 Wayne C. Booth, "'LITCOMP’: Some Rhetoric Addressed to Cryptorhetoricians about a
Rhetorical Solution to a Rhetorical Problem," in Composition and Literature: Bridging the Gap, ed.
Winifred Bryan Homer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 79. See especially chap. 4,
below, in this regard.
long practice of imitation in the rhetorical tradition. As the present study will demonstrate,
many practical methods were devised and implemented in Renaissance schooling to do
precisely what Booth suggests for today.
This study, however, is not an examination of contemporary writing theory and what
will improve it. Nor is it the occasion to argue the effects of Romanticism upon modern
education.2 Rather, it is an historical study of the importance of imitation in Renaissance
culture and a close analysis and survey of those educational methods that comprised imitative
pedagogy in humanist schools in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Pedagogy of the past,
I believe, has some value for pedagogy of the future. My hope is that, despite obvious
differences between modern and Renaissance education, the present study will help reverse
prejudice against imitation and reintroduce it into instruction in language, writing, and
literature where it once held such prominence.3
I offer this study not simply for present-day educational purposes, important as these
may be, but in order to expand our understanding of the history of rhetoric in a period when
it flourished. As James J. Murphy has noted, the Renaissance remains largely uncharted
territory because of the sheer number of writings published on rhetorical topics that remain
2 I am currently editing with my colleagues Dawn Formo and Jennifer Welsh a volume dedicated
to this very topic, "The Romantic Legacy in English Department Humanities" (Los Angeles, 1994).
3 Some important efforts have been made recently in this regard. Three contemporary composition
textbooks advocate (limited) student imitation as part of their efforts to revive classical rhetoric:
Edward P. J. Corbett, Classical Rhetoric for the Modem Student, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1990); Winifred Bryan Horner, Rhetoric in the Classical Tradition (New York: St. Martin’ s Press,
1988); and Sharon Crowley ,Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students (New York: Macmillan, 1994).
See also the methods proposed by Frank D’ Angelo, "Imitation and Style," College Composition and
Communication 24 (October 1973): 283-90. Each of these sources presents imitation quite distinctly
from one another, despite their appeal to a common (classical) tradition. Each also presents imitation
solely within the rubric of elocutio, or style, which has not been the only historical domain for
imitation.
largely unaccounted for critically or even bibliographically.4 An understanding of imitation
as a central principle of Renaissance humanist education provides a framework for making
sense of the many textbooks, writing aids, compilations, vulgaria, and other educational
apparatus that are so ubiquitous from this period. While I do not pretend that pedagogies
of imitation account for the vast textual production in this period, knowing how and why
classical texts were read provides a window into Renaissance culture that is not always
apparent from extant histories or from an uniformed examination of these primary materials.
Those materials often appear to be antiquarian or pedantic. However, as I begin to argue
in my introduction, a knowledge of the purposes and methods of imitation puts what appears
to be pedantry in a different light altogether.
4 James J. Murphy, "One Thousand Neglected Authors: The Scope and Importance of Renaissance
Rhetoric," in Renaissance Eloquence: Studies in the Theory and Practice of Renaissance Rhetoric
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 20-36.
1
I n t r o d u c t io n
This study of Renaissance imitation is a defense of humanist pedantry. Humanists
spent tremendous effort fussing over the proper forms of Latin words, identifying and
compiling various features of language, copying and varying those features in their own
writings, and requiring their students to do the same. The humanists are not typically valued
for their highly artificial imitative methods. Instead, they are honored for championing the
study of literature and those liberal arts from which their appellation derives, the studio,
humanitatis} Humanists are also applauded, especially early Italians such as Petrarch or
Poggio Bracciolini, for discovering and editing many important manuscripts of classical texts;
indeed, for their pioneering philology that has become the foundation of modern textual
criticism.2 Absorbed with issues of language and literature, humanists applied their skills of
copying, editing, translating, writing and speaking to many purposes in Renaissance society.
Their defining activity, however, was education. As educators, humanists did more than
'For an account of the earliest recorded mention of the studio humanitatis, see Erik Petersen, "The
Communication of the Dead," in The Uses of Greek and Latin, ed. A. C. Dionisotti, Anthony Grafton,
and Jill Kraye, Warburg Institute Surveys and Texts, ed. Jill Kraye and W. F. Ryan (London: The
Warburg Institute, University of London, 1988), 57-69. For a recent, iconoclastic view of the humanist
legacy, see Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities: Education and the
Liberal Arts in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Europe (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986).
2 See Appendix A: Renaissance Discoveries of Ciceronian Texts. The standard account of
humanist textual discoveries is Remigio Sabbadini’s Le scoperte dei codici Latini e greci ne’ secoli XIV
e XV, 2 vols. (Florence: Sansoni, 1905). For humanists as pioneering philologists, see U. von
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, History of Classical Scholarship, trans. Alan Harris, ed. Hugh Lloyd-Jones
(1921; reprint, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982); John Edwin Sandys,A History
of Classical Scholarship, II: From the Revival of Learning to the End of the Eighteenth Century (in Italy,
France, England, and the Netherlands) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1908); and R. Pfeiffer,
History of Classical Scholarship from 1300 to 1850 (Oxford, 1976).
In t r o d u c t io n : Im it a t io n in R e n a is s a n c e C u l t u r e a n d H u m a n is t P e d a g o g y 2
merely introduce additional classical literature to the curriculum and urge its perusal.3 They
changed how literature was read, and why literature was read, changing the very nature of
literacy. Early humanists such as Gasparino Barzizza, Leonardo Bruni, Guarino of Verona,
and Vittorino da Feltre, as well as later transalpine humanists such as Philip Melanchthon,
Juan Luis Vives, and especially Erasmus, taught language and the liberal arts, organized
schools, developed teaching techniques, and wrote educational treatises and textbooks
detailing their goals and methods. Among those methods, imitation figured centrally.
In our own time, however, imitation has not been accorded the significance it held
in the Renaissance. In 1885 the great Renaissance scholar Remigio Sabbadini claimed that
Latin was a living language until the establishment of the principle of imitatio in the second
half of the fifteenth century.4 For over a century we have continued to accept this judgment
formed in the crucible of late Romantic preconceptions, and we continue to see rhetorical
imitation not as an innovative contribution but as a pedantic practice that proved the
downfall of the Latin tongue and ended whatever positive influence humanists had exerted
3 In the history of education, as in other fields, the trend in recent years has been to see continuity
rather than sharp difference between the medieval and Renaissance periods. Paul Kristeller has
contributed to this point of view by claiming humanist educators were in a continuous tradition with
medieval dictatores or teachers of letter-writing, but Kristeller has also been careful to delineate unique
contributions of humanists that distinguish them from their predecessors. See his Renaissance Thought
and its Sources (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979). For those arguing strongest for a
continuity rather than a distinction between medieval and Renaissance education, see Paul F. Gehl,
A Moral Art: Grammar, Society, and Culture in Trecento Florence (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1993) and Robert Black, "Italian Renaissance Education: Changing Perspectives and Continuing
Controversies," Journal of the History of Ideas 52 (1991): 315-34. Black argues that classical literature
was indeed studied in medieval education, mitigating humanist contributions in this regard. For the
most direct answer to this challenge, see Paul F. Grendler, "Reply to Robert Black," Journal of the
History of Ideas 52 (1991): 335-37; Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning 1300-
1600 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989); and Grendler, ed., "Education in the
Renaissance and Reformation," Renaissance Quarterly 43.4 (Winter 1990): 774-824.
4 Remigio Sabbadini, Storia del ciceronianismo e di altre questioni letterarie nell’ eta dell rinascenza
(Turin: Ermanno Loescher, 1885), 75.
In t r o d u c t io n : I m it a t io n in R e n a is s a n c e C u l t u r e a n d H u m a n is t P e d a g o g y 3
upon education. It is my hope that the present study will revive the reputation of imitation
by demonstrating its utility and ubiquity in Renaissance education.
Modern Difficulty in Appreciating Imitation
The significance of imitation in Renaissance education remains difficult for us to
appreciate for four reasons: 1) our ignorance of neo-Latin literary culture; 2) our inability
to sympathize with Renaissance efforts to revive the Latin language; 3) our post-Romantic
prejudices favoring originality; and 4) our acquaintance with doctrines on imitation from
classical sources largely unknown in the Renaissance.
As to the first, imitation must be understood as imitatio, that is, as part of a primarily
Latin literary culture that was the literary culture of the Renaissance. Today, despite the fact
that vernacular literature was considered inferior to Latin compositions until late in the
fifteenth century in Italy and late in the sixteenth century for most of the rest of Europe,
we focus almost exclusively upon those pioneering literary productions in the modern tongues
— the Italian writings of Petrarch and Boccaccio, Montaigne’s Essaies, the French poetiy
of the Pleiade school, Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Shakespeare’s plays, etc. Important as these
were and are in their own right, their study has almost entirely eclipsed the significant (and
predominant) neo-Latin literary productions of this period.5
sFor the history and bibliography of neo-Latin literature (defined as all literature written in Latin
from the Renaissance to our day), see Josef IJsewijn, Companion to Neo-Latin Studies. Part I: History
and Diffusion of Neo-Latin Literature, 2d ed. (Louvain: Leuven University Press, 1990) and the annual
Instrumentum bibliographicum neolatinum published in the journal Humanistica Lovaniensia. For a
general assessments and surveys of neo-Latin genres and authors, see Lawrence V. Ryan, "Neo-Latin
Literature," in The Present State of Scholarship in Sixteenth Century Literature, ed. William M. Jones.
Columbia, Missouri, 1978; and Paul Van Tieghem, La litterature latine de la Renaissance: etude
In t r o d u c t io n : I m it a t io n in R e n a is s a n c e C u l t u r e a n d H u m a n is t P e d a g o g y 4
Only a few Latin writings of this period are still studied, but these are read in
translation, not as complex and interesting products of a Latin literary education. A good
example is Erasmus’s Encomium moriae, known today as The Praise of Folly. The inadequacy
of appreciating neo-Latin literature purely in translation is typified in the title of Erasmus’ s
much-read work. The plays on language central to Encomium moriae begin with under
standing that moriae puns upon the name of Erasmus’s good friend, Thomas More, and upon
the Latin term for folly. More important, perhaps, than Erasmus’s playful treatment of
moriae is his treatment of encomium. To English readers the term "praise" evokes nothing
similar to what encomium meant to educated readers of the sixteenth century. To be able
to interpret this truly Renaissance rhetorical work requires understanding that Erasmus was
amplifying a common schoolroom exercise (one of theprogymnasmata). Speeches of praise
or blame were among these elementary writing exercises practiced ubiquitously in
Renaissance Latin grammar schools.6
While imitative theory and practice did influence later, vernacular literary
developments in the Renaissance, imitatio was first and foremost the effort to copy the
language and literature of the ancient Romans for use in the educated Latin culture of
Renaissance Europe. To the extent that we ignore Latin literary culture of the Renaissance
— including both the revival of classical literature and the production of neo-Latin works —
d ’ histoire litteraire europeenne (Paris, 1944; Slatkine Reprints, Geneva, 1966). For an important study
of neo-Latin literary culture in Renaissance England, see J. W. Binns, Intellectual Culture in
Elizabethan and Jacobean England, ARCA: Classical and Medieval Texts, Papers and Monographs,
24 (Leeds: Francis Cairns, 1990).
6 Hoyt Hudson avoids the error of ignoring the sixteenth-century educational context out of which
Encomium moriae arose in his "The Folly of Erasmus" in Twentieth-Century Interpretations of "The
Praise of Folly," ed. Kathleen Williams (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1969): 23-24.
I n t r o d u c t io n : I m it a t io n in R e n a is s a n c e C u l t u r e a n d H u m a n is t P e d a g o g y 5
we will find it difficult to understand how and why imitation was a foundational literary
principle of this time. Commenting on this situation, Richard Schoeck has said,
If Curtius could write, with justice, that "the culture of the Middle Ages
cannot yet be presented, because its Latin literature has as yet been
incompletely studied," this is doubly true of the Renaissance and to an ever
great complexity. . . . [W]ith such a lack in the evidence, such a lacuna in our
understanding, we cannot fully understand the roots, the resources, or the
models of the Renaissance.7
No place seems to exist in modern humanities departments for studying the many important
neo-Latin writings of the Renaissance. Whatever literature is studied from the Renaissance
period (however broadly defined) begins with the early literature of the modern languages;
classics departments, with diminishing students and faculty, fight to conserve the curriculum
they have and cannot afford to extend their scope centuries beyond patristic authors.8
The absence of a neo-Latin curriculum is but half of the double shame in our present
ignorance of Latin. Not only do we pass over a monumental corpus of significant, post-
classical literature, but any assessment of the production of vernacular Renaissance literature
is done without reference to the imitative methods for composing literature that these writers
learned from humanists in the Latin schools. Some critics have done justice to the Latin
curriculum and the role of imitation within it in accounting for the literary production of
certain major figures, such as T. W. Baldwin in his monumental study of Shakespeare’s
literary formation.9 More often, those literary studies that even acknowledge the wealth of
7 Richard Schoeck, "Lighting a Candle to the Place: On the Dimensions and Implications of
Imitatio in the Renaissance," Italian Culture 4 (1983): 131-32.
8 One need only consult IJsewijn’s bibliography or Van Tieghem’ s survey to see how quickly a
substantial curriculum of neo-Latin literature could be prepared (see n. 5).
*r. W. Baldwin, William Shakespere’ s Small Latine and Lesse Greeke, 2 vols. (Urbana: University
of Illinois Press, 1944).
In t r o d u c t io n : I m it a t io n in R e n a is s a n c e C u l t u r e a n d H u m a n is t P e d a g o g y 6
Latin literary influences upon a Renaissance writer do so usually in terms of simple source
identification, focusing wholly on what content was borrowed and ignoring the linguistic
techniques by which an author adapted, translated, transformed — that is, imitated — his or
her sources.1 0 My study does not attempt to examine specific vernacular literary productions
as imitations, but may serve future literaiy assessments of Renaissance authors by delineating
those specific methods of imitative composition that so many authors acquired in humanist
schools during these two centuries.
The second reason we are kept from appreciating Renaissance imitation, a cause I
address in my first chapter, derives from our lack of sympathy for Renaissance enthusiasm
to revive the Latin language. It is known that classical literature and knowledge of antiquity
were being revived during this time, but few people have recognized the cultural significance
of the attempt to revive the Latin tongue itself. Latin is usually taken for granted as the
universal medium in Renaissance culture employed by the educated to communicate with one
another. However, Renaissance Latin was not simply a transparent tool humanists carried
forward from their medieval predecessors. As they saw it, Latin had been sickened by years
of neglect and by the infections of foreign vocabularies and overly-technical scholastic jargon.
In this setting, imitation became the modus operandi for repairing Latin and reviving it as a
viable medium for learning and for general social purposes. We don’t see our own languages
today in need of any significant repair, as Renaissance humanists did the Latin they inherited,
1 0 One happy exception to this can be found in Malcolm Quainton’s study of Jean-Antoine de Ba'if,
"Some Sources and Techniques of Source Adaptation in the Poetry of Jean-Antoine De B a'if,"
Renaissance Studies: Six Essays, ed. I. D. McFarlane, A. H. Ashe, and D. D. R. Owen (London:
Scottish Academic Press, 1972), 76-99. Quainton carefully dissects several of Ba'if s poems, noting not
only the eclectic mix of sources that informs most of them, but specifically linking Ba'if s methods to
the imitative methods outlined by Joachim Du Bellay in his Deffence et Illustration de la langue
frangoyse.
I n t r o d u c t io n : I m it a t io n in R e n a is s a n c e C u l t u r e a n d H u m a n is t P e d a g o g y 7
and so the exacting nature of their literary imitation appears to us to be slavishly conservative
and pedantically technical. Imitation did indeed provide writers methods for composing
literature (Latin or vernacular) but it began as a technical effort associated with philology
and remained a conservative activity rooted in the effort to revive and repair the Latin
tongue. Ironically, some have seen the humanist efforts to revive the Latin tongue by
imitating classical usage (particularly, Ciceronian diction and style) as the very undoing of
the tongue. Such claims ignore how this more purely linguistic sort of imitation preceded,
made possible, and overlapped with the varieties of rhetorical imitation that were the
mainstay of Renaissance education for nearly two centuries. These two sorts of imitation,
which may loosely be termed "linguistic" and "stylistic" imitation, were indivisible in humanist
curricula.
A third reason for our not appreciating the importance of imitation in the
Renaissance derives from modern prejudices that are a consequence of living in a post-
Romantic era. As mentioned in the preface, imitation stands in opposition to the literary
virtues of "originality" and "genius" that we inherit from the Romantic tradition.1 1 To refer
to someone today as being an imitator is clearly pejorative, but in the Renaissance (as in
classical antiquity), to be an imitator was negative only if one were — in Horace’s words —
a "servile" imitator;1 2 otherwise, to be an imitator was very much synonymous with being a
“ Richard Schoeck finds a parallel discrepancy between Renaissance and contemporary theater
and visual arts: "Precisely because of the importance of imitatio, Renaissance art and acting are at
a far remove from the twentieth-century emphases on spontaneity, pure expressionism, and Method"
("Lighting a Candle," 127).
“ Horace exclaimed against imitators, calling them a servile herd: O imitatores, servum pecus (Ars
poetica, 133).
I n t r o d u c t io n : Im it a t io n in R e n a is s a n c e C u l t u r e a n d H u m a n is t P e d a g o g y 8
poet or "maker." Indeed, imitation was listed among those qualities necessary for the poet
by such later sixteenth-century luminaries as Ben Jonson and Sir Philip Sidney.1 3
This is not to say that objections to imitation came only after the eighteenth century.
On the contrary, as the Ciceronian debates demonstrated, some Renaissance writers argued
strongly against imitation, particularly Angelo Poliziano in fifteenth-century Italy and Francis
Bacon in sixteenth-century England. However, their objections are of a different order than
today’s, for even the most vehement Renaissance opponents did not reject imitation
categorically, but qualified it; Poliziano, for example, argued for an originality that derived
from imitating more than a single author. Of all the European writers who contributed their
opinions to the debate over the imitation of Cicero in the Renaissance, none claimed
imitation was an illegitimate literary activity. Those debates always concerned how to imitate
and whom to imitate, but never whether to imitate. Erasmus best illustrates this qualified
stance towards imitation. As we will see, Erasmus does indeed attack the extremist imitators
of Cicero, but he does so from a position of commitment to an entire educational program
based upon imitation.
A fourth reason we are inhibited from appreciating Renaissance imitation is that we
are tempted to confuse classical and Renaissance literary theory. Because of the importance
that our own literary culture has attached to Aristotle’s or Plato’s discussions of imitation,
we may too easily overlook the fact that these ideas were not revived and integrated into
literary culture until well after the Greek texts in which they were found were themselves
revived, translated, and disseminated.
l3See Donald Lemen Clark, "The Requirements of a Poet," Modem Philology 16 (1918): 77-93.
I n t r o d u c t io n : I m it a t io n in R e n a is s a n c e C u l t u r e a n d H u m a n is t P e d a g o g y 9
Literary imitation in the Renaissance was distinct from what Aristotle referred to as
mimesis in his Poetics. In that treatise, imitation (mimesis) meant the representation of
human nature or of certain universal traits, and various kinds of poetry were distinguished
as modes of imitation. Aristotle’s Poetics, unlike his works on logic, was all but unknown to
the Renaissance until Aldus printed the Greek text in 1508.1 4 The Poetics did not even
appear in Latin — and hence had no impact whatsoever — until the phenomena which I will
address were over a hundred years old. A Greek-Latin version of the Poetics emerged in
1536 (by Alessandro de Pazzi), but it was not until Robertelli published a Greek-Latin
edition accompanied by an important commentary in 1548 that Aristotle’s literary theory
began to have currency. The next year Bernardo Segni published the first Italian edition and
Aristotle’s ideas began to spread, first in Italy and then beyond. All this is to say that
Aristotelian imitation (mimesis) did not begin to inform the production of literature in the
Renaissance until the Renaissance was nearly over.1 5
Once it did appear, very interesting treatises on poetics began to emerge that were
hybrids of classical doctrine from Aristotle, Horace, and Cicero. These have been given
some attention, in their Italian, French, and English manifestations, by Harold Ogden White
1 4 See Charles B. Schmitt, Aristotle and the Renaissance (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard
University Press, 1983); Aristotelismus und Renaissance: In Memoriam Charles B. Schmitt, ed. Eckhard
Kessler, Charles H. Lohr, and Walter Spam (Wiesbaden, 1988); and especially Pierre Lardet, "Les
traductions de la Rhetorique d’ Aristote a la Renaissance" Traduction et Traducteurs au Moyen Age:
Actes du colloque international du CNRS organise a Paris, Institut de recherche et d ’ histoire des textes les
26-28 mai 1986 (Paris: Editions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1989), 15-30.
l5Ludovico Castelvetro’ s Poetica d ’ Aristotele Vulgarizzata et Sposta (Basel: P. Pema, 1570) was the
first Renaissance poetical treatise to use Aristotle’ s Poetics as the basis of a complete poetical theory.
Castelvetro both translated and "completed" Aristotle’s Poetics with his own material.
I n t r o d u c t io n : I m it a t io n in R e n a is s a n c e C u l t u r e a n d H u m a n is t P e d a g o g y 10
and Arthur Kinney.1 6 These treatises are beyond the scope of this present study, since they
come late in the sixteenth century, concern themselves more with poetry than with prose,
more with vernacular composition than with neo-Latin, and more with the literati than with
the young student of language and literature for whom the treatises examined in this study
were written.1 7 To such treatments on imitation I will make only slight reference.1 8 Like
Aristotle’s, Plato’s ideas on imitation were similarly obscured and kept separate from
schoolroom practice. Marsilio Ficino’s fifteenth-century translations popularized Plato’s
ideas, as did Ficino’s Platonic academy in Florence.1 9 But the Platonic concept of imitation
— in which the artist counterfeits sensible reality — was eclipsed by the theological concepts
for which Plato was mined in the Renaissance. Moreover, Plato’s texts and ideas were not
disseminated broadly through humanist schools like those of Quintilian and Cicero.2 0 Today
1 6 Harold Ogden White, Plagiarism and Imitation During the English Renaissance: A Study in Critical
Distinctions (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1935); Arthur F. Kinney, Continental Humanist
Poetics: Studies in Erasmus, Castiglione, Marguerite de Navarre, Rabelais, and Cervantes (Amherst:
University of Massachusetts Press, 1989); and Kinney, Humanist Poetics: Thought, Rhetoric, and
Fiction in Sixteenth-Century England (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1986).
1 7 Primary works on poetic imitation falling outside the present study include those works by
Hieronimo Muzio, Giraldi Cinthio, Julius Caesar Scaliger, Francesco Patrizio, Antonio Mintumo,
Marco Hieronymo Vida, Bernardo Daniello, Ludovico Castelvetro, Bernardo Parthenio, Torquato
Tasso, Jacobus Pontanus, Joachim Du Bellay, Jacques Peletier, Pierre de Ronsard, Du Verdier, Pierre
de Laudun d’ Aigaliers, Estienne Pasquier, and Jean Vauquelin de la Fresnaye. For an overview of
these, see White, chap. 1.
1 8 A further and valuable study would be an analysis of how the arrival and spread of Aristotelian
imitation in the Renaissance challenged, absorbed, or otherwise transformed the imitation that is the
subject of this study.
1 9 See James Hankins, Plato in the Italian Renaissance. 2 vols. (Leiden and New York: Brill, 1991);
and Paul Oskar Kristeller, "The Platonic Academy of Florence," Renaissance News 14 (1961): 147-59.
2 0 This is not to gainsay the importance of Platonic doctrine and the various kinds of imitation he
discusses, however. By the time Thomas More wrote Utopia, he was able to draw upon a century of
debate over the best condition of society that began in the Florentine discussions of Plato’s Republic
and Laws, books in which the whole state is considered an imitation of the best and noblest life (see
Schoeck, "Lighting a Place," 124).
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we may find Plato’s "imitation," like Aristotle’s notion of mimesis, a familiar starting point
for considering literary theory, but the same would not have been true in the Renaissance.
The Nature of Renaissance imitatio
The imitatio which is at the center of this study had as its object and model not
nature or human nature, not universals or transcendent ideals, but classical texts. This
imitatio is not the imitation that would eventually come to early modern European literary
culture, but rather an earlier, perhaps more elementary, and certainly more influential kind
of Renaissance imitation. Renaissance imitatio in humanist schooling was literary imitation,
the copying of the form or content of another writer’s work. As such, it was a revival of
classical methods found chiefly in Cicero and in the tenth book of Quintilian’s De institutione
oratoria.2 1 Imitation was not limited to the realm of poetics or drama, nor to the educated,
nor to elite circles of the literati — although it was indeed a subject that occupied the
advanced writers of the time. Renaissance literary imitation began at the introductory level
2 1 Excellent surveys and studies of the classical doctrine and practices of imitation are to be found
in Richard McKeon, "Literary Criticism and the Concept of Imitation in Antiquity," Modem Philology
34 (1936): 1-35; Donald Leman Clark, "Imitation: Theory and Practice in Roman Rhetoric," Quarterly
Journal of Speech 37 (1951): 11-22; Edward E. Erdmann, "Classical Advice on Rhetorical Imitation,"
Rhetorical Imitation and English Renaissance Literacy (Diss. University of Southern California, 1988),
23-50; D. A. Russell, Criticism in Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981); Elaine
Fantham, "Imitation and Evolution: The Discussion of Rhetorical Imitation in Cicero’ s De oratore
2.87-97 and Some Related Problems of Ciceronian Theory," Classical Philology 73 (1978): 1-16;
Fantham, "Imitation and Decline: Rhetorical Theory and Practice in the First Century After Christ,"
Classical Philology 73 (1978): 102-116; White, "Classical and Continental Renaissance Theories of
Imitation," chap. 1 of Plagiarism and Imitation During the English Renaissance-, James J. Murphy,
"Roman Writing Instruction as Described by Quintilian," inA Short History of Writing Insturction From
Ancient Greece to Twentieth-Century America, ed. James J. Murphy (Davis, California: Hermagoras
Press, 1990), 44-69; D. A. Russell, Creative Imitation and Latin Literature, ed. David West and Tony
Woodman (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979); and Russell and M. Winterbottom,
Classical Literary Criticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
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of instruction in Latin language and literature — the grammar school — and served as an
instrument of instruction in grammar and rhetoric, in Latin composition in many genres, and
later in the advanced development of style. While imitation was primarily theorized and
practiced within Latin schools or among those literate in Latin, it was sometimes used with
Greek, and was adopted in vernacular schools as well. Imitation was the concern of the
courtier and the poet, as illustrated by Castiglione’ s and George Puttenham’s discussions of
it in their The Book of the Courtier and The Arte of English Poesie, respectively, but it had its
roots in the Renaissance schoolroom where rhetorical exercises in imitation guided almost
every aspect of education in language. Imitation was an intimate part of rhetorical education
from the early fifteenth century through and beyond the sixteenth century.2 2
Extant treatments of Renaissance imitation vary widely in their approaches, and none
focuses centrally upon imitation in humanist education. We may characterize them by the
focus of their study: poetics, polemics, and style.
The most complete and recent study of Renaissance imitation falls under the first
category, focusing on imitation in Renaissance poetics. This is Thomas Greene’s The Light
in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry.2 3 While poetical theory and production
2 2 For a discussion of departure from imitative pedagogies that occurred subsequent to the
epistemological revolutions of the seventeenth century, see Grant M. Boswell, "From Imitation to
Experience: Changing Assumptions in Humanist Education in Seventeenth-Century England" (Ph.D.
diss., University of Southern California, 1986); and Boswell, "The Rhetoric of Pedagogy: Changing
Assumptions in Seventeenth-Century English Rhetorical Education," Rhetoric Society Quarterly 16
(1986): 109-23.
2 3 Thomas M. Greene, The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1982). This study has recently been complemented by a follow-up
volume, whose essays relate to imitation in only the most tangential sense, despite the volume’ s title:
Creative Imitation: New Essays on Renaissance Literature in Honor of Thomas M. Greene, ed. David
Quint et al., Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 95 (Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval &
Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1992).
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are important elements of Renaissance literary culture, this genre-specific study is necessarily
partial and tends to deal exclusively with just a few salient figures: Petrarch, Poliziano,
Ronsard, Du Bellay, Wyatt, and Ben Jonson. Greene does refer to some of the polemics
over imitation in his ninth chapter, and his study provides provocative evaluations of the
nature of imitation and literary models in general, but his study is more psychological and
exploratory than historical. For example, his categorization of types of imitation (e.g.,
"heuristic imitation," "sacramental imitation") is idiosyncratic to the philosophy of imitation
he himself develops and is not at all related to the terms used for imitation in Renaissance
poetical treatises, let alone the prior and more extensive record of Renaissance imitation to
be found in educational treatises.
The second kind of study to be done on Renaissance imitation has been focused on
polemics — specifically, the Ciceronian polemics of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Izora Scott’s pioneering study, Controversies Over the Imitation of Cicero in the Renaissance,
now over 80 years old, provides not only a helpful survey and bibliography of primary sources
on imitation in the Renaissance, but includes translations or paraphrases of key texts such
as the letters on imitation exchanged by Pico and Bembo and the Ciceronieanus of Erasmus.2 4
Scott’s study of Ciceronianism in the Renaissance was preceded by Remigio Sabbadini’s
Storia del ciceronianismo e di altre questioni letterarie nell’ eta dell rinascenza and followed by
Hermann Gmelin’s "Das Prinzip der Imitatio in den romanischen Literaturen der
Renaissance."2 5 All of these studies provide useful surveys of important primary materials
2 4 Izora Scott, Controversies Over the Imitation of Cicero in the Renaissance (1910; reprint, Davis,
California: Hermagoras Press, 1991).
2 5 For Sabbadini, see n. 4, above; Hermann Gmelin, "Das Prinzip der Imitatio in den romanischen
Literaturen der Renaissance," Romanische Forschungen 46 (1932): 83-360.
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on the imitation of Cicero, but they do so by emphasizing the high-profile polemics over
imitation at the expense of the ubiquitous practice of imitation in Renaissance schooling.
These controversies were not unimportant; the cultural presence of Cicero and the linguistic
and rhetorical significance of his writing is hard to overestimate in the Renaissance. Yet the
polemics illustrate a kind of rhetoric over imitation that was quite distinct from the rhetoric
of imitation in the Renaissance. That is to say, these studies put to one side the historical
praxis of imitation in favor of historical arguments about it. This is unfortunate, since these
polemics do not make much sense divorced from the widespread imitative practice that gave
rise to them. Outside of that context, we cannot help but side with Poliziano and
(apparently) Erasmus against those ridiculous Ciceronian extremists who imitate the very
phrases and words of Cicero in an ape-like and servile fashion. But when attention is given
to the nature of Latin in Renaissance culture and to why and how literal copying was taught
in the Renaissance classroom, justifications abound for the servile or pedantic practices that
the polemicists we tend to side with mock most.
The third focus that has been given to Renaissance imitation is found in studies
treating imitation as a chapter in the history of prose style.2 6 This is not inaccurate, only
incomplete. When treated solely as an issue of style, imitation appears to have been a minor
factor in prose composition, something superficial attended to after the substance of an issue
had been explored and developed. Renaissance imitation did indeed have much to do with
style, but it was never strictly stylistic or formal in nature. Imitation was a highly developed
procedure for engaging and coordinating verba and res, expression and ideas, both form and
2 6 See, for example, Morris Croll, "Attic Prose: Lipsius, Montaigne, Bacon," in Style, Rhetoric, and
Rhythm: Essays by Morris W . Croll, ed. J. Max Patrick et al. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1966), 167-202.
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content. Imitation was never limited to the domain of elocutio, just one of the five
conventional divisions of rhetoric {inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, actio). Instead, as
we shall see, imitatio played a substantial role in inventio, the finding and developing of
arguments and material, and directly informed dispositio, arrangement, by providing students
options for how to order their own speeches and writings based on what they observed in
writing. Imitation did focus great attention upon style and upon the forms of writing, but this
does not diminish the importance humanists attached to the content of the literature they
chose for imitation. Much of the textual history on imitation occurs in discussions of lists of
authors deemed appropriate and necessary for a Christian education. Imitation, like the
education in classical and patristic literature of which it was an instrumental part, had a
distinctively ethical dimension.2 7 Humanists believed that they could pass on moral, civic, and
sometimes specific political or religious values, if students were properly guided in the models
they followed and the kinds of imitations they produced. Such imitation was anything but
superficial or pedantic and had very much to do with the serious religious motives of
Renaissance educators.
The fact that imitation was not a matter of surface features or style is reflected in the
great concern expressed by many in the Renaissance that imitating classical literature could
lead to imitating pagan values at the expense of Christian beliefs.2 8 However, the fact that
2 7 See, for example, Edward Erdmann, "Imitation Pedagogy and Ethical Indoctrination," Rhetoric
Society Quarterly 23.1 (Winter 1993): 1-11. Erdmann confirms the idea that imitation did indeed effect
moral indoctrination, against the strongly argued challenge to this idea found in Grafton and Jardine,
From Humanism to the Humanities.
2 8 Erasmus would argue vehemently on both sides. In his Antibarbari (1520) he defends the
importance of pagan literature to Christians; in his Ciceronians (1528) he attacks its deleterious
influence if improperly imitated.
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literary imitation had high religious and ethical stakes attached to it did not make it primarily
religious in nature. Literary imitation may be contrasted with an alternate and contempor
aneous tradition of imitation in the Renaissance that was exclusively religious in nature. The
Imitatio Christi, part of the late medieval devotio modema of Thomas a Kempis, influenced
the currents of Renaissance religion but remained distinct from literary imitation.2 9
Translation, the fourth and last focus of critical attention given to Renaissance
imitation, has been sorely incomplete given its close proximity to imitation and its general
importance during this period. Studies by Ehsan Ahmed and Robin Renee Killman helpfully
compare the close relations existing between methods of imitation and translation in the
Renaissance, but examine these methods only as they have bearing upon or are derived from
late-Renaissance French poetry.3 0 Glynn Norton, while also focused solely on France in his
history of Renaissance translation, nevertheless provides a useful survey of early humanist
translation theory that does illuminate the translation-imitation connection.3 1 As for more
general treatments of translation, these exhibit a common problem in relating translation to
imitation. Most studies of translation focus exclusively on the theory and practice of
2 9 Interestingly, as Paul Grendler has identified in Schooling in Renaissance Italy, vernacular schools
employed the Imitatio Christi as a central textbook (287-88).
3 0 Ehsan Ahmed, "A Crisis of Lyric Identity: French Humanist Responses (1533-52)” (Ph.D. diss.,
1987), abstract in Dissertation Abstracts International (1987): 48.01A; Robin Renee Killman,
"Reflections of the Pleiade Aesthetic in Edmund Spenser’ s Minor Poems" (Ph.D. diss., 1985), abstract
in Dissertation Abstracts International (1985): 47.02A.
3 1 Glyn P. Norton, The Ideology and Language of Translation in Renaissance France and Their
Humanist Antecedents, Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 201 (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1984).
See also Norton, "Translation Theory in Renaissance France: Etienne Dolet and the Rhetorical
Tradition," Renaissance and Reformation 10.1 (1974): 1-13; Norton, "Fidus Interpres: A Philological
Contribution to the Philosophy of Translation in Renaissance France," in Neo-Latin and the
Vernacular in Renaissance France, ed. Grahame Castor and Terence Cave (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984);
and Norton, "French Renaissance Translators and the Dialectic of Myth and History,"Renaissance and
Reformation/Renaissance et Reforme 17.4 (1981): 189-202.
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translation only insofar as the translator’s aim is to make a finished literary product for
consumption by a target audience to whom the source text is foreign. This ignores the
history of translation as an exercise, in which imitation was always closely allied.3 2
Translation in the former, more popular sense was indeed a developing art in the
Renaissance;3 3 however, few have given any attention to the extensive Renaissance use of
translation as a writing exercise.3 4 The outstanding exception to this is the important history
of translation by Frederic Rener.3 5 As an exercise, translation shared many common
assumptions and procedures with imitation, which Rener situates in the grammatical and
rhetorical traditions that are the context of this study as well. Rener describes how both
imitation and translation have functioned from antiquity as tools for enriching the power of
language either for individuals or for an entire speaking populace.3 6 In the Renaissance, an
historical period during which Latin was being renewed and the vernacular languages were
3 2 Translation as an exercise in antiquity and in the Renaissance is treated briefly by Eric Jacobsen,
Translation: A Traditional Craft: An Introductory Sketch with a Study of Marlowe’ s Elegies (Copenhagen:
Nordisk Forlag, 1958). A more substantial examination of translation in antiquity, its relationship to
imitation, and the close proximity of these two practices in the medieval period is found in Rita
Copeland, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and
Vernacular Texts (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Jacobson focuses upon the
consequences of these practices for literary products, considering translation-as-exercise to be a minor
stylistic issue.
3 3 Seminal in this regard for Renaissance England is F. O. Matthiessen, Translation: An Elizabethan
Art (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1931.) There is no general history of
translation for the Renaissance period.
3 4 Histories of foreign language instruction have touched lightly on the proximity of imitation to
translation as a method of acquiring proficiency in foreign composition. See Louis G. Kelly, Twenty-
five Centuries of Language Teaching (Rowley, Massachusetts: Newbury House Publishing, 1969), 175.
3 5 Frederick Rener, Interpretatio: Language and Translation From Cicero to Tytler, Approaches to
Translation Studies, vol. 8 (Amsterdam and Atlanta, Georgia: Rodopi, 1989).
3 6 For differences between classical and medieval translation and imitation, see Copeland, Rhetoric,
Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages.
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evolving, imitation and translation were principal means by which the linguistic resources of
a given person and a given language were simultaneously developed.
In sum, to understand imitation in the Renaissance we must set aside modern
prejudice against imitation because those in the Renaissance did not share our Romantically
derived values of originality. We must also limit ourselves from imposing Aristotelian or
Platonic notions of imitation upon a setting that was not informed by these ideas from the
classical past. However much we may use these concepts to understand the history of literary
theory, they were not operative or dominant ideas affecting the theory or practice of
imitation until very late in the Renaissance. The Ciceronian controversies over imitation
were relevant, but to focus on these as representative of Renaissance imitation mistakenly
focuses on the theory of imitation at the expense of the more influential practice of imitation
occurring in humanist classrooms. Imitation was primarily literary in nature, was rooted in
humanist philological efforts to revive Latin, was closely related to translation theory and
practice, and carried important cultural and ethical dimensions into its primary domain, the
classroom.
The sources for information about imitation in the Renaissance upon which I have
relied are derived from the following kinds of primary sources and, with some overlapping,
reflect the distinctions made above:
A. Defenses of the Latin language. Here imitation is presented as a necessary means
of recapturing the power of Latin once available in its golden-age purity and power.
Examples include Lorenzo Valla’s In principio sui studii, Adriano Castellesi’s De sermone
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latino, and later (parallel) works defending vernacular tongues such as Joachim Du Bellay’s
Deffence et illustration de la langue francoyse.
B. Documents from the Ciceronian controversies. Cicero is the fulcrum upon which
opinions turned on whether imitation ought to be exclusive (based on a single model), or
eclectic (based on many). Petrarch’s early letters addressed to Cicero provide an important
backdrop for the debates that begin in the Quattrocento among prominent humanists such
as Poggio Bracciolini and Lorenzo Valla and continue into the next century. Several
sixteenth-century treatises are devoted wholly to the issue, carrying the common name of
Ciceronianus (such as those by Erasmus, Etienne Dolet, and Gabriel Harvey). University
orations or texts that confront the Ciceronian legacy, such as Peter Ramus’s attack on Cicero,
Brutinae Quaestiones, also have bearing on the imitation question.
C. Grammatical Treatises. Renaissance grammatical treatises represent the crucial
reorientation of language studies away from a scholastic basis in logic and reason to a basis
in usage. Lorenzo Valla’s Elegantiae linguae latinae is most relevant in this regard,
establishing literature as the source of appeal for grammatical information. Renaissance
grammars thus set up the conditions for imitation by focusing language study on exempla to
be studied and followed. Renaissance grammars reviewed include Guarino of Verona’s
Regulae grammaticales, Niccolo Perotti’s Rudimenta grammatices, Antonio de Nebrija’ s
Introductiones Latinae explicitae, Johannes Despauterius’s Commentarii grammatici, and the
more theoretical De emendata structura Latini sermonis by Thomas Linacre and De causis
linguae Latinae by Julius Caesar Scaliger.
D. Manuals of rhetoric. A wide variety of rhetorical treatises fueled the hallmark
humanist study of eloquence, contributing variously to Renaissance imitation. Some of these
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were epistolary manuals, a continuation of the medieval ars dictaminis, having model letters
for imitation or directions for making letters more eloquent through imitative methods —
such as Aegidius Suchtelensis’s Elegantiarum viginti precepta ad perpulchras conficiendas
epistolas. Others focused wholly on schemes and tropes, providing tables or lists with
examples in order to acquaint students with rhetorical features they would look for in
analyzing and imitating authors, such as Petrus Mosellanus’s Tabulae de schematibus et tropis,
Joannes Susenbrotus’s Epitome troporum ac schematum, or the more summary versions by
Georg Major. The majority of rhetorics were more explicitly pedagogical in nature and
derived from classical sources such as thc Ad Herennium, Quintilian, and the books making
up Cicero’s Rhetorica. Constituting a vast and diverse source for information on both the
theory and practice of imitation, rhetorical manuals sometimes included whole chapters on
imitation, such as Philip Melanchthon’s Elementorum rhetorices libri II.
E. Educational treatises. These are often indistinguishable from rhetorical manuals
(except, perhaps, by their discussions of non-literary aspects of education such as exercise,
punishment, etc.). Renaissance educational treatises take up various aspects of imitation
methodology. Some are simply foundational works outlining and championing the studia
humanitatis, such as Vergerius’ s De ingenuis Moribus ac liberalibus studiis libellus litteris,
providing lists of authors to be read and identifying features within them to be imitated.
Some tie the study of authors more explicitly to imitation, such as Leonardo Bruni’s De
studiis et litteris. A few encyclopedic compendia reviewing the entire educational curricula
discuss imitation in separate chapters within them, such as in Giorgio Valla’s Placentini
expetendorum, ac fugiendorum. Other educational treatises, like Rudolph Agricola’s De
formando studio, take up certain aspects of imitation pedagogy such as how notebooks were
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to be employed. Erasmus addresses the methodology of imitation in his more general and
influential De ratione studii. The great humanist’s corpus of educational treatises contribute
importantly and variously to Renaissance imitation, including his De conscribendis epistolas,
De recte pronuntiatione, Antibarbari, his epitome of Valla’s Elegantiae, De pueris statim ac
liberaliter instituendis, and most importantly, his De duplici copia rerum ac verborum.
Educational works of other important humanist pedagogues also bear on imitation, including
Philip Melanchthon’s several educational treatises, Juan Luis Vive’s De tradendis disciplinis,
and John Brinsley’s Ludus Literarius: Or, The Grammar Schoole.
F. Imitation Treatises. Some educational or rhetorical treatises are devoted wholly
to imitation, such as Gasparino’s very early De imitatione, Jacques Omphalius’s De elocutionis
imitatione ac apparatu, Johanne Sturm’s De imitatione oratoria libri tres, and the second book
of Roger Ascham’s Schoolmaster.
G. Poetical Treatises. The books in F. are to be distinguished from other
Renaissance treatises explicitly concerned with imitation but devoted almost exclusively to
poetics or to vernacular literature. These, for the most part, lie outside of this study and
include Camillo’s Della imitazione, Giovambattista Giraldi Cinzio’s Super imitatione epistola,
Celio Calcagnini’s Super imitatione commentatio and De rhetorica et imitatione, Bartholomeo
Ricci’s De imitatione, Bernardino Parthenio’s Dell’ Imitazione poetica, Guilio Cortese’s
DelVImitazione e Dett’ Invenzione, Ludovico Castelvetro’s Poetica d ’ Aristotele Vulgarizzata et
Sposta, and Marco Girolamo Vida’ s De arte poetica.
H. Translation treatises. Imitation is described alongside translation theory or
practice in treatises wholly devoted to translation such as Leonardo Bruni’s De interpretatione
recte, Etienne Dolet’s La Maniere de bien traduire d’ une langue en aultre, or Sir Laurence
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22
Humphrey’ s De interpretatione linguarum. Imitation is also discussed in defenses of the
vernacular (often poetical in nature) in which imitation and translation are contrasted, such
as Jacques Peletier’s L ’ artpoetique or Joachim Du Bellay’s Deffence et Illustration de la langue
Francoyse. Imitation is also discussed alongside translation within several educational
treatises; for example, Juan Luis Vives’ s Versiones seu interpretations in his De ratione
dicendi, or Roger Ascham’s discussion of translation in the latter half of his Schoolmaster.
The differences among these various sorts of sources indicate the breadth to which
imitation was employed and discussed in the Renaissance, while the similarities in conception
and method that unite them indicate that imitation was a flexible and important tool that
found uses in many Renaissance contexts.
I stated that this study is a defense of humanist pedantry. Better put, I am providing
the linguistic, cultural, and educational contexts that account for the technical methods of
imitation that were so popular for so long across Renaissance Europe. My design is to
provide a better understanding of imitation, one that takes into account the energetic
philological attempts by humanists to purify and revive Latin and their equally ambitious
pedagogical programs for developing student ability and proficiency in writing and speaking
the primary classical tongue.
In the chapters which follow I pursue two related goals. In Part One, I seek to
demonstrate the broad cultural significance in the Renaissance of what strikes us today as
a narrow, pedantic preoccupation among humanist educators and writers. In Part Two, I
survey and analyze in detail humanist pedagogies of imitation across Europe, starting with
Gasparino Barzizza in the early Quattrocento, continuing through a variety of major
In t r o d u c t io n : I m it a t io n in R e n a is s a n c e C u l t u r e a n d H u m a n is t P e d a g o g y 23
European educational figures in the next two centuries and concluding with John Brinsley
in early seventeenth-century Britain.
Against the background of humanist attitudes towards the revival of Latin (chapter
1) and cultural attitudes towards Cicero (chapter 2), the more specific practices of imitation
that follow in Part Two can be viewed in their true light, rather than in terms of modern
prejudices or distorted historical perspectives that have ignored these clear cultural warrants
for grammar school "pedantry." It has long been easy to be dismissive of Renaissance
imitation largely because of Ciceronianism, that Renaissance phenomena in which apparent
extremists advocated an overly literal and "slavish" imitation of their exclusive model.
Erasmus established longstanding antipathy towards Ciceronian pedantry in his Ciceronianus,
but as my third chapter demonstrates, the great humanist had more in common than not with
the Ciceronians. Not only did Erasmus support and promote what to modern sensibilities
could only be called pedantry, but he turned that "pedantry" to account as he brought
imitation to its Renaissance apex in the principle and practice of copia. In his De copia
(discussed in chapter 6), imitation appears as both a linguistically detailed yet highly
inventive, generative activity.
Part Two surveys Renaissance pedagogies of imitation in detail. This is not an
exhaustive survey, for the scope of such a project would be too large and would require the
examination of many primary materials found only in various rare book repositories to which
I have not yet had access. I believe it is, however, representative, since it surveys the works
of the most influential figures of Renaissance education in Europe, especially some whose
In t r o d u c t io n : I m it a t io n in R e n a is s a n c e C u l t u r e a n d H u m a n is t P e d a g o g y 24
pedagogies have not been readily available in standard histories of Renaissance education.3 7
I have attempted to provide an overview of how broadly imitation was used in this period
both across Europe and across the various activities of the humanist Latin curriculum.
Imitation was not an accidental or occasional feature in Renaissance education; imitation was
the foundation of Renaissance literacy. Students were taught how to read in preparation for
imitation (the subject of chapter 4); were provided specific linguistic methods of translating
or transforming the sources they imitated (chapter 5); and were directed to imitate for
various pedagogical purposes, at various grade levels, and with various degrees of license
(chapter 6). My sixth chapter provides the detailed pedagogies of several of the most
influential Renaissance educators, comparing and contrasting their imitative methods within
the humanist program of language arts education.
In Part Three, I step back from the specific methods and exercises prescribed by
various pedagogues and return to more general concerns of Renaissance imitation theory.
There, in my seventh and final chapter, I review the important linguistic and rhetorical
conditions that humanists specifically placed upon imitation in order for it to be meaningful
and productive. I emphasize the rhetorical nature of Renaissance imitatio by describing the
various sociolinguistic proprieties that writers from the period prescribed to govern imitative
activity, including controlling metaphors and the doctrine of decorum. Far from turning
students into unthinking mimics, imitation pedagogies prepared students to adapt their
3 7 These histories still remain standard and useful references, however. See R. R. Bolgar, The
Classical Heritage and Its Beneficiaries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958); Foster Watson,
The English Grammar Schools to 1660: Their Curriculum and Practice (1908; reprint, London: Frank
Cass, 1968); William H. Woodward, Studies in Education during the Age of the Renaissance 1400-1600
(1906; reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); and Woodward, Vittorino Da Feltre
and other Humanist Educators: Essays and Versions: An Introduction to the History of Classical
Education (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1897).
In t r o d u c t io n : I m it a t io n in R e n a is s a n c e C u l t u r e a n d H u m a n is t P e d a g o g y 25
language creatively to various purposes and circumstances, fulfilling the purpose of a
rhetorical education to bring to practical social contexts the efficacy of speech and writing.
26
P a r t O n e
C u l t u r a l a n d L in g u i s t i c C o n t e x t s f o r
I m it a t io n i n t h e R e n a is s a n c e
27
C h a p t e r O n e
Motives for Imitation:
The Revival of Latin in the Renaissance
Imitation in the Renaissance was rooted deeply in humanist attitudes towards the
Latin language. Many humanists, informed by a new sense of historical difference and by
a new awareness of the role of language in antiquity, believed Latin had become corrupted
and that it needed desperately to be returned to its pristine state. In vigorous defenses of
the Latin language humanists insisted upon its broad cultural significance, and in exacting
studies of the language they delineated the specific qualities of the tongue to which new
attention needed to be given. In this chapter I set forth such primary texts demonstrating
the humanist approach to Latin. Their interest in the history, nature, and powers of the
Latin language provided a broad cultural warrant for literary imitation and dictated the
linguistically technical character that pedagogies of imitation would assume.
Rhetoric
From the humanist perspective, once purified and renewed, Latin would provide the
means to understand or translate better the classical texts coming to light in this period, and
it would restore the unique powers of this linguistic medium for present-day uses. Latin had
for centuries been regarded as the entrance to learning and as a permanent medium of
special significance to the church; to this humanists added the appreciation of Latin’s
rhetorical qualities. The literacy to which humanists aspired and to which they directed their
C h a p t e r O n e : T h e R e v iv a l o f L a t in in t h e R e n a is s a n c e 28
students was one dominated by the rhetorical ideal of the orator, whose persuasive eloquence
swayed audiences and effected meaningful changes in society.
Rhetoric has been called the primary concern of Renaissance humanists, and
eloquence the foremost end to which humanists aspired.1 I will not recount the history of
Renaissance rhetoric here, something others have done2 (however incompletely, given its
scope).3 But rhetoric remains highly germane to the issue of Latin’s Renaissance revival
precisely because the rhetorical ends to which learning was reoriented in the Renaissance did
far more than alter (or augment) texts in the domain of rhetoric proper. In this chapter it
will be apparent that rhetorical concerns accompanied history, philology, translation, and
1 "Tlie Renaissance humanist was first of all a rhetorician, concerned to perfect in himself and
others the art of speaking and writing well"; William J. Bouwsma, "Changing Assumptions in Later
Renaissance Culture," A Usable Past: Essays in European Cultural History (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1990), 75. " It was the pursuit of eloquence which united humanists of
all shades," concludes Hanna Gray in her seminal essay, "Renaissance Humanism: The Pursuit of
Eloquence," Journal of the History of Ideas 24 (1963): 514.
2 For bibliographic studies, see Don Paul Abbott, "The Renaissance" in The Present State of
Scholarship in Historical and Contemporary Rhetoric, rev. ed., ed. Winifred Bryan Homer. (Columbia
and London: University of Missouri Press, 1990), 84-113; James J. Murphy, Renaissance Rhetoric: A
Short Title Catalogue of Works on Rhetorical Theory from the Beginning of Printing to A. D. 1700, with
Special Attention to the Holdings of the Bodleian Library, Oxford. With a Select Basic Bibliography of
Secondary Works on Renaissance Rhetoric (New York: Garland, 1981); Charles L. Stanford, "The
Renaissance," in Historical Rhetoric: An Annotated Bibliography of Selected Sources in English, ed.
Winifred Bryan Horner (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1980), 111-84. For helpful overviews of a dauntingly
large subject, see Wilbur S. Howell, Logic and Rhetoric in England, 1500-1700 (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1956); John Monfasani, "Humanism and Rhetoric," in Renaissance Humanism:
Foundation, Forms, and Legacy, vol. 3, Humanism and the Disciplines, ed. Albert Rabil, Jr.
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), 171-235; Thomas M. Conley, "Rhetoric and
Renaissance Humanism," in Rhetoric in the European Tradition (New York and London: Longman,
1990), 109-50; Brian Vickers, "Renaissance Reintegration," in In Defence of Rhetoric (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1988), 254-93; and James J. MuTphy, ed., Renaissance Eloquence: Studies in the
Theory and Practice of Renaissance Rhetoric (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,
1983).
3 See James J. Murphy, "One Thousand Neglected Authors; The Scope and Importance of
Renaissance Rhetoric," in Renaissance Eloquence: Studies in the Theory and Practice of Renaissance
Rhetoric, ed. James J. Murphy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 20-36.
C h a p t e r O n e : T h e R e v iv a l o f L a t in in t h e R e n a is s a n c e 29
especially grammar. I have not separated rhetoric out from these allied language activities,
for it was not done so in the Renaissance.
Imitation in the Renaissance classroom, as Part One of my dissertation shows, was
part of a rhetorically-centered curriculum that began with the basic study of the Latin
language in the domain of grammar. We can speak of imitation as providing the vehicle for
apprehending and appropriating classical Latin linguistically and stylistically; that is, one
imitated classical literature in order to secure first its grammatical purity and then to mimic
its rhetorical efficacy. However, in actual praxis, these two domains overlapped considerably.
Thus, it will be unsurprising in this chapter to find evidence of a rhetorical orientation to
those language studies that may first appear to be only propaedeutic or corollary to the study
of rhetoric proper.
Latin and Humanist Historiography
A sense of historical difference, of living in a new time somehow distinctly different
from the past, made possible the very idea of a Renaissance.4 For the humanists, the Latin
language served as a measure of historical difference. That is, humanist historians viewed
language as part of the historical object of study that yielded as much information as the
events being described by it. As Nancy Struever has put it, one of the basic rhetorical
assumptions of humanist historiography was "that we confront the past as expressed in
4 Herbert Weisinger has written several articles relevant to this point. See "The Self-Awareness
of the Renaissance," Papers of the Michigan Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters 29 (1944): 561-67;
Weisinger, "Who Began the Revival of Learning," Papers of the Michigan Academy of Sciences, Arts,
and Letters 30 (1945); 625-38; Weisinger, "The Renaissance Theory of Reaction against the Middle
Ages," Speculum 20 (1945): 461-67; Weisinger, "Ideas of History during the Renaissance," Journal of
the History of Ideas 6 (1945): 415-35; and Weisinger, "Renaissance Accounts of the Revival of
Learning," Studies in Philology 45 (1948): 105-18.
C h a p t e r O n e : T h e R e v iv a l o f La t in in t h e R e n a is s a n c e 30
symbols or language, as mediated, rather than as naively or notionally handed down."5 Thus
Lorenzo Valla could deliver the shocking assertion, in his Adnotationes on the New
Testament (1443), that "none of the words of Christ have come to us, for Christ spoke in
Hebrew and never wrote down anything." According to Karl Otto Apel’ s notion of
Sprachhumanismus, language to the humanists was "a kind of meta-institution, on which other
institutions depend, and thus the history of the philosophy of language is fundamental to the
history of philosophy," or for that matter, to history at all.6 Humanist historiography
depended upon language theory; or rather, humanist history proceeded on the basis of
studied attention to language, especially philology.
The influence of language theory on Renaissance history is most apparent in the fact
that humanist historians began to rely upon linguistic evidence in the dating of primary
materials.7 Perhaps the most conspicuous Renaissance instance of philologically-based
criticism to assess historical claims was Lorenzo Valla’s De falso credita et ementita
Constantini donatione declamatio (1439-40).8 This document exposed as a medieval forgery
the Donation of Constantine, a deed of temporal authority purportedly given to Pope
sNancy S. Struever, The Language of History in the Renaissance: Rhetoric and Historical
Consciousness in Florentine Humanism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), 90. Struever has
criticized Jerrold Seigel’s otherwise important study of humanist history for not addressing the
centrality of language to humanist historiography (see following note).
6 Paraphrased by Nancy Struever, review of Rhetoric and Philosophy in Renaissance Humanism:
The Union of Eloquence and Wisdom, Petrarch to Valla by Jerrold E. Seigel, History and Theory 11
(1972): 74. See Karl Otto Apel, Die Idee der Sprache in der Tradition des Humanismus von Dante bis
Vico, Archiv fur Begriffsgeschichte, 8 (Bonn, 1963), available in an Italian translation by Luciano Tosti,
L ’ idea di lingua nella tradizione dell’ umanesimo da Dante a Vico (Bologna 1975).
7 For accounts of humanists as pioneering philologists, see n. 2 in my introduction.
8 For an account of the innovative critical spirit Valla brought to these studies, see G. Voigt, Die
Wiederbelebung des klassichen Alterthums, vol. 2 (Berlin, 1893).
C h a p t e r O n e : T h e R e v iv a l o f La t in in t h e R e n a is s a n c e 31
Sylvester from the Emperor Constantine, and exposed it largely on the basis that its Latin
style was of a date demonstrably later than that of Sylvester or Constantine.9
In historical writings, the Latin language proved to be not only a means for
establishing chronology and verifying sources, but also a key attribute of Roman and
European culture whose fate was caught up with those political circumstances that affected
it. This is illustrated in the histories written by Leonardo Bruni, the foremost innovator of
humanist historiography. In this passage from his Vita di Dante e del Petrarca (1436), Bruni
describes the tandem rise and fall of Rome and that of Latin language:
E puossi dire che le lettere e gli studi della lingua latina andassero parimente
con lo stato della Repubblica di Roma, perocche infino all’eta di Tullio ebbe
accrescimento; di poi perduta la liberta del popolo romano per la signoria
degl’imperadori, i quali non restarono d’uccidere e di disfare gli uomini di
pregio, insieme col buono stato della atta di Roma peri la buona disposizione
degli studi e delle lettere.1 0
A che propositio si dice questo da me? Solo per dimostrare che come la citta
di Roma fu annichilata da gl’ imperadori perversi tiranni, cosi gli studi e le
lettere latine riceverono simile ruina e diminuzione, intanto che all’estremo
quasi non si trovava chi lettere latine con alcuna gentilezza sapesse.1 1
It is difficult to tell whether Bruni regrets more the loss of liberty under the emporers or the
concomitant loss of Latin letters.
The same parallel between the fate of Rome and that of Latin was repeated a few
years later by Valla — not in a history, but in the preface to the first book of his Elegantiae
9 Both the Donation of Constantine and Valla’ s oration exposing it may be found in a modem
edition with accompanying English translation in The Treatise of Lorenzo Valla on the Donation of
Constantine, trans. and ed. Christopher B. Coleman, Renaissance Society of America Reprints Texts,
1 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993).
1 0 Quoted in Wallace K. Ferguson, "Humanist Views of the Renaissance" The American Historical
Review 45 (1939), 21 n. 60.
nQuoted in Ferguson, 21 n. 61.
C h a p t e r O n e : T h e R e v iv a l o f L a t in in t h e R e n a is s a n c e
32
linguae latinae}2 There, Valla provides a comparatio imperii sermonisque Romani, a parallel
between the Roman Empire and the Latin language, "insisting on the superior cultural and
historical importance of the language as the durable basis of Western civilization":1 3
The writers of many nations speak only in Latin, a language embracing all the
teachings worthy of a free man . . . and who is not aware that when a
language flourishes, all studies and learning flourish, but when it declines,
they too decline?
Apud nos, id est, apud multas nationes, nemo nisi Romane, in qua lingua
disciplinae cunctae libero homine dignae continentur . . . qua vigente quis
ignorat studia omnia disciplinasque vigere, oceidente occidere?1 4
Valla would reprise this theme in greater detail in an important speech about the Latin
language, In principio sui studii.
In identifying the fall of Rome with the fall of Latin and learning generally, both
Bruni and Valla were among many humanists to emphasize the death of antique Roman
culture as a prelude to its contemporary rebirth in Italy. Italian humanist historians may
have laid the groundwork for putting history on a more factual, textual basis, but their
patriotism motivated them to write very self-conscious, self-serving histories in which their
national heroes were painted as the restorers of Rome’s ancient glory. As Wallace Ferguson
states, "The Italians of the Renaissance recognised in ancient Rome the glory of their own
1 2 Valla provided separate prefaces for each of the six books of his Elegantiae, the text of which
may be found (with accompanying Italian translations) in Eugenio Garin, ed., Prosatori Latini del
Quattrocento (Milan and Naples: R. Ricciardi, 1952), 594-631.
1 3 David Marsh, "Grammar, Method, and Polemic in Lorenzo Valla’ sElegantiae," Rinascimento 29
(1979): 93.
1 4 Quoted and translated by Marsh, 93.
C h a p t e r O n e : T h e R e v iv a l o f L a t in in t h e R e n a is s a n c e 33
national past. . . . Their enthusiasm for Roman antiquity was re-enforced by national
sentiment."1 5
Thus, histories by Villani, Bruni, Biondo, Machiavelli, and Sabellicus would all mark
the beginning of a distinct and darker historical period at the fall of Rome. This division,
marking the onset of the "Dark Ages," was a Renaissance invention, and it differed from
medieval histories which for religious reasons emphasized an unbroken continuity from
ancient Rome. Medieval history, explains Ferguson, was based on a biblical model, dividing
human history into six ages, corresponding to the six days of creation, or, more frequently,
into the four monarchies mentioned in Daniel’s prophecy (Daniel 2:40). The fourth
monarchical age had long been identified as Rome (apparently by Jerome), and since the
Bible described the fourth monarchy as the last of earthly empires until the world’ s end,
Christian tradition required believing that the Roman empire somehow still endured, despite
its political dismantling in the fifth century (Ferguson, 5). In order to accommodate this
belief, historians invented the concept of translatio imperii, by which Roman rule was
considered to be passed down first to the Charlemagne, ad Francos, and later to the Holy
Roman Empire, ad Teutonicos. This managed to sustain the Christian historical paradigm
for many, and as Ferguson notes, the concept did fit the idea of the unity and universal
character of the Respublica Christiana (5). However, Petrarch would reject the idea of
translatio imperii, thus clearing the way for the concept of an historical division between
1 5 Ferguson, "Humanist Views of the Renaissance," 7-8.
C h a p t e r O n e : T h e R e v iv a l o f L a t in in t h e R e n a is s a n c e 34
ancient Roman civilization and the age following the break up of the empire, as well as for
the idea of a civilization which arose after the darkest period was passed.1 6
Fillipo Villani’s Liber de civitatis Florentiae famosis civibus (1382) was the first
Renaissance history to mark the fall of Rome as the beginning of a new age. Villani began
his history at the Tower of Babel, but did not follow the six- or four-period theological
organization of the Middle Ages. Flavio Biondo’s more famous Decades1 7 drew a sharp line
between ancient and modern history at the sack of Rome by the Goths in 410 (which Biondo
mistakenly dates as 412). Biondo provides two running sets of dates for his history to
emphasize this distinction, one according to anno salutis, and a second according to anno
inclinationis Romanorum imperii. This distinction between ancient and modern history would
be adhered to by Machiavelli in his Istorie fiorentine of 1525, which begins at the barbarian
invasion of Rome. Inventing the "Dark Ages" to give light to their own, Renaissance
historians described their period as the resurrection of Roman civilization. This was done
quite explicitly, for example, when Biondo titled a chapter of his Decades, "Comparatio qualis
vetustae & novae romae." Such comparisons to ancient Rome had important political
dimensions, such as when the Florentine republic was likened to republican Rome.1 8 These
1 6 See T. E. Mommsen, "Petrarch’s Dark Ages," in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, ed. E. F. Rice
(Ithaca, N.Y., 1959), 108-29. Mommsen notes that Petrarch reversed the extant Christian paradigm
of pagan darkness followed by the light of the Christian era. To accommodate the invention of a
"renaissance," the Christian "middle ages" were described as "dark" as a prelude to the Italian
enlightenment.
1 7 The full title, 'Ten books of history from the fall of the Romans" (Historiarum ab inclinatione
Romanorum imperii decades). Biondo’s history was written 1439-53 and first printed in Venice:
Octavianus Scotus, 1483.
1 8 See Hans Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance: Civic Humanism and Republican
Liberty in an Age of Classicism and Tyranny, rev. ed. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1966). Baron’s thesis has been much challenged and revised since he first published it. See Albert
Rabil, Jr., "The Significance of 'Civic Humanism’ in the Interpretation of the Italian Renaissance," in
C h a p t e r O n e : T h e R e v iv a l o f L a t in in t h e R e n a is s a n c e 35
comparisons also had vital socio-religious dimensions, such as when Biondo compares the
Pope to a Roman Caesar in the title of another chapter of the same work: "Dictator
perpetuus est pontifex."1 9
But of all the cultural comparisons to ancient Rome, the linguistic and literary
dimension is arguably the most crucial. To repair this reverenced attribute of Roman culture
would be as significant to the glory of present-day Italy as its loss had been to the glory of
ancient Rome. One illustration of how strongly felt was the absence of Rome’s ancient
language and literature comes from the father of Leon Battista Alberti, who reportedly said
that the loss of "our ancient and noble Latin language" was a greater one than that of the
Empire.2 0 The fate of Latin and Latin literature was an index of the ancient culture’s
fortunes. To the degree that Latin was being revived, so was Rome.
The specifically literary nature of that revival is apparent in Bruni’s Vita di Dante e
del Petrarca, (1436), which included a lengthy essay on the history of Latin letters from
Cicero to Petrarch. According to Bruni, Latin letters reached their apex during Cicero’s era.
Although he allowed that Dante recently had achieved excellence in the rima volgare, Bruni
believed no one of the current age capable of writing competent Latin verse or prose; all
were "rozzi e grossi e senza perizia di lettere." All the same, he credits Petrarch with having
begun to bring literary studies back to light (by which he means Petrarch’ s Latin, not
Rabil 2:141-174. Rabil reviews the critical reception of "civic humanism" as discussed by William
Bouwsma, Gennaro Sasso, Jerrold Seigel, Charles Trinkaus, Eugene Rice, Wallace K. Ferguson, Lauro
Martines, Gene Brucker, Quentin Skinner, and J.G.A. Pocock.
1 9 Renaissance reverence for Cicero, the subject of my next chapter, strongly influenced such
political and religious comparisons.
2 0 Quoted in C. Grayson, A Renaissance Controversy: Latin or Italian? (Oxford: Clarendon,
1960), 8.
C h a p t e r O n e : T h e R e v iv a l o f L a t in in t h e R e n a is s a n c e 36
vernacular, achievements): "Ed ebbe tanta grazia d’intelletto che fu il primo che questi
sublimi studi lungo tempo caduti ed ignorati rivoco a luce di cognizione: i quali dapoi
crescendo montati sono nella presente altezza."2 1 Bruni’s depiction of Petrarch helped to
establish the notion of a third cultural period in addition to the classical and medieval
periods that Petrarch had been first to identify. "This was the period of the renovatio
litterarum, the renaissance of letters, consequent upon the attainment of political liberty, and
achieved only in Bruni’s own day, and partly (as Bruni would have claimed) as a result of his
own literary efforts.”2 2
Biondo’s Italia illustrata (written 1448-1458, published 1474) similarly describes the
resurrection of Roman culture in literary terms, crediting Petrarch with the initial stirrings
of a revival of literary elegance (again in reference to Petrarch’s Latin compositions, not his
Italian works). However, Biondo admits that the lack of Cicero’s texts prevented Petrarch
from achieving what others would later do. Biondo hails Giovanni Ravenna (1346-1417) as
the first to restore the study of eloquence to Italy, there being few or almost none after the
church fathers, Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine, who wrote Latin with any elegance.
Matteo Palmieri (1406-1475), in his Della vita civile (written ca. 1460, printed 1529), would
give the same credit to Leonardo Bruni, whom he says was the first who came "as a bright
light of Latin elegance to give to men the sweetness of the Latin tongue" (come splendido
lume della eleganzia latina, per rendere a gli uomini la dolcezza della latina lingua), after some
2 1 Quoted in Ferguson, "Humanist Views of the Renaissance," 20-21.
2 2 James Hankins, et al., trans. and eds., The Humanism of Leonardo Bruni (Binghamton, New
York: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1987), 10-11.
C h a p t e r O n e : T h e R e v iv a l o f L a t in in t h e R e n a is s a n c e 37
800 years of darkness.2 3 Gasparino Barzizza earns the same credit from Jacopo Filippo
Foresti of Bergamo in Foresti’s Supplementum chronicarum (Venice 1483), while Vespasiano
de Bisticci, in his Vite di uomini Ulustri del secolo xv (written 1482), says Fra Ambrogio
Traversari and Bruni are together responsible for having "revived the Latin tongue which
had been dead and buried for a 1000 years or more."2 4 Finally, of course, it little matters to
whom most credit is due for the revival of Latin and literature in Renaissance Italy.
Historians of the time were unanimous in regarding the revival of Latin as principal evidence
that the culture of ancient Rome was being restored.2 5
Humanist historians established a firm conception of an ideal period of Roman
civilization followed by a decline that was as much linguistic as anything else. However
inflated by patriotic zeal or teleologically contrived in order to lead necessarily to the revival
of fifteenth-century Italy, this concept functioned for Renaissance Italians as a driving
cultural motive for restoring the Roman ideal, and bringing Latin back to life was at the
center of that ideal. It is to be noted that these early Italian historians referred to the
restoration of the Latin language in terms of its "elegance" and "eloquence." These were not
general terms of praise, but specific and identifiable qualities of the language, as will be
discussed below.
2 3 Quoted in Ferguson, "Humanist Views of the Renaissance," 22.
2 4 Quoted in Ferguson, 25.
2 5 For other non-literaiy aspects of the Renaissance revival of Roman culture, see R. Weiss, The
Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1969).
C h a p t e r O n e : T h e R e v iv a l o f L a t in in t h e R e n a is s a n c e 38
Defenses of the Latin Language
Reviving Latin was a precondition for preserving and promoting the best facets of
Renaissance society. This, at least, was the case according to those explicit defenses of Latin
made by a number of fifteenth and sixteenth century humanists, such as Paolo Manuzio,
Pompeius Ugonius Romanus, Guillaume Bude, and especially Lorenzo Valla.2 6 These
defenses reprise the historical significance of Latin prior to Rome’s decline and justify in
broad social terms the necessity of continuing its study. In addition, they begin to advertise
those features of Latin considered valuable enough to be given close scrutiny, although the
real work of reestablishing classical Latin would occur in language and translation studies.
In the preface to his Commentaries Ciceronis epistolarum ad Qu.fratrem (1557), Paolo
Manuzio provides a defensio linguae latinae in which he ridicules claims that Latin is a dead
language and argues for its contemporary importance on the basis that both knowledge and
eloquence are to be had from classical Latin literature.2 7 With marked sarcasm he asks
detractors whether Latin literature indeed holds any dignity at all, it having been so highly
acclaimed for so long by the Roman populous. Appealing to the need to feed the mind, he
offers Latin literature as an intellectual feast, asking what could be more sublime than Livy’s
history, what more gravely learned than the writings of Cicero? Roman literature holds
infinite variety, he claims, including outstanding poets, historians, orators, philosophers, etc.
(12). But Latin is valuable for more purposes than simply filling the mind with wisdom
2 6 Another work that appears to be of this same genre that I have been unable to examine is
Gabriel Francicanus Barius’ s Pro lingua latina libri tres (Rome, 1554).
2 7 Paolo Manuzio, pref. to Commentaries Ciceronis epistolarum ad Qu. fratrem, reprinted in Selecta
Latinitatis Scripta Auctorum Recentium (Saec. XV-XX), ed Aemilius Springhetti, Latinitas Perennis, I,
(Rome: Gregorian University, 1951), 8-14; cited hereafter as Springhetti.
C h a p t e r O n e : T h e R e v iv a l o f L a t in in t h e R e n a is s a n c e 39
through its literature, important as this is. Better than any other language in the world,
Manuzio claims, Latin is suited to civic leadership, and possesses that sort of practical
eloquence that makes possible vindication against the calumny of adversaries (11). Manuzio
identifies some of the desirable rhetorical features of language to be found better in Latin
than anywhere else, including the elegance and abundance of its words and its rich and
ornamented expression (11-12). Manuzio obviously believes Latin to be valuable for more
than just the content of Latin literature. It was a medium whose study held practical use,
chiefly due to its rhetorical qualities.
That practical utility of Latin for meeting current social needs was often expressed
in religious terms by other defenders of the tongue. For example, in his De studio litterarum
recte et commode instituendo (1527),2 8 Guillaume Bude insisted upon the "flexibility of
eloquence and of Latin diction for expressing sacred issues" (flexibilitas eloquentiae et dictionis
latinae ad res sacras exprimendas). That is, Latin was to be looked to in order to obtain the
words and eloquent expression for sacred subjects. The content of the scriptures was extant
in the Bible, "but the ideas and meanings should be ornamented" (sed res et sententiae ab iis
exomandae sunt; 39). Bude valued Latin not only for making available an effective means
of communication for sacred subjects, but for conserving the rites and rituals of the church
against change (40). In order to keep these aspects of worship in tact, it was also necessary
to keep Latin intact (40).
Pompeius Ugonius Romanus argued for the importance of Latin to the church in
terms of the propagation of the gospel in his oration De latina lingua, given in November
2 8 Gulielmus Budaeus, Flexibilitas eloquentiae et dictionis latinae ad res sacras exprimendas (1527),
reprinted in Springhetti, 39-40.
C h a p t e r O n e : T h e R e v iv a l o f L a t in in t h e R e n a is s a n c e 40
1586.2 9 Like Bude, Romanus pointed to the dependence of the church upon Latin, but in
more administrative terms. The curia, the Vatican councils, and other sites of important
church business depended upon Latin to conduct its important and ongoing affairs.
Romanus cites Paul the Apostle, who saw fit to minister in Rome in the Roman tongue, as
an historical witness of the religious importance of Latin. That importance was carried
forward in the various customs, writings, and works of theology in the church up to the
present day. Making a long list of the various uses of Latin by the church (including such
crucial activities as the performance of sacred rites and the condemnation of heretics),
Romanus insists on its ongoing importance. However, in stressing the continuity of Latin’s
use and importance in church history, Romanus does not imply that Latin has always been
static and uniform. Otherwise he would not have stressed that Latin being currently imitated
in the present church was that eloquent Latin, brought forward from antiquity, employed by
the church fathers:
We imitate those former leaders of the Christian republic, in whose writing
we discern not only incorrupt and pure Latin speech, but we also admire the
singular eloquence, in every way ornamented and brilliant, of the most
famous orators.
Imitemur veteres illos Christianae reipublicae principes, quorum in scriptis,
non modo incorruptam Latini purique sermonis consuetudinem cernimus,
verum etiam singularem eloquentiam, omniaque clarissimorum oratorum
ornamenta et lumina admiramur. (26)
Romanus remarks on the Ciceronian copia of Jerome’s Latin, the clarity of Caesar’s Latin
in Cyprian, the richness of Livy’s Latin in Augustine, etc. He urges his audience to imitate
these examples above all others (26). While Latin remained important for the church
2 9 Pompeius Ugonius Romanus, De latina lingua, reprinted in Springhetti, Selecta Latinitatis Scripta
A uc to rum Recentium, 23-26.
C h a p t e r O n e : T h e R e v iv a l o f L a t in in t h e R e n a is s a n c e 41
throughout the middle ages, writers such as Romanus emphasized the need for Latin to be
reestablished in the church according to the rhetorical eloquence of classical exemplars (in
this case, mediated through patristic sources).
Lorenzo Valla, whose Elegantiae linguae latinae did more to bring about a restoration
of the Latin tongue than any other fifteenth-century language study, spoke eloquently on
behalf of Latin in a speech delivered in October, 1455, In principio sui studii.3 0 Like Bude
and Romanus, Valla emphasized how important Latin was to society by linking its history and
future to that of the church. Valla’s speech describes an intimate and reciprocal relationship
between the church and the Latin language: historically, each has preserved and sanctified
the other. If the church has kept learning alive through preserving Latin, so Latin has
maintained the church. Latin seems to be divinely ordained since the two testaments of
scripture remain extant by way of the Vulgate (cum enim utrumque testamentum extaret
scriptum latinis litteris; 285). Further, the inclusion of Latin alongside Greek and Hebrew
on the cross of Christ, Valla asserts, is nothing less than God’s consecration of the Latin
language ([latinas litteras] quas deus in cruce una cum graecis et hebraicis consecravit; 285).
Obviously using his praise of the Pope to urge the church to support Latin studies, he refers
to the pontiff not only as Christ’ s surrogate, but metaphorically as he who,
in this ship, so to speak, holds fast the rudder of fidelity to Latin against
violent winds and tempests and has always encouraged the other sailors and
passengers, lest they abandon those things that ought to be kept safe.
qui in hac navi ut sic dicam latinae fidei clavum tenens adversus procellas ac
tempestates ceteros nautas atque vectores ne ab ea tutanda desisterent
semper est adhortatus. (285)
3 0 The text of Valla’s speech may be found in Opera omnia, ed. Eugenio Garin, vol 2 (Turin:
Bottega d’Erasmo, 1962), 281-86.
C h a p t e r O n e : T h e R e v iv a l o f L a t in in t h e R e n a is s a n c e 42
Valla equates true religion and true language, affirming that "holy religion and true letters"
are on par with one another, and remain so completely interdependent that "wherever the
one is not, the other cannot be, and since our religion is eternal, so will Latin literature be
eternal" (religio sancta et vera litteratura pariter habitare et ubicumque altera non est, illic neque
altera esse posse, et quia religio nostra aetema etiam latina litteratura aetema fore', 285-86). The
love of (Latin) literature and the love of Christian religion are described as parallel: quis
amator litterarum, quemadmodum amator christianae religionis (286). Whether the fates of
Latin and of the church were as tightly linked in the past as Valla describes is surely
debatable; however, with the advent of the Reformation the fates of Latin and the church
would indeed go hand in hand. The challenge to the authority of the church was one with
the challenge to its linguistic universality.3 1
At the time Valla was writing in the mid-fifteenth century, however, universality was
a general basis upon which to appeal for Latin studies not only on religious, but also on
educational, intellectual, and even political grounds. This is apparent in the earlier part of
Valla’s speech where he boasts of the intellectual and artistic achievements of Roman society
that were only made possible through the universal Latin tongue. Latin spread with the
Roman conquests, he explains, until the various conquered peoples came to employ it as
3 1 Ironically, Valla would contribute to the downfall of Latin in the church. In 1443 Valla wrote
his Collatio novi testamenti (republished in the 1450s and known later as the Adnotationes). This work
corrected errors in the Vulgate by referring to the original Greek and included much philological and
grammatical commentaiy. By emphasizing the theological implications of different translations, Valla
laid the groundwork for a philologically based scriptural theology to replace scholastic metaphysical
hermeneutics. Elio Antonio de Nebrija (1441/4-1522), famed for his Institutiones Grammaticae (1481),
followed Valla in this regard, defending a philological approach to scripture in his Apologia (1516).
When Erasmus would edit this work and then cause it to be printed for the first time in 1505, it
provided the philological foundation not only for Erasmus’ s groundbreaking version of the Greek New
Testament (1516), but for those vernacular Biblical translations that were the backbone of the
Protestant Reformation itself.
C h a p t e r O n e : T h e R e v iv a l o f L a t in in t h e R e n a is s a n c e 43
their customary tongue (romana potentia propagata, in suas leges nationibus redactis ac
diutuma pace stabilitis, effecit, ut pleraque gentes uterentur lingua latina et inter se
conseutudinem haberent; 283). The benefit of this linguistic unity was parallel to the
commercial benefits accompanying the empire’s unity. Just as the new political relations
made better trafficking in merchandise, so also the various disciplines of learning were
enriched by being put into the common Latin tongue. Indeed, Latin was like a standardized
monetary system, the "currency of communication" (aureo nummo) among these conjoined
nations (Neque aliter quam invento nummo factum est, ut illius beneficio omnes omnia, quae
usquam essent, mercari et sua ipsi aliis venditare possent, sic accepta lingua latina velut aureo
nummo nationes cuncta; 283).
As Valla depicts it, the universality of Latin provided the circumstances that made
possible general cultural development, a growth of knowledge and abilities unavailable to
those limited by ignorance of others. The sciences and arts, he explains, depend upon "the
cooperation of many people, by which a given art is put together, developed, and cultivated
through imitations (aemulantibus) and (in turn) through critical assessments of a given work’s
praiseworthiness" (nihil admodum proftcere atque excrescere queat, quod non a plurimis
componitur, elaboratur, excolitur, praecipue aemulantibus invicem et de laude certantibus; 282).
Cultural growth is a process in which "one artist discovers another (Alius aliud invenit) and
whatever one notices as conspicuously good in another, he himself attempts to imitate,
emulate and surpass" (id ipse imitari, aemulari, superare conatur, 282). Studies are first
stimulated and then perfected, Valla explains, through a process of mutual appraisal and
imitation. Valla compares cultural progress to the process of constructing a city, something
completed more swiftly and efficiently when a greater number of hands are applied to the
C h a p t e r O n e : T h e R e v iv a l o f L a t in in t h e R e n a is s a n c e
44
task. Valla quotes Virgil’s description of the founding of Rome from the Aeneid to illustrate
this, implying that the rebuilding of Rome in his day would require equal cooperation (282-
83). Such mutual awareness, appreciation, imitation, and cooperative achievement is only
possible when people are "joined together through the commonality of the same language"
(eiusdem linguae commercio coniunctis; 283).
Valla would not be the last to highlight the universality and permanence of Latin and
to link its success with the prosperity of intellectual culture generally. The universality and
permanence of the Latin language became a common justification for its study during and
after the Renaissance. Juan Luis Vives (1492-1540) would echo Valla in this regard:
"Intercourse between foreign peoples, the common Faith, works of permanent and universal
interest, demand such a tongue." Latin was more than a language, it served as "a symbol of
universal solidarity."3 2
Consistent with those humanist histories described above, Valla relates the downfall
of the Latin language at the downfall of Rome. To illustrate the stakes to society of the loss
of this common medium, he returns to his monetary comparison:
If the common currency is taken from the midst of the empire, wouldn’t trade
itself be taken away? Wouldn’t social intercourse be returned to its former
wild state, a difficult and almost impossible crisis?
si nummus tollatur e medio, nonne tolletur etiam commercium et consuetudo
generis humani, et redietur ad illam asperam et difficilem et paene
impossibilem rerum permutationem? (284)
This is precisely what the Roman empire suffered in its collapse, Valla claims, bringing down
with it the very language that its writers had made to shine so bright. By extension, whatever
3 2 Quoted in William Harrison Woodward, Studies in Education During the Age of the Renaissance
1400-1600 (1906; reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 197.
C h a p t e r O n e : T h e R e v iv a l o f L a t in in t h e R e n a is s a n c e 45
progress the arts and sciences were making was arrested during the ensuing linguistic
confusion. "The Latin language fell with Rome, and with it all those disciplines with which
it was necessarily joined" (ita sublato imperio romano, quo lingua latina nitebatur, ipsam
linguam necesse erat corruere et cum ea cunctas disciplinas; 284). As proof, Valla then asks,
bravely and rhetorically,
who, after the collapse of the empire, wrote anything concerning grammar,
dialectic or rhetoric unless it was something trifling? What person existed
worthy of the name orator? What historian, poet, lawyer, philosopher or
theologian worth comparing to any of the ancients?
Etenim postcollapsum imperium quis ingrammatica, dialectica, rhetorica nisi
nugas scripsit, quis orator hoc dignus nomine extitit, quis historicus, poeta,
iurisconsultus, philosophus, theologus ulli veterum comparandus? (284)
Parum dico, he answers himself, "Too few, I say."3 3
In typical Renaissance fashion, Valla laments the beleaguered state of the arts, a
subject he develops in greater length (and applied more specifically to scholastic abuses
against dialectic) in his Repastinatio dialecticae et philosophiae,34 or that Erasmus would
engage more generally in his Antibarbari (begun ca. 1488, first printed 1520) or that Juan
Luis Vives would detail relative to each art in turn in his De corruptis artium (1531). To
demonstrate that the loss of these ancient arts is a palpable loss affecting the current political
3 3 Valla will not hesistate to name himself, however, as one such contributor, in a letter to
Bernardo Serra in August 1439 (with some justice, if not modesty). Valla claims that his Elegantiae
have benefited the Latin language more than all those who in the past six centuries have written on
subjects as diverse as grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, civil and canon law, and lexical distinctions: "quos
[sc. libros] dixi melius merri de lingua latina quam omnes qui sexcenti iam annis vel de grammatica
vel de rhetorica vel de dialectica vel de iure civili atque canonico vel de verborum significatione
scripserunt." (Quoted by Marsh, "Grammar, Method, and Polemic in Lorenzo Valla’ s Elegantiae” 93).
3 4 See Peter Mack, Renaissance Argument: Valla and Agricola in the Traditions of Rhetoric and
Dialectic (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1993).
C h a p t e r O n e : T h e R e v iv a l o f L a t in in t h e R e n a is s a n c e 46
situation, Valla describes how illiteracy in Latin has led to inferior civil laws. "Isn’t it true,"
he asks condescendingly,
that among the better part of Latin nations, that which is written, whether in
the courts or out of them, is not Latin at all? Hasn’t almost every single state
founded its own civil law in a vernacular idiom? This being the case, how can
it be otherwise than Roman civil law is exterminated and held for nothing?
Nonne apud plerasque latinas nationes tam in iudiciis quam extra iudicia
scribitur illiterate id est non latine, nonne singulae paene civitates suum ius
civile vernacula lingua condiderunt? Quod cum sit, quid aliud, quam ius civile
romanum exterminatur et pro nihilo habetur? (284)
It is a simple equation between the loss of language and the loss of an important component
of culture: if each country writes its own law in its own vernacular, they all distance
themselves from those Roman laws that made possible the civil polity that people in the
Renaissance both lacked and envied.
Roman civil law is not all that perishes with the loss of Latin; Valla extends this to
a more general loss of the liberal arts. "So long as the Latin language is cast away (abicitur)",
he says, "so also are nearly all the liberal arts" (Ita dum lingua latina abicitur, omnes
propemodum cum ilia liberates abiciuntur artes; 284). As proof, Valla offers the examples of
Asia and Africa. When the Latin language was ejected from these countries along with the
Roman empire, all the "good arts" were similarly rejected and the original barbarism of these
areas returned to take possession of them (ideo omnes bonae artes pariter eiectae sunt et
pristina barbaries rediit in possessionem', 284-85). Valla leaves little doubt of the enormous
consequences for religion, learning, the law, and culture generally that hinge upon the proper
preservation and cultivation of the Latin language.
C h a p t e r O n e : T h e R e v i v a l o f L a t i n i n t h e R e n a i s s a n c e
The Threats of Barbarism and the Vernaculars
47
Defenses of the Latin language were as much concerned with the apparent enemies
to Latin as they were eager to praise the benefits this language was capable of bestowing on
society. In the Renaissance, barbarism was a cultural enemy, a specter of sorts that haunted
and threatened the well-being of Latin intellectual life. One of the chief reasons that Latin
found numerous advocates among the humanists and that classical usage was ardently
cultivated and imitated was that Latin was perceived to be under siege and partly occupied
by foreign linguistic influences. With the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, James
Hankins explains, the linguistic world that it had formed and nurtured was shattered: "Syntax
grew simpler, vocabulary less precise. A host of barbaric and foreign words invaded the
language to supply the linguistic needs of a proto-feudal society. Christianity imported its
Graecisms and Hebraisms."3 5 In addition, scholastic Latin had imported specialized and
technical jargon into Latin while maintaining a simplified syntax. A significant amount of
humanist research and publishing was given over to the identification of barbarisms and their
purging.
A corollary to this fear about barbarism was Renaissance resistance to the vernacular
languages. Attitudes towards the vulgar tongue changed as the modern languages and
literatures developed, but for a long time humanists resisted the vernacular as vehemently
as they did the barbarous influences of scholastic technical jargon. For the better part of the
fifteenth century and for long into the sixteenth century in some areas of Europe, humanists
3 5 James Hankins, ed. and trans., On the Study of Literature [De studiis et litteris], in The Humanism
of Leonardo Bruni. Trans, and ed. Gordon Griffiths, James Hankins and David Thompson
(Binghamton, New York: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1987), 198.
C h a p t e r O n e : T h e R e v iv a l o f L a t in in t h e R e n a is s a n c e 48
believed that, despite the development of the Romance languages, these were "still too crude
and unstable to serve the learned as instruments of thought and communication."3 6
Humanists sought to cultivate this attitude in their pupils, teaching them to rely upon
the stable, permanent, and more universal learned languages than upon the ever-changing
vernacular tongues. This is apparent in one of Erasmus’ s texts composed for grammar school
consumption, De recta latini graecique sermonis pronuntiatione dialogus (1528). There, in a
dialogue between "Lion" and "Bear," Erasmus inspires young students to respect the
permanence of Latin and to reproach the less stable vulgar tongues:
Lion: How is it though, I wonder, that we have all these myriads of different
languages?
Bear: . . . today what can children possibly learn from their parents and their nurses
except the common language of their particular country, be it French,
Spanish, German, English, or Polish.
Lion: You are right. If only the world limited itself to these two languages! [Greek
and Latin] . . .
Bear: It is odd writing in the language of the man in the street if you wish your
work to stay fresh and to last forever. Once upon a time a large part of
Europe and Africa together with a smaller part of Asia spoke Latin or Greek.
Now, look at the number of barbarian languages there are, which the
common people have created out of Latin alone! Look at the number of
different dialects even within single countries, as in Italy, France, and Spain.
Erasmus’s "Bear" then articulates the connection between classical language and literature:
Bear: So it is important for scholars to confine themselves to those languages that
have almost exclusively been used in learned writing. The reason is that they
do not depend for their guarantee on ordinary people. The people are poor
custodians of quality, whereas the guarantee of the integrity of the learned
languages rests in the books written by good authors.3 7
3 6 Hankins, The Humanism of Leonardo Bruni, 198.
3 7 Desiderius Erasmus, The Right Way of Speaking Latin and Greek- A Dialogue (De recta latini
graecique sermonis pronuntiatione dialogus [1528]), trans. and ed. Maurice Pope, Collected Works of
Erasmus: Literary and Educational Writings 4, ed. J. K. Sowards (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1985), 390. Erasmus was not the first to insist on the importance of stylistic expression as a quality
that would ensure the longevity of literature. Vergerius, the author of the earliest humanist
C h a p t e r O n e : T h e R e v iv a l o f L a t in in t h e R e n a is s a n c e 49
Latin (as Greek) was important because it had been recorded in learned writing. The
relatively static character that writing gives to language conserves its virtues and makes
possible its development, whereas the spoken tongues of the vulgus are subject to change and
therefore loss. Classical literature became the basis for appeals to usage in the Renaissance.
Erasmus prescribes an explicit role for literature in guaranteeing and demonstrating the
authoritative use of language.
The negative attitude towards the vernacular languages is also evident in the writing
of Marc Antoine Muret. In a speech given in Rome in 1583,3 8 at a time when Italian had
succeeded in challenging Latin, Muret still maintained strong arguments against the
vernacular, claiming the superiority of both Greek and Latin:3 9
Now all vernacular tongues . . . lie so much below the dignity of those
languages (Greek and Latin) as do the deepest depressions of the valleys
below the greatest heights of the sky.
Nunc cum . . . vernacula omnia tanto iaceant infra illorum dignitatem, quanto
imae maximeque depressae convalles infra editissimorum coeloque, ut poetae
loquuntur, minantium montium cacumina. (16)
educational treatise, De ingenuis moribus (1392), claimed that "Literature indeed exhibits not facts
alone, but thoughts and their expression. Provided such thoughts be worthy, and worthily expressed,
we feel assured that they will not die: although I do not think that thoughts without style will be likely
to attract much notice or secure a sure survival"; William Harrison Woodward, Vittorino Da Feltre and
other Humanist Educators: Essays and Versions: An Introduction to the History of Classical Education.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1897), 105. For the manner in which this conception
affected Renaissance literary studies, see "Imitation and Literary Criticism (1): Lists of Authors to be
Read" in chapter 4, below.
3 8 Marcus Antonius Muretus, Linguae graeca et latina amandae sunt et retinendae quia antiquam
sapientiam continent et nostris universaliores sunt, reprinted in Springhetti, 15-19.
3 9 While Muret defends both Latin and Greek, he claims that Greek, though important for
learning, is not as useful as the more widely understood Latin: Itaque ad usum latina potior est; ad
doctrinae copiam graeca (18).
C h a p t e r O n e : T h e R e v iv a l o f La t in in t h e R e n a is s a n c e 50
Muret reasons that if people wish to write, they do so either for the public good or their own
glory. In both cases they would choose something that could be understood by the most
people either presently or in the future (17). To those who claim that Latin (or Greek) is
moribund, Muret argues they will maintain their healthy usefulness long after popular
languages have perished. Historically, he claims, whenever popular languages had served as
the standard and norm of speaking (arbitrium et ius et norma loquendi [citing Horace]), "they
were continually in motion, fluctuating, having nothing certain or stable about them, unable
to maintain the same features within any given time period" (assidue agitabantur, fluctuabant,
nihil habebant cerium, nihil stabile; unum seculum eodem vultu durare non poterant; 18). In
welcome contrast, Latin, having been carefully established out of the best writers, redacted
and submitted to certain rules, remains fixed for centuries (18). If the vulgar had been
allowed to hold sway linguistically, today, he claims, not even Cicero would be understood,
just as when Cicero complained of the unintelligibility of the Twelve Tables in his day (18-
19). The problem with vulgar languages, Muret says, is that they daily live and daily die,
depending upon the "unschooled lips of the multitude." Luckily, the learned have rescued
language out of "popular servility" so that the classical languages not only presently live, but
have achieved a certain immortality and immutability (19).
Muret comes very late in a long argument over the classical versus the modern
tongues. The questione della lingua had been broached in Italy as early as by Dante, who in
his De vulgari eloquentia (written 1303) had contrasted the immutability of Latin with the
unstable corruption of the vernacular. Dante was tempted to write his Infemo in Latin but
opted for the less learned but more popular vulgus (forever changing the origins of modern
C h a p t e r O n e : T h e R e v iv a l o f L a t in in t h e R e n a is s a n c e 51
Italian literature). Dante justified his choice by describing Latin (with its formal rules and
grammar) as something artificially abstracted from the pre-existing, natural vernacular:
I hold vulgar speech to be that which we acquire with no knowledge of rules
by imitating those who raise us. It is that from which derives that speech
which is secondary to us, called the grammar of Rome [Latin].
. . . vulgarem locutionem asserimus, quam sine omni regula, nutricem
imitantes, accipimus. Est et inde alia locutio secundaria nobis, quam Romani
grammaticam vocaverant.4 0
Dante’s was a minority view, however. Flavio Biondo reflected more popular attitudes in the
mid-fifteenth century, claiming that Italian (as it then was) was nothing more than corrupted
and mutated Latin: sensimque factum est, ut pro romana latinitate adulterinam hanc
barbaricam mixtam loquelam habeamus vulgarem.4 1 This sentiment received its most popular
incarnation in Sperone Speroni’s, Dialogo delle lingue (written 1530-40), in which Speroni’s
Lazarro Bonamico, a professor of Greek and Latin at Pisa, is made to say that Tuscan is to
Latin as dregs is to wine, "for the vulgar tongue is nothing but Latin debased and corrupted
by time, by barbarians, and by our own neglect."4 2
Romolo Amaseo presented two sensational speeches in Bologna in November, 1529,
that represent the fervent nature of humanist response to the corrupted common tongue.
Lecturing on why the use of Latin should be retained (De latine linguae usu retinendo), he
4 0 De vulgari eloquentia 1.1. Sect. 2,3, quoted in Glynn R. Faithfull, "The Concept of 'Living
Language’ in Cinquecento Italian Philology," Modem Language Review 48 (1953): 284. See Dante, De
la volgare eloquentia. and Italian translation by Giovanni Giorgio Trissino, 1529. (Reprint, European
Linguistics, 1480-1700. Yorkshire: The Scolar Press, 1970).
4 1 Flavio Biondo, De romana locutione, quoted in G. A. Padley, Grammatical Theory in Western
Europe, 1500-1700; Trends in Vernacular Grammar II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988),
11 n. 27.
4 2 Quoted in Grayson, A Renaissance Controversy, 20.
C h a p t e r O n e : T h e R e v iv a l o f L a t in in t h e R e n a is s a n c e
52
asks why is it we would choose to renounce our means of speaking to the whole world. "Why
should we give up a universal medium for a corrupt and semi-barbarous idiom that can
scarcely be called a language?" Extending something of a humanist call to arms, he pleads:
"I call on all you young men of Italy, you who should above all seek the prize of
eloquence. . . . Bestir yourselves . . . and fight for these remains of your Empire."4 3
We may draw two conclusions from the nature of Amaseo’s appeal. First, at least
for the Italians, Latin still represented a remnant of the lost Roman empire that was their
cultural heritage. This appeal to a sense of patria in the Latin tongue is the same appeal
Lorenzo Valla employed in his In principio sui studii when depicting the cultural glories of
Latin in the lost Roman empire. Marc Fumaroli has described how the Italians, faced with
Latin in a state of decay, were exiled from their own inheritance. This helps us understand
the significance attached to recovering that language:
La decadence de la langage latine devient le symbole de l’exil de ITtalie,
heritiere legitime de Rome, dans une Europe barbare qu’elle ne controle
plus. . . . Retrouver l’or pur de la latinitas enfoui dans le plomb de la
decadence et de la barbarie, devient a partir de Petrarque le Grand Oeuvre
autour duquel se deploient tous les aspects d’une Renaissance stimulee par
l’orgueil et la nostaligie de la patrie italienne perdue.4 4
Grayson similarly relates how this spiritual and cultural affinity with the literary figures and
achievements of the Romans inspired Italians to pursue the humanist project of language
reform:
This identification with the greatness of that past was in effect the goal of the
humanists, and one of its most conspicuous features was the re-creation of
4 3 Quoted and translated by Grayson, A Renaissance Controversy, 7.
“ ^Marc Fumaroli, L ’ age de [’ eloquence: Rhetorique et "res literaria" de la Renaissance au seuil de
I’ epoque classique (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1980), 77.
C h a p t e r O n e : T h e R e v iv a l o f L a t in in t h e R e n a is s a n c e 53
the purity of the Latin language out of the barbarous darkness of the Middle
Ages. (8)
The second conclusion we may draw from Amaseo’s appeal is that he equates the
pursuit of Latin with the pursuit of eloquence. The revival of Latin in the Renaissance
meant the revival not only of the grammatical concerns of pure Latin diction and established,
classical syntax; but the revival of grammar’s companion art, rhetoric.
Thus far I have shown that the broadest of cultural concerns animated humanist
interest over maintaining and reviving the Latin language. While acquiring the wisdom and
knowledge available in Latin literature became increasingly important with the rediscovery
of many classical text and thus warranted the study of Latin on intellectual grounds, this was
but part of the picture. Law, the sciences, the arts, and especially the church depended upon
the well-being of this medium. The Renaissance was a period of great flux and instability —
religiously, politically, and linguistically. In this uncertain world, the stable Latin tongue of
the past offered a secure anchor for political and cultural stability in the future. To return
Latin from its widely lamented corruption back to its pristine state would not only make
possible the retrieval of antique knowledge in classical texts, but it would reestablish political,
intellectual and cultural vitality of an idealized Roman past. Unlike other features of that
past, the Roman language could be grasped and reanimated by turning to the literature that
had preserved this valued tongue.
I now turn to the more narrow and specific humanist language studies that delineate
those specific features of the Latin language that were to be revived through imitation.
Renaissance humanists sought to recover classical Latin with a tenacious love of detail that
would seem academic or pedantic to us today, but given the cultural motives that animated
C h a p t e r O n e : T h e R e v iv a l o f L a t in in t h e R e n a is s a n c e 54
the project, the seemingly petty squabbles over word spellings and grammatical minutiae were
anything but inconsequential. From the humanist perspective, it was just such a studied
concern for Latin that would prove essential to the preservation of their society.
Lorenzo Valla’s Elemntiae linguae latinae
The distance from the ancient cultures humanists admired had been measured in
linguistic terms from the time of Petrarch. Admiring the pristine aural excellence of Cicero’s
Latin long before Cicero’s language was to become systematically studied, Petrarch
recognized how very different Latin had become by his own day. Petrarch was unequipped,
however, to discern what those specific differences were. They would be identified in the
following century, beginning with Valla’s Elegantiae linguae latinae, in which ancient Roman
usage began to be culled out from medieval, "barbaric" Latin and reestablished as a standard.
The Elegantiae set forth the philological and grammatical grounds for Renaissance imitation.
Among the early humanists it would be difficult to find a more influential figure than
Lorenzo Valla (1407-57).4 5 His contributions to Renaissance concepts of the cultural
significance of Latin in In principio sui studii have been described above. Three of his
philological studies have been mentioned, Defalso credita et ementita Constantini donatione
declamatio, Adnotationes on the New Testament, and Dialecticae disputationes. These
4 5 The standard edition of Valla’ s works is Opera omnia, ed. Eugenio Garin, 2 vols (Turin 1962),
which includes, in vol. I (1-235), the standard sixteenth-century edition of Valla’ s works, Laurentii
Vallae Opera (Basel, 1540). The standard biography of this important humanist is Girolamo Mancini’s
Vita di Lorenzo Valla (Florence, 1891). For his role as a philologist, see Franco Gaeta, Lorenzo Valla:
Filologia e storia nelVUmanesimo italiano (Napoli, 1955) and S. I. Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla:
Umanesimo e teologia (Florence: Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, 1972). For additional
bibliography, see Maristella Lorch, "Lorenzo Valla," Renaissance Humanism: Foundation, Forms, and
Legacy, vol. 1, Humanism in Italy, ed. Albert Rabil, Jr. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1988), 349 n. 13.
C h a p t e r O n e : T h e R e v iv a l o f La t in in t h e R e n a is s a n c e 55
significantly influenced the church, the study of the Bible, and Renaissance dialectic.
Underlying all of these studies and establishing Valla’s Renaissance fame was his pioneering
work on the Latin language, Elegantiae linguae latinae.
Valla’s treatise epitomized humanist efforts to resuscitate Latin and influenced how
Latin was written, spoken, and taught for the next two centuries. Its wide manuscript
circulation from the time of its composition (ca. 1440) and its impressive publication history
at the advent of print testify to the importance and utility his contemporaries ascribed to it.
Complete manuscripts of the Elegantiae from the period number 50, with 20 redactions or
epitomes found in other manuscripts. From its first edition in 1471, some 147 printed
editions have also been identified through 1598.4 6 To the textual record we can add the
testimony of Erasmus himself, who, as a student in Paris, heartily endorsed Valla’ s work and
recommended it to his peers. Erasmus produced his own summary of it, Paraphrasis seu
potius epitome in elegantias Laurentii Vallae (written 1488, published 1531) that saw 60
editions, and he reworked parts of Valla’s Elegantiae in his own De copia rerum ac verborum
(1512). If we combine the editions proper of Valla’s Elegantiae with those of Erasmus’s
epitome of Valla, this work saw well over 200 editions through the sixteenth century, not
including its wide manuscript circulation or its many editions and adaptations by writers other
than Erasmus.
The Elegantiae initiated a Renaissance genre: books published specifically to show
off or "illustrate" what were known as the "elegancies" of the Latin tongue. Many such books
were merely alternate editions, summaries or adaptations (credited or not) of Valla’s work
4 6 Josef IJsewijn and G. Toumoy, "Un primo censimento dei manoscritti e delle edizioni a stampa
degliElegantiarum linguae latinae libri sex di Lorenzo Valla ”Humanistica Lovaniensia 18 (1969): 25-41;
and ibid., 20 (1971): 1-3.
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(such as Erasmus’s) or that of Josse Bade (Jodocus Badius), Epitome in Laurentii Vallae
elegantias (1538).4 7 Others merely retained some form of Valla’s title, perhaps in order to
capitalize on a subject of such popular interest. An example is Augustino Dati’s rhetoric,
Elegantiarum linguae latinae praecepta (1539).4 8 Other examples of the "elegancies" genre
include Petrus Artopaeus’ s Latinaephrasis elegantiae expotissimis authoribus conscripta, "The
Elegancies of Latin Phrases brought together out of the most renowned authors"
(Wittenberg, 1534),4 9 and Aldus Manutius the Younger’s Elegantes et copiosae Latinae linguae
phrases, "Elegant and copious phrases of the Latin language" (1558)5 0 . The younger Aldus
would compose another important illustration of the Latin language that would be used even
into the seventeenth century, the delightfully titled Pomarium tempestivae latinitatis seu
phrases synonymae "An orchard of ripe Latinity or synonymous phrases" (1656). The
"elegancies" genre would later cross over into the vernacular languages as they vied for equal
status with the classical tongues. Joachim Du Bellay’s Dejfence et Illustration de la Langue
Francoyse (1549), for example, is an heir to Valla’s neo-Latin defense of Rome’s tongue.
4 7 This was bound with Bade’ s Epistolarum compositio et ratio scribendi, ("Method of Composing
Letters") suggesting their tandem use in the classroom.
4 8 See Appendix B: Editions of Valla’s Elegantiae and related works located at the Henry E.
Huntington Library.
4 9 This and the following example were phrase books. While they preserved Valla’s intention of
displaying good Latin, they had a different arrangement, usually classified by categories of everyday
subject matter ("Going to School"); whereas Valla’ s was arranged in a manner similar to modem
thesauri. They were also made for a different audience, school boys rather than schoolmasters or the
educated. The phrase books genre is discussed further in chapter 3.
5 0 Buisson found eight editions through 1600; Repertoire des ouvrages pedagogiques du XVIe siecle
(Paris, 1886). Aldus’ s book expanded from 358 to eventually 631 pages, and was adapted by the
Jesuits as they published their own edition in 1566. It was also translated into French and put into
alphabetical order in a 1574 edition. This would make it interesting to compare with Joachim Du
Bellay’ s Dejfence et Illustration de la langue francoyse (1549).
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The popularity of Valla’s and similar, subsequent studies demonstrates how eagerly the
"elegancies" of the language were sought. But to just what qualities of the language were
Valla and his successors referring when describing the "elegancies" of the language?
One glance at the substantive grammatical issues that Valla covers reveals that
"elegancies" does not refer to decorative ornaments of the language. The Elegantiae has not
been studied as a rhetorical manual (perhaps, as I will indicate, incorrectly). It has been
studied primarily in terms of particular philological points Valla makes,5 1 and as a pioneering
Renaissance work on grammar. Though not a grammar book per se, grammatical minutiae
dominate the Elegantiae, which appears to twentieth-century eyes as something of a cross
between a dictionary, a thesaurus, and a grammar book, a haphazardly arranged compilation
of brief entries on the differences among Latin words and expressions. For example, one
section is entitled Labo et labor quid differanV. "The difference between labo (to wobble or
hesitate) and labor (to slip or fall)." Another, De sicut; ita; itaque; et sic. — which
distinguishes similar adverbs {sic, ita [both meaning "thus"]) and the conjunctions formed
from them {sicut, itaque "just as"; "therefore"). If "elegantia" does not hold the aesthetic
connotations of its English cognate, could it simply refer somehow to the grammatical
content that seems to dominate Valla’s work?
Elegantia is in fact a technical term Valla borrowed from pseudo-Cicero’s rhetorical
manual, Ad Herennium (4.12.17-18). It is there defined as one of three qualities making up
a sound Latin style, alongside compositio (the artistic juxtaposition of words) and dignitas
(distinction through stylistic embellishment). In the Ad Herennium, elegantia is subdivided
5 1 David Marsh regrets this narrowness and refreshingly describes Valla’ s general linguistic
assumptions as made evident in the prefaces to each of the work’s six books ("Grammar, Method, and
Polemic in Lorenzo Valla’s Elegantiae," 91).
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into its two component qualities, latinity and clarity. Latinity (latinitas) is defined as the
employment of correct forms without incongruous junctures or expressions and is achieved
in the absence of barbarisms (foreign vocabulary or improper Latin words) and solecisms
(which compare to barbarisms, but consist of multiple words). Clarity (explanatio) is the
property which consists of using current vocabulary (sanctioned by consuetudo or everyday
custom) and correct terms (words applied in their original, literal sense). According to the
A d Herennium, then, the study of elegantia would mean ascertaining correct Latin word forms
and syntax, latinitas (or conversely, purging barbarisms and solecisms), and identifying
vocabulary that is authoritatively sanctioned by usage, claritas or explanatio.
By setting forth the elegancies of the Latin language, Valla was identifying pure Latin
diction and setting forth proper syntax, and doing so strictly in reference to established usage
as found in classical Latin literature. These are indeed grammatical concerns and they may
hardly seem a revolutionary endeavor, but Valla’s approach was in fact a radical departure
from medieval grammar and language theory and towards a rhetorical linguistic orientation
that would profoundly affect the study of language and literature in the Renaissance. Valla
established grammar upon an altogether new basis, one he adopted not from ancient
grammarians, but from the classical rhetoricians.
It has been noted that Valla took the term elegantia from the Ad Herennium of (as
he believed) Cicero. From classical rhetorical theory Valla also adopted the oratorical
precept, outlined by Cicero in his Orator, of appealing to accepted language usage (usus),
rather than to fine philosophical distinctions, as the standard in determining which forms of
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words the best speaker of Latin should employ. Valla even quotes Cicero’s metaphor of
weighing words "in the popular scale, not the goldsmith’s balance."5 2
The goldsmith’s balance against which Valla reacted was medieval scholasticism,
whose fine distinctions and philosophical speculations, when applied to grammar, had yielded
what he considered to be a mass of abstractions and subtleties that were far from his
practical standard. Kukenheim provides some examples of medieval grammatical
speculations:
la proposition taceo, est-elle vraie au moment ou elle est enoncee? Le verbe
velle a-t-il un imperatif, la volonte etant libre? Le temps present, conveint-il
aussi aux noms? Le nom dolor est-ce un modus permanentis, par opposition
a doleo, modus fluxusl5 3
The modes of meaning or modi significartdi in Kukenheim’s last example were typical of
medieval grammars from the mid-twelfth century,5 4 including Michel de Marbois’s De modis
significandi (ca. 1250) and the popular Grammatica speculativa sive de modis sigrtificandi (ca.
1290) of Duns Scotus.5 5 These highly formal criteria for meaning are diametrically opposed
to what Valla offers as a semantic foundation, usus or consuetudine. Valla adduces textual
sources in order to arrive at the correct semantic value of words in question, not the logical
categories of the modi significandi. Later Renaissance grammarians would echo Valla’s
szDialecticae disputationes, quoted by Marsh, "Grammar, Method, and Polemic in Lorenzo Valla’ s
Elegantiae," 105.
S 3 L. Kukenheim, Contributions a Thistoire de la grammaire grecque, latine et hebraique a I’ epoque
de la Renaissance (Leyden, 1951), 50 n. 1.
5 4 See G. L. Bursill-Hall, Speculative Grammars of the Middle Ages: The Doctrine of Partes Orationis
of the Modistae (The Hague, 1971); Richard W. Hunt, The History of Grammar in the Middle Ages,
(1980).
5 5 Kukenheim and Buisson each list only a single grammar after Valla to reprise the modi
significandi in the Renaissance, Martinus Anglicus’ s Modi significandi comprehentes omnia
grammaticalia generaliter (Venice 1504).
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disgust for the medieval grammars constructed "ex modis significandi & metaphysica,"
referring to them as the "clacking of old women, the modi significandi in particular being
condemned as a 'barbarorum inventum’."5 6 For example, in his Grammaticae Institutiones
(1510), Johannes Brassicanus of Tubingen opens with a diatribe against medievalists who
claim that no one can be grammarian without a knowledge of metaphysics (sine metaphysices
cognitiones).5 1
Valla’s argument with the speculative medieval grammarians was in many ways the
reenactment of the ancient grammar controversy among the Alexandrian grammarians
concerning the formal and semantic basis of language. David Marsh explains that this
ancient dispute arose over a fundamental distinction between analog and anomaly.
Some maintained that analogy — the regularity of morphology — governed
the grammatical classification and interpretation of language, while others
viewed anomaly — the formal variety within general patterns — as
predominant in accounting for the richness of linguistic expression.5 8
The Roman grammarians sided with analogy; the orators, with anomaly, "which [the second-
century] Varro had come to identify with the observation of current usage, consuetudo" (98
n. 6). Marsh finds this consistent with Cicero’s judgment (Orator 48.159) that speech is more
elegant if it accords with established practice rather than nature: "Quid vero hoc elegantius,
quod non fit natura sed quodam instituto." Marsh explains th at" natura connotes etymological
regularity (analogy), institutum established usage (anomaly)" (Marsh 98. n.6).
5 6 G. A. Padley, Grammatical Theory in Western Europe, 1500-1700: The Latin Tradition
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 28.
5 7 Quoted by Padley, 28.
5 8 Marsh, "Grammar, Method, and Polemic in Lorenzo Valla’s Elegantiae," 98.
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In making grammar conform to the arch discipline of logic, the scholastics established
language upon the rigid regularity of abstract categories or rules (analogy); in contrast, Valla
established grammar upon the historically contingent and empirical basis of established usage
(anomaly).5 9 While the modi significandi of the late medieval speculative grammarians most
egregiously violated the accidental, historical, anomalous nature of language to which Valla
subscribed, any over-dependence on grammatical rules or abstractions was in danger of
depending more on the analogous forms of language than on how words and constructions
had actually been employed. Valla uses these grounds to indict nearly all of the most
popular medieval grammars. His lowest opinion was saved for Evrard of Bethune, author
of the thirteenth-century metrical grammar, Graecismus; for Alexander of Villedieu, author
of the ubiquitous Doctrinale; for Papias, author of the eleventh-century Elementarium
doctrinae rudimentum; for Hugutio, who wrote the early thirteenth-century Derivationes, and
most especially for Isidore of Seville, who authored the seventh-century Origines.
Valla nastily refers to this last as "Isidore, the most arrogant of the unlearned, who,
when he knows nothing, prescribes everything" (Hisidorus indoctorum arrogantissimus, qui
quum nihil sciat, omnia praecipit).6 0 This is not simply invective; Valla is opposed to
prescriptions because they tend to ignore language as it has been used in favor of language
5 9 Curiously, Valla’ s seminal study, based on these premises acknowledging the flux of semantics
that accompanies the flux of history, was perceived as laying the foundation "of the veritable cult of
eloquence and Ciceronianism pursued by the Humanists" (Padley, Grammatical Theory, The Latin
Tradition, 15) that made of Cicero a static and permanent reference. "Yet the true Ciceronianism,
which rejected every phrase which could not be justified out of the great authority, did not appear till
the end of the fifteenth century, when the grammatical writings of Lorenzo Valla had begun to tell
on all Italy"; Jakob Burkhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, trans. S. G. C. Middlemore
(Vienna: Phaidon Press, 1937), 129.
^Quoted by H. J. Stevens, Jr., "Lorenzo Valla and Isidore of Seville," Traditio 31 (1975): 344.
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as it should be used. Valla specifically criticizes Isidore for relying on etymologies (a fault
Hugutio shared) just as he does the speculative grammarians for relying upon the modi
significandi.
If the advocates of the modi significandi relied to their detriment upon forms of
meaning, those who championed etymology relied with equal fault upon the forms of words.
Neither method is a reliable basis upon which to determine semantics, from Valla’s point of
view, because each relies upon form rather than usage. Etymology also had its roots in the
ancient analogy-anomaly quarrel. In this case, as H. J. Stevens explains, etymology goes back
to Stoic linguistic sources.
Stoics believed in a naturalistic correspondence between words and what they
denote; however, the irregularity ("anomaly") of a living language only vaguely
reflects this correspondence. Therefore, they devised etymology as a way of
accounting for the changes while keeping the naturalistic linguistic theory.6 1
Thus, Isidore provides an etymology of oratio, "speech," by claiming this is derived by analogy
from oris ratio, literally, "reason of the mouth." While the etymology might prove satisfying
to the mind, it may be utterly false historically. Valla analyzes and dismisses this particular
etymology as wishful thinking, for "correct linguistic usage derives from the historical analysis
of practice (usus), not from a fanciful imagination of phonetic resemblances."6 2
Valla relies for his grammatical points upon the more redoubtable Donatus and
Priscian, "who represent for him the last trustworthy authorities before the barbarous
products of medievalism."6 3 However, he does not hesitate to correct even Priscian, that "Sun
6 1 Stevens, "Lorenzo Valla and Isidore of Seville," 344 n. 2.
6 2 Marsh, "Grammar, Method, and Polemic in Lorenzo Valla’s Elegantiae," 97.
“ Padley, Grammatical Theory, The Latin Tradition, 17.
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of Grammar, which sometimes suffers eclipse."6 4 He can do so with confidence only by
reference to classical literature, the trustworthy record of usus (Valla is aware of and careful
to avoid abusus, recognizing that not every author can be equally depended upon for
determining usage). To base grammar upon usage was not a new idea; grammarians had
always paid lip service to the authority of usus. However, none before Valla had attempted
what he succeeded in doing. Valla showed how to use Latin words correctly by citing
appropriate examples from Roman authors.6 5
The Legacy of Valla’s Elesantiae in Renaissance Language Studies
Valla’s revolutionary language studies, reorienting the Latin language upon the basis
of usage, would have far-reaching effects upon the language arts as they were studied and
taught in the Renaissance. Valla’s influential critique of Aristotelian metaphysics and logic,
Dialecticae disputationes (originally Repastinatio dialecticae et philosophise), attempted to
substitute plain and common Latin terms — words based upon common usage — for the
technical jargon of the scholastics. As Valla, and later Rudolph Agricola, under Valla’s
influence, effected a change in the language of dialectic, they changed this language art itself.
Identifying and then adhering to a standard of pure Latin was a watershed phenomenon in
Renaissance learning.
^Quoted by John Edwin Sandys, A History of Classical Scholarship, II: From the Revival of
Learning ot the End of the Eighteenth Century (in Italy, France, England, and the Netherlands)
(Cambrididge: Cambridge University Press, 1908), 68.
6 5 Keith W. Percival, "Renaissance Grammar," in Rabil 3:75.
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A considerable textual history bears witness to the legacy of Valla’s Latin Elegantiae
and the approach to Latin it represented, demonstrating that the humanists who succeeded
and advanced Valla’s program accepted and in turn promoted the new basis upon which he
oriented language studies. The most observable result of Valla’s seminal treatise was the
appearance of reference works that augmented Valla’s initial study. A number of major
lexicons and thesauri appeared in the sixteenth century that, while significantly longer, more
organized as references, and more exclusively focused on diction than on any other aspect
of Latin grammar, nevertheless remained true to Valla’s intention of illustrating the Latin
language and doing so on the basis of the authoritative citation of Latin authors.
References based exclusively (or nearly so) on the Ciceronian corpus were prominent
among these, including Mario Nizzoli’s Thesaurus sive Ciceronianus (1535) and Etienne
Dolet’s Commentariorum linguae Latinae (1536).6 6 Many comparable reference works —
relying upon but not restricting themselves to Cicero — were published and used in the
Renaissance, all serving the same goal of seeking to discover and make known the pure Latin
words of antiquity and to scourge barbarisms from present-day Latin. Two examples come
from Robert Estienne, who published a Thesaurus linguae latinae in 1531, which his son
Herni reworked, enlarged, and republished into the last quarter of the sixteenth century, and
from Joannes Benz (Bentzius), who published in 1594 his Thesaurus pure loquendi et scribendi
graeco-latinus novus ex Isocrate, Cicerone aliique concinnatus, "A Treasury of Greek and Latin
newly compiled out of Isocrates, Cicero and others for speaking and writing purely."
6 6 ValIa would not approve of relying solely on Cicero. Not only was his approach in the
Elegantiae an eclectic one, but he had written a treatise (now lost) comparing Quintilian and Cicero
and favoring the former.
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Nizzoli’s gigantic volume, which in the 1563 edition I inspected came bound in half
inch thick steel-and-engraved-leather binding, complete with two large locking metal clasps,
was a veritable shrine to latinitas. Some would deem it a monument to pedantry, but it
would be better understood as a monument to the movement begun by Valla in his
Elegantiae. Nizzoli’s compendium, Dolet’ s commentaries or Estienne’s dictionary compare
much to the contemporary Oxford Latin Dictionary, or the Oxford English Dictionary for
English. They each contain lists of synonyms following head words, then an exhaustive set
of quotations actually exemplifying the use of the term from authoritative contexts.6 7 Like
Valla, Nizzoli makes distinctions in semantics clearly apparent through illustrations of various
uses of a given word. Nizzoli’s volume differs from Valla’s original efforts mostly in format
and in the completeness of his sources (Valla’s work is in the form of brief essays and
although he draws on literature for his examples he does not identify sources nor provide
citations as do these later compilers). For example, Nizzoli’s entry under copia includes the
synonyms abundantia, ubertas, facultas, vis, and flumen, followed by more than a folio column
of quotations using copia from out of Cicero. Estienne’s Thesaurus only improves upon
Nizzoli in having broader sources and in displaying each quotation beginning at a new line.6 8
And much as our very useful OLD, each also lists cognates under separate headings, each
with its own history. The measure of the utility of our own OLD or OED is not an unfair
6 7 The difference between Nizzoli’s and Estienne’s works would be critical to Erasmus. The latter
employed Latin from the panoply of approved Latin authors, while the former restricted himself to
Cicero alone (of which Erasmus disapproved).
6 8 Visually, Nizzoli’ s work was arranged very similarly to the OLD, making me wish Oxford had
followed Estienne or Dolet’ s more readable (if more voluminous) arrangement instead. The editors
of the recent Toronto University editions of Erasmus have chosen to arrange the contents olDe Copia
in this more readable format.
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measure of the utility of Nizzoli’s, Dolet’s, or Estienne’s exhaustive compilations of language
use for Renaissance readers and writers. If achieving the pure Latin of the ancients was
indeed of such immense importance as the sources cited in the early half of this chapter
demonstrated, than a comparably immense study of that language seems to have been
justified. In a veiy simple sense, Renaissance dictionaries, derived from classical usage in
established authors, presented the unalloyed Latin lexicon for their readers to imitate. And
in some cases, such as Nizzoli’s work, readers were also given examples of barbarous words
they were not to imitate.
Nizzoli kept the main part of his dictionary for the pure words of Cicero and exiled
barbarisms into a separate appendix, which he introduced as
a most useful index in which innumerable words either barbarous or else
Latin but not Ciceronian are included. Should anyone desire either to speak
or write, whenever they wish to bring to mind something more eloquent [than
a barbarous locution], they may make use of this "counselor" that I’ ve
provided.6 9
Nizzoli’s appendix provides one or several proper words next to each barbarous word as
suggested substitutions. For example, one may be tempted to use the word augmentum.
However, this lacks latinitas (i.e., it appears nowhere in the Ciceronian corpus), so Nizzoli
lists the words amplificatio or incrementum as suggested substitutes. The word cabala is an
imported misfit, as is planeta, for which he urges instead astrum, vel Stella errans, and Stella
vaga "star" or "wandering star."
6 9 "ut si quando aliquid elegantius in memoriam revocare velimus, hoc quasi monitore utamur quod
si quis facere volet, non minimam hinc, opino, ad dicendum scribendumque; sentiet utilitatem." Mario
Nizzoli [Marius Nizolius], Thesaurus Ciceronianus (Basel: I. Hervagium, 1563), ZZiiir . Henri Estienne
would later ridicule Nizzoli for assigning himself the role of monitor or watch-dog of Latinity in his
Nizoliodidascalus, subtitled Monitor Ciceronianorum Nizolianorum (1578).
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The textual record contains many books less ambitious than Nizzoli’s or Dolet’s but
just as dedicated to identifying latinitas or to purging barbarismus. Some books, like Nizzoli’s,
pair examples of barbarisms or inappropriate Latin alongside proper Latin. When Erasmus
published his summary of Valla’s Elegantiae lingua Latinae, this was bound with an
anonymous work, Farrago sordidorum verborum, thus providing readers in one volume the
"Elegancies of the Latin Language" alongside the amusingly complementary "Hodgepodge
of Shabby Words."7 0 Latinitas and barbarism defined one another. More frequent than such
pairings are the sections on barbarisms often found in Renaissance grammars. Francesco
Priscianese’s De primi principii della lingua romana (1540) is one example. Following the
morphological paradigms and brief essays that constitute the better part of this Latin
grammar (written in Italian), he includes a section (cclxxi) on barbarisms and solecisms.
Other books that clearly answer Valla’s original purpose and method include
Junianus Parthenopaeus Maius’s On the propriety of ancient words {Liber de verborum
priscorum proprietate [Naples, 1475])7 1 or the parallel title by Antonius Mancinellus,
Proprietates vocum (Paris, n.d.;).7 2 Andre Alciat’s Four books on the meaning of words {De
verborum significatione libri quatuor [1530])7 3 appears typical in its effort to keep to stable
7 0 The Farrago with which his work was bound had Erasmus’ s tacit approval, since he very loudly
voiced his other objections to this edition, including the insertion of vernacular terms and the
alphabetization of the work, changes introduced by the printer without authorization. See C. L.
Heesakkers and J. H. Waszink, eds., Paraphrasis seu potius epitome in elegantiarum libros laurentii vallae
by Desiderius Erasmus, in Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami, vol 1-4 (Amsterdam: North-
Holland Publishing Company, 1973), 198-99.
7 1 Buisson lists six editions through 1490.
7 2 Buisson lists two sixteenth-century editions.
7 3 Buisson lists four editions between 1530-1548.
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definitions for Latin terms. A more humorous example is that published by Van Baarland
(Hadrianus Barlandus), Dialogi XLII adprofligandam e scholis barbariem utilissimi (Antwerp,
1526), which I translate quite literally: "Forty-two most useful dialogues for knocking the
barbarism out of students."
While the language studies and reference works that I have described did indeed
answer Valla’s purpose of discovering and presenting pure Latin for students to imitate and
employ, they do not fully represent the consequences for the study of language and literature
that attended Valla’s ground-breaking study and that bear directly on the nature of
Renaissance imitation. The works just cited, with slight exception, focused exclusively on
Latin diction. While latinitas, maintaining pure Latin word forms, was a key component of
Valla’s work, he also included extensive syntactical analyses of classical Latin. How then,
besides providing a broadened emphasis upon the identification and purging of barbarisms
and solecisms, did Valla’s work affect Renaissance grammar?
As indicated above, Valla responded strongly to medieval grammars that based their
findings more on abstractions and logical categories than on examples from actual usage.
The effect of reorienting grammar towards usage was to lessen the number of abstract rules
and to favor the direct examination of literature. The change from rule-based to literature-
based grammar instruction could be roughly measured by the shrinking size of Renaissance
grammar texts. While the medieval Donatus had been a modest 4,500 lines (in question-and-
answer form, to be memorized), Priscian had become a tremendous tome printed in folio
pages and surrounded with a sea of commentary. Whether for their sheer size, for their
digressive commentaries, or for the dense obscurity of being written in awkward verses (as
were the Graecismus and Villedieu’ s Doctrinale), medieval grammars were considered by
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humanists to be roadblocks rather than introductions to reading Latin. This was the opinion
of humanists such as Jean Cocleus, who, dissatisfied with this state of things, vowed to write
an easier grammar in simple prose. He did so: Grammatices rudimenta — Quadrivium
grammatices (Nuremberg, 15 ll).7 4 He was preceded by the earliest known Renaissance
grammar, that of Guarino of Verona. Guarino’s Regulae grammaticales (written ca. 1415,
printed first in Venice, 1497), while retaining some vestiges of the Graecismus, was a slimmed
down volume so bare that Percival wonders how so complex a language could be learned
from it.7 5 Many other examples could be brought to bear in this regard (and a few notable
exceptions).
The greatest effect of Valla’s Elegantiae on Renaissance grammar was not the
elimination of grammar rules, but an adjustment to what received emphasis in rudimentary
language instruction. As will be more apparent in chapter 4, humanist pedagogues placed
great importance upon grammatical instruction, but increasingly designed their pedagogies
so that grammatical knowledge was more the product of the schoolmaster’s commentary and
the student’s first-hand experience with literature, and less the outcome of exposure to a
grammar rules and texts per se. There were fewer grammatical definitions and more
grammatical illustrations. Rather than memorizing the octes partes orationis from Donatus,
students rehearsed their grammar in the writings of Cicero, Tacitus, Livy, and Sallust after
acquiring enough prior instruction to be able to recognize grammatical forms. The metrical
grammars of Villedieu and Bethune quickly disappeared from Renaissance grammar
7 4 "At ferunti huic exercitio difficultatem hactenus intulit obscura Pyladae grammatica duris
versibus exarata, perplexaque obnubilata commentatione, quam acceptare cogebamur quod aliorum
exemplaria grammaticorum tunc venalia hie non erant." Quoted in Kukenheim, Contributions, 56 n. 1.
7 5 Percival, "Renaissance Grammar," 74.
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instruction, not simply because printing made rote memorization an obsolete methodology,
but because the grammatical focus of the language classroom changed from acquiring rules
to acquiring exposure to examples of language use. The Elegantiae was not only an
exposition of Latin, but "a return to the classical approach to reading and writing Latin and
the study of authors."7 6 Likewise, Renaissance grammars composed in the wake of Valla’s
work would not either be simply expositions of Latin, but would also return to that classical
approach centered on the study of authors.
Valla’s approach to grammar was in fact a revival of grammatica enarrativa from
antiquity, "that grammar whose province is the explanation and elucidation of literary texts
and the establishment of canons of elegance."7 7 Classical grammar, as humanists after Valla
happily discovered, was bifurcated. Aldus Manutius, in his Rudimenta grammatices latinae
linguae (Venice, 1501), recalled the ancient division of grammar into methodice and historice,
"the first being fmitiva or strictly normative and dealing with the rules of correct speech, the
latter enarrativa and concerning itself with the explanation of authors."7 8 A similar division
is apparent in Joannes Brassicanus’s Institutiones grammaticae (Strassbourg, 1508). He
describes the two branches of ancient grammar as methodica and exegetice. This division
allowed humanists to maintain some place for normative rules while staying true to Valla’s
approach based on literature and usage. This division would also be explicitly adopted and
exploited in the methodology of imitation, as will be shown in chapter 4, beginning with
Guarino of Verona.
7 6 Padley, Grammatical Theory, The Latin Tradition, 17.
7 7 Padley, Grammatical Theory, Trends in Vernacular Grammar II, 6.
7 8 Padley, Grammatical Theory, The Latin Tradition, 31.
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The revival of grammatica enarrativa placed the study of grammar in closer proximity
to the domain of rhetoric, for the study of authors in antiquity had not been done solely for
instruction in the rudiments of Latin grammar, but in order to acquire the various rhetorical
features displayed by various writers and orators. This approach to the study of authors is
made most explicit in the tenth book of Quintilian’s Institutiones oratoriae, a key source for
Renaissance imitative doctrine upon which many influential humanists depended, including
Lorenzo Valla and Erasmus. Quintilian profoundly influenced the Renaissance study of
language and literature, especially subsequent to the rediscovery of his complete work by
Poggio in 1416, both directly, and mediated through such works as the Elegantiae and
Erasmus’s De copia.
Quintilian’s influence on Valla helps us to see that the Elegantiae, contrary to
received opinion, did not concern itself exclusively with philological or grammatical issues,
but did in fact assess Latin in rhetorical terms. No, Valla’s book was not a rhetoric per se
— especially if the scope of its subjects is compared to that of prominent rhetorical manuals
of the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries (for example, George of Trebizond’s comprehensive
Rhetoricorum libri v (written ca. 1435; printed in Venice ca. 1470) — nevertheless, the
rhetorical orientation of the Elegantiae went beyond the simple attribution of his language
theory to the rhetorical standard of usage he had taken from Cicero. Valla’s purpose is as
much to draw attention to the eloquent use of Latin as it is to conserve the purity or
elegance of Latin. This synthesis of the grammatical and the rhetorical held important
consequences for the practice of imitation.
Valla repeats in his Elegantiae a distinction made by Quintilian: "It is one thing to
speak Latin, and another to speak grammatically" (Aliud esse latine, aliud grammatice loqui;
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72
1.6.27). Latinitas being so closely related to elegantia in their definitions has led one scholar
of Renaissance grammar to gloss Valla’s quotation as "elegance transcends grammaticality,"7 9
giving a distinctly different sense to the title of Valla’s work from what has normally been
attributed to it. In this light grammar, explains Padley, is a tool for the recognition and
prescription of eloquence; it is a basis for rhetoric.8 0
This interpretation is borne out within the Elegantiae. In the third book, Valla
compares several similar expressions — each grammatically correct — distinguishing their
relative superiority on the basis of their eloquence: "Exeo domo, vel e domo, et, sum in
domo, vel domi; hoc grammaticae est; illud vero latinitatis et elegantiae" (3.15.90). Here the
eloquent expressions appears to be those that take advantage of grammatical nuances
available to but not always taken advantage of by Latin writers. Sum in domo is an
acceptable but elementary way of saying one is at home, employing the inflected verb and
a preposition indicating place. The locative case, however — more rare, but both proper and
efficient, can accomplish the same meaning in one word, domi.
This method of proceeding, identifying comparable Latin expressions of which both
are grammatical yet one is more eloquent, is taken up by Aegidius Suchtelensis in his very
brief and pointed guide for making one’s writing more eloquent, Elegantiarum vigintiprecepta
adperpulchras conficiendas epistolas (Augsburg, 1497). The author opens with a brief preface
insisting that imitation can only be achieved by studying examples of eloquence, and then
proceeds to give twenty summary rules for achieving eloquence, each followed by examples.
Aegidius’s lists of examples are each twofold, the first list headed by "The simple grammarian
7 9 W. Keith Percival, quoted in Padley, Grammatical Theory, Trends in Vernacular Grammar II, 6.
^Padley, Grammatical Theory, Trends in Vernacular Grammar II, 6.
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says (this as. . .)" {Simplex grammaticus dicit); the second, by "This is more eloquently
expressed by the orator (as. . .)" (Hoc orator dicit elegantius). For example, Rule Seven is to
speak more eloquently by employing the ablative absolute. Aegidius illustrates:
The grammarian says:
When Rome flourished and Scipio the African reigned, then the republic was
well governed and Carthage was completely destroyed. . .
The orator says more elegantly:
"Rome flourshing and Scipio the African reigning, the republic was then well
governed. . .8 1
Grammaticus dicit:
"Quando rhoma florebat et scipio affricanus regnabat, tunc respublica bene
gubernabatur et Carthago penitus delebatur. . . ."
Orator eleganter dicit:
"Rhoma florente atque Scipione affricano regnante, tunc respublica bene
gubernabat. . ."
Aegidius is following Valla’s lead in describing eloquence on just such a level of
linguistic specificity. Those who have acknowledged some Renaissance rhetorical utility to
Valla’s Elegantiae have referred to it within the domain of elocutio as a document providing
some stylistic helps in addition to its grammar. While this is not untrue, it conceals the
broader estimation of eloquence Valla expresses and which constitutes an underlying
assumption warranting Valla’s entire study.
For example, in the preface to Valla’ s fourth book, he defends the necessity of
eloquence for ecclesiastical purposes, citing the example of Paul (as Pompeius Ugonius
Romanus had in his defense of Latin) and the church fathers who, as eloquent theologians,
were superior to those theologians without literary preparation. Valla claims that eloquence
8 1 There being no ablative absolute in English, my translation must rely on participial phrases like
that beginning this sentence, which only partly communicates the sense of attendant circumstance that
this construction connotes.
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and the splendor of the Latin language (brought back to its pristine purity) are two of the
greatest ornaments and auxiliaries of the faith.8 2
Et certe soli eloquentes . . . columnae ecclesiae sunt, etiam ut ab Apostolis
usque repetas, inter quos mihi Paulus nulla alia re eminere quam eloquentia
videtur . . . Non modo non reprehendendum est studere eloquentiae, verum
etiam reprehendendum non studere.8 3
Valla shrewdly qualifies his enthusiasm for eloquent expression, acknowledging that not every
discursive need is met through ornamented speech. The subject matter of law, he claims,
does not lend itself to eloquence, though one should still insist on latinitas, and theology may
forego eloquence as well, so long as the clarity of latinitas is not lost as fine distinctions are
made (Marsh, 102).
Lorenzo Valla’s work synthesizes grammatical and rhetorical concerns. While he
does not address standard rhetorical topics (such as invention or arrangement), his approach
to the language cannot be called purely grammatical, since it is informed by a rhetorical
orientation to language and its uses. Like Cicero’s orator, he seeks words and expressions
out of authors demonstrating common usage; pure speech is the common domain of both
grammarian and rhetorician. Like the aspiring orator that Quintilian describes, Valla looks
to literary authors both for grammatical norms (grammatica methodice) and for models of
eloquence to be analyzed (grammatica enarrativa) and imitated. Valla also maintains
distinctions between the strictly grammatical and the more effective rhetorical uses of Latin,
and champions the social and religious practice of eloquence, much as he will later do in his
8 2 Quoted and trans. by Fumaroli, L ’ Age d ’ Eloqnence, 78 n. 68.
“ Quoted in Marsh, "Grammar, Method, and Polemic in Lorenzo Valla’ s Elegantiae," 94 n. 3.
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Inprincipio suistudii. Nevertheless, he acknowledges that oratorical eloquence is unnecessary
or unsuited to certain subjects, unlike the always-necessary grammatical standard of latinitas.
Valla describes his own work not as being "about eloquence, but about the refinement
of the Latin language, from which one may nonetheless begin the pursuit of eloquence" {non
enim de hac [sc. eloquentia) sed de elegantia linguae Latinae scribimus, ex qua tamen gradus
fit ad ipsam eloquentiam; Marsh, 110). Grammar had not held such a propaedeutic position
relative to rhetoric since the classical period. Valla influenced the Renaissance conception
of these two arts as coordinate and cooperative in leading towards the social uses of Latin.
This close proximity between the language arts of grammar and rhetoric is apparent
in the first significant grammar text to follow Valla’s study, Niccolo Perotti’s Rudimenta
grammatices (written 1468, printed Rome, 1473). This work illustrates well the difference
between medieval and Renaissance grammars upon the basis of rhetorical orientation. Based
on Priscian and Donatus (for morphology) and deriving its syntactical information from
Guarino’s Regulae, Perotti’s grammar includes a most unusual third section — a manual on
composing epistles.8 4 No medieval grammar would mix its theoretical speculations on
language with the earth-bound, practical concerns of the ars dictaminis, more properly the
domain of rhetorical instruction. Perotti’s grammar represents graphically the rapprochement
between the language arts of grammar and rhetoric characteristic of the Renaissance. Padley
remarks that the importance of legal studies in Italy had inclined Humanist grammatical
treatises from an early date toward such practical, rhetorical ends, in sharp contrast to the
^In the edition I examined (Venice: Jacobus de Fivizano, 1476), the epistolary manual begins on
sig. K4r. Arranged like the grammar preceding it in question-and-answer format, this deals less with
the standard medieval categories of the parts of a letter and spends more time discussing such issues
as the appropriate level of style for a letter (lower and more familiar, K4V ) and "how we speak
elegantly" (quomodo eleganter dicemus\ M8r ff.), clearly showing the work’s rhetorical bias.
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tradition of logical speculation at the University of Paris. "It was customary for an ars
dictaminis or ars dictandi to be appended to grammatical works, and the whole grammatical
output of the Italian Renaissance is coloured by rhetorical preoccupations . . ,” 8 5
That rhetorical coloring is identifiable in Perotti’s definition of the art of grammar,
which he presents in terms more redolent of the orator than the logician. Grammar is not
an ars iudicandi, an art of thought, but the ars recte loquendi, recteque scribendi, the art of
speaking and writing correctly (Padley, 31). Padley explains that in accordance with "the
newly refound emphasis on rhetoric and on oratorical rather than dialectical training,"
grammar gradually becomes defined in the Renaissance as the art of writing and speaking
correctly (Padley, 30). Such a definition occurs in the grammars of Lily and Sulpitius, the
latter naming grammar rectae loquelae, rectae scripturae scientia, "the science of correct
speaking and writing" (Padley, 30).
The most important confluence of grammar and rhetoric that we can identify from
the legacy of Valla’s work is the common appeal to authoritative literature as the primary
method for developing linguistic ability. To use Brassicanus’s terms, these language arts were
to be mastered not by ratio but by exempla. By insisting that grammatical ability and
rhetorical mastery of the language must be acquired through literary exempla, Valla was
preparing the way for the Renaissance pedagogies of imitation. As soon as literary examples
became the dominant source of linguistic instruction (whether grammatical or rhetorical in
intent), imitation entered as a set of practices devoted to analyzing and then appropriating
the language being modeled.
^Padley, Grammatical Theory, The Latin Tradition, 30.
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Leonardo Bruni and Translation
While Valla employed his linguistic acumen to the fields of theology and dialectic,
Leonardo Bruni, Valla’s contemporary, applied his own to the field of translation. Like
Valla’s Elegantiae, Bruni’s treatise, prefaces, and letters on translation took up the detailed
study of the Latin language and showed why a lack of attention to specific features of the
tongue would have serious consequences — in this case, for the transmission of knowledge
from Greek sources into Latin culture. Bruni showed he was of like mind with Valla (when
outlining the preparations necessary for a translator) by insisting that linguistic knowledge
be firmly based upon a thorough acquaintance with models of Latin to be found in
established authors. Valla’s study integrated grammar and rhetoric by setting forth the
former as a preparation for the latter, but Bruni demonstrated an even closer
interdependence between these two language arts. Bruni provided proof that the rhetorical
features of language are not simply options for rendering thought more eloquent, but that
issues of style are as relevant to the meaning and communication of thought as are the
essentials of grammar. Finally, Bruni takes up the issue of imitation explicitly, describing it
as a requisite both for the preparation of the translator in acquiring a stock of effective
expression, and for the execution of a translation that is faithful both to the style the content
of the source text.8 6
Aristotle’ s Nichomachean Ethics had been known to Europe through Robert
Grosseteste’s Latin translation for over two hundred years prior to Bruni’s new translation
in 1416. In the preface to this groundbreaking translation, Bruni advertised humanist
8 6 Bruni would write even more extensively on imitation in a later treatise, De studiis et litteris
(1424), described below in chapter 4.
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concern for proper Latin and showed why the inappropriate Latin of the previous translation
had seriously misrepresented Aristotle and done great harm to knowledge as a consequence.
In Aristotle’s discussion of the Good, Bruni complains, Grosseteste used the words
delectatio ("delight") and tristitia ("sternness") for "pleasure" and "pain," instead of the Latin
terms for these concepts to be found in standard Latin philosophical discussions: voluptas
and dolor. This poor choice of words is more than an accident of the difficulties inherent
in translation. To Bruni, such misuse of Latin clearly indicates Grosseteste’s inadequate
education in the very subject matter of Aristotle’s treatise:
First, may I ask why he departed from the usage of Cicero, Seneca, Boethius,
Lactantius, Jerome and other Latin authors? He would answer, I think, if he
were willing to admit the truth, that he had never read them, and had taken
the words Delight and Sternness from the vulgar. But he would have done
better to read these outstanding men; the vulgar is hardly to be esteemed as
a teacher of diction.8 7
Bruni’s attitude reflects not only humanist resistance to the unstable vernacular (discussed
above), it represents the connection humanists saw between the purity of one’s Latin and
extent of one’s learning. From the humanist standpoint, a lapse in language could only mean
a certain illiteracy of the classics; therefore, latinitas was a reliable benchmark of one’s
education:
Among the educated, sound Latinity implied respectability and status; gross
faults of grammar or idiom in the writing of one who should know better
could draw contempt and scorn. For the humanists these matters came close
8 7 Leonardo Bruni, Preface to the Appearance of a New Translation of Aristotle’ s Ethics. (1416), ed.
and trans. James Hankins, in The Humanism of Leonardo Bruni. Trans, and ed. Gordon Griffiths,
James Hankins and David Thompson (Binghamton, New York: Medieval & Renaissance Texts &
Studies, 1987), 215-16. Bruni, wanting to show he is not guilty of Grosseteste’ s ignorance, continues
at this point by citing a passage from Cicero’s De finibus in which Cicero explicitly claims that the
Greek word for pleasure, hedone, has a simple equivalent in Latin {voluptas).
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at times to being moral issues. God is not offended by solecisms, says
Erasmus — but neither is he pleased by them.8 8
A prominent example humanists holding each other to the high standard of latinitas was the
comment made by one of Valla’s students regarding a passage of Latin in a document Poggio
Bracciolini had sent to Valla. When Poggio overheard the student’s criticism of his latinitas,
he defended himself in no less than five invectives against Valla, who in turn responded in
the form of four Antidoti and two dialogues.8 9 Although to read the hyperbolic accusations
in Poggio’s invective makes one believe he was making a mountain out of a mole hill, it
would be a mistake to believe that his reaction were comparable to someone in a modern
context taking unusual offense at being told he or she had split an infinitive. In the
Renaissance, to attack one’s Latin was tantamount to attacking one’s education.
And this is precisely what Bruni did in attacking Grosseteste’s translation. Through
a thorough acquaintance with literature one came not simply to mimic the diction of given
authors, but to recognize that certain words were attached to certain concepts as a matter
of custom (consuetudine, comparable to Valla’s standard of usus). Grosseteste had obviously
not read any Roman ethical works, Bruni claims, or he would have known to render the
comparable Greek concepts into the same terms Cicero had used for "pleasure" and "pain"
in his discussion of the Good.
Bruni was not simply scoring points against an ignoramus. Not to employ proper
Latin terms would jeopardize understanding the content of the literature being translated and
8 8 Margaret Mann Phillips, ed. The Antibarbarians (Antibarbarorum liber) by Desiderius Erasmus,
Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 23, Literary and Educational Writings 1 (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1978), xxvii.
8 9 Lorenzo Valla, In Pogium antidoti libri TV and In eundent Pogium libellus I . . . II, in Opera
omnia, ed. E. Garin, 1.253-366; 366-89. Annotated versions available in Camporeale, 469-534.
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hinder the promulgation of the knowledge that text would otherwise make available. In the
case of translation, poor Latin meant a palpable barrier to the increase of learning generally.
As Valla stated in the cultural history of Latin he presented in his In principio sui studii,
attending to latinitas is tantamount to attending to the conditions that make further
knowledge possible. Bruni shows why this is the case by illustrating how Grosseteste’s
inattention to language caused confusion in the field of ethics, simply because his poorly
chosen words did not represent the philosophical distinctions Aristotle had made in Greek.
Grosseteste, for example, used the word bonum in translating Aristotle’s term, kalon.
Bruni claims he should have used honestum (moral worth), a more specific term. While
everything honestum is bonum, this makes bad philosophy, for by the same logic utile (the
useful) could also be translated with bonum, making it impossible to debate the ethical
difference between doing what is honestum (of moral worth) and what is utile (useful), for
to oppose them would be to ask ridiculously, "What is the difference between what is good
and what is good?" The distinctions between concepts upon which the advance of knowledge
depends begin with the distinctions made between the words that represent them.
Philosophical precision through precise terms, however, is the very argument Bishop
Alfonso of Cartagena uses to defend Grosseteste’ s medieval translation and to criticize
Bruni’s. Alfonso claimed Grosseteste’s version had been employed in European universities
for two centuries precisely because it had a scientific precision that Bruni’s lacked. This was
often accomplished by transliterations or the coining of neologisms from Aristotle’s Greek.
Bruni cites an example for examination:
With respect to the delightful, insofar as it relates to play, a moderate person
is eutrapelos, and a mean disposition eutrapelia, while a superabundance is
bomolochia, the man who possesses it being called bomolochos; the man who
is lacking with respect to it is agroikos, and his habit is called agroikia. (214)
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Bruni and Alfonso could not have had two more different responses to the use of such terms.
Considering how unintelligible such a passage would be for the Latin reader, Bruni
impatiently exclaimed, "Oh blockhead — do you call that a translation?" Then, just as Valla
did in his Dialecticae disputationes relative to Aristotle’s works on logic, Bruni suggested
common and comprehensible replacements, words whose authority derived from standard
literary usage: eutrapelia could be replaced with urbanitas, bomolochia with the Latin
equivalent of "buffoonery"; agroikos with the Latin version of "lout." Alfonso did not see
Grosseteste’s transliterations as barbarous incursions on a pristine language; rather, they were
natural ways of expanding Latin in order to accommodate the sophistication of philosophical
terminology. Alfonso acknowledges the terms were difficult, but what were glosses for?
Philosophy was a sophisticated business that required a comparably sophisticated
terminology. Neologisms and transliterations from Greek accommodated this need.9 0
Perhaps most indicative of the difference between Alfonso’s medieval and Bruni’ s
Renaissance perspectives is Alfonso’s distress at Bruni’s attempt to discover what Aristotle
had actually said by trying to establish his original text. What matters, he makes bold to
affirm, is not what Aristotle actually said, but what accorded with reason. Aristotle was not
an author to be better understood by approximating his original words through the
philological process of textual criticism; he was an auctor, an authority, who had been
^For a contemporary view that supports Alfonso’ s assessment of the value of Grosseteste’s
translation, see Jean Dunbabin, "Robert Grosseteste as Translator, Transmitter, and Commentator:
The Nicomachean Ethics” Traditio 28 (1972): 460-72. Dunbabin emphasizes the helpful critical
apparatus Grosseteste made available both by inserting explanatory marginalia and by translating the
Greek commentaries that accompanied copies of the Ethics. Dunbabin sees Grosseteste’s translation
as a postivie effort to enrich the philosophical vocabulary of the Latin West with common Greek
terms (466). An article comparing Grosseteste’s and Bruni’ s translations that Ihave not seen is that
by S. Troilo, "Due traduttori dell’Etica Nicomachea: Roberto di Lincoln e Leonardo Bruni." Atti del
Reale Istituto Veneto di scienze, lettere et arti 91, II (1931-32): 275-305.
C h a p t e r O n e : T h e R e v iv a l o f L a t in in t h e R e n a is s a n c e 82
commented upon by many learned men over the centuries whose emendations were a
refinement, not a departure, from whatever truth the historical Aristotle first spoke.
Bruni replied to these charges in the first Renaissance treatise on translation, De
interpretatione recta (1424/26). This document is something of a manifesto of humanist views
on language and on the criteria both for the interpretation and production of discourse. In
it Bruni based translation upon a thorough knowledge of the source language — a criterion
that may seem obvious to us, but which was in stark contrast to Alfonso, who held truth and
reason above language as translation’s proper grounds. Bruni also identified what constitutes
knowledge of a language and specified the linguistic features to which attention must be paid
both in the analysis of literature and in the production of a new text. Those features are
precisely what imitation depends upon, as he will mention in this treatise and develop more
fully in De studiis et litteris.
Bruni requires a "wide and extensive knowledge of both languages" involved in the
translation, a knowledge that is "wide, idiomatic, accurate, and detailed, acquired from a long
reading of the philosophers and orators and poets and all other writers." If latinitas first
appeared to mean merely knowing what words properly belonged to the Latin lexicon, Bruni
roots such knowledge in literary study: "No one who has not read, comprehended,
thoroughly considered and retained all these [writers] can possibly grasp the force and
significance of the words" (218). A knowledge of language only comes "by a repeated, varied
and close reading of all kinds of writers" (219-20).
The reason for this is simple and leads him to identify further features of the classical
tongues to be observed (in this case, Greek). Masters of literature such as Aristotle or Plato
"practiced a most elegant kind of writing filled with the sayings and maxims of the old poets
C h a p t e r O n e : T h e R e v i v a l o f L a t i n in t h e R e n a i s s a n c e 83
and orators and historians, and frequently employed tropes and figures of speech that have
acquired idiomatic meanings far different from their literal meanings" (218). Bruni provides
many examples of the idiomatic and figurative use of language to show the complexities of
language to which one must pay attention if one is to understand it properly. This goes not
only for the interpretive phase of translation during which one must know these things in
order to apprehend the meaning of the source text, but for the generative aspect of this
process as well. Bruni requires the translator will be "familiar with the idioms and figures
of speech used by the best authors, and will imitate them when he translates" (220).
Translation and imitation will have many intersections in the Renaissance, but Bruni
is the first to treat them together in an explicit manner. Imitation comes to bear on the
translation process in two distinct regards. First, with respect to the translator’s fluency and
preparation in his or her own language (read: Latin); and second, with respect to the
translator’s effective adaptation of the original author’s style. Bruni expects the translator
to have become thoroughly acquainted with the various rhetorical features of language such
as figures of speech that he (or she, as he makes clear in De studiis et litteris) has derived
from their reading of authors — to have imitated both proper and effective speech in one’s
own tongue, as modeled in literature. This is the first and more general sense in which
imitation is necessary for translation. The second sense in which imitation comes to bear in
translation is when the translator identifies and mimics the style of the author being
translated. In great distinction from Alfonso’s standards, Bruni declares the necessity of
respecting the elegance or eloquence of the original writer. The stylistic quality is to be
imitated:
Hence, if he is translating Cicero, with a variety and richness of expression
matching his, the translator must fill up the entire period with large, copious,
C h a p t e r O n e : T h e R e v iv a l o f La t in in t h e R e n a is s a n c e 84
and full phrasings, now rushing them along, now building them up. If he
translates Sallust, he must needs decide in the case of nearly every word to
observe propriety and great restraint, and to this end must retrench and cut
down. If he translate Livy, he must imitate the latter’s forms of expression.
(221, my emphasis)
One imitates the style of Cicero or Livy in order to render properly his thoughts. Latinitas
concerns itself with propriety, but Bruni refines this notion for translation: one uses words
and expressions not only proper to a given tongue, but proper to a given writer.9 1
To imitate a writer’s style requires being able to perceive and recreate the sounds,
rhythms, and aural phrasing of a language. So Bruni insists the translator / imitator be
versed in the differences between cola, commata, and periods, and their relationship to word
order (220-21). As though to forestall criticism that he calls attention only to the ornamental
and superficial aspects of language, Bruni shows how such linguistic features as balanced
clauses provide not simply beauty, but intellectual clarity. He provides and explains an
example sentence:
"Innate in us is the desire for pleasure, but acquired is that judgment that
aims at the best" is a kind of antithesis. "Innate" and "acquired" are opposed
to each other, as are "the desire for pleasure" and "judgment aiming at what
is right." (222)
Such tropes as antithesis do not simply ornament thought; they communicate that thought
more effectively and so are more intellectually appealing. Figures like these, Bruni affirms,
are to be found among the philosophers, not just the orators or poets. He gives multiple
examples from Plato and Aristotle to show how much care these thinkers took for the
manner in which they expressed their thoughts. "Did [Aristotle] too cultivate literary
9 1 The many varieties of propriety that obtained upon Renaissance imitation, including the notion
of decorum out of the rhetorical tradition — fitting one’s imitation to the circumstances, audience,
and subject matter — are discussed below in chapter 7.
C h a p t e r O n e : T h e R e v iv a l o f L a t in in t h e R e n a is s a n c e 85
graces. . .? Assuredly he did — brilliantly and often!" (223). Not to acknowledge and imitate
these features of the Greek authors in a Latin translation would be "a shameful act," he says,
sometimes a misinterpretation, always a misrepresentation.
Later, we will see translation presented as a method of imitation. In both cases the
imitator and the translator share a common position and a common focus that Bruni has
made clear: each stands between two texts — one to be closely analyzed and interpreted,
the other to be composed; and both texts are to be approached by way of those specific
qualities of language that Bruni has shown us. The educational treatise by Bruni to be
examined in chapter 4 sets forth these linguistic criteria even more specifically, and does so
within a complete program of reading and writing that constitutes the two conjoined activities
of Renaissance imitation.
The language studies by Valla and Bruni each demonstrate the foundations upon
which Renaissance imitation would proceed. They established the authors of classical
literature as the reliable sources from which to acquire both pure and effective Latin; they
identified the features of language to be analyzed and appropriated from those authors; and
they attributed the desirable excellence of those authors not simply to their lexical purity or
grammatical propriety, but to their stylistic and rhetorical effectiveness. Such studies placed
Renaissance students of language on an important middle ground between literary models
and their own compositions, readying them for the specific pedagogical exercises that would
enable them to achieve the fluency of their models.
C h a p t e r O n e : T h e R e v iv a l o f L a t in in t h e R e n a is s a n c e 8 6
The highly detailed attention to language that characterized humanist studies as they
sought to revive the Latin language was anything but trivial or academic. Humanists believed
in a direct correlation between language and culture: as the one prospered or suffered, so
did the other. Their histories show the summit of Roman culture occurring with the
perfection of the Latin language, and the various social, educational, and intellectual
degenerations of the middle ages coinciding with the decline of Latin. Thus, when Valla
weighed the semantic difference between labo and labor, this was not a narrow concern, but
a local manifestation of the grander cultural motive to imitate what humanists believed had
animated and sustained antique society. They were seeking "the complete reproduction of
the linguistic world of classical antiquity, its whole grammar, vocabulary, and rhetorical
structure. It was only thus, they felt, that they could raise the standard of their own Latin
writing to the level of the ancients."9 2 Since language and culture were so closely bound up
together, humanists turned most ardently to those classical models who, employing the full
powers of this medium, represented Roman culture at its acme. Among these, Cicero was
preeminent.
^Hankins, The Humanism of Leonardo Bruni, 199.
87
C h a p t e r T w o
The Preeminent Renaissance Model:
Cicero Imitandus
Father supreme of Roman eloquence: I yield you hearty thanks . . .
for all of us, who adorn ourselves with the flowers of the Latin
language. Yours are the springs from which we water the meadows,
you are the leader that marshals us; yours are the suffrages that
support us, and yours the light that shines upon our path.
— Petrarch, Familiares 24.4
Given the tone of Petrarch’s apostrophe, it is little wonder that Jerrold Seigel has
described Cicero as the central figure of classical culture for humanists, "the inspiration and
guide for those who sought to return to the classical world."1 The way back to that world, as
Petrarch suggests, was by way of the Latin language and eloquence Cicero demonstrated.
Cicero has been studied as a model of prose style in the Renaissance,2 and as the object of
a cult of "slavish," overly-literal imitators.3 Petrarch and the humanists who succeeded him
believed Cicero was to be imitated for the purity of his language, but even more so for the
1 Jerrold Seigel, Rhetoric and Philosophy in Renaissance Humanism: The Union of Eloquence and
Wisdom, Petrarch to Valla (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 3.
2 See Remigio Sabbadini, Storia del ciceronianismo e di altre questioni letterarie nell’ eta dell
rinascenza (Torino, 1885); John Edwin Sandys, "The History of Ciceronianism" in Harvard Lectures on
the Revival of Learning (Cambridge, 1905), 145-173; Izora Scott, Controversies Over the Imitation of
Cicero in the Renaissance (1910; reprint, Davis, California: Hermagoras Press, 1991); and Hermann
Gmelin, "Das Prinzip der Imitatio in den romanischen Literaturen der Renaissance," Romanische
Forschungen 46 (1932): 83-360.
3 Ciceronianism, and the apparent pedantry of its most ardent adherents, will be discussed in
chapter 3.
C h a p t e r Two: C i c e r o I m ita n d u s 8 8
philosophical and rhetorical uses to which he put Latin. Other classical writers (and some
early Renaissance figures) would also serve as literary models,4 but they could compete
neither with the amount and variety of Cicero’s writings, nor with his status as the arch-icon
of antique Roman culture. In the present chapter I will examine Cicero’s position as the
preeminent model for imitation in order to show that Renaissance imitation had the same
breadth and depth, the same cultural significance, as did its chief model.
Cicero had enjoyed a wide reputation in the middle ages, when he was known as the
inagister eloquentiae, "Master of Eloquence," much as Aristotle was known simply as "The
Philosopher."5 This reputation, however, was based on his youthful (and rhetorically limited)
De inventione, his Topica, and the pseudo-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad Herennium.6 These works
were important for providing the technical details of rhetoric, but lacked the theoretical
grounds upon which he based his more mature and as-yet unknown works. Of Cicero’s
4Seneca, Caesar, Livy, and Terence are but a few who served as Latin prose models. Ovid,
Horace, and Virgil served as models of Latin poetry. Petrarch, of course, was widely imitated. Unlike
the others, this early Renaissance - late medieval figure was never specifically included in Renaissance
curricula. Many Greek models were imitated, especially Homer and Demosthenes; but the imitation
of Greek never had the prominence that imitation of Latin and Latin writers did. For Renaissance
discussions of groups of models to be imitated, see the section, "Imitation and Literary Criticism (1):
Discussions of Authors to be Read," in chapter 4.
sJames J. Murphy, "Cicero’s Rhetoric in the Middle Ages," Quarterly Journal of Speech 53 (1967):
334-41.
6 For information on which of Cicero’s works on rhetoric were known to the middle ages, see John
Ward, "From Antiquity to the Renaissance: Glosses and Commentaries on Cicero’ s Rhetorical in
Medieval Eloquence: Studies in the Theory and practice of Medieval Rhetoric, ed. James J. Murphy
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978), 26-67; Ward, "Renaissance
Commentators on Ciceronian Rhetoric," in Renaissance Eloquence, ed. James J. Murphy (Berkeley and
Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983), 126-73; and Ward, "Artificiosa Eloquentia in the
Middle Ages: The Study of Cicero’ s De inventione, the Ad Herennium and Quintilian’ s De institutione
oratoria from the early Middle Ages to the Thirteenth Century, with special reference to the schools
of northern France," 2 vols. (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 1972).
C h a p t e r T w o : C i c e r o I m it a n d u s 89
philosophy, only his Tusculan Disputations revealed his thought to the middle ages, providing
a prejudicial and partial image of his thought.7 Hans Baron explains:
the author of the Tusculan Disputations had been a stoic sage, a model of
aloofness and suppression of those passions that govern public life. For a
thousand years, there had been no room for Cicero’s civic doctrine that man
is meant to play an active part in his community and in the state, and not to
pursue mere solitary contemplation.8
This socially active dimension to Cicero — the backbone of what Hans Baron has coined
"civic humanism" — would emerge as those texts were discovered and discussed that revealed
the more complete picture of the ancient Cicero.
Understanding and appreciation of Cicero began to increase steadily beginning with
Petrarch, the first to bring to light hitherto unknown Ciceronian texts. It was not Cicero’s
political involvement, however, that attracted Petrarch to him. In fact, Petrarch was initially
repulsed by the idea that Cicero, this great thinker, would compromise himself by entering
the mundane world political concerns.9 The first of two fictive letters that Petrarch wrote to
his ancient hero asked him why he did not choose a philosopher’s solitude over the political
arena (Familiares 24.3). What did attract Petrarch very early to Cicero, according to the
account he gives of his boyhood infatuation with the ancient Roman, was the sweetness and
sonority of Cicero’s words (Senilium return libri 15.1). Instead of studying his law books
Petrarch secretly devoured Cicero, until his angered father found him out and put all his
7 A few other works of Cicero were known throughout the middle ages, such as his De officiis and
the Somnium Scipionis.
8 Hans Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance: Civic Humanism and Republican Liberty
in an Age of Classicism and Tyranny, rev. ed. (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press,
1966), 121.
9 See Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance, 121-29.
C h a p t e r T w o : C i c e r o Im it a n d u s 90
books to the flames. As the fire ate up Petrarch’s treasures, he pleaded tearfully until his
father finally relented, allowing him to rescue one book by Cicero, plus the Aeneid.
The aural qualities of language which may strike some readers as peripheral received
tremendous attention in the Renaissance, beginning with Petrarch’s love of the sound of
Cicero’s language and desire to imitate this sweet sound. As mentioned in chapter 1,
Leonardo Bruni emphasized the necessity of attuning oneself to the rhythmical qualities of
what one reads and writes. Bruni’s studies gave substance to the idea that sound was an
essential complement to the sense of a text. He required the translator to have "a sound ear
so that his translation does not disturb and destroy the fullness and rhythmical qualities of
the original.”1 0
Petrarch could only sense and praise the sounds of Cicero, but Leonardo Bruni made
concerted and systematic efforts to identify and imitate those aural aspects and other features
comprising Cicero’s style. Bruni was reputed by his contemporaries to have been the first
to recapture the rhythmical qualities of ancient Latin prose. According to Paolo Cortesi,
"Leonardus Aretinus primus inconditam scribendi consuetudinem ad numerosum quendam
sonum inflexit."1 1
Erasmus would later mock the ultra-Ciceronians for their "observance of such trivial
things as rhythms," while neglecting qualities he deemed more important.1 2 But this opinion
does not negate the extent to which the sound of Latin was of serious interest to the most
1 0 Leonardo Bruni, On the Correct Way to Translate [De recte interpretatione], trans. and ed. James
Hankins, in The Humanism of Leonardo Brunt. Trans, and ed. Gordon Griffiths, James Hankins and
David Thompson (Binghamton, New York: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1987), 220.
“ Paolo Cortesi, De hominibus doctis dialogus, ed. Maria Teresa Graziosi (Rome 1973), 20.
1 2 Desiderius Erasmus, Ciceronianus, in Scott, 51.
C h a p t e r Two: C i c e r o I m jta n d u s
91
respected humanists, in terms of pronunciation (upon which Erasmus and many others wrote
entire treatises),1 3 or in terms of the aesthetics of metrics and numerus.1 4
Bruni indicated in his De studiis et literis (1424) that the sound of language was not
solely an issue of aesthetic polish. Not to acknowledge and respect it was to risk seriously
misunderstanding the original. Sound carries not only aesthetic but semantic significance in
Latin, since the ablative and nominative cases are sometimes spelled alike and can only be
distinguished by vowel length. Bruni illustrated with a short passage from the Aeneid:
Omnibus in morem tonsa coma pressa corona, "Each with his hair bound by a trimmed
garland in the traditional manner" (5.556). Ignorant of the vowel length of tonsa and
corona, one could mistake nominative and ablative cases, misinterpret the syntax, and
inaccurately read, "As usual, they all got haircuts from the tight-fitting crowns."1 5 We should
not shortchange humanist interest in reviving attention to the sounds of language.
Petrarch sparked interest in Cicero not simply by recognizing and praising his
rhythms; he discovered long-forgotten manuscripts by Cicero that began to change the way
Cicero was understood and revered. In Liege in 1333 Petrarch found a copy of Cicero’s
1 3 See, for example, Desiderius Erasmus, Dialogus de recta latini graecique sermonis pronuntiatione
(Basel, 1528); Justus Lipsius, De recta pronuntiatione latinae linguae dialogus (Antwerp: Plantinum,
1586).
1 4 Georgio Valla discusses both these aural qualities of Latin in his compendious De expetendis,
etfugiendis rebus opus [De fugiendis] (Venice: Aldus Manutius, 1501). In the section on grammar he
distinguishes and categorizes the sound values of each of the consonants and vowels (SviT), a
preliminary to understanding the artful arrangement (compositio) of words adjacent to one another
(Yiiir ff.) This is followed by a lengthy discussion of prose rhythm, "De numeris oratorum" (Ilf'). For
discussion of the imitation of "nombre oratoire" or numerus, see Kees Meerhoff, Rhetorique etpoetique
au XVIe siecle en France: Du Bellay, Ramus et les autres (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1986).
1 5 Leonardo Bruni, On the Study of Literature [De studiis et litteris], trans. and ed. James Hankins,
in The Humanism of Leonardo Bruni. Trans, and ed. Gordon Griffiths, James Hankins and David
Thompson (Binghamton, New York: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1987), 243, and n. 9
by Hankins.
C h a p t e r T w o : C i c e r o Im it a n d u s 92
oration Pro Archia, a speech important not only for modeling the practice for which only
Cicero’s theory had thus far been extant, but for its content. Cicero defends a poet, Archia,
and in so doing presents an important defense of literary studies that would shape humanist
attitudes towards the ars humanitatis.1 6 It was to those literary studies, claims Cicero in this
speech, that he owes his success in public life. Literature prepared him both mentally and
linguistically.1 7 Thomas Greene described Petrarch’s discovery of this speech as a watershed
moment in the Renaissance, for it helped Petrarch grasp the possibility of a cultural
alternative, one in which the public vita activa, prepared for by literary and rhetorical studies,
was of more value than the cloistered vita contemplativa.1 8
Petrarch’s first discovery set a pattern. Each succeeding manuscript discovery did not
simply add more to the Ciceronian corpus; new texts brought a widened appreciation of
Cicero’s personality, background, and influence, while at the same time bringing to light new
genres exemplifying how Cicero employed language and literature effectively in his life. In
other words, it became more possible and attractive to imitate Cicero at the same time that
the variety of ways in which he could be imitated increased.
Cicero’s progress as a Renaissance model for imitation may be clearly seen in the
wake of Petrarch’s next discovery in 1345. That year Petrarch uncovered an important
1 6 On the relations between the meaning of "humanism" and the discovery of new classical texts
in the Renaissance, see R. Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship from 1300 to 1850 (Oxford, 1976),
3-123. See also my Introduction, n. 1-2.
1 7 It is little wonder that this speech became more popular than others among humanists, according
to Hanna Gray, "Renaissance Humanism: the Pursuit of Eloquence," in Renaissance Essays from the
Journal of the History of Ideas, ed. Paul Oskar Kristeller and P. P. Wiener (New York, 1968), 205.
1 8 Thomas M. Greene, The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry (New York:
Yale University Press, 1982), 80.
C h a p t e r T w o : C i c e r o Im it a n d u s 93
collection of Ciceronian letters in Verona. The medieval Cicero was the stern, stoic
philosopher of the Tusculan Disputations, but the Epistolae ad Atticum provided the first
glimpse of a personal Cicero, both in the subjects about which he wrote and in the style with
which he wrote them.
Cicero had already provided a structure for the medieval art of letter writing, the ars
dictaminis, from at least the eleventh century.1 9 The five-part epistolary structure that
became the "approved format" by the twelfth century was essentially an adaptation of the six
parts of an oration described in those Ciceronian and pseudo-Ciceronian rhetorics available
to the middle ages.2 0 The actual letters of Cicero to Atticus, however — augmented
importantly by Coluccio Salutati’s 1392 discovery of the Epistolae ad familiares — altered
letter-writing forever by substituting eloquent and personal models for what had become stale
formularies.2 1
1 9 For a discussion of this Ciceronian pattern in medieval letters, see Thomas Conley, Rhetoric in
the European Tradition (New York and London: Longman, 1990), 94-95; for examples of dictamen
reflecting Ciceronian influence, see Anonymous of Bologna, The Principles of Letter-Writing (Rationes
dictandi), trans. James J. Murphy, Rhetoric in the Middle Ages, 5-25, esp. p. 7; and the text recently
edited by Martin Camargo, "A Twelfth-Century Treatise on ‘Dictamen’ and Metaphor." Traditio 47
(1992): 161-214.
2 0 Parts of an Oration Parts of a letter
Outlined by Cicero From the Ars dictaminis
1. salutatio
1. exordium <
2. captatio benevolentiae
2. narratio - 3. narratio
3. divisio - (omitted)
4. confirmatio - 4. petitio
5. refutatio - (omitted)
6. peroratio - 5. conclusio
2 1 For studies of the transformation from the medieval letter-writing manuals or ars dictaminis to
the kinds of letter-writing manuals studied and written by Renaissance humanists, see Jerrold Seigel,
"From the dictatores to the Humanists," chap. 7 of Rhetoric and Philosophy in Renaissance Humanism',
and Ronald Witt, "Medieval Ars dictaminis and the Beginnings of Humanism: A New Construction
C h a p t e r Two: C i c e r o I m iia n d u s 94
Cicero’s letters became models for imitation both generically and stylistically.
Petrarch imitated Cicero’s personal epistle format on a grand scale, producing — rather
prodigiously — his own volumes of familiar letters. He continued to polish and publish these
until his death, initiating that impressive Renaissance genre, the letter collection.2 2 Writing
letters in imitation of Cicero became a longstanding tradition of publication that would come
to rival and supplant the dictamen manuals hitherto so popular. One example2 3 is Petri
Bunelli and Paolo Manuzio’s Epistolae Ciceroniano stylo scriptae (1581).2 4 Training in letter
writing was a significant element in humanist education, both as an early exercise in writing
Latin and as an advanced genre to be mastered and used in public service. To this end
of the Problem," Renaissance Quarterly 35 (1982): 1-35.
2 2 Examples include Paulus Manutius, Epistolarum libriXH (1556) and Johann Sturm, Classicorum
epistolarum (1565).
2 3 Other epistolary manuals either based solely on Cicero or intending to teach Ciceronian letter-
writing include the anonymous Certaine Epistles ofTully verbally translated (London 1611) (discussed
in chapter 5); the very pedagogically-oriented and anonymous Principia Latine Loquendi, scribendique
sive, Selecta quaedam ex Ciceronis epistolis, ad pueros in Latina lingua exercendos, adiecta interpretatione
Anglica, & (vbi opus esse visum est) Latina declaratione. . . . A very necessary and profitable entraunce
to the speakyng and writyng of the Latin tongue. Or, A certain draught taken out of Ciceroes Epistles, for
the exercise of children in the Latin speache together with an easy and a familiar construction thereof into
Englishe, trans. "T. W ." (1575); and a late example illustrating the enduring influence of Cicero on the
letter-writing tradition, Knox, Elegant Epistles . . . from Cicero (1794).
2 4 Published and prefaced by Henri Estienne, this book comes only a few short years after
Estienne’s own De latinitate falso suspecta (1576) and Nizoliodidascalus, sive, Monitor Ciceronianorum
Nizolianorum, Dialogus Henrici Stephani (1578), both of which mercilessly lampoon Nizzolius and the
ultra-Cieeronians for their extremes. He refers to these recent publications in the end of his preface
to Bunelli and Manutius’s volume, demonstrating either his willingness to keep Cicero as an important
model so long as one does not rely on secondary compilations (the main difficulty he has with
Nizolius), or else that he knows that, as a publisher, anything published on either side of the
controversy is bound to be a good sell.
C h a p t e r T w o : C i c e r o I m it a n d u s 95
numerous letter-writing manuals came into being for use in schools, with significant ars
scribendi epistolae being composed by Erasmus, Vives, and others.2 5
Coluccio Salutati applied himself to the careful copying of Cicero’s prose style and
pure Latin in the letters he had found.2 6 Armed with Cicero as a reliable standard, he
criticized medieval Latin orthography and phraseology, and attempted to purge nonclassical
words and constructions and to follow classical orthographical conventions. His early
attempts to follow Cicero’s language prepared the way for the following generation of
humanists, including Lorenzo Valla, whose remarkable restorative study of Latin we have
seen in the previous chapter.2 7
Salutati became Chancellor of Florence in 1375 and earned fame in the last decade
of the Trecento (after his discovery of Cicero’s Ad familiares) for his classical and elegant
Latin in public documents. Opinions differ as to how well he did imitate Cicero’s prose style.
His contemporary, Fillipo Villani, flattered him by calling him an "ape" of Cicero.2 8 Sandys
2 5 EpistoIary manuals typically include instructions in how to compose letters eloquently alongside
samples. For example, see Desiderius Erasmus, De ratione conscribendi epistolas liber (Basel, 1535);
and Valentinus Erythraeus, De ratione legendi, explicandi, et scribendi epistolas, libri 3 (1576).
2 6 For the life and humanistic contribution of Salutati, see Berthold L. Ullman, The Humanism of
Coluccio Salutati, Mediovo e Umanesimo, 4 (Padua: Editrice Antenore, 1943); and Ronald G. Witt,
Hercules at the Crossroads: The Life, Works, and Thought of Coluccio Salutati, Duke Monographs in
Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 6 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1983).
2 7 Valla was criticized by some later humanists for not relying sufficiently on Cicero as a standard
(Valla’s approach was eclectic and heavily influenced by Quintilian). Poggio Bracciolini’ s invectives
are a ranting version of this criticism. For other criticisms, see John Edwin Sandys, A History of
Classical Scholarship, IT . From the Revival of Learning to the End of the Eighteenth Century (in Italy,
France, England, and the Netherlands) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1908), 69 n. 1.
Sandys mentions Velletri’s criticism (included in Vagetius, De Stylo Latino [1613]). Sanctius (1523-
1601) also criticized Valla in his Minerva over Valla’s treatment of the comparative: "egregie ineptus
est Valla, cuius studium fuit Latinam linguam compedibus constringere."
2 8 Fillipo Villani, Liber de civitatis Florentine famosis civibus (1382), quoted in A. Gambaro, ed.,
Desiderio Erasmo da Rotterdam, II Ciceroniano o dello stile migliore (Brescia 1965), xxxii. Villani’ s is
C h a p t e r T w o : C i c e r o I m it a n d u s 96
is dubious about Salutati’s success, since Salutati did not receive the collected letters of
Cicero until 60 years of age and believes Salutati’s style showed more the influence of Seneca
and Petrarch. However, Sandys acknowledges that Salutati "was the first to aim at elegance"
in official letters, which is something in itself.2 9
Aeneas Silvius claimed that Salutati’s successor in the chancellorship, Leonardo
Bruni, was actually the first to go beyond the clumsiness of fourteenth-century Latin and to
imitate Cicero’s prose style successfully:
Leonardo Bruni more effectively carried off the method of writing in the
manner of Cicero that had first been introduced by Manuel Chrysoloras. For
Coluccio Salutati retained a certain ineptitude of his period that was
overcome by Leonardo.
[Manuel Chrysoloras] qui. . . priscum. . . modum scribendi, ac Ciceronianum
morem induxerat, [Leonardus] magis profecit. Nam Coluccius [Salutatus]
ineptias quasdam sui saeculi retinebat; itaque superatus est a Leonardo.3 0
Regardless of who most succeeded in copying Cicero’s style, there is no question as to
Salutati’s influence in popularizing Cicero and both the literary and Roman ideals he
represented.
As the Latin Secretary to the Florentine Republic for over 30 years Salutati
corresponded with humanists across Europe. A practical consequence of Salutati’s attempt
to craft elegant Latin epistles for state business was to open the way for other humanists who
trained in the imitation of Cicero’ s prose to gain employment. This certainly proved to be
the one positive instance of this appellation to be found in the Renaissance according to George W.
Pigman, III, "Versions of Imitation in the Renaissance," Renaissance Quarterly 33 (1980): 8 n. 13.
2 9 Sandys, "The History of Ciceronianism," 151.
3 0 Aeneas Silvius, De viris illustribus, ed. G. Voigt, in Bibliothek des litterarischen Vereins in Stuttgart,
vol 1, part 3 (1843), 23.
C h a p t e r Two: C i c e r o I m ita n d u s 97
the case during the following century as itinerant humanists qualified for employment for
dukes or popes based on the elegance of their Latin letters. For example, Augustino Dati,
whose eloquence was praised by Erasmus, became secretarius of Sienna in 1457; Francesco
Filelfo (1398-1481), who would establish a teaching program in Florence based on reading
almost nothing but Cicero, served the Venetian ambassador to Constantinople prior to
receiving a high salary as chair of eloquence in Bologna; Poggio Bracciolini, who criticized
Valla for not relying sufficiently on Cicero in his Elegantiae, served as apostolic secretary to
two popes, Alexander V and John X. Obviously being trained in Ciceronian eloquence had
a practical advantage in Quattrocento Italy.
A second consequence of Salutati’s enthusiastic reception of Cicero’s familiar letters
was that Salutati strongly urged comparisons between the socio-political situation of Cicero
and his own day, and he encouraged responding to current situations as Cicero would. He
was not interested solely in imitating Cicero’s orthography; he wanted to imitate Cicero’s
political philosophy.
From reading the letters, says Baron, Salutati gained insight into the great final
struggle of the respublic romana and observed causes that resulted in civil wars and the
decline of the "metropolis of the world from popular freedom down into the service of
monarchy."3 1 It was natural for Salutati to sympathize with Cicero’s endangered republic
since, in 1392, Florence was just emerging from a war with Giangaleazzo, Duke of Milan
(1390-92) "in which Salutati had so eloquently defended the liberties of the Florentine
Republic against the rising Monarchy of the Fisconti. This was the situation in which Salutati
was to appraise Cicero’s participation in the political struggles of Rome" (123). A parallel
3 1 Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance, 123.
C h a p t e r T w o : C i c e r o I m it a n d u s 98
political situation called for a parallel response. Salutati imitated Cicero’s doctrine on the
duty of a citizen that every "civis et vir bonus" is to come to the aid of his endangered
commonwealth. This was the special duty of the philosopher, who was not to stay
sequestered in private life when his wits and words could be put to good use. Cicero was not
a simple tutor of Latin to those who studied his letters; he taught influential persons like
Salutati that Latin learning and writing were to be applied to civic needs.
The letter was only one genre in which Cicero was imitated both for genre, style, and
content. As more of his numerous orations came to light, Cicero influenced a revival of
public speaking and the training for it in schools. Petrarch discovered Pro Archia in 1333,
and Boccaccio was credited for finding Pro Cluentia in 1355. It would be Poggio Bracciolini,
however, who found two gold mines of Ciceronian orations. In the Cluny monastery in
Burgundy in 1415 he found a manuscript (possibly eighth century) that included the
previously unknown Pro RoscioAmerino, Pro Murena, as well as Pro Cluentio, Pro Milone, and
Pro Caelio. Two years later, in France and Germany, he would discover eight more unknown
speeches of Cicero: Pro Caecina, Pro Roscio comoedo, De lege agraria i-iii, Pro Rabirio
perduellionis reo, In Pisonem, and Pro Rabirio Postumo,3 2
In 1416 Poggio uncovered at St. Gall the important Commentary of Asconius on five
Ciceronian speeches. The Asconian commentaries provided an important impetus to the
analysis of Cicero because of their rhetorical rather than strictly interpretive approach.
Throughout the Renaissance Cicero’s speeches were studied critically for their content,
organization, and style, producing an entire sub-industry of Ciceronian commentaries whose
3 2 See Appendix A, Renaissance Discoveries of Ciceronian Texts.
C h a p t e r T w o : C i c e r o I m it a n d u s 99
complete scope has not yet been evaluated.3 3 Joachim Classen explains the various ways in
which Ciceronian speeches were analyzed by such humanists as Bartholomaeus Latomus,
Philip Melanchthon, Johannes Sturm, Peter Ramus, and Christoph Hegendorff.3 4 And
though, as Classen outlines, differences abound among the Ciceronian commentators as to
how Cicero was to be imitated, their analyses had in common the belief that Cicero could
and should be imitated, whether along stylistic, ethical, or political lines. The art of oratory
was reinvented in the Renaissance as changed political circumstances made possible and
necessary an increased use of public rhetoric. The newly rediscovered orations of Cicero
were there to serve as models for the undertaking and so were eagerly imitated.3 5
The cultural climate of Italy was well primed to receive Cicero’s orations as a living
legacy in the heritage Italians were eager to claim. The Italians perceived themselves to be
living amidst the relics of a superior civilization from which they had fallen. Because they
perceived those ruins to be as much intellectual and linguistic as they were stone or marble,
the humanists sought as eagerly to recover the language and literature of ancient Rome as
3 3 C. J. Classen has made important contributions in recent years to understanding the nature of
Ciceronian commentaries in various parts of Europe in this period. See "Cicero orator inter
Germanos redivivus," Humanistka Lovaniensia 37 (1988): 79-114; Classen, "Cicero Orator Inter
Germanos Redivivus, II," Humanistka Lovanknsia 39 (1990): 156-76; and Classen, "Cicerostudien in
der Romania im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert," in Ckero, ein Mensch seiner Zeit, ed. G. Radke (Berlin,
1968): 198-245; Lawrence D. Green, "Canonicity and the Renaissance Cicero" in Composition in
Context: Essays in Honor of Donald C. Stewart, ed W. Ross Winterowd and Vincent Gillespie
(Carbondale and Edwardville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1994), 17-27; and John Monfasani,
"Humanism and Rhetoric," in Renaissance Humanism: Foundation, Forms, and Legacy, vol. 3,
Humanism and the Disciplines, ed. Albert Rabil, Jr. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1988), 171-235, esp. p. 188.
3 4 The details of these approaches and the general significance of Renaissance commentaries to
the practice of imitation are discussed in chapter 4.
3 5 This held true in Renaissance schooling, especially, where regular declamations were prepared
for public presentation. Johann Sturm instructed students, in his De exercitationibus rhetorkis, liber
academkus (1575), to perform orations as if in Cicero’ s place before a Roman court.
C h a p t e r T w o : C i c e r o I m it a n d u s 100
they did its artifacts. Poggio Bracciolini, to take one salient example, interested himself
equally in the physical and intellectual remnants of ancient Rome. He studied sculptures,
ancient architecture, coins, and inscriptions, while achieving great fame for the discovery of
seminal manuscripts, and for pioneering the imitation of Ciceronian prose style.3 6 There was
a simple cultural justification for imitating Cicero’s prose style: just as the shine had to be
put back on a coin with Caesar’s face, so the lustre had to be returned to Latin with a
Ciceronian stamp. Poggio was so enthusiastic at the reemergence of classical Latin as a
flexible and fit tool of thought that he wrote jest books (Facetiae [1438-52]) in an attempt
to prove that there was nothing that could not be expressed in Latin.3 7
The historian Flavio Biondo (1392-1463), whose works were mentioned in the
previous chapter, contributed to this sense of having fallen from a superior culture to which
there was need to return. DeRoma instaurata ("Rome Restored") (1444-1446), and DeRoma
triumphante (1459) most obviously take up the comparison to ancient Rome. The former
work dealt almost extensively with Roman topography, but the close of its first book includes
such sections as Comparatio qualis vetustae & novae romae which demonstrate the general
comparison that is being made by the entire work: the glory of this past culture is to be
remembered and revived by current Italy.3 8 The latter work specifically described pagan
Rome as a model for reforming administrative and military institutions.
3 6 Poggio transcribed all of Cicero’ s Letters to Atticus for Cosimo de’ Medici in 1408.
3 7 Sandys, "The History of Ciceronianism," 155. Not everyone, including Erasmus, approved of the
lasciviousness of his tales about the clergy.
3 8 Biondo later wrote Historiarum ab inclinatione Romanorum imperii decades (1483), one of the
first works to provide a coherent sense of chronological history from ancient to then-modern Rome.
It helped establish the notion of a middle ages and is primary evidence of the self-conscious nature
of the Renaissance (see chapter 1).
C h a p t e r T w o : C i c e r o Im j t a n d u s 101
Both works were influential for their description of the papacy as a continuation of
the power of the Roman empire, consistent with the translatio imperii discussed in chapter
1. Cicero’s clearly republican sentiments, so adored by Salutati, would seem to make him
unattractive to those who favored an imperial conception of the church, yet as John
D ’ Amico’s studies of the phenomenon demonstrates, Rome became a center for Ciceronian
oratory.3 9
Ciceronian oratory in Renaissance Rome provides a strong example of the social and
religious clout that imitating Cicero carried in this period. Erasmus, as we will see, would
lampoon Ciceronian extremists, citing contemporary Roman oratory as an example of the
ridiculous extremes to which following Cicero could lead. His spokesman, Bulephorus,
reports having witnessed a speech given before Pope Julius II following an invitation
"extended to any one who would speak of the death of Christ. ..." A certain Ciceronian
addresses the Pope, described in the following manner:
The introduction and peroration, longer almost than the real sermon, were
occupied in proclaiming the praises of Julius II, whom he called Jupiter
Optimus Maximus holding and brandishing in his powerful right hand the
three-cleft and fatal thunderbolt and causing by a mere nod whatever he
wished. All that had been done in France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Africa,
and Greece, he declared, had been done by the will of Julius alone. So spoke
at Rome a Roman in Roman tongue and Roman style. But what had this
characterization to do with Julius, the high priest of the Christian religion,
vice-gerent of Christ, successor of Peter and Paul? What with cardinals and
bishops performing the duties of the other apostles?4 0
3 9 John D ’ Amico, Renaissance Humanism in Papal Rome: Humanists and Churchment on the Eve
of the Reformation (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins Universtiy Press, 1983); idem., "Humanism
in Rome," in Renaissance Humanism: Foundation, Forms, and Legacy, vol. 1, Humanism in Italy, ed.
Albert Rabil, Jr. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), 264-95.
■^Erasmus, Ciceronianus, 62-63.
C h a p t e r T w o : C i c e r o I m it a n d u s 102
The threat of Ciceronianism to Christianity is obviously the point of Erasmus’s comic sketch.
If imitating Cicero meant exchanging Christianity for paganism, how could it be sanctioned?
The Ciceronian controversy, however, was only one occasion of many in the Renaissance
(and long before) in which arguments were debated on the potential paganism of Latin
letters.4 1
Erasmus, it turns out, was not being fictional at all in this example. Kenneth
Gouwens has reported how a speech very much like the one Erasmus reported was in fact
given in Rome in 1525. Like the fictional fanatic, this speaker exchanged Christian terms for
pagan, although apparently with less acclaim than the fictional speaker Erasmus criticized.4 2
While we may agree with Erasmus as to the potentially blasphemous nature of
speaking on a Christian theme in pagan terms, there is little doubt that the speaker was only
attempting to capitalize upon the influence he believed available to him by identifying with
such a prominent figure of ancient Rome as Cicero. Given contemporary efforts to identify
the Pope with the powers of the Roman emperors or the efforts to restore the city (and
glory) of ancient Rome, such a speech seems much less anomalous and ridiculous, and at
least sensible in the circumstances if not ultimately laudable. One may even argue that
substitutions of Christian terms for pagan ones were not attempts to undermine the
importance of Christianity, but to ascribe to the ecclesiastical institution the power and status
of the ancient political order. Consider once again Biondo’s De Roma instaurata. After his
4 1 Erasmus defended classical literature against charges of paganism in his Antibarbari (1520).
While Erasmus would later charge the Ciceronianisms with paganism, only a few years prior he
recorded in the preface to his edition of the Tuscidan Disputations that Cicero was divinely inspired
(Albert Rabil, Jr. "Desiderius Erasmus," in Rabil 2:256).
4 2 Kenneth Gouwens, "Ciceronianism and Collective Identity: Defining the Boundaries of the
Roman Academy, 1525," The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 23.2 (Spring 1993): 173-195.
C h a p t e r T w o : C i c e r o I m it a n d u s 103
chapter entitled "On the Comparison of Ancient and Modern Rome," he included two
chapters (87 and 88) obviously meant to flatter, not blaspheme, church powers: Dictator
perpetuus est pontifex and Senatores sunt cardinales.4 3
In addition to the popularity that Cicero enjoyed through his many rediscovered
letters and speeches, Cicero’s influence as a literary and cultural model became deeply rooted
in educational practice as a result of Poggio’s discovery of a complete copy of Quintilian’s
Institutio oratoria in the first quarter of the Quattrocento. Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria
provided what none of Cicero’s works did in enormous detail — the outlines of a school
curriculum. This curriculum was based upon a profound veneration of Cicero. Consequently,
the more popular Quintilian became, the more entrenched Cicero became as the supreme
model: Ille se profecisse sciat, cui Cicero valde placebit, Quintilian made clear: "Whosoever
shall greatly admire Cicero, may be sure that he has made good progress" (10.1.112). This
statement is made in Quintilian’s chapters promoting imitation.4 4
A final and very important installment of Ciceronian rediscoveries came in 1421 when
Bishop Landriani uncovered Cicero’s De oratore, Orator (known only partially before), and
the unknown Brutus. These fleshed out Cicero’s rhetorical opus in important ways — De
oratore in particular. Cicero was no longer simply the source for rhetorical technique, but
for a complete rhetorical theory. De oratore, unlike the less informative De inventione, is an
4 3 See also Lorenzo Valla’s discussion of the church as a conservator of Roman culture in his In
principio sui studii (chapter 1, above).
' ‘ ‘ ‘For the importance of this section see James J. Murphy, ed., "The Role of Book Ten on the
Relation of Reading, Speaking, and Writing," in Quintilian on the Teaching of Speaking and Writing:
Translations from Books One, Two, and Ten of the "Institutio Oratoria." Landmarks in Rhetoric and
Public Address (Carbondale and Edwardville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987), xxxiv ff. The
pedagogical influence of Cicero will be apparent in the following chapters of this study.
C h a p t e r T w o : C i c e r o I m j t a n d u s 104
important dialogue discussing the role of eloquence in Roman society and including views
on matters such as civic virtue, ethics, literature, and the role of education in society. With
Quintilian, De oratore formed the backbone of rhetorical education in humanist education.4 5
By the close of the fifteenth century Cicero would be known as the author of no less
than seven works on rhetoric,4 6 eight on philosophy, and others on political science and law.
No longer simply the magister eloquentiae of the middle ages who had written a little
philosophy and a great deal of technical rhetoric, Cicero became known as a statesman and
orator, a philosopher and educational theorist, and an author of letters both personal and
4 5 It is possible to cite parallel passsages between Quintilian and most Renaissance educational
treatises (as Woodward notes concerning Matteo Palmieri’ s Della Vita Civile, or as the editors of the
Toronto editions of Erasmus fully annotate in Erasmus’ s educational works). Woodward finds a
cultural rationale underlying Quintilian’ s Renaissance preeminence: "When we remember the anxiety
of the man of education of the Revival to recognise the ideal of his social and intellectual life in that
of ancient Rome, we do not wonder that the humanists, whether professed students or just cultivated
men of affairs, seized upon the one systematic manual of Roman education as the authoritative guide
for an age in which the virtues and glory of the ancient civlisation were to be re-bom"; William
Harrison Woodward, Studies in Education During the Age of the Renaissance 1400-1600 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1906. Reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1924), 72-73.
For a view of a minority, anti-Quintilianic tradition in the Renaissance, see John Monfasani, "Episodes
of Anit-Quintilianism in the Italian Renaissance. Quarrels on the Orator as a Vir Bonus and Rhetoric
as the Scientia Bene Dicendi." Rhetorica 10.2 (Spring 1992): 119-138. Resistance to Quintilian was in
terms of the moral dimension to Roman education, not in terms of the practical utility of his
methodology, which was accepted on all sides.
4 6 1) De Inventione, written in his youth and treated dismissively by him in his more mature De
oratore. Concerns only inventio, with special focus on stasis theory. 2) Brutus, a discussion of the
history of oratory in Rome; 3) Partitiones oratoriae, a brief and schematic overview of rhetoric written
for his son; 4) De optimo genere oratorum, the introduction to Cicero’ s translation of Demosthenes’
oration On the Crown', 5) Topica, Cicero’s discussion of argumentative commonplaces, an adaptation
of the discipline of dialectic for the purposes of rhetorical invention; 6) De oratore, Cicero’s most
complete and mature discussion of rhetoric; 7) Orator, Cicero’s last work on rhetoric, a defense of his
own eloquent style within the classical debate between Atticist (plain) and Asiatic (ornate) levels of
oratorical style. The Rhetorica ad Herennium, the most complete technical rhetoric from antiquity,
was considered to be Cicero’s throughout the middle ages but was attributed to "Comificius" in the
Renaissance. Given its proximity to De inventione, many (in the Renaissance and today) consider it
nonetheless to be representative of Cicero’ s rhetorical theory. These works were not employed equally
in the Renaissance. The Topica and Rhetorica ad Herennium were especially useful in grammar school
instruction; De oratore and Brutus for more advanced discussions of rhetorical theory.
C h a p t e r T w o : C i c e r o Im it a n d u s 105
persuasive. Unlike any other classical figure, it was possible to study both his theory and his
practice, both his philosophical investigations and his public participation in society.
The imitation of Cicero — his Latin, the genres of his speaking and writing, his
familiarity with literature, or in his manner — could have genuine political force in
Renaissance Rome, and Cicero soon became the cultural standard throughout Renaissance
Europe, the measure against which all could gauge their writing and speaking. Guarino of
Verona was the first to use Cicero as his standard in criticism of the works of others.4 7
Others would follow suit. Lawrence Green observes that in the Renaissance one finds
a constant drumbeat of Ciceronian reference in the critical studies of other
classical authors, but only rarely is the process reversed, and only rarely do
we find attempts to explicate Cicero by reference to other writers [excepting
Demosthenes]."4 8
Cicero provided the Renaissance, as John D’Amico has said, a critical literary theory:
In following a perfect model, writers not only identified themselves with the
best, but they also permitted themselves the scope within which to make
innovations that could be judged by others. Ciceronians felt that without a
model there could be no judgment of writers based (at least in part) on
objective criteria. Since Latin was a language that had to be re-created, this
objectivity was all the more important to the humanists. How could one
judge a writer using an essentially learned language unless objective standards
were available to all?4 9
The Ciceronian corpus could provide such a set of objective standards for neo-Latin language
and literature:
4 7 Sandys, "History of Ciceronianism," 154. Guarino’ s influential curriculum is discussed in
chapter 4.
4 8 Green, "Canonicity and the Renaissance Cicero," 18. Green cites the example of Guillaume Du
Vair (1556-1621), whose De L ’ eloqvence frangoise, & des raisons pourquoy elle est demeuree si basse.
Edition nounelle, reneue & augmentee (Paris, 1600), which after 49 pages of theory spends the
remaining 362 pages comparing speeches by Demosthenes and Cicero (24-25 n. 4).
4 9 D’ Amico, Renaissance Humanism in Papal Rome, 132-33.
C h a p t e r Two: C i c e r o I m ita n d u s 106
The exponents of Ciceronianism worked to create a literary tradition with
which writers could identify. They did this by establishing canons of literary
criticism by which to judge all styles of writing. After a period of "barbaric"
decline, the Ciceronians argued, the only way to find purity of style and
expression was through Ciceronian imitation. The establishment of this
model would enable a writer to place himself within a literary tradition with
laws and canonical writings. (D’Amico 132)
Cicero’s works achieved canonical status in the Renaissance. "The texts were shared
property, they were studied and written about in every country in Europe, and they provided
a shared background for literate discussions for several centuries."5 0 The variety of Cicero’s
writings, their early popularity, their combination of theory and practice, the dissemination
given them by influential humanists in their schools (such as those of Guarino or of Vittorino
da Feltre) or in their public positions (such as Coloccio Salutati or Leonardo Bruni in the
chancellorship of Florence), the status of Cicero as a learned and eloquent patriot who
brought his talents into public service through both letters and orations — all these factors
combined to create in Cicero a unique cultural icon of the Renaissance. We have no
modern-day equivalent to compare to his sheer presence. His literary writings had the
stature that Shakespeare or Milton have for us today; his philosophical writings vied with
Aristotle; his Latin was referenced in the Renaissance much as Noah Webster is today; his
oratorical prowess could perhaps be correlated to the acclaim Daniel Webster enjoyed in
nineteenth-century America. Altogether, he was "a towering figure" in Renaissance culture.5 1
In 1563 the translator Nicholas Grimald provided testimony of the stature and range
of Cicero’s influence by the late sixteenth century. In the preface to his bilingual edition of
5 0 Green, "Canonicity and the Renaissance Cicero," 17.
5 1 James J. Murphy, ed, Peter Ramus’ s Attack on Cicero: Text and Translation of Ramus’ s " Brutinae
Questiones,” trans. Carole Newlands (Davis, California: Hermagoras Press, 1992), xv.
C h a p t e r T w o : C i c e r o Im it a n d u s 107
Cicero’s De officiis he compiles an impressive accounting of the numerous and diverse people
who have profited from Cicero. What he says of this work is representative of the entire
Ciceronian corpus:
But in Rome, in Italy, in Europa, in all quarters, where latine speech
had place . . . so it [De officiis] [has been] imbraced at all times, of all men,
in every degree, order and estate. Rulers have heere found much wittie
pollicie appertaining to the governaunce of Realmes. Householders and
Parents have picked out of these bookes vertuous instructions for their
children and thier servants. Doctors and divines have heere met with morall
sentence, and ensamples very excellent. Civil Lawyers have espyed, touching
justice and equitie, both rules appointed and cases discussed.
Schoolmen have taken heerehence problemes and questions, to debate
at large, and have fetched from hence philosophical conclusions, with reasons
and arguments to prove and to disprove. Orators have bene well furnished
heereby with sundrie graces and ornaments of speech, and in the like manner
of matter, have marked howe to bestowe theyr stile. Rhetoricians, who for
thier exercise doo use declamations, have taken out of this common places,
lyke large fieldes, where men may walke at libertie. Schoolemasters never
wist of finer phrases, for to make their schollers acquainted wyth the very
vaine of the Latine language.
Grimald concludes this encomium by listing, in a crescendo of infinitive phrases, the many
uses to which Cicero’s works could be put:
At fewe woordes, all men that of wisdome be studious, may get somewhat
heerein to sharp the wit, to store the intelligence, to feede the minde, to
quicken the spirit, to augment the reason, to direct the appetite, to frame the
tongue, to fashion the manners, moreover, to rule, to obeye, to dispute, to
determine, to teach, to perswade and to every needful purpose in a man’s life.
Marvilous is the matter, flowing the eloquence, rich the store of stuffe, and
full artificiall the inditing.S 2
Cicero became the predominant figure to be imitated in the Renaissance precisely
because he modeled the use of the Latin language in both its most specific and technical
senses and in its broadest cultural connotations. Indeed, he brought these areas together
5 2 Nicolas Grimald, Marcus Tullius Ciceroes three bookes of duties (1583), Bivr -Bvr . By Grimald’s
manner it appears that he has himself not been immune to Ciceronian rhetoric.
C h a p t e r T w o : C i c e r o I m it a n d u s 108
under a single head, reinforcing their interdependence. While serving as both a linguistic and
stylistic model of Latin prose, Cicero also exemplified the virtues of wide learning,
philosophical sophistication, and public involvement. Cicero not only wrote about the
importance and powers of the language arts, he demonstrated them to a Renaissance public
by way of the letters and orations and philosophical treatises that came to comprise the more
complete Ciceronian corpus that emerged in the fifteenth century. Cicero uniquely embodied
humanist ideals: the purity of the Latin language, the efficacy of rhetorical training and
performance, and that combination of wisdom and eloquence that became the signature
desideratum of Renaissance humanists.5 3
Just as Cicero cannot properly be understood if considered only as a model of pure
Latin or eloquent prose, so imitation cannot be so narrowly conceived. To imitate Cicero’s
Latin was at once to stake one’s claim in the kind of liberal education that he promoted or
the kind of public involvement he represented. Flavio Biondo could say in the same breath
that Cicero was latinitatis illustrator, et idem orator eximius [the illustrator of latinity, that same
who is so outstanding an orator]5 4 only because humanists did not divide Cicero’s importance
as a linguistic model from his importance as a rhetorical, educational, or political model. He
could not have been an effective public orator had he lacked purity of diction; nor could he
have been a model of pure Latin had he not been highly read.
In the same way, we cannot separate the linguistically technical methods of imitation
employed in the Renaissance from these same broad areas of cultural significance with which
5 3 "Philosophy needs eloquence as much as oratory needs wisdom." Seigel, Rhetoric and Philosophy
in Renaissance Humanism: The Union of Eloquence and Wisdom, 3.
5 4 Flavio Biondo, De verbis romanae locutionis, 120.
C h a p t e r T w o : C i c e r o I m it a n d u s 109
they were tightly joined. The thoroughness of imitation did not reveal the pedantry of
Renaissance humanists, but the seriousness with which they attempted to restore Latin to the
status of a living and powerful language within their culture.
r
110
C h a p t e r T h r e e
Imitation as Pedantry:
Servile Ciceronianism and Erasmus
"Ciceronianism" labels the more zealous attempts by certain humanists to imitate their
cultural icon. The Ciceronians appear to have been unnecessarily exclusive, restricting
themselves only to reading or imitating Cicero; incorrigibly plagiaristic, copying words and
phrases directly out of Cicero; overly fastidious, testing each of their words for purity in
special Ciceronian references; and utterly artificial, stringing their compositions together with
quotes and notes from an array of pedantic aids. A healthy cottage industry accommodated
these fetishes. Huge lexicons and thesauri redacting Cicero’ s words or expressions were
published throughout the sixteenth century.
As early as 1450 Aeneas Sylvius warned against such forced imitation of old writers
and the potential harm of reviving archaisms.1 Angelo Poliziano, in an exchange with Paolo
Cortesi in 1489, opposed overly-close imitation of Cicero on grounds that it threatened
originality.2 He argued for an eclectic approach to reading and imitation which the
Ciceronians would (apparently) not allow.3 Other prominent humanists wrote against the
movement in letters (such were Poggio Bracciolini’ s against Lorenzo Valla), or in treatises
x Quoted by J. W. H. Atkins, English Literary Criticism: The Renascence (London: Methuen, 1947),
22.
2 Paulo Cortesi and Angelo Poliziano. "Nemo imitandus! (Politianus). Minime gentium, sed
Cicero prae ceteris imitandus! (Cortesius)" in Aemilius Springhetti, Selecta Latinitatis Scripta
Auctorum Recentium (Saec. XV-XX), Latinitas Perennis, I (Rome: Gregorian University, 1951), 130-34.
3See chapter 7, in which eclecticism is reevaluated..
C h a p t e r T h r e e : S e r v il e C ic e r o n ia n is m & E r a s m u s 111
under the common title, Ciceronianus, "The Ciceronian" (as did Gabriel Harvey and Peter
Ramus). More recent critics assert that the slavish imitation of Cicero’s language sterilized
Latin. Elton claims the "artificial bonds" into which Ciceronians forced Latin prevented its
flexibility and further development, resulting in its decay.4 Brunot and Bodmer both claim
that in the very attempt to revive Latin, the Ciceronians killed it:
D ’abord les efforts que firent les ciceroniens pour restituer la langue latine
dans sa purete antique contribuerent a Fabolir comme langue vivante. . . . lui
imposer la circonlocution au moyen des mots de Ciceron, meme eny ajoutant
ceux Du Ier siecle, c’etait le tuer.5
Pedantic attempts of humanists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to
substitute the prolix pomposity of Cicero for the homely idiom of the
monasteries hastened its demise. By reviving Latin, the humanists helped to
kill it.6
Given the cultural importance that was attached to the revival of Latin, the Ciceronians seem
to have gone beyond the pedantic to the criminal. But little sympathy remains today for the
demise of Latin, and Ciceronianism has long faded away as a locus of debate over vital issues
such as the preservation and flowering of language or the benefits and dangers of imitative
practice. Today Ciceronianism simply labels prejudice against any humanist excesses with
language. Until challenged in 1968 by Brian Vickers,7 Morris Croll had coopted "Ciceronian"
4 G. R. Elton, Reformation Europe 1517-1559 (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 291.
5 Ferdinand Brunot, quoted by R. G. Faithfull, "The Concept of ‘Living Language' in Cinquecento
Italian Philology," Modem Language Review 48 (1953): 284.
6 Frederick Bodmer, The Loom of Language (New York: W. W. Norton, 1944), 312.
7 Brian Vickers, Francis Bacon and Renaissance Prose (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1968), 96-140.
C h a p t e r T h r e e : S e r v il e C ic e r o n ia n is m & E r a s m u s 112
to mean the bad half of his simple dichotomy of prose styles (the more trim and progressive
"Attic" style being attributed to Bacon).8
By far the most famous and decisive denunciation of the Ciceronian movement came
from Desiderius Erasmus in his Ciceronianus of 1528.9 This work spawned decades of
response from the Ciceronians and set the terms for any future assessment of Ciceronianism.
Within a short time Erasmus was considered to have laid to rest this great embarrassment
to humanism. By 1605 Francis Bacon looked back at the expired Ciceronian movement as
an example of one of the "vain affectations" that did such harm to learning during the
previous century and cited Erasmus as having said the benediction on the movement’s gross
errors.1 0
But the moderate and respectable Erasmus had much more in common with the
Ciceronian fanatics he ridiculed than is ever acknowledged by those who believe him to have
closed the book on Ciceronianism. This chapter will show Erasmus to be as slavish and
servile as any of the Ciceronians he lambastes in his Ciceronianus. My intent is not to cast
aspersions on the great humanist, but to rescue the reputation of the imitative practices that
have been tarnished in company with the Ciceronians. "Ciceronianism," as it has been
8 Morris Croll, "Attic Prose: Lipsius, Montaigne, Bacon,” in Schelling Anniversary Papers by his
Former Students (New York: The Century Co., 1923), 117-50, reprinted in Style, Rhetoric, and Rhythm:
Essays by Morris W. Croll, ed. J. Max Patrick and Robert O. Evans, et al. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
UP, 1966), 167-202.
9 Desiderius Erasmus, Dialogus Ciceronianus, de optimo dicendi genere [Ciceronianus], in
Controversies Over the Imitation of Cicero in the Renaissance, ed. Izora Scott (1910; reprint, Davis,
California: Hermagoras Press, 1991); and idem., in Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami, vol. 1-2,
ed. Pierre Mesnard (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1973), 581-710, cited hereafter
respectively as Ciceronianus (Scott) and Ciceronianus (Mesnard).
1 0 Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning (London: Henry James, 1605) in The Collected
Works of Francis Bacon, ed James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Denon Heath. (London:
Longmans, 1857-1874), 282-85.
C h a p t e r T h r e e : S e r v il e C ic e r o n ia n is m & E r a s m u s 113
received in our time, proves a great obstacle to understanding the efficacy of those
pedagogies of imitation that thrived in humanist education from the early fifteenth century.
The stigma of pettiness attached to this movement encourages the false belief that whatever
these extremists did represented everything bad about imitation. But, the educational
programs and treatises for which Erasmus is justly famous are based upon a thoroughgoing
and linguistically technical sort of literary imitation. Unless we are prepared to condemn the
impressive corpus of Erasmus’s work, it will be necessary to reconsider the Ciceronians.
The Ciceronianus of Erasmus
Appearing midway through 150 years of Ciceronian controversy (1528), the
Ciceronianus of Erasmus dramatized the issues in a satirical dialogue whose popularity
ensured that Ciceronianism would become a Europe-wide issue.1 1 Whether it was Erasmus’s
prestige or the highly memorable caricature he draws of the ultra-Ciceronians (a "devastating
burlesque" according to Monfasani), his Ciceronianus seems to have been the last word on
the Ciceronians.1 2
Erasmus’s position on Cicero or imitation is easily misjudged when the Ciceronianus
is considered by itself or just in relation to the Ciceronian polemics, as it is in Izora Scott’s
1 1 John Monfasani, "Humanism and Rhetoric," in Renaissance Humanism: Foundation, Forms, and
Legacy, vol. 3, Humanism and the Disciplines, ed. Albert Rabil, Jr. (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1988), 194.
1 2 John D’ Amico says Erasmus’s Ciceronianus delivered the "final assault" to Roman Ciceronianism.
"Humanism in Rome," Renaissance Humanism: Foundation, Forms, and Legacy, ed. Albert Rabil, Jr.
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), 281.
C h a p t e r T h r e e : S e r v il e C ic e r o n ia n is m & E r a s m u s 114
otherwise admirable study.1 3 Moreover, when one begins with the assumption that those
opposing Erasmus’s rational eclecticism were simply fanatics or had less honorable or
informed motives, we mistakenly infer that these Ciceronian zealots were somehow acting
outside of basic humanist assumptions that their efforts were actually fulfilling. We further
err if we do not take into account the true object of Erasmus’s satire. Erasmus does not
mock the philological care of the Ciceronians; rather, he condemns their unthinking devotion
to an authority who sometimes was wrong.
Erasmus’s Ciceronianus may be divided into three parts: 1) the characterization and
ridicule of a typical Ciceronian; 2) a refutation of false imitation and the presentation of
"true" imitative doctrine as an erring Ciceronian is cured of his "illness"; and 3) a lengthy
catalog of European writers in which Erasmus assesses how Ciceronian each one is. Part
three, the catalogue of writers, provided the catalyst for so much of the controversy that
would immediately follow. Erasmus reports that he received complaints from those offended
to have been either included in or excluded from his list. Worse, Erasmus unintentionally
offended French pride. First of all, he praised France’s beloved Ciceronian, Christophe de
Longueil, but all too briefly for French pride, moving Etienne Dolet to counter-attack with
De imitatione Ciceroniana, adversus Desiderium Erasmum Roterodamum, pro Christophoro
Longolio (1535). Then, compounding his error, Erasmus allowed an unfortunate proximity
in his text between Badius and Bude; the former a French printer of modest repute and the
latter France’s greatest scholar. This juxtaposition was taken a denigrating comparison at the
expense of Bude.
1 3 Izora Scott, Controversies Over the Imitation of Cicero in the Renaissance (1910; reprint, Davis,
California: Hermagoras Press, 1991).
C h a p t e r T h r e e : S e r v il e C ic e r o n ia n is m & E r a s m u s 115
As Erasmus expresses in his dedicatory letter to the second edition of his
Ciceronianus, he had intended the list of authors not for literary score-keeping but for
pedagogical purposes. "The young learn a great deal from critical assessments like the ones
here, as they get into the habit of reading always with discrimination and recognizing what
to avoid and what to try to do. There is a vast difference between criticism [censuras] and
eulogy [encomia]."1 4 Erasmus was frustrated that his Ciceronianus had been misunderstood.
People had focused on relatively minute issues (the matter of who was included in his survey
of writers) while ignoring his more substantial arguments. His listing of authors was seen
simplistically as a mere sign of approval or disapproval rather than as an exercise in the
critical appraisal of given authors against a given standard. Erasmus never perceives the
irony that he may himself be guilty of effacing important differences in how a given author
might be appreciated — in this case, Cicero. Erasmus’s denunciations of the ultra-
Ciceronians depend upon their characterization as foolishly enraptured devotees, their
appreciation of Cicero limited to encomia at the expense of censura. We must hold onto the
possibility that Cicero was appreciated in significant ways by those who slavishly followed
him.
But from Erasmus’s caricature of the Ciceronians in part one of the Ciceronianus
there is little hope of seeing their activities as respectable on any grounds. Critical
understanding of Cicero seems an impossibility to those who are so enamored of their model
as to treat him as an absolute idol. Nosoponus, the character whom Erasmus creates to
1 4 Desiderius Erasmus, preface to Ciceronianus, 2d ed. in Dialogus Ciceronianus, De optimo dicendi
genere. The Ciceronian: A Dialogue on the Ideal Latin Style [Dialogus Ciceronianus], trans. Betty I.
Knott, in Collected Works of Erasmus, ed. A. H. I. Levi, vol. 28 (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1986), 339. See the section in chapter 4: "Imitation and Literary Criticism (1): Discussions
of Authors to be Read."
C h a p t e r T h r e e : S e r v il e C ic e r o n ia n is m & E r a s m u s 116
represent the servile imitators, has restricted himself for seven years to reading only Cicero’s
works, has placed portraits of Cicero on every doorway to keep his thoughts only on Cicero,
and is in the process of learning all Cicero by heart. Nosoponus imitates Cicero religiously
and literally. He has set in order three books to aid him in composition: a Ciceronian
lexicon, a Ciceronian phrase book (including formulas of speech, tropes, figures, etc.),1 5 and
a third book of Cicero’s meters and periods (having reduced every Ciceronian utterance to
its rhythm and feet) (2.24). He will use no words that Cicero did not, not even other
inflections of words which Cicero did use (2.25-6). He holes up in a quiet room and pores
over his composition, verifying each word and phrase with Cicero before letting it stand,
considering it fast work to produce a letter of six sentences in as many nights (2.32).
The General Objection to Ciceronianism: Verba over res
Erasmus’s general objection to the Ciceronians is the fact that they went about aping
a superficial veneer of Cicero rather than acquiring his substance. What folly, says
Bulephorus, for imitators to adopt merely Cicero’s words, his tropes, the ends of his periods,
his introductions, his salutations, or to employ a variety of stock Ciceronian phrases (2.48-49).
Disgusted, Erasmus’s spokesman asks, "Are we not indifferent imitators if we copy Cicero
by the observance of such trivial things as rhythms, tropes, phrases . . . and neglect so many
excellent qualities?" (2.51). He enumerates the desired qualities to imitate in a series of
rhetorical questions:
Where is the mind of Cicero, where the originality so abounding and happy,
where the power of arrangement, where the thinking out of propositions,
where the wisdom in handling arguments, where the power of persuasion, the
1 5 Erasmus, Ciceronianus (Scott), 2.27.
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felicity, the memory so fruitful and ready, the versatility, where in short that
soul breathing even now in his writings, that genius, manifesting such
peculiar, subtle power? If these are lacking, how indifferent will be our
imitation! (2.54)
Matters of style, it seems, can be dangerously trivial when more substantial issues should
have priority. Erasmus will drive this point home through bald exhortation: "Let us care first
for thoughts, then for words; let us adapt the words to the subjects, not subjects to words”
(2.81). It would seem that Erasmus equates verba with style and relegates it to secondary
consideration in favor of res, subject matter.
Curiously, this stance would align Erasmus with the opinions expressed by Francis
Bacon in his Advancement of Learning (1605) against not only Ciceronianism but rhetoric in
general. Bacon blames them together for causing irreparable injuries to learning in the
sixteenth century because of undue attention to verba at the expense of res. In a sweeping
summary of the rise and fall of humanism, Bacon identifies the concurrence of four causes
— "the admiration of ancient authors, the hate of the schoolmen, the exact study of
languages, and the efficacy of preaching" which
did bring in an affectionate study of eloquence and copie of speech, which
then began to flourish. This grew speedily to an excess; for men began to
hunt more after words than matter; and more after the choiceness of the
phrase, and the round and clean composition of the sentence, and the sweet
falling of the clauses, and the varying and illustration of their works with
tropes and figures, than after the weight of matter, worth of subject,
soundness of argument, life of invention, or depth of judgment.
He describes Ciceronianism as being simply the next logical progression along a continuum.
The priority of expression over matter with which humanists began seems to have led
inevitably to the regrettable fixation on Cicero:
Then did Sturmius spend such infinite and curious pains upon Cicero. . . .
Then did Car of Cambridge, and Ascham, with their lectures and writings,
almost deify Cicero and Demosthenes, and allure all young men that were
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studious unto that delicate and polished kind of learning. Then did Erasmus
take occasion to make the scoffing echo; Decern annos consumpsi in legendo
Cicerone [I have spent ten years in reading Cicero] and the echo answered in
Greek, one, Asine. Then grew the learning of the schoolmen to be utterly
despised as barbarous. In sum, the whole inclination and bent of those times
was rather towards copie than weight.1 6
The matter of Bacon’s argument may be much less copiously stated: Ciceronians
emphasized words or rhetorical ornament at the expense of subject matter. Bacon has used
copiousness of language to condemn the copiousness of language. Yet it is not so simple a
thing to separate his style from his point, inasmuch as the matter he has to convey would not
be conveyed so convincingly to us were it not for the rhetorical schemes he employs,
anaphora (parallel beginnings to successive clauses) and climax. For this reason I have
quoted his words rather than paraphrased his sense. Both are important and inseparable,
although they may be identified separately for critical purposes.
This is Erasmus’s position, siding neither with res nor verba but with a critical stance
appreciative of both. We err to believe that because Erasmus’s spokesmen urged his
Ciceronian to attend first to res that Erasmus somehow considered verba to be of little
account. He valued it very much. This fact has ramifications for how we understand all of
his criticisms of the Ciceronians. As I will show in detail, Erasmus was greatly invested in
the verbal appreciation of authors. He does not condemn the Ciceronians for the verbal
features to which they pay attention, but for the lack of including the study and use of these
features within a complete rhetorical framework.1 7
1 6 Francis Bacon, Works, vol 3, 283-84. Bacon will use this res/verba dichotomy as the basis of his
recommendations to James I against children learning rhetoric or dialectic until they have acquired
something to argue over or to ornament.
1 7 This will be shown to be a complicated position, for those most accused of limiting their
imitation of Cicero (Bembo, Cortesi) argue convincingly that unless one strictly imitates a single model
C h a p t e r T h r e e : S e r v il e C ic e r o n ia n is m & E r a s m u s 119
Erasmus’s spokesman, Bulephorus, raises the issue of res / verba when he quizzes
Nosoponus on his method of composition. Bulephorus asks, which is of first importance,
attention to subject or to language? (Verum ad istum compositio modum, utra cogitatio prior,
de rebus, an de verbis?; 31). Given Bulephorus’s later exhortation, "let us care first for
thoughts, then for words" (2.81), we can expect Nosoponus to affirm unequivocally in favor
of words (so Erasmus can correct him). But his answer is not so simple: "both." Explaining,
he asserts, "in general, attention to subject matter is prior to thought of words; in particular,
it is secondary" (In genere de rebus prior est cogitatio, in specie posterior). This is in fact the
same complex relationship between res and verba that Erasmus had stated in his propria
persona in De ratione studii years before (1511). In the opening lines of his master plan for
education, Erasmus had similarly divided and related words and things: "In principle,
knowledge as a whole seems to be of two kinds, of things and of words. Words are earlier;
things are more important" (Principio duplex omnino videtur cognitio rerum ac verborum.
Verborum prior, rerum potior).1 8 Nosoponus continues with an illustration. If he were writing
to request a friend to return some books, the facts of his intention constitute the subject
matter, obviously prior to embodiment in the words of a letter (de rebus prior est cogitatio /
rerum potior). However, finding and composing words is the primary task in actually writing,
(Cicero), the imitator will lack that coordinating and comprehensive framework that provides a
consistency among the various elements to be imitated (see chapter 7).
1 8 Desiderius Erasmus, On the Method of Study [De ratione studii], trans. and ed. Brian McGregor,
Collected Works of Erasmus, vol 24, Literary and Educational Writings 2, ed. Craig R. Thompson
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978), 665; and idem., in Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi
Roterodami, vol. 1-2, ed. Jean Claude Margolin (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company,
1973), 79-152, cited hereafter respectively as De ratione studii (McGregor) and De ratione studii
(Margolin).
C h a p t e r T h r e e : S e r v il e C ic e r o n ia n is m & E r a s m u s 120
just as learning words must come before one’s education in ideas (in specie [cogitatio de rebus]
posterior / verborum prior).
Positing the relationship between res and verba preserves an interdependence between
ideas and expression that is more representative of humanist concerns than Bacon’s
dismissive and ultimately inaccurate characterization of them as being solely preoccupied with
verba. If humanists or Ciceronians were sometimes guilty of overemphasizing words at the
expense of matter, it was only subsequent to their attempts to restore the relationship
between ideas and their expression that they valued and identified in classical literature.1 9
It is less true that Erasmus held res over verba than it is that he attempted to
compensate whenever the necessary relationship between the two became unduly weighted
to one side or the other at the particular historical moment in which he wrote. This is clearly
apparent when one compares what is said next in the Ciceronianus and De ratione studii
immediately following their very similar statements on the interdependence of res and verba.
Nosoponus, who has momentarily appeared uncharacteristically consistent with Erasmus’s
true viewpoint, soon lapses back into a genuine figure of satire as he continues describing the
process of composition. He demonstrates that even though one may appear to give subject
matter a general priority, it is still very easy for words to supplant that general priority when
they are given an overly involved temporal priority. That is, Nosoponus starts by believing
in the overall importance of res, but becomes so caught up in the process of finding and
selecting verba that he is soon trying to find meanings to fit the Ciceronian expressions he
has chosen rather than the reverse:
1 9 Humanist writings that establish this relationship are discussed in chapter 4.
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Then follows the question of the words. I read as many letters of Cicero as
possible; I consult all my lists; I select some words strikingly Ciceronian, some
tropes, and phrases, and rhythms. Finally, when furnished sufficiently with
this kind of material, I examine what figures of speech I can use and where
I can use them. Then I return to the question of sentences. For this now is
a work of art to find meanings for these verbal embellishments. (2.31)
The laughable artificiality of trying to find something meaningful on which to hang one’s
adored verbal ornaments seems to make Erasmus’s stance transparently anti-verbal.
However, Erasmus’s stance comes out just the opposite in De ratione studii. Beginning with
that same assumption of the general priority of ideas and the temporal priority of words
(verborum prior; rerum potior), Erasmus continues by vindicating close attention to verba.
There are some, he says, who "hurrying on to learn about things, neglect to care for words,
and in trying to save expense incur a greater one" (ad res discendas festiant, sermonis curam
negligunt, et male affectato compendio in maxima incidunt dispendia). What price does he say
is to be paid in ignoring verba in one’ s dedication to res?: "a person who is not skilled in the
force of language is, of necessity, short-sighted, deluded, and unbalanced in his judgment of
things as well" (qui sermonis vim non calleat, is passim in rerum quoque iudicio caecutiat,
hallucinetur, deliret necesse est).2 0 Erasmus gives expression here to a fundamental humanist
assumption about the relationship between language and knowledge: knowledge depends as
much upon its embodiment in words as words do upon the concepts they express.
This relationship between knowledge and language was so important that humanists
ascribed enormous moral and social consequences for failing to care for expression as much
as one did for matter. Roger Ascham affirms:
They be not wise . . . that say, "What care I for man’s words and utterance,
if his matter and reasons be good?" Such men say so, not so much of
2 0 Desiderius Erasmus, De ratione studii (Margolin), 113 lines 5-7.
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ignorance, as either of some singular pride in themselves, or some special
malice of others, or for some private and partial matter, either in religion or
other kind of learning. For good and choice meats be no more requisite for
healthy bodies, than proper and apt words be for good matters . . . Ye know
not what hurt ye do to learning, that care not for words, but for matter; and
so make a divorce betwixt the tongue and the heart. For mark all ages, look
upon the whole course of both the Greek and Latin tongues, and ye shall
surely find, that when apt and good words began to be neglected, and
properties of those two tongues to be confounded, then also began ill deeds
to spring; strange manners to oppress good orders; new and fond opinions to
strive with old and true doctrine, first in philosophy, and after in religion;
right judgment of all things to be perverted and so virtue with learning is
contemned and study left off.2 1
In this short passage Ascham demonstrates the humanist belief that the chain of relations
between learning, religion, and the well-being of society are welded by the link of language.
If that link fails, so does the culture.
In urging attention to matter over words in his Ciceronianus, Erasmus was not
denying the great importance of verba any more than he was setting aside the priority of res
by emphasizing attention to expression in De ratione studii. In both cases he seems only to
have been pulling people back from extremes of his own historical moment, illustrating the
consequences of each. If those focusing too much on words risked the dangers of pedantry
and idolatry, those focusing too much on subject matter risked endangering proper judgment
in that matter by ignoring the power of language. Of this latter group Erasmus shrewdly
observed, "none are more given to constant quibbling over the minutiae of language than
those who boast that they pass over mere words and concentrate on the matter."2 2
2 1 Roger Ascham, The Schoolmaster (1570), in The Whole Works of Roger Ascham, vol. 3, ed. Rev.
[J. A.] Giles (London: John Russell Smith, 1864), 211-12.
2 2 Erasmus, De ratione studii (ed. McGregor), 666. It would be interesting to compare the
differences between the arch-Ciceronians and the scholastics of the high middle ages relative to how
they argued over language.
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The interdependence of res and verba to which Erasmus was committed is nowhere
more evident than in his most famous educational work, which conjoins these inseparable
concerns in its very title: De copia rerum ac verborum. This text best embodies Erasmus’s
belief in the necessity of acquiring proficiency in both words and ideas. The coordinate
nature of these joint concerns is always apparent there. For example, while specifying
methods of verbal amplification by using catachresis, metaphor, and simile, Erasmus remarks
that "these figures of speech are also involved in richness of subject-matter [copia rerum],
which I shall deal with in book II."2 3 When in the second book he demonstrates that these
same figures function on larger, conceptual levels of invention, it amplifies their initial
importance and downplays the idea that they are "mere" ornaments. Very specific, local
levels of language {verba) may lead to, distinguish, or in some other way determine
conceptual schemes. De copia’s full importance to Renaissance composition and imitation
will be discussed later in more detail.
An unfortunate by-product of the Ciceronian controversy is that it has falsely
polarized res and verba, situating the Ciceronians (at times, humanists generally) among those
obsessed with the latter at the expense of the former. Erasmus can be blamed for
perpetuating this in his Ciceronianus and credited for demonstrating that humanists could be
simultaneously preoccupied with both. Just as Erasmus, held to be such a rational and
moderate humanist, can be accused of Ciceronian exclusivity with the imitation of verba; so
2 3 Desiderius Erasmus, Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style: De duplici copia verborum ac
rerum Commentarii duo, trans. and ed. Betty I. Knott, in Collected Works of Erasmus: Literaiy and
Educational Writings 2, ed. Craig R. Thompson, vol. 28 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978),
337.
C h a p t e r T h r e e : S e r v il e C ic e r o n ia n is m & E r a s m u s 124
those Ciceronians, upon closer inspection, can be redeemed from their low station and their
means of imitation shown to be legitimate, even highly productive, linguistic methods.
Imitation as Pedantry (11: Diction
If overattention to verba at the expense of res was the general criticism against
Ciceronianism, the specific faults for which it was indicted began with the issue of Ciceronian
diction. Erasmus described diction as his primary objection to the Ciceronians. In a later
letter he described the Ciceronianus as his attempt to "condemn the foolish affectation of
Ciceronian diction."2 4 His contempt for copying words and the pettiness of its focus come
across in his use of the diminutive form for "word,” dictiuncula. In his Ciceronianus, those
who pursue pure Ciceronian diction are lead to extraordinary acts of pedantry, as Nosoponus
illustrates.
Because one must know what were Cicero’s words before one can be sure of using
only those, Nosoponus redacts Cicero’s entire corpus into a lexicon for consultation.
Nosoponus will make other Ciceronian references, but brags that the lexicon is thicker than
his others (his second volume contains formulas of speech, tropes, figures, witticisms, and his
third, the rhythms and feet with which Cicero begins, develops and ends his periods):
quanto maior sit eius indicis, in quo formulas loquendi, tropos et schemata,
gnomas, epiphonemata, lepide dicta, similesque dictionis delicias omnes sum
complexus. Rursus tertii, qui numeros omnes et pedes quibus orationis
partes incohat, profert, finit, continet.2 5
2 4 Epistle 1003, quoted and translated by Scott, 1.26.
2S Erasmus, Ciceronianus (Mesnard), 611 line 12. Erasmus does use vocula throughout.
C h a p t e r T h r e e : S e r v il e C ic e r o n ia n is m & E r a s m u s 125
Nosoponus expands the search for Ciceronian diction to include identifying not only root
words but their inflections, derivatives and compounds. Once compilations of all of these
are readied, he may safely use or not use a given word (or its inflection or compound) upon
verifying its authoritative use in Cicero. Thus, Nosoponus feels secure in using omatus and
omatissimus, laudatus and laudatissimus, word forms he has found in Cicero, but he will not
use omatior and laudation nisi comperero, dicere religio sit; "unless I find it, I have misgivings
to speak it" (6111. 12). While the kinds of attention to language represented by the second
and third reference works of Nosoponus are also subject to Erasmus’s mockery, Erasmus
identifies the chief area of Ciceronian abuse to be their self-restriction of lexical choices to
Cicero’s diction alone.
Erasmus seems to have exaggerated little concerning the way Ciceronians were
preoccupied with Ciceronian diction. Almost as though Erasmus had prophesied their
coming, huge folio volume dictionaries and guidebooks were published within a short time
of the Ciceronianus. Mario Nizzoli published an alphabetical arrangement of Ciceronian
words and phrases in 1535 (mentioned in chapter 1) which was re-edited and republished six
times through 1606, with a late edition in 1734 (Scott 1.103-04). In 1536 Etienne Dolet
published a two folio-volume book of Ciceronian diction arranged by subject, the
Commentariorum linguae latinae.
The Ciceronians come off very silly indeed for their scrupulousness in using only
Cicero’s words. We must keep in mind, of course, that Cicero served as a standard of latinity
in the Renaissance (see chapter 2). Establishing authoritative classical usage was a mainstay
concern of humanists. Erasmus clearly shared this concern both in his personal efforts to
achieve and preserve a pure Latin style and in his subsequent publications.
C h a p t e r T h r e e : S e r v il e C ic e r o n ia n is m & E r a s m u s 126
In a letter to his friend Cornelis Gerard while he studied in Paris, Erasmus, although
more eclectic, repeats the Ciceronian insistence on using only that Latin found authorized
by classical usage. After listing Cicero, Quintilian, Sallust, and Terence, Erasmus declares
"I should not dare to make use of any phrase not employed by these authors."2 6 Erasmus
includes one non-classical author, Lorenzo Valla. He is an important exception.
We have already examined Lorenzo Valla’s Elegantiarum linguae latinae in chapter
1, the seminal treatise establishing Renaissance Latin upon authoritative classical usage. At
approximately the same time as his letter to Gerard, Erasmus wrote an epitome of Valla’ s
work. The Paraphrasis seu potius epitome in elegantias Laurentii Vallae was written in 1488,
eventually published (officially) in 1531, and saw 33 unofficial and at least 18 official editions
up to 1566. 2 7 It is an alphabetically arranged2 8 assortment of short essays clarifying Latin
diction, syntax and grammar. Nosoponus was made to appear very silly when he balks at
using logically possible inflections of words whose root words are found in Cicero, yet the
best-selling Elegahtiae approached the same level of exactitude in its efforts to establish
Latinity based on usage. Nosoponus will use the word love, amor, but hesitates to use O
2 6 Desiderius Erasmus, The Correspondence of Erasmus: Letters 1 to 141: 1484 to 1500. Collected
Works of Erasmus, vol 1. Trans. R. A. B. Mynors and D. F. S. Thomson. Ed. Wallace K. Ferguson.
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974), 31 (epistle 20 lines 97-100).
2 7 Buisson, Repertoire des ouvrages pedagogiques du XVIe siecle (Paris, 1886), 242-43; and C. L.
Heesakkers and J. H. Waszink, eds., Paraphrasis seu potius epitome in elegantiarum libros laurentii vallae
by Desiderius Erasmus, in Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami, vol 1-4 (Amsterdam: North-
Holland Publishing Company, 1973), 203-04.
2 8 Its arrangement was not strictly alphabetical until the second edition, a change Erasmus did not
authorize and later objected to (C. L. Heesakkers and J. H. Waszink, eds., Paraphrasis seu potius
epitome in elegantiarum libros laurentii vallae, 198-99). The original version, true to Valla’s, grouped
related words together much as a modern-day thesaurus. The Commentariorum linguae Latinae (1536)
of Etienne Dolet is similarly arranged, although arguably more complete and useful than either Valla’s
or Erasmus’s Elegantiae.
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amor or O amores since he has not found the word used vocatively in Cicero. Perhaps he
has good reason. In Erasmus’s summary of Valla there appears an entry on the interjection,
O, clarifying with which cases it may be legally joined based on classical authority, and how
certain alterations would change the force of feeling associated with it:
O interiectio tribus casibus iungitur, nominativo, accusativo, et vocativo,
significat autem vehementiam affectus. O hominem perditum. O te
infelicem. Sin autem affectus non sit tarn vehemens, potest relinqui o, ut
Indignum facinus, iniuriam irrogavit, insuper et conuicium fecit. Si affectus
esset vehementior, dicendum esset, o indignum facinus.2 9
All of Valla’s famed book, faithfully prepared for a broader audience by Erasmus, consists
of these same careful distinctions of usage. Erasmus’s portrayal of the linguistically careful
Ciceronian is not an indictment of employing similar philological methods. Indeed, such
methods become the very basis for Erasmus’s arguments against Cicero as a perfect or
exclusive model for imitation.
Cicero should not be so religiously imitated, he claims, because his latinitas is not
perfect. He has used in potestatem esse instead of the approved in potestate esse. Erasmus
faults not only Cicero’s usage but Cicero’s own judgment of latinitas. Cicero had condemned
the barbarism of Marc Antony in making the superlative piissimus out of pius. Erasmus
rejoins that this superlative is appropriate since it is found in approved authors. Cicero
found likewise the phrase facere contumeliam to be a solecism, but Erasmus appeals to the
authority of Terence, "the best representative of polished Latinity" whose Thais uses that very
construction.3 0 Were the ascertainment and use of correct Latin words and phrases a purely
trivial matter, Erasmus would not bother to fault Cicero’s judgment in it, but his attention
2 9 Desiderius Erasmus, Paraphrasis seu potius epitome in Elegantiarum libros Laurentii Vallae, 284.
3 0 Erasmus, Ciceronianus (Scott), 2.43.
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to it at all. Instead, Erasmus clearly shows he values latinitas and from where it is to be
derived — the usage of authoritative authors. He only seems to differ from the Ciceronians
in the choice and number of his authorities. (He prefers Terence most while venerating the
Latin of all "worthy" authors).
Erasmus’s care for Latin need not be established solely by implication. In his De
copia he provides a candid warning to every candidatus copiae that "his first care must be to
see that his speech is appropriate, is Latin, is elegant, is stylistically incorrupt. He should not
imagine that the rich style can admit anything which is abhorrent from the unsullied purity
of the language of Rome."3 1 Elegance, he says, depends first upon using words established
in suitable authors, then in properly applying and combining them. He refers to the same
solecism from Cicero that he will employ in the Ciceronianus, the unsatisfactory form
piisimus. Erasmus first appeals to Cicero’s judgment, then confesses the example to be a
poor one since other authoritative authors have used this expression. So he turns to an
alternative barbarism, avisare (advise), incorrectly used in lieu o fpraemonere, to illustrate the
importance of relying strictly upon classical usage. Latinity lay at the foundation of
developing the copious style.
When does ascertaining Latinity become an exercise in pedantry? In the Ciceronianus
Nosoponus seems to cross that line when, unsatisfied with merely compiling a Ciceronian
lexicon, he catalogues each distinct use of a given form. After all, he says, "the same word
is not always used in the same way: for example, the verb refero has one force when Cicero
says referre gratiam; another, when he says Liberi parentes et forma corporis et moribus
referunt. . . . Likewise orare Lentulum is one thing; orare causam is another. . . ."3 2 If it
31 E ra sm u s, D e copia, 304.
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weren’t for the fact that we know Erasmus is holding Nosoponus up for satire, it would be
hard to find grounds for laughter here. His assertion that words have different meanings in
different expressions is as reasonable as are his specific examples illustrating it. Indeed, it
becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish the mocker from the mocked when we observe
that in De copia Erasmus proceeds very similarly. Dare damnum (to inflict injury), he says
there, is a correct expression, while dare iniuriam is not. Facere iniuriam, however, would do.
"It is good Latin to say facere iniuriam for 'inflict an injury,’ but Cicero says that Latin
speakers did not use the phrase facere contumeliam for 'inflict an insult’. . ." (Once again,
Erasmus acknowledges and then qualifies Cicero’s authority:) ". . . although this form of
expression is found in Plautus, Terence, and other respectable authors."3 3 He is illustrating
the differences between similar expressions, just as his Ciceronian was doing in the
Ciceronianus.
Unless we are ready to accuse Erasmus himself of being the object of his own
ridicule, we can only believe that his satire is not pointed at the philological care of the
Ciceronians; rather, it was at the unthinking devotion they had to an authority who was
sometimes wrong. Given the attention to language that characterized Erasmus’s entire career
and his major writings, it is impossible to find the Ciceronians any more fastidious about
language than was Erasmus. If we continue to hold Erasmus above the label of pedantry,
then we must look for other ways to define it, for Erasmus and Nosoponus share the same
philological bent, whose cultural importance we have examined in chapter 1.
32Erasmus, Ciceronianus (Scott), 2.24.
33Erasmus, De copia, 305.
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One could even make a case for Erasmus being more particular than the Ciceronians
he censures. In its editio princeps the Ciceronianus was bound together with Erasmus’s
Dialogus de recta latini graecique sermonis pronuntiatione (1528). This fact invites us to see
the comparative scrupulousness with language that Erasmus shared with the Ciceronians.
Pronunciation was of great importance to Erasmus — one element of many in the constant
battle against those barbarisms that could so easily pollute the pure tongue of the ancient
Romans. "A barbarism is also committed by faulty writing or pronunciation," he says in the
prefatory section of the De copia, "such as pronouncing docere with the accent on the first
syllable [instead of the second], or Christus as Cristus [without the aspirate]" (304). The issue
of pronunciation was no mere aside. Erasmus made tremendous efforts throughout his life
to keep vernacular pronunciations from sullying pure Latin usage, best illustrated in that very
book bound together with the Ciceronianus, Dialogus de recta latini graecique sermonis
pronuntiatione. Erasmus never pronounces a word about the Ciceronians being overly
careful about slips of the tongue from classically approved phonetics.
Imitation as Pedantry (2): Phrases
Beyond the issue of Ciceronian diction and the quest for pure Latinity, Erasmus also
ridicules the extremists for copying Cicero’s figures and phrases. Nosoponus has compiled
a second monument to pedantry from the Ciceronian corpus, a tome that includes his various
"delicacies of speech" (dictionis delicias): "formulas of speech, tropes, figures, gnomes,
epiphonemas, witticisms, and all the like" (formulas loquendi, tropos et schemata, gnomas,
epiphonemata, lepide dicat, similesque).3 4 Later in the dialogue, Nosoponus is made to appear
3 4 Erasmus, Ciceronianus (Mesnard), 612 lines 1-3.
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foolish for preparing himself to speak Latin by memorizing a few stock formulae or set
phrases: et in eum usum habeo paratas aliquot formulas. Erasmus’s most damning indictment
of the use of stock phrases or formulae dicendi comes in his bald assertion, "Of like effrontery
are those who think themselves ultra Ciceronians because at different times they prop
themselves on these phrases" (Consimilis impudentiae sunt, qui sibi plusquam Ciceroniani
videnturquod aliquoties infulciant).3 5 He then lists several examples of common phrases from
Cicero, one of which is . . . auum et turn quoties inaequalis momenti sunt quae connectimus,
turn et turn quoties aequalis. What folly, we agree with Erasmus, for them to insist upon using
turn and turn in pairing predicates of equal value and quum and turn in pairing predicates of
unequal value, just because Cicero had so discriminated his use of these very similar
constructions! This overly close attention to imitating the minutiae of language seems to
characterize the petty pedantry of the Ciceronian extremists.
How is it, then, that in his most famous rhetorical work, the De copia rerum ac
verborum Erasmus devotes several chapters (36-39) to distinguishing between the uses of turn
. . . turn and cum . . . turn [cum = quum]? The mistake we may make here is in assuming
that the difference between these two locutions is not important to Erasmus. The several
chapters from De copia devoted to listing and distinguishing how to combine predications of
unequal weight prove that the distinction matters to him. In chapter 36 Erasmus provides
the example, vir est turn indoctus turn improbus: "he is both uneducated and shameless"; in
chapter 37 he provides the contrastingly parallel example, vir est cum doctus turn probus: "he
is a learned man, but also a good one." This is exactly the same locution he has criticized
the Ciceronians for copying from Cicero, yet he seems to encourage adopting Cicero’s
35Erasmus, Ciceronianus (Scott), 2.49.
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specific usage of these slightly differing formulae dicendi by taking such care to distinguish
and illustrate their difference in meaning.
We cannot infer an Erasmian antipathy towards imitating stock phrases or forms for
speaking, however artificial, unoriginal, or trivial this process may appear to our modern
senses. In this case, Erasmus was faulting the Ciceronians for limiting themselves solely to
Cicero’s phrases, not for learning or employing stock phrases, a procedure which he had
broadly promoted in his system of education.
Erasmus’s commitment to formulae is illustrated in the genesis of his bestselling
Colloquia, or familiar dialogues. These matured out of his early pedagogical work,
Familiarum colloquiorum formulae (Basel 1518), which consisted of nothing but quotidian
phrases, with variations, that Erasmus offered beginning students of Latin to adopt wholesale.
Craig Thompson calls them (in comparison to the more literary and developed Colloquia to
which they led) "trivia . . . simple, repetitious, and artless."3 6 Nevertheless, they served an
important role in preliminary linguistic training, a kind of "apprentice work," as Thompson
calls them. Erasmus put great store in the utility of these stock phrases, designed for various
everyday activities: greeting friends, inquiring after the ordinary affairs of life, and managing
proper acknowledgements or replies required by social decorum. The formulae dicendi trace
their genealogy not only through Latin language pedagogy but through courtesy manuals and
dictamen manuals, also concerned with appropriate verbal behavior in given social situations.
One can thus compare Erasmus’s formulae with his De conscribendis epistolis (1521), a letter-
writing manual that earned its own wide following, which contained a long section on
36Craig Thompson, trans. and ed., The Colloquies o f Erasmus (Chicago: University o f Chicago
Press, 1965), 556.
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salutations each geared to the addressee’s particular station. Erasmus was continuing a long
tradition in both the formulae and dictamen genres, supplying the public with ready-to-use
language for practical occasions. The formulae put forth by Erasmus differed from the
formulae he accuses the Ciceronians of employing precisely because he grounded his in
practical utility, and emphasized the need to adjust them flexibly to given situations.
Erasmian formulae were meant for those coming to grips with Latin and needing linguistic
training wheels, as it were, to get them going. The Ciceronians, however, accomplished
literati, used stock formulae identifiably taken from Cicero as a way of claiming themselves
heirs to the great Roman orator. Tyros might misapply stock phrases or employ them
artificially, but the Ciceronians purposefully ignored the issue of adjusting their phrases
according to their intentions or the circumstances of a given situation in favor of boasting of
the source from which they obtained them. This misuse of Cicero’s phrases does not negate
the utility Erasmus perceived either in using stock phrases at all or in imitating these from
classical authors. Once again, the difference was in how such phrases were used and whether
one obtained these from a single or from many classical authors. According to Craig
Thompson, Erasmus employed two principle sources for his book of colloquial Latin phrases,
Cicero and Terence. "The comedies of Terence and letters of Cicero were commonly
considered the supreme models of colloquial Latinity and therefore the best to imitate. As
a matter of course they stand first in Erasmus’ list."3 7 Both Cicero and stock phrases were
worthy of imitation according to Erasmus.
37Craig Thompson, trans. and ed., The Colloquies o f Erasmus (Chicago: University o f Chicago
Press, 1965), 556.
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Not only does Erasmus advocate the imitation of formulae dicendi at the most
elementary level of Latin language acquisition, but also at the more advanced level of
acquiring a copious style. De copia was a composition textbook intended for students who
had already acquired grammar and a rhetorical technical vocabulary and who were ready to
begin a series of preliminary composition exercises based on imitation (see chapter 5). Such
imitations occurred on several levels of language, beginning with diction but moving quickly
to imitations of phrases. The genius of this approach (as will be later discussed) occurred
in the efforts to which students were put to find variations and amplifications of expression
(and in book II, subject matter). To exemplify the richness of the language and the
possibilities of expression available to students (and also to exemplify the method students
should employ in gathering from their reading), Erasmus made lists of words and offormulae
categorized by topic. Thus, in chapter 131 of book I, the idea "in short" is followed by a list
of phrases either composed by Erasmus himself or taken directly from a variety of classical
authors: he copies out ad summam from Horace, ut semel dicam ("to say once for all") from
Quintilian, ultimo and ad extremum ("at the last") from Suetonius and Cicero respectively,
and lists several of his own device, such as rem omnem verbo complectar ("I shall sum up the
whole business in a word.")3 8 As will be discussed in chapter 7, Erasmian imitation, whether
of words, phrases, or other literary features, was never separated from the notions of
judgment and decorum that underlay all of his rhetorical pedagogy. It was as important to
distinguish which usage would be most appropriate for which rhetorical occasion as it was
to adopt proper or eloquent usage modeled by classical authors. All the difference lay in the
reason for the use of a given locution or of a given source. As for the Ciceronians, their
3 8Erasmus, De copia, 305.
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error was not in using quum and turn when there were clauses of unequal weight to join or
turn and turn when they were equal, but in using such a locution because of its source rather
than its application.
Imitation as Pedantry (31: Compiling Reference Works
Erasmus intended not so much to fault Ciceronian attempts to acquire Latinity
through imitating pure diction or their attempts to imitate formulae dicendi, but rather their
methods of compiling and composing. After all, much of the comic hyperbole in the
Ciceronianus occurs as Nosoponus brags of his meticulous labors in marking and collating
exempla from Cicero, of his monumental reference works that result from this, and of his
fastidious and peculiar methods of writing that follow. For him, the imitation of Cicero
seems almost exclusively to consist of the academic scholarship involved in collecting and
arranging material for concordances. Says Nosoponus:
but as often as the word is found in Cicero, however similar the form, I note
the page, the side of the page, and number of the line, affixing a mark which
indicates whether the word is in the middle of the line, at the beginning, or
at the end. In this way you see one word takes up several pages.3 9
Here, not only over-close attention to words is being mocked, but the complex system of
marking and collating examples. Nosoponus will elaborate this notation system elsewhere
by marking Ciceronian words with a red mark, all others in black.4 0
In the last reference compiled by Nosoponus, he has compiled "all the metrical feet
(pedes) with which Cicero ever begins or ends his sentences or clauses (commata, cola,
39Erasmus, Ciceronianus (Scott), 2.25.
^Erasmus, Ciceronianus, (Mesnard), 611.
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periodos), the rhythms or cadences he uses (numeris), and the inflection of his tone
(modulatione) in accordance with given sayings (sententiis). While it is less clear how such
a reference would be organized, Erasmus drives home his point: at the conclusion of all this
tireless work, the Ciceronian produces reference works larger than all Cicero’s works.4 1
Once again, we may be falsely led to assume an attitude in Erasmus towards language
or the specific activities of legitimate imitation that is untenable when we examine the
broader contexts of his other publications and the humanist pedagogy that he propagated.
These three activities — the careful annotation of authoritative texts, their redaction in some
form into a reference work, and careful composition— were in no way ridiculous to Erasmus
per se. Indeed, these activities constituted the mainstay of Erasmus’s career and figured
prominently in the curriculum he designed for students.
De copia contains instructions to students on how they should read in preparation for
their writing. In chapter 9 we read that students are to
thumb the great authors by night and day, especially those who were
outstanding in the rich style, such as Cicero, Aulus Gellius, and Apuleius.
We must keep our eyes open to observe every figure of speech that they use,
store it in our memory once observed, imitate it once remembered, and by
constant employment develop an expertise by which we may call upon it
instantly.4 2
This paragraph — besides showing once again that Erasmus continues to regard Cicero as
an important model so long as others are also read — embodies Erasmus’s imitative
doctrine in a nutshell. One reads analytically, identifying virtues of style and imbibing them
for future use in one’s own writings.
41Erasmus, Ciceronianus (Scott), 2.24.
42Erasmus, De copia, 303.
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Note how these procedures parallel those of the ridiculed Nosoponus. He has been
diligently thumbing Cicero day and night, observing such features of style as the figures
Cicero employs (which he includes in his second great reference work, along with formulas
of speech, "proverbs, epiphonemas, witticisms, and all the like." If a difference is to be
discerned between Erasmus and the Ciceronian he paints, it seems to be that Erasmus
encourages his students to absorb the features of style into their memory while the
Ciceronian prides himself in mechanically marking passages and copying these exemplars of
style into a book.
While there were important differences among humanists regarding the precise means
by which they believed one could effectively imitate the virtues found in literature, Erasmus
both taught and exemplified a method very dependent upon marking and compiling. (This
is outlined in the following chapter). Erasmus does not leave students without a place to
copy out those marked passages. In Book II oiDe Copia, Erasmus details how the student
is to create a commonplace book in which to record what he gathers from out of his reading,
making appropriate headings as a tool both for the analysis and storage of what he finds.
So our student will flit like a busy bee through the entire garden of literature,
will light on every blossom, collect a little nectar from each, and carry it to
his hive. (639)
The use of the commonplace book in humanist curriculum is an important factor in
Renaissance imitation, whose origin and development are discussed in chapter 4. At this
point I wish only to point out the importance Erasmus attached to the veiy activity which is
made to seem ludicrous in the Ciceronianus, this apian collecting of material from one’s
reading. No bee was as busy as Erasmus in this regard, who demonstrated on a grandiose
scale what he would presumably have his students do on a smaller one.
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In De ratione studii Erasmus recommended that students observe any adages or
parallels employed in the authors they read. Practicing what he preached, Erasmus published
his Adagia collecteana in 1500, an assortment of 818 proverbs he had amassed from his own
reading. He would eventually expand this through several editions until it comprised some
4,000 sayings out of Latin and Greek literature, each accompanied by an explanation and
references. Rabil notes that the Aldine edition (1508), newly titled Adagia chiliades and
incorporating his impressive efforts in Greek studies, made Erasmus a famous man. It was
through this hefty compilation of proverbs that Erasmus the humanist "became a well-known
figure to all men of learning and power in Europe."4 3 The Adagia was the first of many
important compilations Erasmus would compose for educational purposes.
A book that developed out of Erasmus’s ongoing Adagia project was his Parabolae
sive similia (1514).4 4 While the Adagia contained moral proverbs, the Parabolae were
comparisons with historical events, natural history, or general experience which Erasmus
copied from classical authors or else derived himself by referring to those — such as
Aristotle or the Elder Pliny — who had described natural or social phenomena. The
Parabolae, like the Adagia, enjoyed great success. Over 50 editions are known as wide
circulation began about 1520 and carried on for half a century across all of Europe.4 5 A
4 3 Albert Rabil, Jr., "Desiderius Erasmus," in Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms, and
Legacy. Volume 2: Humanism Beyond Italy, ed. Albert Rabil, Jr. (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1988), 234.
4 4 The first edition of the Parabolae sive similia was bound with a revised edition of De copia
(Strasbourg: Schiirer, 1514).
4 5 Desiderius Erasmus, Parallels [Parabolae sive similia], trans. and ed. R. A. B. Mynors, Collected
Works of Erasmus, vol. 23, Literary and Educational Writings 1, ed. Craig R. Thompson (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1978), 127.
C h a p t e r T h r e e : S e r v il e C ic e r o n ia n is m & E r a s m u s 139
simile from the Parabolae reads, "As Nature has hidden precious stones deep in the earth,
while worthless things meet one’s eye everywhere, so the best things are known to fewest
people and are not to be unearthed without great labor" (221 11.15-18). Erasmus provided
just such labor in a decades-long culling of classical literature to complete his books of
adages and comparisons. It is difficult to see the Ciceronians as having been silly for their
desire to compile great reference works that bring together the virtues of language and style
found in their reading when the chief of humanists exemplifies and advises this very effort
and does so with great popularity.
Imitation as Pedantry (41: Imitation as Quotation
Erasmus continues his satire of Ciceronian preoccupation with language by mocking
Nosoponus’s overly careful and dillentantish method of composition. Much of the satire is
spent on ridiculing the conditions of composition he requires (silent isolation), the length of
time it takes him to compose something (six nights to make as many sentences), and the
excessive revision of checking every word against his various Ciceronian dictionaries. As
Nosoponus describes how he actually sets about his composing, the Ciceronian’s method
appears to be a frighteningly literal and artificial method of imitation consisting of little more
than selecting features from his various references of Cicero’s words, phrases, ornaments and
rhythms, then conjoining them together in a jumble. The incoherence of the result is evident
by Nosoponus’s need to find meanings to attach to the words he has chosen, rather than to
employ what he has found to express his original matter:
I consult all my lists; I select some words strikingly Ciceronian, some tropes,
and phrases, and rhythms. Finally, when furnished sufficiently with this kind
of material, I examine what figures of speech I can use and where I can use
C h a p t e r T h r e e : S e r v il e C ic e r o n ia n is m & E r a s m u s 1 4 0
them. Then I return to the question of sentences. For this now is a work of
art to find meanings for these verbal embellishments.4 6
In so proceeding Nosoponus is sure to create a monstrous pastiche. Erasmus advocated a
contrasting sort of imitation, one enlightened by reason and rhetorical doctrine rather than
characterized by abject copying and artificiality. However, Erasmus may have unwittingly
provided the necessary conditions for the very sort of imitation he lampoons.
In his spirited answer to Erasmus’s Ciceronianus, Etienne Dolet accuses Erasmus of
not valuing Christophe de Longueil because Longueil (unlike Erasmus) "does not busy
himself with paraphrases and annotations."4 7 Dolet had already barbed Erasmus for
"belch[ing] forth whatever came into his mouth and fill[ing] libraries with nothings and
ponderous volumes of proverbs, fit for grammarians and children" (1.65). Behind the strong
invective is a legitimate claim against imitation that Erasmus himself illustrated in the
Ciceronianus by having his spokesman, Bulephorus, ask Nosoponus, "Now that you are finely
equipped with dictionaries, tell us . . . how you are accustomed to turn this noble collection
of yours to the needs of speaking and writing?"4 8 Elsewhere Bulephorus cites Quintilian’s
criticism of Tiro, someone who had assembled all of Cicero’s bon mots together (just as
Nosoponus has done). Bulephorus says Tiro "showed more zeal in collecting than wisdom
in selecting them" (2.36). It is one thing to collect wise or elegant sayings; another to
employ them properly. When collecting becomes an end in itself, instead of a step towards
46
Erasmus, Ciceronianus (Scott), 2.31.
4 7 Etienne Dolet, Dialogus de Ciceroniana imitationepro C. Longolio (1535), quoted and translated
by Scott, 1.67.
48Erasmus, C ice ro n ia n u s (Scott), 2.28.
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the judicious synthesis of derived material into one’s own compositions, then such references
lose their constructive force,4 9
Unfortunately, the very presence of these dictionaries or other compilations of Latin
eloquence tended to lend themselves to the kind of cafeteria-style composition that appeared
so ridiculous as Nosoponus described it. Erasmus was by no means alone in this process.
Renaissance prose styles, as John D’ Amico has accounted for them, sometimes acquired a
mosaic texture. This was due partly to the diversity of styles that were becoming available
as models subsequent to Quattrocento textual discoveries and publications, and partly to the
growing circulation of compilations of words or other verbal features that attracted much
attention. D ’ Amico traces the archaicizing of the so-called Apuleians to the coming out of
such books as Pliny’s Historia Naturalis, an encyclopedic work that included numerous
examples of archaic usages, and the Noctes Atticae of Aulus Gellius (second century), which
represented a pedantic discussion of archaic language and unusual grammatical
constructions.5 0 While I do not offer a complete history of the way in which this Renaissance
4 9 Erasmus does take pride in his prodigious collecting, perhaps enough for us to find him guilty
of pursuing this for its own sake. In a ditty he penned in 1533:
It is quite easy, they say, for anyone to write down proverbs.
I don’ t deny it, but it is hard to write down thousands of them.
If anyone doesn’ t believe me, he can make the experiment for himself.
He will soon have a fairer appreciation of my efforts.
Perfacile est, aiunt, proverbia scribere cuivis
Haud nego, sed durum est scribere chiliades
Qui mihi non credit, facial licet ipse periclum [sic]
Mox fuerit studiis aequior ille meis.
Desiderius Erasmus, Poetry, trans. Clarence H. Miller, Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 85, ed. Harry
Vredeveld (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), 176-77.
5 0 John D ’ Amico, "The Progress of Renaissance Latin Prose: The Case of Apuleianism,"
Renaissance Quarterly 37 (1984): 366-67. See also chapter 7, below.
C h a p t e r T h r e e : S e r v il e C ic e r o n ia n is m & E r a s m u s 1 4 2
textual tradition of compilations affected Renaissance prose styles, the popularity of these
compilations, marketed to educators and students, suggests that they had some influence in
this way.
That influence was not appreciated by some outspoken humanists who complained
against a pseudo-imitative method of composition that relied too heavily upon such published
helps. "Imitation," claims Dolet, "does not mean quotation, it means digesting and
absorbing."5 1 Digestion, as George Pigman III has shown, was a master-metaphor of
imitation indicating the more rational approach to absorbing and using the qualities of those
one reads.5 2 It is the same Senecan metaphor that Erasmus used to describe true imitation.
However, one is easily tempted away from the ideal of absorbing and synthesizing one’s
sources when a printed compilation is at hand with a ready quotation to employ. This
became a factor later in the sixteenth century as the Ciceronian industry was in full swing.
In an oration delivered at Rome in 1572, M. Antoine Muret (Muretus), an erstwhile
Ciceronian himself, complained that the standard for eloquence had been falsely redefined
as the mere ability to pepper one’s speech with Ciceronian phrases:
Do not think I accept the word eloquence as it is commonly accepted. For
today whenever any one has learned the rules of the rhetors and can write a
letter or oration by the aid of Nizzoli’s book he straightway assumes the name
of an eloquent speaker.5 3
As important as Erasmus’s adages or other compilations may have proven in other regards,
like Nizzoli’s Ciceronian thesaurus they provided writers a ready way to "imitate" ancient
5 1 Quoted and translated by Scott, 1.69.
5 2 George W. Pigman, III, "Versions of Imitation in the Renaissance,” Renaissance Quarterly 33
(1980): 1-32.
5 3 Quoted and translated by Scott, 1.106.
C h a p t e r T h r e e : S e r v il e C ic e r o n ia n is m & E r a s m u s 1 4 3
wisdom and words by merely quoting from these reference works. The "true" doctrine of
imitation that Erasmus contrasts to Ciceronian methods involved synthesizing sources and
applying these judiciously, a kind of imitation summed up in the digestion metaphor, but his
publications made all too possible the sort of imitation-as-quotation Nosoponus
demonstrated. Dolet seems to anticipate the very mistake that could be made by those
adhering more closely to Erasmus’s Adagia or Parabolae than to his De copia in their
imitative practice when he claims that Erasmus "would like his proverbs copied instead of
Cicero."5 4 Whether he would have wanted them copied or not, one may surmise that his
proverbs indeed were. The Erasmian references saved people the enormous time of going
to the sources themselves and the trouble of assessing these sayings within their proper
contexts. One of the signs that Erasmus had indeed digested his sources is the fact that
modern editors have ascertained that on many occasions he cited his sources from memory,
reporting the sense of the source but providing his own wording. Those who would consult
his reference works and copy out their quotations were less likely to "digest" and assimilate
their sources.
Digestion describes a kind of transformation to which one submits one’s models.
Humanists would provide very specific directions for how to transform the models one
imitated, as laid out in chapter 5. Digestion was also one of several metaphors that were
often repeated in an advisory way in discussions of imitation. These are discussed in chapter
7 among those principles and suggestions educators taught to safeguard imitation from the
extremes to which imitation could go.
S 4 Quoted and translated by Scott, 1.69.
C h a p t e r T h r e e : S e r v il e C ic e r o n ia n is m & E r a s m u s 1 4 4
The Ciceronian controversies were all about extremes. As polemics, they involved
posturing and exaggeration in order to make a point. We would better understand
Erasmus’s condemnation of the Ciceronians as a reactionary corrective than as some final
statement by the most famous of humanists regarding the ridiculousness of imitating
verba. Erasmus discussed the problem of Ciceronian extremists with more detachment
in the treatise that was bound with the editio princeps of the Ciceronianus, Dialogus de
recta latini graecique sermonis pronuntiatione (Basel, 1528). Within this dialogue
Erasmus’s "Bear" comments on how he has seen "some devotees of polite learning scorn
the liberal disciplines, and concentrate on the correct use of language, as if this
comprised the whole purpose of education." To this, "Lion" responds, "True, but this is
always the way. Extremes are never corrected except by reversing the swing and as it
were curing fault with fault. In my view the imbalance will eventually correct itself."5 5
Certainly Erasmus attempted to help even the imbalance, but the Ciceronianus must be
taken in this light and not as his only position upon the nature and procedures of
imitation. His many other works better establish the commitment he shared with the
Ciceronians towards the linguistically technical aspects of language, and the methods of
analyzing and retaining those linguistic features to be imitated.
This chapter has not been a revisionist’s attempt to mitigate Erasmus’s stature by
showing that he was as petty as those whom he satirized in his Ciceronianus. On the
contrary, I have demonstrated Erasmus’s investment in the same linguistic activities that
5 5 Desiderius Erasmus, The Right Way of Speaking Latin and Greek: A Dialogue (De recta latini
graecique sermonis pronuntiatione dialogus), trans. and ed. Maurice Pope, in Collected Works of
Erasmus, vol 26, Literary and Educational Writings 4, ed. J. K. Sowards (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1985), 388-89.
C h a p t e r T h r e e : S e r v il e C ic e r o n ia n is m & E r a s m u s 145
seem to characterize the worst offenses of the Ciceronians to underscore their common
regard for the technical appreciation of language. They both gave careful attention to
diction, to phrases or formulae dicendi, and to rhetorical ornamentation, and did so by
way of shared methods: close analytical reading, the marking of texts, and the collecting
of notable excerpts on each of these levels either to be entered in a student copybook or
published as a reference work for others’ benefit. Far from being the suspect activities
of a handful of fanatics, these were in fact the methods prescribed in humanist
educational treatises outlining pedagogies based on imitation, as the next chapters will
show.
It is to those treatises and pedagogies that we now turn, better prepared to
appreciate the technical nature of imitative methods. We will find that imitation was a
systematic procedure taught consistently over time. The methods of imitative pedagogy
are readily divided into two main activities: methods for analyzing literature and those
for transforming one’s models into original discourse. Chapters 4 and 5 take up these
two groups of methods respectively, and chapter 6 shows how they were applied across
Renaissance curricula.
P a r t T w o
M e t h o d s in H u m a n i s t P e d a g o g i e s o f I m i t a t i o n
1 4 7
C h a p t e r F o u r
Literary Analysis as Preparation to Imitate
Renaissance educational theory made specific provision for imitation as the practical
counterpart to theoretical instruction in the language arts. In a rhetorical education, it was
imitation that provided a set of methods as praxis. Unfortunately, even with today’s renewed
interest in rhetoric, imitation is rarely acknowledged to have played a key historical role in
rhetorical training. Eloquence has been granted its central position in humanist concerns,1
but the place of imitation relative to the attainment of this goal has no comparable status.
This is inconsistent with Renaissance theory and practice. Etienne Dolet, for example, states
in a lengthy essay under the heading eloquentia in his Commentariorum linguae latinae (1536)
that "There can be no doubt but that in what concerns eloquence, a great portion of the art
of oratory is contained in imitation" (In his etenim eloquentiae, et artis oratoriae pars magna
quin imitatione contineatur, dubitari non potest', column 1234). Dolet’s assertion is a clear
echo of Quintilian’s dictum from Institutio oratoria, the backbone of humanist education:
"For it cannot be doubted that a great portion of the art [of rhetoric] consists in imitation"
(Neque enim dubitari potest, quin artis pars magna contineatur imitatione; 10.2.1-2).
Inattention to imitation is not simply an issue of misplacing one element among many
in an educational curriculum. Imitation comprised the heart of Renaissance literacy: one
read not solely for knowledge nor even for aesthetic pleasure; rather, a person read to gain
the ability to write and speak. As the praxis that would turn one’s reading to account in
‘See chapter 1, n. 1.
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one’s writing or speaking, Renaissance imitation was divided between methods in two closely
inter-related categories: those devoted to the analysis of literary models, and those
instructing students how to alter and adapt these models in their writing and speaking.
Specific kinds of literary criticism prepared students for specific exercises in transforming
sources according to one’s own discursive purposes. This chapter deals with methods
prescribed for. literary analysis; the next chapter, those taught for manipulating sources.
Imitation in Renaissance Educational Theory
Imitation in Renaissance education linked an education in literature with the social
power of eloquent communication. The classical educational theory that humanists revived
along with ancient literature included a triad of requirements necessary for the development
of an individual’s powers of eloquent expression. Since imitation figured prominently in this
classical doctrine on how to achieve eloquence, it would achieve similar status in humanist
educational schemes. Although classical doctrine is not entirely consistent, imitatio is
invariably described as a practical component accompanying instruction in theory (ars).
According to Plato (Phaedrus 269) and more particularly Cicero (Brutus 6.25),
eloquence was said to depend upon ingenium, ars, and exercitatio.2 An aspiring orator began
with native ability (ingenium), learned rhetorical theory (ars rhetorica), and gained expertise
through practice (exercitatio). What was the place of imitation in this scheme? The pseudo-
Ciceronianvld Herennium altered this threefold division, attributing oratorical success to art,
imitation and exercise (arte, imitatione, exercitatione; 1.2.3). Cicero, however, had actually
2 For a discussion of the variations in these requiremens and the differences in classical theory
between requirements for poets and orators, see Donald Lemen Clark, "The Requirements of a Poet,"
Modem Philology 16 (1918): 78-79.
C h a p t e r F o u r : L it e r a r y A n a l y s is a s P r e p a r a t io n t o I m it a t e 1 4 9
grouped imitation beneath the heading of exercise in De oratore, alongside speaking, writing,
paraphrase, translation, and reading (1.33-34). Quintilian followed Cicero’s triad of nature,
art, and exercise, and equally emphasized imitation as part of those exercises which are the
necessary complement to understanding rhetorical precepts (alongside writing, reading, and
speaking [10.1.1]).3 Quintilian and Cicero were, of course, the chief sources for educational
doctrine in the Renaissance.
Consequently, Renaissance theorists either kept intact the triad of ingenium-ars-
exercitatio, with imitatio taking its place under the last of these, or else they raised imitatio
to coordinate status with the other elements as in the Ad Herennium. In his De ratione
dicendi of 1537, Juan Vives followed classical doctrine by stressing art, native ability and
exercise, as would Vossius in his 1621 treatise.4 This three-part arrangement was preserved
in Tabulae institutionem rhetoricarum, a schematized rhetorical manual by Peter Nunnesius
(1578). There imitation is graphically represented in this organization, bracketed (with its
own components), beneath exercitatio.5 Jacob Pontanus added imitation to native ability, art,
and exercise in his Poeticarum institutionum of 1594 as would Sir Philip Sidney in his Apologie
of 1595.6 Thomas Wilson’s Arte ofRhetorique (1553) brought imitation, along with reading,
3 For a useful overview and discussion of all Quintilian’ s methods, see James J. Murphy, ed.,
Quintilian on the Teaching of Speaking and Writing: Translations from Books One, Two, and Ten of the
"Institutio Oratoria." Landmarks in Rhetoric and Public Address (Carbondale and Edwardville:
Southern Illinois University Press, 1987), xxx.
4 Juan Louis Vives,De ratione dicendi (1537), vol. 7 in Opera omnia, ed. Gregorio Mayans y Siscar,
8 vols. (Valencia, 1782-90), 2.156; Gerardus Joh. Vossius, De rhetoricae natura et constitutione (1621;
The Hague, 1648), VIII.
5 Peter Nunnesius, Tabulae institutionem rhetoricarum (1578), 76.
6 Jacob Pontanus, Poeticarum institutionum libri tres (Ingolstadii, 1594), 1.1,10.; Sir Philip Sidney,
Apologie (1595) in Elizabethan Critical Essays, ed. G. G. Smith (Oxford, 1904), 1.195.
C h a p t e r F o u r : L it e r a r y A n a l y s is a s P r e p a r a t io n t o I m it a t e 1 5 0
up to coordinate position with ability, art and practice. Wilson’s five-fold division is the same
one Jonson would outline in his "requirements of a poet" in his Timber of 1641. Donald
Clark notes the tendency in Renaissance theory to raise imitation to equal status with native
ability, art, and practice, rather than allowing it to be part of exercitatio as the classical
authorities (excepting Ad Herenrtium) outlined. In classical and Renaissance theory alike,
imitation is not grouped under ars. It is not simply one of the principles, rules or theories
of rhetoric, but th&Rr-actieaLcomplement-t&fhaLknowledge.
Bartholomaeus Latomus made it starkly apparent that humanists recognized the
crucial difference between instructing students in the precepts of the language arts and
exercising them in those arts through imitation and practice. In 1527 he had published his
impressive and comprehensive treatise on rhetoric and dialectic called Summa totius rationis
disserendi uno eodemque corpore et dialecticas et rhetoricas partes complectens, "A treatise on
the entire method of discourse comprising in one and the same volume both dialectic and
rhetoric." This hybrid work, compiling doctrines out of Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian, George
of Trebisond, Lorenzo Valla, Rudolph Agricola, and Philip Melanchthon, would seem
thorough enough for any education; yet Latomus considered it insufficient by itself. Rhetoric
(and dialectic) were to be taught in light of actual usage, as he affirmed in his edition of
Cicero’s pro Milone, published the next year (1528). The precepts of the Summa needed to
be illustrated in a model speech. In his preface he said he was publishing this Ciceronian
oration "not because I think myself able to unfold all of [Cicero’s] artifice, but because I
hold, with Quintilian, that his best qualities need to be set forth that one may become
exercised in them" (non quod totum artificium eius aperire me posse putarem, sed quod
C h a p t e r F o u r : L it e r a r y A n a l y s is a s P r e p a r a t io n t o I m it a t e 151
existimabam cum Fabio optima quaeque proponenda esse et in iis exerceri oportere)? The
commentary Latomus provided for pro Milone would expose its artifice and so prepare
students to imitate it as a model. As Joachim Classen has observed, Latomus’s
main purpose is to instruct, to teach others how to compose a speech by
analysing an exemplary specimen and by explaining its details, the facts, the
grammar, the language, but especially the artificium, i.e. each move in the
rhetorical strategy: the selection of topics and their function, the arguments
and their nature, the stylistic devices and their effect.8
What Latomus does with pro Milone is repeated by many other humanists in their efforts to
teach rhetorical principles and then unfold these to those who would imitate them by way
of exemplary texts. Another salient example of this combination of theory and practice is
found in David Chytraeus’s Praecepta rhetoricae inventionis, illustrata multis bonis et utilibus
exemplis, ex Sacra Scriptura, et Cicerone, sumptis "Principles of rhetorical invention, illustrated
by many good and useful excerpts from the Holy Scriptures and Cicero" (Wittenberg, 1556;
cited in Classen, 174). I will return to the important role of rhetorical commentaries in
Renaissance literary criticism later in this chapter.
As a doctrine, imitation clearly held its place in the Renaissance among the .
j
requirements for eloquence. As a practice, imitation held an intermediary position in j
I
Renaissance education between the study of literature and the composition of oral or written j
discourse. Imitation bridged two fields that are so distinct in our modern perception that we
have difficulty in conceiving of them as ever having comprised a single, integrated curriculum:
7 Quoted in C.J. Classen, "Cicero orator inter Germanos redivivus II," Humanistica Lovaniensia
39 (1990), 161-62.
8 Classen, "Cicero redivivus II," 162.
C h a p t e r F o u r : L it e r a r y A n a l y s is a s P r e p a r a t io n t o I m it a t e 152
the criticism of literature and the production of writing (or speech). Yet this was the nature
of Renaissance literacy: one read expressly in order to write or speak.
The textual record readily establishes the intermediary position of imitation between
literature and the production of discourse. Renaissance discussions of the nature of imitation
and directions for imitating are to be found in two general domains: literary criticism and
pedagogical treatises treating various aspects of discursive production. The fact that these
overlap considerably only underscores the continuum between reading and writing that
imitation maintained in this period.
Imitation and Literary Criticism (1): Discussions of Authors to be Read
Various Renaissance texts commonly included lists of authors to be read. In
polemical exchanges, in educational treatises or proposed curricula, or in poetical treatises,
writers claimed given authors deserved attention and frequently explained why. It was clear
that these authors were to be read not solely for the knowledge they could provide but in
order to provide imitative models for student writers — whether for style, for the exempla
they provided, or for other features.
Considerations of Renaissance curricula have often focused on humanists’
development and promotion of liberal studies.9 While the lists of authors they presented in
these various venues did indeed represent the breadth of general learning that the studia
humanitatis were to impart, these authors were clearly presented to be copied in various
ways.
9 See Robert E. Proctor, "The Studia Humanitatis: Contemporary Scholarship and Renaissance
Ideals" ___: 813-818; in Paul F. Grendler, "Schooling in Western Europe," Education in the
Renaissance and Reformation., ed Paul F. Grendler, Renaissance Quarterly 43.4 (Winter 1990): 775-87.
C h a p t e r F o u r : L it e r a r y A n a l y s is a s P r e p a r a t io n t o I m it a t e 1 5 3
Cicero and Quintilian had set the pattern for this approach to reading. In Brutus
Cicero provided a lengthy assessment of orators to be studied by the aspiring orator.1 0
Quintilian, in Book 10 of his Institutio oratorio, set out several fields to be read by those
aspiring to eloquence — poetry, history, philosophy, oratory — then devotes significant
attention to individual authors and their particular virtues (quae in auctore quoque praecipua
virtus). This extensive literary criticism, an important classical assessment of a wide variety
of writers in various genres, was not set forth for some general appreciation of ancient and
contemporary literature. Rather, Quintilian specifically describes these authors and their
virtues as models for imitation. Indeed, at one point he criticizes some readers who enjoy,
but fail to imitate, the popular Seneca: "But the young men loved him rather than imitated
him" (Amabant autem eum magis quam imitabantur; 10.1.126).
Quintilian’s Renaissance counterparts differed little in this regard. Lists of authors
were provided not only to represent important fields of knowledge to be acquired through
reading, but to serve as models for student imitation. In one of the earliest educational
treatises of the Renaissance, Leonardo Bruni’s influential De studiis et litteris (1424), he
outlines a course of study for one Lady Battista Malatesta of Montefeltro in several distinct
branches of study. In each instance, Bruni clearly recommends each author as a source both
for knowledge and for imitation. The Lady is to read divinity and moral philosophy —
St. Augustine, Epicurus, Zeno, and Aristotle. The subjects these authors treat are valuable
“Cardinal Adriano Castellesi (1461-1521?) relied upon Cicero’s Brutus to provide a critical
framework for his brief history of the Latin language,De sermone Latino (Rome, 1514/15). Castellesi’s
treatment of the rise and fall of the Latin language, describing four distinct periods in its history —
antiquissimum, antiquum, perfectum, and imperfectum — depends upon the distinctions in oratorical
style Cicero recorded in Brutus. Cicero provided a critical model for the analysis of language and style
that Castellesi extended into his own era.
C h a p t e r F o u r : L it e r a r y A n a l y s is a s P r e p a r a t io n t o I m it a t e 154
"not only for the guidance they give in life, but they also supply us with a marvelous stock
of knowledge which can be used in every variety of oral and written expression."1 1 She is
to know history through Livy, Sallust, Tacitus, Curtius, and especially Julius Caesar (because
of the "ease and elegance" in his Commentaries) — not only because "knowledge of the past
gives guidance to our counsels and our practical judgment" but because "history . . . is the
most commodious source of that stock of examples of outstanding conduct with which it is
fitting frequently to embellish our conversation" (245-46).
That authors are to be read for the benefit they can provide for the students’ own
speaking and writing becomes most apparent when Bruni recommends first the orators and
then the poets to be read. The orators model persuasive force and eloquence for the student
to copy: "It is the orators who teach us to praise the good deed and to hate the bad; it is
they who teach us how to soothe, encourage, stimulate, or deter; [. . .] Anger mercy, and the
arousal and pacification of the mind are completely within the power of the orator" (246).
The poets Bruni recommends include especially Homer and Virgil among many others. Of
the former Bruni claims that "his poetry provides a complete doctrine of life" (247). But
seeking knowledge alone from these authors is not sufficient. Poetry is "of primary
importance in our education" for two reasons: "alike for its utility . . . — that wide and
various acquaintance we get with facts — and for the brilliance of its language" (248). In
summarizing his treatise, Bruni concludes that it is needful "to bestow great pains on the
philosophers, the poets, the orators and historians and all the other writers." This was not
“Leonardo Bruni, On the Study of Literature [De studiis et litteris], ed. and trans. James Hankins,
in The Humanism of Leonardo Bruni. Trans, and ed. Gordon Griffiths, James Hankins and David
Thompson (Binghamton, New York: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1987), 245. Bruni is
speaking specifically of moral philosophy here.
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only to gain a "wide and various knowledge" but in order "to appear eloquent." Reading was
not to be separated from developing expressive skills:
Needed too is a well-developed and respectable literary skill of our own. For
the two together reinforce each other and are mutually beneficial. Literary
skill without knowledge is useless and sterile; and knowledge, however
extensive, fades into the shadows without the glorious lamp of literature.
(250)
It was assumed that one read in order to prepare oneself to speak or write. It was
unthinkable to read only for content: "Of what advantage is it," Bruni asks, "to know many
fine things if one has neither the ability to talk of them with distinction or write of them with
praise? Bruni concludes, "literary skill and factual knowledge are in a manner of speaking
wedded to each other. It was the two joined together that advanced the glory and fame of
those ancients whose memory we venerate" (250).
Vergerius, an important humanist educator who taught in Padua from 1391, preceded
Bruni as the first author of a systematic treatise outlining liberal studies. Vergerius’s De
ingenuis moribus (1392) circulated widely, with at least 40 editions printed before 1600.1 2
Like Bruni, Vergerius saw literature as a source of more than knowledge: "Literature indeed
exhibits not facts alone, but thoughts, and their expression."1 3 He clearly approached
literature as a source of expression for students to follow, for in making his case for the study
of literature, his appeal is built on the practical benefit literature could provide for those
1 2 William Harrison Woodward, Vittorino Da Feltre and other Humanist Educators: Essays and
Versions: An Introduction to the History of Classical Education (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1897), 94. According to Woodward Paulus Jovius said De ingenuis moribus was still a recognized
textbook into the sixteenth century. Paul Grendler claims this work was the most frequently recopied
and used pedagogical treatise before Erasmus’s works; Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and
Learning 1300-1600 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 117.
1 3 Quoted in Woodward, Vittorino Da Feltre and other Humanist Educators, 105.
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absorbed in affairs: "To be able to speak and write with elegance is no slight advantage in
negotiation, whether in public or private concerns" (104). As Bruni would later do, Vergerius
recommended several general fields of literary study— chiefly moral philosophy, history, and
poetry. While less specific regarding imitation, Vergerius describes literature as a
preparation for rhetorical eloquence in what was an integrated program of reading and
expression:
By philosophy we learn the essential truth of things, which by eloquence we
so exhibit in orderly adornment as to bring conviction to differing minds.
And history provides the light of experience — a cumulative wisdom fit to
supplement the force of reason and the persuasion of eloquence. (106-7)
Humanists sought the integration of philosophy and eloquence, as Hanna Gray and Jerrold
Seigel have well articulated;1 4 imitation was the mediating catalyst to accomplish this.
Consistent with these early treatises, later Renaissance catalogues of authors to be
read contained a sort of literary criticism that was aimed to prepare students to follow
literary models in their own writing and speaking. Of those treatises or chapters of treatises
specifically devoted to imitation, many included lists of authors — sometimes as laudable
models to be read, studied, then imitated; sometimes as unsatisfactory examples students
were cautioned against.1 5
1 4 Jerrold Seigel, Rhetoric and Philosophy in Renaissance Humanism: The Union of Eloquence and
Wisdom, Petrarch to Valla (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968); Hanna Gray, "Renaissance
Humanism: The Pursuit of Eloquence," Journal of the History of Ideas 24 (1963): 514.
1 5 Cicero, despite his reputation, was among those authors that some pedagogues warned students
away from. Vives claimed Cicero to be inimitable because of his excellence, and that it was a great
failing to imitate him if one lacked "sufficient heat of feeling" or "strength of judgment" (he criticizes
Jovianus Pontanus for just such a lifeless imitation of Cicero) (De tradendis disciplinis 363). The
implication is that when one is so superior to the rest, too many will fall short of the mark in
attempting to copy him. Erasmus, in his Ciceronianus, similarly claims Cicero’ s excellence made
imitating him a risky venture (Erasmus also eschews Cicero as a model because of certain identifiable
faults in his style such as solecisms).
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For example, the last third of Erasmus’s polemical Ciceronianus (1528) would contain
an extensive catalogue of authors. Erasmus purports simply to be assessing whether any have
come close to Cicero’s style; but he in fact provides a general assessment of the qualities of
various authors, ancient and modern. The irony of Erasmus’s method is that, — in this
treatise so harshly critical of those too preoccupied with Cicero — he demonstrates how well
Cicero serves as a standard for literary criticism.
This is readily illustrated in Erasmus’s judgments regarding such figures as St.
Augustine. Augustine, he claims, is "like Cicero in that he makes his periods very long and
involved. But he is not so clever in breaking up the extended structure of his oration into
divisions nor has he Cicero’s ready speech and felicity in handling subjects."1 6 A
contemporary, the Frenchman Claude Chansonette, is specifically evaluated on how well he
has been able to imitate Cicero: "Not unsuccessfully does he imitate Cicero. The fluency,
perspicuity, wealth of language, and wit of Cicero he has almost attained. . . . He has this
remarkable distinction, viz., that he has combined eloquence with knowledge of law and
philosophy" (102). Erasmus claims, in his dedicatory letter to the second edition, a
specifically pedagogical purpose for this sort of criticism: "The young learn a great deal from
critical assessments like the ones here, as they get into the habit of reading always with
discrimination and recognizing what to avoid and what to try to do."1 7
1 6 Desiderius Erasmus, Dialogus Ciceronianus, de optimo dicendi genere [Ciceronianus], in
Controversies Over the Imitation of Cicero in the Renaissance, ed. Izora Scott (1910; reprint, Davis,
California: Hermagoras Press, 1991), 93.
1 7 Desiderius Erasmus, preface to Ciceronianus, 2d ed. in Dialogus Ciceronianus, De optimo dicendi
genere. The Ciceronian: A Dialogue on the Ideal Latin Style [Dialogus Ciceronianus], trans. Betty I.
Knott, in Collected Works of Erasmus, ed. A. H. I. Levi, vol. 28 (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1986), 339.
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Philip Melanchthon’s Elementorum rhetorices libri duo (1531) included a long chapter
devoted to imitation, De imitatione, in which he sets forth authors to be read for policing
one’s Latinity and for acquiring a stylistic sense of compositio, syntax. Besides Cicero,
Melanchthon urges reading those from around Cicero’s day such as Caesar, Terence, Livy,
Plautus, and Sallust.1 8
Among the most explicit regarding the imitative goal behind reading was Juan Luis
Vives. In his wide-ranging educational treatise, De tradendis disciplinis (1531), imitation
became the category under which the reading of authors fell. The subtitle of his chapter on
imitation is quid sit, quantarumque virium imitari. quis cuique et in quo Imitandus; antiqui
scriptores in qua quisque maxime virtute floruit, indicatur. "Here is indicated what [imitation]
is, how much power is available through imitating, who, according to whom, and in what way
to imitate; along with a discussion of those ancient writers who, because of their great
characteristics, are most worthy of imitation." As will be more fully described in chapter 7,
Vives provided a sophisticated approach to listing authors, recommending they be read not
just in order to be imitated, but in order to answer the specific propensities and talents
(ingenium) of the individual student.
Renaissance educators provided catalogues of authors both for the purposes of
general, liberal education and for the specific purpose of indicating specific models for
student imitation. The appreciation of literature was not a self-contained activity, but a
prelude to oral and written composition.
1 8 Philip Melanchthon, Elementorum rhetorices libri duo (1531), F6V . An English translation of this
work I have not seen has been prepared by Sister J. M. LaFontaine (Ph.D. diss., University of of
Michigan, 1968.).
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Imitation and Literary Criticism (2): Instructions in Reading Critically
In order for the appreciation of literature to be meaningful, humanists provided much
more than lists with capsule assessments of authors’ imitable virtues. They provided
directions for the detailed criticism of authors. Imitation was not simply a desideratum or
an assumption relative to literature; it was as specific and technical as the literary criticism
that preceded it: what students could identify, they could copy. The more precise such
identifications were, the more sophisticated one’s imitation could be. The apprehension and
imitation of classical literature proceeded with reference to the same features of language,
and these features, as we will see, were derived from the three language arts of the trivium:
grammar, rhetoric, and logic.1 9
Leonardo Bruni specified the critical approach necessary for imitation to be
meaningful in his De studiis et litteris. He was the first, along with Gasparino Barzizza, to
spell out the means by which one acquired literary expression by reading authors. He
explained in detail the first phase in the process of imitation: analytical reading according
to specific criteria from the language arts. Bruni begins by approving the grammarians
Servian and Priscian for their investigation of "every detail" in books, thus creating a kind of
1 9 While grammar and rhetoric provide a wealth of specific ways by which literature would be both
analyzed and imitated, the field of logic played a diminished role. Resistance to the overelaborate
dialectical procedures of the Schoolmen most likely accounts for the muted role of logic in
Renaissance imitative practice. When Erasmus outlines a grammar school curriculum in 1512, he
allows dialectic to be included with reservation and qualification: "If someone should decide that
dialectic be added . . . I shall not gainsay him much, provided that he learn his dialectic from Aristotle
and not from that prolix breed, the sophists" (Desiderius Erasmus, On the Method of Study [De Ratione
Studii ac legendi interpretandique auctores], trans. Brian McGregor, Collected Works of Erasmus, vol
24., Literary and Educational Writings 2: De Copia / De Ratione Studii, ed. Craig R. Thompson.
[Toronto: Univeristy of Toronto Press, 1978], 670).
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literary discipline.2 0 Indeed, grammatical categories constituted a starting place for student
literary analysis, to which were soon added rhetorical features: "[Literary] study reveals and
explains to us not only the words and syllables but also the tropes and figures of speech in
all their beauty and polish" (241). A student was to keep a keen eye on both grammatical and
rhetorical structures and to note how they achieved their effects. The goal was "to bring to
this reading a keen critical sense":
The reader must study the reasons why the words are placed as they are, and
the meaning and force of each element of the sentence, the smaller as well
as the larger; he must thoroughly understand the force of the several particles
whose idiom and usage he will copy from the authors he read. (241)
Words and syllables, the parts of sentences, the "particles" and idioms of usage — these are
the highly specific categories of language from the art of grammar that were a primary
component in Renaissance imitation. As I argued in chapter 1, in the Renaissance classical
authors served as standards of Latinity in a time of great linguistic instability. Literary
criticism began with the identification of proper diction that would then regulate one’s own
language use. After reading the various authors Bruni recommends that the Lady, "when she
is obliged to say or write something . . . use no word she has not first met in one of these
authors" (242).
Lexical analysis was one important feature of grammar used in literary criticism.
Grammar also concerned itself with the sounds of language — pronunciation, vowel length,
2 0 Leonardo Bruni, De studiis et litteris, 241. Grammar came to stand for the entire study of
literature, as can be discerned in Thomas More’s comments to Martin Dorp regarding a slur against
Erasmus. Someone had called his humanist friend a "mere grammarian." More claimed Erasmus was
proud of the title because it designated the truest student of literature and therefore of all knowledge;
William Nelson, ed., A Fifteenth Century School Book (Oxford: Clarendon, 1956), xviii.
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and metrics. Bruni explicitly recommends authors be read for sound as a preparation for
student writing:
For in prose, as well as in verse, there are certain rhythms, inflexions, and
pacings, an orchestration, as it were, recognized and measured by the sense
of hearing, which causes the voice at one moment to drop and at another to
rise, and to create beautifully ordered connections between the cola,
commata, and periods. This will be readily apparent in every good writer.
(242)
Bruni suggests reading authors aloud to become aware of these aural qualities of language
in the literature. The Lady "will clearly grasp this when she reads aloud and she will fill her
ears with it as with a harmony, and will hear it also afterwards when she writes, and will
imitate it" (242).2 1
Bruni spends a great deal of time calling attention to the aural qualities of literature,
not only urging students to consider the quantities of syllables in poetry but also prose
rhythms. He cites the literary criticism of Aristotle regarding meters more appropriate for
the beginning, middle, or end of a sentence, and indicates which meters Cicero felt worked
best in the middle of the period (the iamb in the low or ordinary style, the dactyl, the paean,
or dochimius [five-syllable foot] in a fuller style). Certain attitudes of mind, he points out,
lend themselves to certain rhythms — anger to hasty rhythms (not the spondee!); narration
and instruction, to deliberate and stable rhythms. "Thus, every variety of communication has
its appropriate rhythm. Any writer who ignores this fact will be writing as chance directs, like
a man stumbling in the dark" (243).
Bruni gave more specific attention to rhythm and the general aural qualities of
language than perhaps any other humanist. Grammatical study was to produce a sensitivity
2 1 For the semantic relevance of attention to the sound of language, see my discussion of Bruni’s
directions on translation in chapter 2, above.
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to the qualities and uses of the sounds of language as it occurred in literary authors; these
same qualities would govern one’s subsequent writing. Bruni switches casually from speaking
of the reader to speaking of the writer, for those categories of grammatical analysis which
were to guide student interpretation of authors were the same categories that would govern
their own production of speech or writing.
Renaissance grammar treatises advertised themselves as means for students to
develop a critical faculty relative to literature and to be able to better absorb literary
features. For example, prefacing the 1542 edition of Thomas Linacre’s De emendata structura
Latini sermonis (1524) was a letter by Philip Melanchthon, who gave this glowing
endorsement for Linacre’s grammar:
I have concluded that [this book] will be of the greatest benefit to students
for their improvement in speaking Latin properly, and in accurately
discerning phrases and all figures of Latin speech. I have considered that all
those who preside over students should be urged to offer this book to
students for study prior to their reading.2 2
Added to grammatical criticism was the attention to be given to the parts of language studied
in rhetoric. Bruni instructed: "Those figures of speech and thought, which like stars or
torches illuminate our diction and give it distinction, are the proper tools of the orator which
we borrow from them when we speak or write, and turn it to our use as the occasion
demands."2 3 Erasmus, nearly 100 years later, would reiterate Bruni’s instructions to read in
order to find and then use such rhetorical uses of language. He tells students to
2 2 ,,iudicavi magnopere profuturm esse studiosis ad emendatem, et vere latinem loquendum, et ad
recte iudicandum de phrasi, et omnibus figuris latini sermonis. . . . Nunc vero etiam hos qui praesunt
scholis duxi adhortandos esse, ut hunc librum adolescentibus proponant et praelegant"; Phillip
Melanchthon, prefatory letter (1531) to De emendata structura latini sermonis by Thomas Linacre
(Basel: Nicolaum Brylingerum, 1542), 3-4.
^Leonardo Bruni, De studiis et litteris, 246.
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thumb the great authors by night and day. . . . We must keep our eyes open
to observe every figure of speech that they use, store it in our memory once
observed, imitate it once remembered, and by constant employment develop
an expertise by which we may call upon it instantly.2 4
By grammars such as Priscian’s and Linacre’s, and by rhetorical manuals such as the Ad
Herennium, students would acquire facility in taking apart the artifice by which their literary
exemplars achieved their excellence.
Richard Sherry recorded the manner in which schoolmasters in sixteenth-century
England aided their students in identifying figures of speech, one very important literary
feature to be made aware of among many. "The common scholemasters be wont in
readynge, to saye unto their scholers: Hie est figura ["Here is a figure of speech"]: and
sometimes to ask them, Per quam figuram? ["Which figure is being used?"]"2 5 Sherry
published an often-used compendium of figurative speech to prepare students to make such
identifications,^ treatise of the Schemes and Tropes gathered out of the best grammarians and
oratours (1550).2 6 Joannes Susenbrotus similarly published a popular work providing a ready
way for students to acquire enough knowledge of ornamental language to begin identifying
schemes and tropes in their texts, Epitome troporum ac schematum (1541).2 7 Susenbrotus
urged the schoolmaster to "fully point out" grammatical and rhetorical figures in the authors
that students read (Vickers, 259).
2 4 Erasmus, De ratione studii, 303.
“Quoted by Brian Vickers, In Defence of Rhetoric (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 259.
“Sherry’ s work was reissued in 1555 asvl Treatise of the figrues of Grammar and Rhetorike profitable
for all that be studious of Eloquence, and in especiall for such as in Grammar Scholes doe reede most
eloquent Poets and Orators.... The title reflects the goal of humanist education, eloquence, as well
as the method of seeking model examples of language use from literature.
“His work went through over twenty-four editions in less than a hundred years from publication;
Vickers, In Defence of Rhetoric, 258.
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In Renaissance England the identification of figures was formalized as a required
portion of the curriculum in some schools such as Westminster and Hertford. Students at
the former were required to go through authors such as Cicero or Virgil "by construing and
other grammtical waies, examining all the rhetorical figures." At the latter, figures were to
be "observed by the schollers and inserted by them into their paper books"2 8 (a method
elaborated below). Printed helps for this sort of technical analysis of literature soon came
out, such as John Palsgrave’s translation of Acolastus. Palsgrave added marginalia pointing
to metaphors, sententiae, and rhetorical schemes (Vickers, 260). Angel Day’s The English
Secretorie (1596) included sample letters whose margins indicated figures located there.
Finding figures of speech was an activity treated very seriously. Susenbrotus believed
that unless one did so one could not come to understand the mind of the author being read;
Sherry similarly claimed that "no eloquente wryter maye be perceived as he shulde be,
wythout the knowledge of them."2 9 Consequently, schemes and tropes were to be clearly
indicated as a text was expounded.3 0
By the time William Kempe wrote The Education of Children in Learning (1588), the
"artificiall expounding of other men’s works" had become a set part of humanist curriculum.
Kempe gives detailed description of a typical humanist schoolroom pedagogy. This began
with preliminary instruction in grammar, rhetoric, and logic, followed by readings and
^Quoted in Vickers, In Defence of Rhetoric, 260.
^Quoted in Vickers, In Defence of Rhetoric, 259.
3 0 Sherry’ s and Susenbrotus’ s emphasis on identifying figurative language did not mean so doing
was the exclusive method of literary analysis. As Renaissance commentaries demonstrate, much more
was to be identified in classical authors than just their figures of speech (see the following section on
Renaissance commentaries).
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lectures in which a student was to be "tryed how he can referre the examples of his Lecture
to the rules of Art." In Kempe’s curriculum, this literary criticism preceded student
imitations. The process of "unfolding the Arte" began in the second form, after only modest
introduction to Latin, and consisted of "observing the examples of the . . . poynts in
Grammar, of the arguments in Logike, of the tropes and figures in Rhetorike, referring every
example to his proper rule." This was a graduated process. Students in higher forms were
expected to be able to discern more in their reading from each of the three arts of grammar,
rhetoric, and logic, so that by the fifth form (age 12), the student
muste observe in authors all the use of the Artes, as not only the words and
phrases, not only the examples of the arguments; but also the axiome,
wherein every argument is disposed, the syllogisme, wherby it is concluded;
the method of the whole treatise, and the passages, whereby the partes ar
joyned together. Agayne, he shall observe not only every trope, every figure,
as well of words as of sentences; but also the Rhetoricall pronunciation and
gesture fit for every word, sentence, and affection5 .1
Literary criticism had become a codified part of humanist curriculum whose criteria derived
from the three language arts and which directed students not simply to understand those
features, but to recreate their use in their own writing.
3 1 William Kempe, The Education of Children in Learning (1588) in Four Tudor Books on Education,
ed. Robert D. Pepper (Gainesville, Florida: Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, 1966), 233. More
complete details of Kempe’ s curriculum are provided in chapter 6.
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Imitation and Literary Criticism (3): Commentaries
The focus on turning one’s reading to account in one’s writing signaled a significant
change from the study of texts in medieval schools. This change is discernible in how late
fourteenth- through sixteenth-century literary commentaries differed from their medieval
counterparts in content, scope, and intent. Medieval educators commonly affixed pedagogical
prefaces to texts used in grammar schools as an aid for their interpretation. These prefaces,
referred to as accessus ad auctor, followed a stereotyped plan or schema according to which
any authority (or auctor) could be studied. The accessus was typically divided into these
categories: vita auctoris, or biographical background on the author; titulus operis, an
explanation of the work’s title; intentio scribentis; an analysis, often speculative, of the purpose
or intention of the writing, materia operus, a summary of the subject matter; utilitas, a
judgment of the practical utiltiy of the work, often religiously oriented; and cui parti
philosophiae supponatur, or the assignment of the work to its proper place within the
medieval curriculum.3 2
One twelfth-century grammarian, for example, prefaced his copy of Ovid’s epistles
with just such a scheme. The accessus is written in rudimentary Latin, with each of the
categories of analysis carefully highlighted. For the vita auctoris, the author briefly tells
where Ovid was from, who his family was, and his fame for innovating the writing of epistles
after Greek models. For the titulus operis, the author includes the observation that the
work’s title, "Ovid’s Epistles," is taken from the nature of the work — namely, epistles.
3 2 Edwin A. Quain, "The Medieval Accessus ad auctores," Traditio 3 (1945): 215-64. The locus
classicus for accessus is Conrad of Hirschau, a Benedictine monk of the 12th century, whose Dialogus
super auctores sive didascalon, a dialogue between a teacher and student on how to study an author,
provides these details. See also R.B.C. Huygens, "Accesus ad AuctoresLatomus 12 (1953): 296-34;
460-84, for examples of how this apparatus was applied to various texts.
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Under intentio scribentis, the intention of the writing, the author first claims Ovid’s intent was
to provide an exposition of the three-fold nature of love, but hastens to add that Ovid
actually speaks for virtue and against vice. The last few categories of the accessus are hurried
through, as though the schoolmaster were only trying to fill out the form rather than unfold
the text. Under the heading materia, subject matter, the schoolmaster only indicates that
these are letters. The next two headings come combined, utiltias vel finalis causa, utility and
final cause, which this pedagogue uses simply to repeat the moralizing he’d led himself into
under discussion of intentio. In saying that the utility of Ovid is to help us flee from bad love
and adhere to good, the pedagogue seems as remote from the text as he seems close to
orthodoxy. As for the final category of the accessus, cui partiphilosophiae supponatur, or the
assignment of the work to a branch of learning, he hastily adds, "[The work] is subjoined to
the study of ethics, since it instructs us upon love that is proper."3 3 One wonders whether
Ovid would agree.
Other examples of medieval accessus reveal a similarly rudimentary and moralistic
approach to literary analysis that reverences the authority of the auctor while typically
bending that writer’s meaning to Christian meanings and purposes. This is not to say that
Renaissance literary analysis did not occur in Christian or moral terms, for it did. But the
apparatus for analyzing texts that was provided to Renaissance students included specific
linguistic and rhetorical categories absent in the medieval accessus. Humanists brought new
terms of analysis to the commentary tradition and provided novel purposes for interpreting
literature.
3 3 Quoted in Quain, p. 220.
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The novelty in Renaissance commentary is apparent in the earliest example from the
era. This was an important compilation written between 1392-1396 by Antonio Loschi of
Pavia, Inquisitio super XI orationes Ciceronis and consisted of commentary on eleven
Ciceronian speeches. The significance of this work, claims John Monfasani, lay in two
important facts: this was the first time since antiquity that classical orations became the
subject of commentary; and Loschi analyzed them strictly in terms of classical rhetorical
categories.3 4
Loschi believed that classical oratory embodied the precepts found in the
classical manuals of rhetoric and that an analysis which utilized the categories
of the manuals would reveal the wellsprings of Ciceronian eloquence. (188)
Consequently, Monfasani continues, he analyzed the arguments, the style, the historical
setting, the causae genus, constitutiones and dispositio of each oration — standard rhetorical
categories available from the Ad Herennium or Quintilian. "For Loschi such an analysis was
not an exercise in antiquarianism, but an eminently practical way to grasp and teach classical
eloquence" (188).
Appearing at the dawn of the Quattrocento, Loschi’s became the first of many
commentaries to contribute to praxis in Renaissance rhetorical education.3 5 The close
analysis of classical oratory would remain an essential part of the Renaissance education, and
would retain the distinctively rhetorical orientation first observable in Loschi. Just as
Lorenzo Valla’s Elegantiae altered the approach to Renaissance grammar by grounding that
language art on the rhetorical standard of usus, so these early Ciceronian commentaries
3 4 John Monfasani, "Humanism and Rhetoric," in Renaissance Humanism: Foundation, Forms, and
Legacy, vol. 3: Humanism and the Disciplines, ed. Albert Rabil, Jr. (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1988), 188.
3 5 Secco [Xicho] Polenton (1370-1463) appears to have been the next commentator.
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reinvented the commentary tradition by submitting it to the categories of rhetoric. While
Renaissance commentaries retained the general interpretive purpose of this genre, they
altered their specific analytical approach towards the ends of rhetoric: to prepare students
to create discourse. By helping students recognize the artifice employed by models (such as
Cicero) they could then imitate these virtues in their own writing (and speaking).
From Joachim Classen’s description of several different commentators we obtain a
very clear sense of the imitative goal of this popular genre of Renaissance literary criticism.3 6
While each commentator conducted his analysis with slightly different emphases, their
methods followed a common pattern: after providing a summary or argumentum of the
speech in question, each proceeded to employ rhetorical categories for their analyses, framing
these in such a way as to be most useful for preparing students for their own writing or
speaking.
Bartholomaeus Latomus’s edition of Cicero’s Pro MUone was published in 1528.
Latomus referred to his annotations as the expositio artificii et pleraeque adnotationes,
comparable to what Kempe would call the "artificiall expounding of other men’s works" that
was to take place in the grammar school analysis of authors.3 7 Following his argumentum,
the concise summary of the matter or res of the speech, Latomus proceeds to identify various
grammatical constructions, expressions, and figures of speech. For example, referring to a
3 6 For the following information on Ciceronian commentators I am indebted to Joachim Classen’ s
invaluable and ongoing studies of German and other European Ciceronian commentators. See his
"Cicero orator inter Germanos redivivus," Humanistica Lovaniensia 37 (1988): 79-114; "Cicero Orator
Inter Germanos Redivivus, II,” Humanistica Lovaniensia 39 (1990): 156-76. Also, "Cicerostudien in
der Romania im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert," G. Radke (ed.), Cicero, ein Mensch seiner Zeit (Berlin,
1968): 198-245. See also Lawrence D. Green, "Canonicity and the Renaissance Cicero" in Composition
in Context: Essays in Honor of Donald C. Stewart, ed W. Ross Winterowd and Vincent Gillespie
(Carbondale and Edwardville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1994), 17-27.
3 7 Classen, "Cicero Redivivus II," 160.
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given locution, tamen ne non, Latomus explains, "This repeats the particle tamen ("all the
same") with the sense of the preceding member, according to [the figure of) Parenthesis, that
it might be a more distinct and full arrangement of speech."3 8 Latomus thus assesses the
rhetorical function of these elements, as well as that of each sentence, section, and finally the
whole of the speech. Unlike the Ciceronians, he appears to focus on linguistic particulars
only in term of their contextualized function relative to other levels of language, including
that of the entire oration.
Philip Melanchthon, known as the praeceptor Germaniae, broadly influenced
Renaissance German curricula through his many speeches, rhetorical manuals, and other
writings. He commented on Cicero’s four orations against Catiline in one text (Hagenau,
1529), the product of his lectures and teaching on Cicero’s speeches.3 9 Like Latomus,
Melanchthon includes a summary of the speech under consideration and then explains some
of the rhetorical figures; however, he primarily emphasizes attention to the order or dispositio
of the speech. In his commentary on Pro Archia (1533), he says:
Anyone who will consider the order of all the sentences and arguments and
observe how they accord with each other will grasp the intention of each
author; and when we have observed the method of joining arguments in the
writing of others, we shall ourselves write what is more coherent. Such care
in examining the order of a speech will, therefore, be most useful both for
our imitation, and also for our judgement.4 0
3 8 "Repetit particulam Tamen, cum sensu praecedentis membri. . . ut sit dilucidior oratio, sitque
plenus ordo" (quoted in Classen, "Cicero redivivus II," 161 n. 10).
3 9 Classen cites nine separate years from 1524-42 in which Melanchthon lectured on Ciceronian
speeches ("Cicero redivivus II," 164).
4 0 "Primum enim voluntatem unuiuscuusque (sic) authoris, is demum recte adsequi poterit, qui
seriem omnium sentenciarum contemplabitur, et animadverte quomodo inter se consentiant. Deinde
cum in alienis scriptis rationem coniungendi sentencias animadverterimus, scribemus et ipsi magis
cohaerentia. Plurimum itaque prodest haec diligentia consyderandae dispositionis in oratione, turn
ad imitationem turn etiam ad iudicandum" (quoted in Classen, "Cicero redivivus II," 165-66).
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The observation of dispositio serves both a hermeneutical function, discerning the authors
intention or meaning, and an imitative one: when methods of arrangement are duly
observed, they will influence the coherence of one’s own writing. Melanchthon employs these
analyses in order to develop the critical faculty in students necessary both for interpretation
and composition.
Johann Sturm was another influential German educator who wrote on imitation and
Cicero both. Sturm produced a major Renaissance edition of Cicero’s Rhetorical
commented on several Ciceronian orations: Philippica I and Pro Publio Quinctio,4 2 and Pro
Plancio;4 3 published commentary on Cicero’s Rhetorical4 published a popular edition of
Cicero’s letters specifically for use in imitive pedagogy;4 5 and remarked generally on Cicero’s
methods and principles throughout his many educational and rhetorical works, especially in
his magnum opus on imitation, De imitatione oratio libri tres (Strasbourg, 1574). Sturm’s
method of literary analysis directs students more towards stylistic imitation— words, phrases,
4 1 Johann Sturm, ed. In hoc volumine continentur: Rhetoricorum ad Herennium; de Inventione; de
Oratore; de claris oratoribus; orator; topica; oratoriae partitiones. Post Naugerianam et Victorianam
correctionem emendati a J. Sturmio (Strasbourg, 1540). Other editions include those of Strasbourg
(Josias Rihel, 1564), Basel (1568), and Strasbourg (1570).
4 2 Johann Sturm, De amissa dicendi ratione libri duo. Explicata est hisce duobus libris, et integra
interposita Ciceronis oratio quam pro P. Quinctio habuit (Strasbourg: Wendelin Rihel, 1538).
4 3 Johann Sturm, Commentarius in orationem Ciceronis pro Plancio, ex scholis J. Sturmii.
(Strasbourg: Wendelin Rihel, 1551).
“ “Johann Sturm, In partitiones oratories Ciceronis dialogi IV (Strasbourg, 1539; and Strasbourg:
Theod. Rihel, 1565).
4 5 Johann Sturm, ed. Ciceronis Epistolarum libri IV, a J. Sturmiopuerili educationi confecti (Epistolae
minores) (Strasbourg, 1539). Other editions included that of 1572 (Strasbourg: Josias Rihel, 1572) and
a Czechoslovakian edition explicitly published for pedagogical purposes by T. Mitis, Epistolarum M.
T. Ciceronis libri tres a Johanne Sturmio ex universis illius Epistolis collecti ad institutionem puerilem.
Cum castigationibus G. Fabricii et argumentis atque scholiis M. Collini (Prague: 1577).
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loci communes. However, it is evident that for Sturm, the imitation of style means not
adopting simply the language of the model, but the speaker’s ethos or consuetudo, his general
manner. For Sturm this obviously implied an ethical dimension: imitation was to shape the
character of the imitator by taking due note of the character of the imitated. Sturm’s
methods reflect his interest in Hermogenes, whom he edited for publication, and are
characterized by a highly technical analytical approach that his students would carry to the
point of pedantry.4 6
One of Sturm’s pupils in Paris was Pierre de la Ramee. This very influential
Renaissance educator found his place among other commentators on Ciceronian speeches,
explicating ten of Cicero’s earliest orations (including the Verrines) and eight more speeches
delivered during Cicero’s consulate in 63 B.C.4 7 Like Latomus and Melanchthon, Ramus
begins by reviewing the facts of the speech (argumentum), then proceeds to point out
rhetorical figures and logical procedures (from the point of view of the inventio and of the
dispositio). "In explaining the speeches his aim is to make the students understand the
rhetorical and logical techniques, but also to enable them to imitate and practise them
themselves."4 8
Joachim Camer arius wrote individual commentaries on Cicero’s Pro Murena (Leipzig,
1542) and Pro Flacco (Basel 1553, in a collection of commentaries) (172-73). The former
he singled out as particularly apt for imitation; the latter reflects the pedagogical base of such
“ ^Sturm’s important imitative methodology will be further detailed in the following section on
marking texts, and in chapters 5 and 6.
4 7 Only the latter eight of Ramus’ s commentaries were published, including those on Pro Rabirio
(Paris 1551), De lege agraria (Paris 1553), and In Catilinam IV (Paris 1553).
“ ^Classen, "Cicero redivivus II," 170-71.
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analyses, being taken from his lecture notes. Camerarius edited a complete edition of
Cicero’s works in 1540, the third printed in Basel.4 9 It would be impossible for anyone to
read Camerarius’s commentaries and not know that one was to imitate the features he points
out — particular words, rhetorical figures, arguments and their effects. Of one passage, for
example, he indicates exemplum bonae et disertae hoc est Ciceronianae orationis, "here is an
excellent and eloquent example of Ciceronian speech," fit for imitatio.5 0 His Ciceronian
commentaries are filled with general reflections on the methods of studying such a speech
(173).
One additional commentator, Rudolf Hildebrand, deserves note. Hildebrand
published several commentaries on Ciceronian speeches: on De lege Manilla [1574], on the
four Catiline speeches [1574], and on three others [1580]). His works provide evidence that
such commentaries were indeed used in the classroom, not merely published and forgotten.
In an edition Joachim Classen has examined in Wolfenbuttel, manuscript notes set out what
appears to be a praefatio with precepts for the reading and teaching of Cicero’s speech Pro
rege Deiotaro (174-75). Someone, whether Hildebrand or a student, was preparing to teach
rhetoric and imitation again by analyzing another Ciceronian oration.
4 9 Ibid., 172. Earlier, Camerarius had entered the debate over the imitation of Cicero in his famous
preface to his commentary on the first book of the Tusculans (Basel 1538). Rather than argue for or
against imitating Cicero, he turned the debate to the question of the function of the model as an aid
to comprehension.
“Quoted in Classen, "Cicero redivivus II," 173. Classen also points out the ethical imitation
Camerarius is interested in. Behavior and moral conduct are part of the features Cicero models for
imitation.
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Renaissance commentaries on Cicero’s orations are remarkable both for the detail
of their analyses and for the clearly pedagogical purpose that drives them. What Joachim
Classen said of Bartholomaeus Latomus may be said generally of other commentators:
Clearly his main purpose is to instruct, to teach others how to compose a
speech by analysing an exemplary specimen and by explaining its details, the
facts, the grammar, the language, but especially the artificum, i.e. each move
in the rhetorical strategy: the selection of topics and their function, the
arguments and their nature, the stylistic devices and their effect. (162)
These humanists were among the many who laid out clear models for imitation, supplied an
analytical framework from the fields of grammar, logic, and especially rhetoric, and thereby
prepared many to comprehend and consequently imitate what they identified. Classen
claimed that Cicero’s speeches, illustrated through the commentaries of the humanists and
their handbooks, "were destined to exercise great influence in the schools and universities in
the sixteenth century and thereafter" (176).
Imitation and Literary Criticism f4): Marking Texts
Humanists implemented pedagogical procedures that would ensure that the critical
analysis of texts would yield very specific kinds of understanding. These consisted of two
activities: marking texts and keeping divided notebooks. In his treatise on education, De
Ratione Studii (whose full title is "On the method of studying, reading and interpreting
'i
authors"), Erasmus indicated that once students have a modicum5 1 of training in grammar,
5 1 That is, just enough to be able to begin identifying the various features of these three arts;
certainly not enough to make these studies ends in themselves as the scholastics had done. They
should be compared to Renaissance grammar instruction (see chapter 1). Not only did humanists take
special care to keep grammar from becoming abstractly speculative as the scholastics had made it, but
they returned it to its classical role of grammatica enarrativa, preparing students for composition
through literary analysis.
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rhetoric and logic, they are prepared to gather analytically from their reading, and to do so
by way of marking down the virtues of style they observe:
you will carefully observe when reading writers whether any striking word
occurs, if diction is archaic or novel, if some argument shows brilliant
invention or has been skilfully adapted from elsewhere, if there is any
brilliance in the style, if there is any adage, historical parallel, or maxim worth
committing to memory. Such a passage should be indicated by some
appropriate mark.5 2
Milton, educated at the grammar school for which Erasmus devised the curriculum, followed
this procedure. His copies of classical texts include the identification of metaphors and other
features that indicates he was trained to identify verbal features critically from an early age.5 3
The marking of texts was featured in the elaborate system of literary analysis
prescribed in one early seventeenth century educational work, the anonymous Certaine
Epistles of Tally verbally translated (1611). There the author directs schoolmasters how to
have their students construe their Latin model. This first involved making a grammatical
translation (rearranging the Latin syntax into English word order, a process requiring
students to identify the grammatical correspondence of parts of a sentence5 4 ); next, the Latin
words were to be given "their proper and naturall significations, so farre forth as sense, and
the propriety of the English phrase will in any wise permit." Lest students naively believe
that their vernacular will always accommodate the Latin with simple equivalent language, the
“ Erasmus, De Ratione Studii, 670.
“ Donald Lemen Clark, John Milton at St. Paul’ s School: A Study of Ancient Rhetoric in English
Renaissance Education (New York: Columbia University Press, 1948).
5 4 For the most detailed elaboration of this procedure, see John Brinsley, Ludus Literarius: Or, The
Grammar Schoole (1612), ed. E. T. Campagnac (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1917). The
process of grammatical construing involved a transformation common to both imitation and
translation, transpositio. See chapter 5.
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author invents a system of notation for students to mark (and thus become better aware of)
unusual uses of speech:
If [English will not permit a simple translation] by reason of some trope,
unusuall phrase, or harder sentence, let him [the student] set v. in the
margent, or in a different letter in the Text, to shew, that ad verbum it is
otherwise: i. for id est, to explaine the sence, and so forth.5 5
The "verbal translations" that constitute the bulk of this short treatise illustrate these
directions for annotation. For example, in one of Cicero’s letters to his wife the phrasefecisti
mihi gratu occurs. The author provides a translation of this, "You did me a pleasure," but
includes the following notation: "v. You did a thing acceptable unto me." The v. indicated
that his English translation did not correspond ad verbum, to the actual words of the Latin.
"You did a thing acceptable unto me" better corresponds to the actual Latin, reflecting the
dative pronoun mihi. Later in the same letter he provides an example of the notation i. (id
est), which indicates comments on the sense of a given phrase are to follow. "Before the
Nones of June" is followed by " i, the fifth of June."
Such marking may seem to entail so much petty busywork. It will be recalled from
chapter 3 that one of the characteristics Erasmus lampoons among the Ciceronians was their
system of marking and collating Cicero’s corpus. Nosoponus describes his system of
notation:
As often as [a given] word is found in Cicero, however similar the form, I
note the page, the side of the page, and number of the line, affixing a mark
which indicates whether the word is in the middle of the line, at the
beginning, or at the end. In this way you see one word takes up several
pages.5 6
S 5 Certaine Epistles ofTully verbally translated (London, 1611), 4r .
5 6 Erasmus, Ciceronianus, 25.
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Nosoponus will elaborate his notation system elsewhere by marking Ciceronian words with
a red mark, all others in black.5 7 Erasmus mocks what is an obvious danger as soon as form
is given importance: there may be those who pay such attention to form that it becomes an
end in itself, obviating the ultimate purpose for which formal analysis was but an
intermediary step. This appears to have happened at times in the case of Johann Sturm and
his students. While methods of notation were part of the analytical procedures prerequisite
to imitation proper, they could become an independent enterprise.
While Sturm holds an important place in the history of Renaissance imitation theory
and practice,5 8 it is hard not to see the method of annotation he taught in his Nobilitas literata
(1549)5 9 as an excessive preoccupation with form. In order to analyze the patterns of sound
and sense to be found in literary passages, Sturm prescribes writing "figurative draughts," to
represent graphically the length and rhythm of verses or sentences. For example, after
pointing out its three clauses, he takes the first period in Cicero’s Pro Publio Quinctio and
diagrams it (E lr):
There be two thinges which in a free citie are most of force.
And both the same do chiefly hinder us at this present
Thone is great fauor, thother is eloquence.
Becomes:
(.
(.
5 7 Desiderius Erasmus, Dialogus Ciceronianus, de optimo dicendi genere [Ciceronianus] in Opera
omnia, vol. II-4 (Amsterdam), 611.
5 8 See above, regarding his Ciceronian commentaries; below, regarding the notebook system he
advocated; and chapter 5, for his outline of transformative methods of imitation.
5 9 Johann Sturm, A ritch Storehouse or Treasurie for Nobilitye and Gentlemen [Nobilitas literata
(1549)], trans. T. Browne (London, 1570).
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Perhaps such a method of notation could indeed did impart to students a sense of form, in
this case, giving them the feel of the greater force available in a tricolon of clauses when the
last is abbreviated. It is also easy to imagine that students would get caught up in the
geometric intricacies of diagramming texts, forgetting to complement their analyses with
imitative compositions. We get a sense of the tempting complexities of the art of "figurative
draughts" when Sturm provides a diagram of the pattern he has found in a portion of Virgil’ s
first Eclogue. Here, Meliboeus sings of the felicity of Tityrus in two verses, of himself in a
verse and half, then returns to the happiness of Tityrus (E lv - E2r):
One wonders whether such abstractions could serve to make sense of a work. Still, Sturm
asks, "Without this practise, wherby shall we iudge how the three beginninges of Vergils
works differ one from another?" (E4r). We may well have an answer for him, but perhaps
his method of annotation should not be too readily ridiculed. Marion Trousdale suggests
that Sturm’s method would be helpful because "art cannot be learned and used unless it is
so articulated that it can be perceived," something "figurative draughts" might have
accomplished.6 0 Most germane to our study is Trousdale’ s observation that "patterns as
“Marion Trousdale, "Recurrence and Renaissance: Rhetorical Imitation in Ascham and Sturm,"
English Literary Renaissance 6 (1976): 169.
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abstracted and codified are both the means of knowledge and the means of use" (169); what
is to be debated is whether Sturm’s figurative draughts entangled students so much in the
abstractions of art that the exercise prevented them from turning this knowledge to use.
Sturm’s student, Valentinus Erythraeus, seems to confirm our reservations regarding
overly formal means of analysis. While Erythraeus did not pursue Sturm’s graphical
representation of verse and prose, he developed a mechanical technique of literary analysis
that involved placing entries into tables that were elaborately divided and subdivided. In
turn, Erythraeus’ s student Melchior Junius seems to have fulfilled Erasmus’s pedantic
depiction of the overly thorough annotator of Cicero: He reduced Cicero’s speeches to a
nearly infinite number of topoi which he arranged meticulously in groups according to their
function. This provided a great stock of ideas and phrases but, as Classen observes, its
practicality must have been severely hampered since each phrase was stripped of its
contextual meaning and function.6 1
Marking texts was an integral part of humanist methodology of close textual analysis.
The fact that a certain few may have gone to extremes, as I maintained in my third chapter,
does not mean that many humanists (of whom Erasmus is positively representative) did not
advocate and rely upon such painstakingly formal activities as the annotation of texts.
Certainly the formal nature of the conventions of annotation could help students analyze
literature by giving them tools for the identification of specific kinds of features, whether
rhetorical, semantic or otherwise. The author of Certaine epistles set great store in the
efficacy of his method (which included not simply marking texts but "verbally translating").
6 1 See Classen, "Cicero redivivus II," 169, for references to the works of Valentinus Erythraeus and
Melchior Junius.
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He bragged that students who go through such careful analysis, including the marking of
verbal features, "may . . . easily conceive, truly understand, and well remember the generall
drift and scope of their Authour."6 2 The specific markings he recommends, v. and L, call
attention respectively to verbal form and the sense or content of passages, consistent with
humanist endeavors to promote student awareness of the differences and relations between
language and meaning, verba and res.
Imitation and Literary Criticism (5): Notebooks
Bruni had urged that students acquire a stock or store from their reading for their
future compositions, and in the early fifteenth century students of Guarino of Verona began
to do so. Guarino inaugurated an important innovation in Renaissance teaching — the
divided notebook. Such notebooks would provide a halfway point between the literature that
students were critically analyzing and the compositions they would subsequently be
composing.
Like the marking of texts, keeping specially divided notebooks trained students to be
aware of various linguistic features and prepared them to remember and then manipulate
literary models for their own purposes. Bolgar claimed that Guarino’s pioneering notebook
method was revolutionary in the history of education, calling it "that humble auxiliary without
which the most painstaking analysis would have been to no purpose."6 3 The virtue of
Guarino’s notebook method, however, is not simply its mnemonic value; the innovation of
6 2 Certaine Epistles of Tully, 4r .
®R. R. Bolgar, The Classical Heritage and Its Beneficiaries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1958), 269.
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this method lay in its division into two parts. As students read, they were to collect matter
and divide it into two sections, methodice and historice. The former was a record of
rhetorical forms and idioms; the latter, general information.6 4
Each of these two divisions had a notebook allotted to it, and as the student read,
he wrote down the details that seized his attention. The notebooks would link critical
observation and future composition. Most importantly, keeping notes in this divided fashion
would encourage two separate kinds of analysis, one for form, one for content. A keen
awareness of the differences and relationships between form and content was essential to
imitation. This is reflected in Roger Ascham’s definition of imitation from 1570: "Giving
different matter similar treatment, or giving similar matter different treatment" (dissimilis
materiei similis tractatio; similis materiel dissimilis tractatio).6 5 In other words, to imitate meant
either to adopt the form of one’s model, using a different subject matter; or it could mean
to borrow the subject matter of one’s model, providing one’s own form.6 6 Notebooks kept
according to form and to content thus prepared students for both kinds of imitation.
Guarino’s notebook method was refined by other humanists, including Rudolph
Agricola. In a brief letter that would become widely known as a small tract called De
formando studio (1532), Agricola echoed Guarino in prescribing the notebook method.
^"Grammaticae autem duae partes sunt quarum alteram Methodicem quae omnium orationis
partium formulas, id est methodus declarat; alteram Hystoricem quae historias et res gestas pertractat,
appellant, eas formulas multis ex libris quae extant capescere licebit, sed magna ex parte compendium
illud optimi parentis mei ad id iuvabit, ubi sicut nihil superfluum Ita omnia facile reperientur quae
ad orationem recte studendam conducere videantur" (quoted in Bolgar, Classical Heritage, 431).
' “Roger Ascham, The Schoolmaster (1570), in The Whole Works of Roger Ascham, vol. 3, ed. Rev.
[J. A.] Giles (London: John Russell Smith, 1864), 214.
“See the section in chapter 5, "Imitation and Composition (4): The Transformative Method of
Substitution," where I describe those Renaissance exercises setting forth how to exchange a model’ s
matter while retaining its form (or the reverse of this).
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However, he suggested the development of multiple headings, a necessity in managing
growing student notebooks. "Knowledge is worthless unless at your fingertips," he reportedly
said.6 7 Guarino’s simple two-part notebook would prove crowded and disorganized after one
began an earnest poring over multiple texts. According to Agricola, the students should
arrange their material
under certain headings like "virtue," "vice," "life," "death," "learning,"
"ignorance," "goodwill," "hatred," and so forth, which have a general
application and are well known to all. Let us class under them everything
that we learn and then by repeating these headings we shall call to mind all
that they cover.6 8
Agricola’s suggestions were widely received. For example, Erasmus would echo these
directions when instructing students to create a commonplace book. However, Erasmus
would, unlike Agricola, preserve the important overall division of material into expression
and subject matter. Insofar as Agricola’s suggestions help organize the collection of matter
(res), they are not so much innovative as they reflect medieval methods of compiling
reference manuals for preachers. Bolgar links the notebook methods of Guarino, Vives, and
Erasmus to utilitarian medieval compilations, such as the well-known Gesta Romanorum, the
Exemplorum liber, the Speculum laicorum, and most especially the medieval Summa
predicantium of John of Bromyard (271). This last volume contains thousands of exempla
grouped under loci communes, or topics, though these are not the standard rhetorical topics,
notes Bolgar, but "those general Christian themes which are every preacher’s stock-in-trade"
(432). Gathering "matter" from sources was by no means a Renaissance invention, but having
students gather matter and expression, res and verba, was. Guarino began this pedagogical
6 7 Bolgar, Classical Heritage, 272.
“Quoted in Bolgar, Classical Heritage, 272.
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method. Others, if not Agricola, would keep this fundamental division central while
modifying it.
Johann Sturm did so in the pedagogy that he outlined in Nobilitas literata (1549).6 9
His entire method of teaching is cast in terms of students acquiring facility in matter and
language and being able to sense both their distinction and their inseparability. Added to
a knowledge of Greek and Latin "is joyned the knowledge of wordes and matter: for that the
wordes are the images of things. Therefore from this time forwarde you must joyne togither
and combine the studie of them both: and to that ende tendeth all my talke" ( l l v ). Sturm
repeats Guarino’s notebook method with one alteration. To notebooks kept for things (res)
and words (figures, examples, etc.) he added a third, one for the precepts of rhetoric drawn
from books (21v ).
Juan Luis Vives also prescribed the keeping of notebooks. In three separate
pedagogical treatises (De rationii studii puerilis', De tradendis disciplinis; Introductio ad
sapientiam) Vives suggests keeping notebooks according to multiple categories.
Make a book of blank leaves of a proper size. Divide it into certain topics,
so to say, into nests. In one, jot down the names of subjects of daily
converse: the mind, body, our occupations, games, clothes, divisions of time,
dwellings, foods; in another, idioms or formulae dicendi', in another, sententiae;
in another, proverbs; in another, difficult passages from authors; in another,
matters which seem worthy of note to thy teacher or thyself.7 0
Elsewhere (in De tradendis disciplinis [1531]) Vives is even more detailed, joining observation
in reading with an intensive program of writing and recording into divided notebooks:
^Citations are to the translation by T. B. Gent, A ritch Storehouse or Treasurie for Nobilitye and
Gentlemen (1570).
7 0 Juan Luis Vives, Introductio ad Sapientium, quoted and trans. by Bolgar, Classical Heritage, 273.
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Let the pupil learn to write correctly and quickly. The foundations of writing
ought to be laid while pupils are being taught to read; they must know what
letters, what syllables, what sounds ought to be separated or combined, and
keep them ready for use. Let them be convinced that nothing conduces more
truly to wide learning than to write much and often, and to use up a great
deal of paper and ink. Therefore let each boy have an empty paper book
divided into several parts to receive all that falls from his teacher’s lips, since
this is not less valuable to him than precious stones.7 1
This last appears to correspond to the notebook Sturm recommends for entering precepts
of the language arts. Vives adds many more divisions, however:
In one division let him put down separate and single words. In another
proper ways of speaking and turns of speech, which are in daily use; and
again, rare expressions, or such as are not generally known and explained.
(108)
These books or divisions correspond to the category of verba or methodice, focusing on
expression and language. Complementing these are further suggestions for divisions, some
clearly emphasizing content or subject matter (as those recommended for history notes or
the names of prominent people); others emphasizing the verbal and expressive portion of
speech or writing:
In a separate division, let him make history notes; in another, notes of
anecdotes; in another, clever expressions and weighty judgments; in another,
witty and acute sayings; in another, proverbs; in other divisions, names of
well-known men of high birth, famous towns, animals, plants and strange
stories. In another part, explanations of difficult passages in the author. In
another, doubtful passages, which are still unsolved. (108)
This is not note-taking in our contemporary understanding of the process. Vives clearly
intends these pennings to be the seeds of future compositions: "These beginnings seem
simple and bare, but later he will clothe and ornament them" (108). In closing this section,
7 1 Vives: On Education: A Translation of the De Tradendis Disciplinis of Juan Luis Vives (1531), ed.
and trans. Foster Watson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1913. Reprint. Totowa, N.J.:
Rowman and Littlefield, 1971), 108.
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Vives reminds students to draw their notes from both their teacher and their reading, and
adds the necessity of organizing so many divisions by way of indexes (perhaps a suggestion
influenced by Agricola’s De formando studii):
The boy should also have a larger book in which he can put all the notes
expounded and developed at length by the teacher, also what he reads for
himself in the best writers, or the sayings which he observes used by others;
and just as he has certain divisions and heads in his note-books, so let him
make indexes of these places for himself and distinguish them by headings in
order to know what he shall enter into each division. (108)
Roger Ascham in England was also known for his zeal in recommending the
notebook method, both for learning Latin through imitative translations,7 2 and especially for
paying close attention to form and verba. Such notebooks would include a "pupil’s collections
of instances of the use of words, phrases, and expressions, and grammatical forms found in
his reading of authors — properly classified; in fact, a self-made dictionary of words, phrases,
syntax, and memorabilia."7 3 Watson also points out that the use of notebook methods went
along with the inductive kind of education Ascham emphasized. Grammar was to be learned
not through books but by "setting the pupil to collect the accidence and syntax himself, as he
proceeds in his reading of authors and his own translations and retranslations, and of
building up a grammar for himself in his Note-book" (xxxviii). Watson considered Ascham’ s
notebook method, as Bolgar did Guarino’s, a remarkable advance in educational methods
over the cumbrous teaching of the Middle Ages.
Vives and Sturm were both enormously influential Renaissance educators. However,
none made a more innovative and comprehensive use of the division between matter and
7 2 See double translation as outlined in chapter 6.
^Foster Watson, xxxvii.
C h a p t e r F o u r : L i t e r a r y A n a l y s i s a s P r e p a r a t i o n t o I m i t a t e 1 8 6
method than did Erasmus in his De copia verborum ac rerum (1512), "On the twofold
abundance of expressions and ideas." In this book Erasmus gives directions for creating a
commonplace book in which to record what one gathers from reading, making appropriate
headings (perhaps according to Agricola’s suggestions), as a tool both for the analysis and
storage of what is found. De copia illustrates what it professes by including long lists, culled
from Erasmus’s wide reading, of expressions (in the first book) and of subject matter (in the
second). Bolgar explains that Erasmus demonstrated that reading is done with a view to
extrapolating; it is suggested "that every intending writer should go through the whole of
classical literature in this way [that Erasmus models] at least once in his life, presumably
before he starts seriously to write."7 4 While De copia merits praise for exemplifying
Renaissance methods of notebook keeping as a means of critical analysis for students as they
became aware of and gleaned the content and form of classical literature, we will later see
that this book was much more than a glorified bicameral notebook.
Clearly literature was seen in the Renaissance not simply as a source of knowledge
or general intellectual or moral development; literature was a resource which, properly
engaged through intense and specific kinds of analysis, could yield a variety of ways by which
one could create his or her own writing. The French pedagogue Nicolas Bourbon had
occasion to articulate this Renaissance attitude towards literature and writing subsequent to
his misfortune of being a victim in the 1534 Affaire des Placards. On that occasion he found
himself stripped of his belongings and thrown into jail. This future instructor of aristocratic
English boys under the auspices of Anne Boleyn would record his unfortunate experience in
1538. While he seems irked to have lost clothing, a pet bird, and a fine bed, among other
7 4 Bolgar, Classical Heritage, 21 A .
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belongings, he is most dolefully galled for the loss of his books. Not only is literature
described here as a dear comfort, but as a resource for his writing:
So I lost in a trice all I had gained by the kindness of those whose children
I had done my best to teach both morals and literature. This was my reward
for so many years of hard work; not to mention my books, most disgracefully
sold off while I was a prisoner, gambled away or squandered on loose
women; and I am more and more tormented by their loss and my wish for
them. So far am I from enjoying that resource which is the joy of men of
some education — a provision of books. I have had close friends, who were
well known for their learning. When they wanted to write a letter or
compose a poem they would betake themselves to their library at once, not
unlike a tortoise hiding in his shell from some impending danger: and from
this treasure of books, as from a storehouse, they would draw not only
richness of language and beauty of style, but themes of all kinds and fine
arrangement, ornaments, and so on, much like bees, who, as our dear Homer
says, settle on varied flowers. This resource is denied to me.7 5
Literature was considered a storehouse from which the riches of language were to be drawn.
In the worst manifestations of Renaissance imitation, the nature of that drawing from
literature was plagiaristic — wholesale copying of the very words of an author. However,
humanists discouraged such literary stealing. To make the encounter with literature the
productive occasion for one’s own later writing, methods were presented by which students
7 5 "Sic periit mihi paulo momento, quicquid ex benignitate quorundam mihi accesserat, quorum
liberos pro virili mea parte, honestis cum moribus, turn literis institueram. Haec mea fuere praemia
bene navatae tot annos operae: ut interim nihil dicam de libris meis, flagitiosissime divenditis, in
aleamque, me captivo, et in scorta profusis: quorum iactura, atque desiderio, magis et magis in dies
discrucior. Tantum abest, ut summo illo subsidio fruar, quo literati fere instructi gaudent, librorum
supellectile scilicet. Ego quibusdam familiariter convixi, qui doctrinae neutiquam vulgariae fama
commendabantur. Ii si quando epistola scribenda, aut carminis aliquid faciendum erat, continuo sese
in bibliothecam suam coniiciebant, Haud aliter quam solet testudo in testam suam, imminente periculo
aliquo, recipere: eque librorum thesauris, tanquam e penu, non verborum modo copiam, ac sermonis
lumina, verum omnium argumenta, et concinnitates, et caetera ornamenta, petebant: Nimirum apum
in morem, quae, ut ait Homerus noster, floribus insidunt variis, etc. Mihi vero huiusmodi facultas
negata est." Quoted and trans. by Margaret M. Phillips, "The Paedagogion of Nicolas Bourbon," in
Neo-Latin and the Vernacular in Renaissance France, ed. Grahame Castor and Terence Cave (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1984).
C h a p t e r F o u r : L i t e r a r y A n a l y s i s a s P r e p a r a t i o n t o I m i t a t e 188
could transform and alter their sources. These transformative methods are the subject of the
following chapter.
18 9
C h a p t e r F iv e
Translating and Transforming Literary Sources
Renaissance students had been trained to perceive the various grammatical, poetic,
and rhetorical aspects of literaiy texts and had practiced recording outstanding examples of
both the form and content of texts; they now were prepared to engage in imitative writing
exercises. Literary analysis trained them to see what features they could imitate; marking
imitable features in their texts and entering them in notebooks helped students become
better acquainted with them and made them more accessible. But there remained the need
to provide explicit instructions for how the students were to go about appropriating the
virtues they had been taught to recognize and record. Between literary criticism and original
student composition in speech and writing came methods of transformation and translation
that constituted imitative methodology in Renaissance education.
The varieties of Renaissance imitative praxis have their origins in a set of
transformative methods outlined in an early humanist treatise by Gasparino Barzizza and in
methods of translation articulated by Leonardo Bruni that were fundamental to Renaissance
Latin education. Many examples of humanist exercises consistent with these methods will
be presented here, while lengthier examples of these methods, particularly as they are
combined with each other and with other elements of the humanist curricula, are set out in
chapter 6.
C h a p t e r F i v e : T r a n s l a t i n g a n d T r a n s f o r m i n g L i t e r a r y S o u r c e s 1 9 0
Translation in Renaissance Education
Translation was a primary educational method in Renaissance education. This may
seem an obvious point, given that humanist curricula were based upon the acquisition of
Latin (and to a lesser extent, Greek), but it is important to call attention to translation in this
study precisely because Renaissance imitative methods either derived from, were identical
to, or complemented translation methods.
Leonardo Bruni clarified the closeness between imitation and translation, specifying
the procedures they shared and inviting us to see them as sibling activities. In his treatise
on translation, De recta interpretations, and in his educational treatise, De studiis et literis,
Bruni set forth humanist criteria for literary analysis, including grammatical and especially
rhetorical features, which were to serve both for the interpretation and production of
literature. Bruni thus provided the imitator and the translator a common intermediary
position between two texts — one to be closely observed and interpreted, the other to be
composed.
As I argued in chapter 1, foremost among Bruni’s criteria for translation was the
preservation of the style of the model. "This then is the best way to translate; to preserve the
style of the original as well as possible, so that polish and elegance be not lacking in the
words, and the words be not lacking in meaning."1 This is where imitation entered the
translation procedure, according to Bruni. In order to recreate the verbal and expressive
virtues of the author being translated, the translator "imitated" his style:
1 Leonardo Bruni, On the Correct Way to Translate [De recte interpretations], ed. and trans. James
Hankins, in The Humanism of Leonardo Bruni. Trans, and ed. Gordon Griffiths, James Hankins and
David Thompson (Binghamton, New York: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1987), 221.
C h a p t e r F i v e : T r a n s l a t i n g a n d T r a n s f o r m i n g L i t e r a r y S o u r c e s 191
Hence, if he is translating Cicero, with a variety and richness of expression
matching his, the translator must fill up the entire period with large, copious,
and full phrasings, now rushing them along, now building them up. If he
translates Sallust, he must need decide in the case of nearly every word to
observe propriety and great restraint, and to this end must retrench and cut
down. If he translate Livy, he must imitate the latter’s forms of expression.
(221, my emphasis)
This describes the Renaissance approach not only to the translation of entire classical texts
for publication (a major humanist activity), but to those schoolroom translations in which
students acquired facility with Latin. The most elementary use of translation may have been
simply to learn Latin vocabulary and to master Latin syntax and grammar, but as we have
seen, authors were studied not only for the way they exemplified pure Latin diction or
grammar, but for their stylistic virtues, their general rhetorical strategies, and ornamentation.
The method of translation served the broader purpose of perfecting students’ Latin literacy,
of moving them from mere competence to proficiency. This is where imitation and
translation converged.
Historically, translation had served such developmental purposes, not merely the
communicative end of making texts available to foreign audiences otherwise barred from
them. Humanists revived this developmental use for translation at the same time that they
revived Latin generally and the Roman educational theory recommending translation as a
form of exercise. Quintilian, the main source of Renaissance educational theory, referred
to translation in his tenth book as a primary exercise of rhetorical composition and the
natural extension of literary models and imitative theory.2 The distinguished orators of the
past, he notes, had judged highly the practice of turning Greek into Latin. Cicero had
2 Glyn P. Norton, "Translation Theory in Renaissance France: Etienne Dolet and the Rhetorical
Tradition," Renaissance and Reformation 10.1 (1974): 4.
C h a p t e r F i v e : T r a n s l a t i n g a n d T r a n s f o r m i n g L i t e r a r y S o u r c e s 1 9 2
himself urged this practice in De Oratore, explaining how he acquired ability in his youth by
translating into and out of Greek from his native Latin in a conscious attempt to imitate
Greek literary virtues. Cicero defines the most useful kind of translation as one favoring
philosophic and stylistic equivalence rather than word-for-word renditions. These
suggestions, further developed in De optimo genere oratorum and De finibus, specifically
encourage the development of one’s own language through translation. For Cicero,
translation was a rhetorical exercise that served not only to transmit the knowledge found in
the source text, but to develop one’s verbal abilities.
Quintilian carries forward these ideas by characterizing translation as a creative
activity by which new ways of saying things are discovered and achieved. Through translation
students could obtain both the "copiousness of matter" as well as the "art" of the Greeks; this
procedure would supply not only ideas, return copia, butplurimum artis, "the greatest degree
of art" (10.2.1-2). Quintilian’s student Pliny the Younger recommended translation for
acquiring "a propriety and brilliance of vocabulary, a wealth of figures, [and] a vigor of
statement. Moreover," he continues (linking imitation and translation), "from the imitation
of the best writers you will learn their faculty of rhetorical invention" (Epistles 1.5)? Pliny
refers to translation as a genus exetvitationis, "as a training routine, as mental gymnastics, as
it were, designed to stimulate the study of words."4
It was as a genus exetvitationis, a kind of practical exercise in perfecting one’s
linguistic abilities, that Renaissance humanists understood translation to be so closely akin
3 See Donald Leman Clark, "Imitation: Theory and Practice in Roman Rhetoric," Quarterly Journal
of Speech 37 (1951): 11-22.
4 Frederick Rener, Interpretatio: Language and Translation From Cicero to Tytler, Approaches to
Translation Studies, Vol. 8 (Amsterdam and Atlanta, Georgia: Rodopi, 1989), 299.
C h a p t e r F i v e : T r a n s l a t i n g a n d T r a n s f o r m i n g L i t e r a r y S o u r c e s 19 3
to imitation. Doctor Viana of Spain and Orazio Toscanella differentiated between the allied
activities of the imitator and translator only by describing the imitator’s greater freedom of
invention (Rener 309). Jacques Peletier, in his L ’ artpoetique, called translation the "truest
kind of imitation, for to imitate is nothing more than to wish to do that which another does,
and this is just what the translator does when he makes use not only of the invention of
others, but also the disposition and elocution so far as he can."5
Translation as a method consisted of all of the elements of grammatical and
rhetorical instruction that made up the Latin language curriculum, but as a genus
exetvitationis translation can be summarized as the simple effort to transfer characteristics of
a Latin model to the student’s linguistic repertoire.6 Those characteristics could be either
ideas, res, or verbal expressions, verba. The transference of form or content summarizes
imitation methods, which Roger Ascham concisely defined as "Giving different matter
similar treatment, or giving similar matter different treatment" (dissimilis materiei similis
tractatio; similis materiei dissimilis tractatio).7
We will see that the imitative exercises prescribed by humanist educators are
continuous with translation methods employed in acquiring Latin, that they sometimes
employ translation explicitly as a kind of imitation exercise, and that they all require the
5 Jacques Peletier du Mans. L ’ Artpoetique, ed. Andre Boulanger (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1930), 105
(my emphasis).
6 It also affected the development of the student’ s ability in his or her vernacular language, but this
is a separate matter.
7Roger Ascham, The Schoolmaster (1570) in The Whole Works of Roger Ascham, vol. 3., ed. Rev.
[J. A.] Giles (London: John Russell Smith, 1864), 214.
C h a p t e r F i v e : T r a n s l a t i n g a n d T r a n s f o r m i n g L i t e r a r y S o u r c e s 1 9 4
student to perform what is essentially a translative operation, the transference of form or
content.
Barzizza and the Origins of Imitative Transformations
Despite the variations that occur in pedagogy from the early fifteenth century through
the first decades of the seventeenth, explicit instructions in imitative methods remained
remarkably consistent in humanist schools across Europe. All such instruction can be traced
to the earliest known Renaissance treatise on imitation, De imitatione by Gasparino Barzizza,
which Pigman dates at 1417.8 If Leonardo Bruni’s treatise De studiis et literis (1424) first
described the kind of critical reading that was to precede student imitations, then his
contemporary, Barzizza, provided the first treatise that spelled out the nuts and bolts of
actual imitative practice.
Gasparino Barzizza (13707-1431) was among the most important of the early
humanist educators, teaching at Pavia, Padua, and Milan in the last decade of fourteenth
century and the first three of the fifteenth. He was called (by Sabbadini) the "primo
apostolo" of Renaissance Ciceronianism and earned a reputation for his Latin style that made
him an international authority. Sabbadini says Barzizza’s model letters are the best imitation
of Ciceronian style until Cortesi.9 Barzizza represented what Izora Scott called the "rational"
Ciceronians, introducing a studied imitation of Cicero that was not limited to superficial
8 George W. Pigman III, "Barzizza’s Treatise on Imitation," Bibliotheque d ’ humanisme et
Renaissance 44 (1982): 341-52.
9 John Monfasani, "Humanism and Rhetoric," in Renaissance Humanism: Foundation, Forms, and
Legacy, vol. 3, Humanism and the Disciplines, ed. Albert Rabil, Jr. (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1988), 187.
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features but entailed an appreciation of Cicero’s accomplishments as a whole. Like Guarino,
Barzizza established a private boarding school where he made important innovations in the
Latin curriculum. Grendler explains that Barzizza introduced the use of Cicero’s letters as
prose models, supplanting (perhaps supplementing) the medieval ars dictaminis.w Barzizza’s
influence can be traced partly through his famous pupils who in turn taught, such as
Francesco Filelfo (1398-1481),1 1 and partly through the fact that (along with Guarino and
Vittorino da Feltre) he implemented humanistic studies among sons of influential men from
northern Italy. By 1450 the majority of schools in northern Italy taught the studia
humanitatis.1 2 It is likely Barzizza’s imitative methods spread alongside his emphases on
Cicero and the studia humanitatis generally, for later humanists employed these methods he
first outlined.
Having been introduced to classical literature during their instruction in Latin (and
Greek) and having been taught enough grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic to begin to be able
to analyze authors critically, students began their training in writing and speaking by taking
a selection of literature and imitating it through a process of alteration and adaptation. This
proceeded according to one or more of four basic methods of transformation Barzizza
1 0 In the spirit of Petrarch’s letters to ancient figures, Barzizza wrote Epistolae ad exercitationem
accomodatae. Set in ancient Rome, these inculcated classical epistolography by having students read
fictive letters supposedly exchanged by classical figures (Monfasani, 187). Barzizza also wroteExempla
exordiorum, a store of elegant openings for letters and speeches. While derived in part from Cicero’ s
Pro Ligario, this compilation of exordia is essentially a medieval genre from the dictamen tradition.
“ Filelfo would introduce a curriculum in Florence based on reading almost nothing but Cicero’s
rhetorical works in the morning and returning to his Tusculan Disputations in the evening.
1 2 Paul F. Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning 1300-1600 (Baltimore and
London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989).
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outlines in De imitatione: addition (addendo), subtraction (subtrahendo), inversion
(transferendo), and substitution (immutando).1 3
Pigman cites Quintilian as Barzizza’s source.1 4 Quintilian had indeed listed four
corresponding categories of transformation — adiectio, detractio, transmutatio, immutatio.1 5
These are presented in his chapter on barbarisms and solecisms (1.5.38).1 6 The
correspondence between Quintilian’s and Barzizza’s categories is only superficial, however.
Quintilian described these as methods of identifying errors in usage; Barzizza, as methods
of teaching elementary composition. Quintilian provided examples of these "vices" (vitia) on
only grammatical levels of language — pairs of words, short expressions, or syntactical
constructions within a sentence; Barzizza provided examples of these not as vices, but as
strategies of appropriation and invention, sometimes on grammatical levels of language, but
sometimes on much larger orders of composition such as the arrangement of arguments in
1 3 Barzizza, 349 (lines 1-2). Later in the treatise Barzizza adds a fifth method, novando, the
coining of new words. This is obviously a minor addition to the four major methods and indicates that
the treatise was not a polished and finished product, as Pigman notes, but notes written up for his
students over separate periods.
1 4 Pigman, "Barzizza’ s Treatise on Imitation," 349.
1 5 Quintilian obviously associated these transformations with the figures of speech. Later in 1.5
he speaks of addition, subtraction, and inversion in reference to the Greek figures of speech, being
species of hyperbaton, including pleonasm (addition), ellipsis (subtraction), and anastrophe (inversion)
(1.5.40).
1 6 Pigman notes that Quintilian also used these categories to organize his explanation of tropes and
figures; however, these do not stand out as clear organizing rubrics, nor does subtraction appear:
"[Substitution:] The substitution of one word for another is placed among tropes, as for example in
the case of metaphor, metonymy, autonomasia, metalepsis, synechdoche, catechresis, allegory, and as
a rule, hyperbole, which may, of course, be concerned with either words or things. . . . Onomatopoea
is the creation of a word and therefore involves the substitution of the words we should use but for
such creation. [Addition:] Again, although paraphrase often includes the actual word whose place it
supplies, it still uses a number of words in place of it. . . . [Inversion:] Hyperbaton is a change of
order. . . it transfers a word or part of a word from its own place to another" (9.1.1).
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a speech. Barzizza also supplied the idea that by way of these transformations one could
conceal the fact that one was borrowing while taking advantage of the help that borrowing
provided. Quintilian would also promote imitation, especially, as was discussed in chapter
4, relative to what models are to read for imitation. That discussion, however, occurs in book
10, distant from the four categories of solecism he describes in book 1. Even if Barzizza did
derive his categories from Quintilian, he turned them to novel uses.1 7
A better candidate for Barzizza’ s most immediate source would be the medieval
poetical treatise, Geoffrey of Vinsauf s Poetria nova.1 8 While Vinsauf s poetical-rhetorical
treatise does not set forth all four of Barzizza’s methods, it does concern itself almost entirely
with amplifying or abbreviating language on the basis of an awareness of the formal qualities
of prose or poetry. Given the importance of amplification to imitative practice, this popular
work (some 200 manuscripts testify of its Renaissance circulation) was a clear precedent, if
not a direct source, for the techniques of expanding or contracting disocurse that would
characterize Renaissance imitative pedagogy.1 9
The origins of Renaissance amplification have been traced by George Engelhardt in
his attempt to account for Erasmus’s concept of copia. Engelhardt finds an alternative but
less convincing source for the doctrine of amplification, the medieval art of sermon writing.
1 7 A parallel to this novel use of established ideas will be seen in the concept of copia. While copia
had long described a kind of stylistic level, Erasmus developed copia into a generalized concept of
abundance and preparation for any rhetorical exigency. See chapter 6.
1 8 Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Poetria Nova, trans. Margaret F. Nims (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of
Mediaeval Studies, 1967).
1 9 See the discussion of classical, medieval, and Renaissance amplification theory and Erasmus’ s
debt to Geoffrey in particular in Ernest Gallo, The " Poetria Nova" and its Sources in Early Rhetorical
Doctrine (The Hague: Mouton, 1971), 150-66.
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He links amplification to dilation and the eight modes of dilation (octi modi dilatandi) of the
artes concionandi of the high Middle Ages. These eight methods, employed to create a
sermon, derived partly from Christian exegetics, he explains, partly from Greek dialectic.2 0
Engelhardt claims these methods of amplification had their counterpart in the medieval
poetics of Vinsauf, a view Faral shares.2 1 However, as Engelhardt acknowledges, Vinsauf s
source for amplification theory does not derive from the homiletic tradition but from the
rhetorical and grammatical traditions, going ultimately back to A d Herennium, as transmitted
through the praeexercitamina of ancient schools (specifically, Hermogenes) by way of the
grammarian Priscian (741).2 2 The likelihood that Barzizza was influenced by Vinsauf is
2 0 I have summarized these modes and their purported origin in the following table. None of the
Latin terms for the eight modes of dilation matches that used by Barzizza, Sturm, or Erasmus.
Modes of dilation in the artes concionandi
From Christian exegetics From Greek dialectic
1 . notificando
Derived from tonoi:
1. ex definitione,
2. dividendo 2.
ex descriptione,
ex notatione
ex partitione,
4. per auctoritates 4.
ex divisione
ex auctoritate
5.
concordantes
per ea quae eisudem sunt 5. ex conjugatione
6. exponendo metaphoras
7. thema diversimode exponere
8.
cogmtioms
per causas et effectus 8. ex causis;
ex effectis
2 1 E. Faral, Les arts poetique du Xlle et du Xllle siecle (Paris, 1924), 62.
2 2 The praeexercitamina or progymnasmata, very important to Renaissance curricula, will be
described in detail below.
C h a p t e r F i v e : T r a n s l a t i n g a n d T r a n s f o r m i n g L i t e r a r y S o u r c e s 1 9 9
strengthened by the fact that Vinsauf discusses three of Barzizza’s four methods, including
quite specific directions on how to vary language through various inversions (in his section
on arrangement).
Categories similar to those Barzizza named informed Renaissance translation.
Although absent from Bruni’s inaugural treatise on translation, they are found in part in
other discussions of translation from the early Quattrocento. In a letter to Pietro Loschi,
Coluccio Salutati praised Loschi’s plan to put Leonzio Pilato’s prose translation of Homer’s
Iliad into verse. Salutati instructed Loschi on how to proceed. Salutati scorns the prose
rendition for being exsanguis and inomata, insufficiently elegant and so unfaithful to Homer.
To correct this, he urges Loschi to make certain transformations to improve the translation.
"He should also try to make the sequence of things more graceful by making changes to the
existing text in the form of additions or omissions: si denique poteris, inventa commutans, vel
omittens aliquid aut addens, seriem efficere gratiorem."2 3 These changes correspond to three
of Barzizza’s categories: omittens - subtraction, addens - addition, and commutans - inversion
or transposition. In his study of the methods of humanists, Remigio Sabbadini concluded
that translation consisted of nearly parallel categories: "Siamo dunque awisati: tradurre
significa abbelire, abbelire, abbelire e sopratutto mutare, togliere, aggiungere";2 4 "We are
therefore informed: to translate means to beautify, beautify, beautify, and above all, to
change, remove and add."2 5
2 3 Quoted in Rener, Interpretatio, 215.
2 4 Remigio Sabbadini, II Metodo degli Umanisti (Florence: Felice Le Monnier, 1922), 26.
2 S A more technical application of these categories to translation will be mentioned in the section
on substitution, below.
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That Barzizza’s methods persisted through the Renaissance as a specific set of
transformations to be used in imitation can be seen by looking ahead a century and a half
to the opposite side of Europe, where humanist Johann Sturm would provide nearly identical
instructions on imitation in his much more elaborate treatise on imitation.2 6 Sturm’s De
imitatione oratoria libri tres (1574) covers many aspects of imitation, including the perennial
debate over who should be imitated and whether imitations are to be of a strict or free
nature. His third of three books on imitation in this work concerns itself with the same
methods of transformation Barzizza spelled out 157 years previously. In a chapter titled
Quae res sint necessariae ad occultandam imitationem; "Those things necessary to conceal
one’s imitation," Sturm lists six: addition (appositio), subtraction (detractio), transposition
(transpositio), substitution (immutatio), amplification {copia), and abbreviation (brevitas).2 7
The first four obviously correspond to Barzizza’s, while the last two, amplification and
abbreviation, parallel the first two, addition and subtraction, but are more general in scope.2 8
This is only a refinement of what is essentially Barzizza’s paradigm.
Barzizza’s categories dominate explicit instruction in imitation in the Renaissance, as
following sections will illustrate.2 9 With more or less specificity and by means of various
exercises, humanists throughout the period under consideration based their specific imitative
. 2 6 Barzizza’s treatise is only some 1700 words in length. Sturm’ s consists of three books and some
43 chapters. It is the most thorough Renaissance treatise on imitation.
2 7 Sturm also provides corresponding Greek terms for these operations; however, these are not
identical to Quintilian’s Greek terms, cited above, n. 15.
zsCopia and brevitas were established terms for describing authors’ styles as a whole, whereas
addition and subtraction focused attention on more local levels of language.
2 9 In addition to his four methods of transformation, Barzizza’s treatise reiterates several provisos
regarding the overall nature of imitation, described metaphorically. See chapter 7.
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methods on one or more of these basic transformations. All closely related to each another,
these transformative methods share a common focus (a literary model), a common procedure
(changing the form or the content of the model in some way) to achieve a common goal
(aiding students to compose on their own).
Imitation and Composition (IV. The Transformative Method of Addition
The first method of transforming literary sources that Barzizza describes is through
addition (addendo). Barzizza describes the transformation of addition as pertaining to both
micro- and macro-levels of composition.3 0 At first, addition means simply adding more words
to a given locution:
I imitate through addition when, for example, if I discover some brief Latin
in Cicero (or in another source), I join to it some words from which it will
seem that the latter Latin takes its form and distinction from the former. For
example, if it is given that Cicero had said, Scite hoc inquit Brutus ["'You
know this,’ said Brutus."], I will add to it and say Scite enim ac eleganter hoc
inquit Me vir noster Brutus ["'For you know this,' said that man of ours,
Brutus, so neatly"]. Behold how it seems to have a form distinct from the
original, and this can also be proven to have a similarity. (349, lines 2-4)
Note that Barzizza calls attention to the way his addition both maintains and alters the form
of the original sentence. In this instance nothing is altered of the syntax or grammar in the
sentence; Barzizza merely adds adverbs and pronouns. The form is changed chiefly by its
length. (The consequence of these additions upon the meaning can be seen in the added
emphasis given to Brutus, and, through the adverbs, by the manner in which Brutus is
reported to have said something.) The goal is to adopt the distinction (diversam) and form
3 0 Barzizza’ s treatise is not polished and includes reiterations and variations of his methods. In
the case of each transformative method I am bringing to bear all that he said relative to each,
although these are not found together in the original document.
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( formam) of the original while attempting to add something new. Barzizza makes this seem
rather simplistic through a comic comparison:
If some painter made a portrait of a man absent a left or right hand, I would
take the brush and add a left or right hand, and even paint in a horn for him
on his head. You see how it seems that this figure is quite distinct from the
original. (351, lines 103-04)
This example betrays the care that Barzizza himself and many humanists after him would
show regarding the propriety of the changes one made upon one’s model. We should not
take the ridiculousness of his example as evidence of the deficiency of imitative methods until
we know his entire doctrine. Barzizza’s point is simply that through additions one can
quickly make something quite different from the form of one’s model.
Barzizza elsewhere describes imitation through addition upon a larger level of
composition: "when we take, for instance, one of Cicero’s briefer speeches and we must
amplify it." This implies more than simply filling in additional words within established
sentences. Barzizza suggests supplying additional or alternate means to achieve the same
purpose:
Take this example: If Tully or someone else discusses war, you could imitate
him through other words both through substitution and addition. You may
commemorate our ancestors in this war either by making them examples,
through a parallel, or through rhetorical figures. (349, lines 15-17)
Here we see the overlapping nature of addition and substitution. What appears to be added
to or amplified is the theme or content of a given speech; what is substituted are the means
for developing that theme.3 1
3 1 Those means — exempla, comparisons, or figures — are rhetorical elements students are trained
to see in the literature they read.
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Amplification is addition on a larger scale or as a more general principle of
development. To give this larger concept of addition separate status, Johann Sturm divided
the concept of addition. He pairs subtractio not with addendo but with appositio, apposition.
An apposition is a very local and specific sort of addition in which words of the same
grammatical category are placed next to their models. For the broader sense of addition
(that Barzizza also addresses within his discussion of addition but does*! not supply a separate
/
term for, refering alternately to addition and amplification for any kind of expansion), Sturm
uses the term copia. As will become apparent later, this invokes the powerful concept of
abundant expression that Erasmus foregrounded in his De copia verborum ac rerum (1512).
Whatever the terms employed, we may understand that imitation through addition occurred
both on local grammatical levels of language and on higher levels of composition.
Barzizza suggests that the method of addition can be tried on more than brief
speeches. Amplification or addition may be practiced whenever "a simple account has been
proposed to you; for example, in a letter to be composed, or if you should desire to select
a maxim among the books of all the most wise" (349, lines 13-15). When Barzizza suggests
here that an amplification may be done upon any short account, especially upon a saying to
be found among the wise, he is describing (tersely) a kind of exercise in amplification that
would be used extensively in writing instruction across Renaissance Europe: the
progymnasmata.
Amplification was a ubiquitous method employed in humanist curricula and is closely
associated with the popular set of exercises imported from the Greek rhetorical tradition
C h a p t e r F iv e : T r a n s l a t in g a n d T r a n s f o r m in g L it e r a r y S o u r c e s 2 0 4
known as the progymnasmata (sometimes: praeexercitamina).3 2 These were a set of
preparatory exercises in composition (eight to 14 in number, depending on how they were
counted) that were developed in ancient Greece and codified in the works of three Greek
rhetoricians, Aelius Theon (first century), Hermogenes (second century), and Apthonius of
Antioch (fourth century).3 3
These were called progymnasmata because they preceded student composition of
gymnasmata, or declamations (Kennedy, 53).3 4 Each of the dozen or so exercises served as
a structural building block for the larger speech. For example, the exercise in "narrative"
corresponded to the narration of facts in the declamation; and exercises in "confirmation" and
"refutation" directly corresponded to those parts of a speech in which arguments were proven
and refuted. The exercises accommodated not only speech-writing, but composition
generally. Kennedy refers to the more general import of these exercises, calling them "the
3 2 Barzizza may have learned of these exercises from Quintilian, who redacts them in 2.4.
However, the complete Quintilian was not found until 1421, four years following the date of Barzizza’s
treatise. Hermogenes’ exercises were redacted in Priscian, another probable source.
3 3 They included (according to Hermogenes) 1) myth or fable; 2) narrative tale; 3) anecdote or
chria (so called because it was chreiOd.es, useful); 4) proverb or saying; 5) refutation; 6) confirmation;
7) commonplace (by which was meant an amplification of a vicious or virtuous type of person); 8)
encomia; 9) invective; 10) comparison (a double encomium or an encomium and invective); 11)
personification (the dramatic imitation of a person); 12) description (an account to render something
or someone visible); 13) thesis (a logical argument); and 14) advocating or opposing a law. Adapted
from George A. Kennedy, Greek Rhetoric Under Christian Emperors (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton
University Press, 1983), 60-66. See also James J. Murphy’ s summary of these exercises as set forth
by Quintilian in "Roman Writing Instruction as Described by Quintilian,” in A Short History o f Writing
Insturction From Ancient Greece to Twentieth-Century America, ed. James J. Murphy (Davis, California:
Hermagoras Press, 1990), 57-61.
3 4 In Greek education these exercises came at the latter part of training in grammar and the early
part of training in rhetoric, but in the Renaissance these fields were taught simultaneously in grammar
schools and so these exercises occurred at an early stage.
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bases of rhetorical composition in [Greek] literature" (53). They seem to have served a
parallel purpose in Renaissance Latin education.
As students acquired facility in these exercises, they would then be able to imitate the
form of larger speeches by adding together these constituent parts. In this case Barzizza’s
transformation of addition simply describes the compositional procedure of combining parts
into a whole. Upon mastery of the progymnasmata, students would have in hand those
ingredients which, properly added to one another, could produce a complete composition.
Amplification has sometimes been understood to mean simply enlarging what is given into
a lengthier form (as, for example, in the medieval odes modi dUentandi). However, it will
be seen that adding additional features to the model one is imitating was a guided process
that included specifications as to what should be added or, more importantly, how new
ingredients were to be added. Of this, more later.
Many of the dozen progymnasmata were themselves exercises in addition (or
subtraction). For example, in his directions for the first progymnasma, rewriting a myth,
Hermogenes instructs students to do so through amplification or abbreviation: "Myths are
sometimes to be expanded, sometimes to be told concisely. How? By now telling in bare
narrative, and now feigning the words of the given characters." Hermogenes suggests that
a simple narrative can be expanded by adding dialogue. He then provides an example —
first the unadorned matter, then its amplification. This will become a pattern followed by
many Renaissance educators as they would provide similar instructions in amplification:
For example, "the monkeys in council deliberated on the necessity of settling
in houses. When they had made up their minds to this end and were about
to set to work, an old monkey restrained them, saying that they would more
easily be captured if they were caught within enclosures." Thus if you are
concise; but if you wish to expand, proceed in this way. "The monkeys in
council deliberated on the founding of a city; and one coming forward made
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a speech to the effect that they too must have a city. "For see," said he, "how
fortunate in this regard are men. Not only does each of them have a house,
but all going up together to public meeting or theater delight their souls with
all manner of things to see and hear." Go on thus, dwelling on the incidents
and saying that the decree was formally passed; and devise a speech for the
old monkey. So much for this.3 5
This gives students a clear pattern to follow. They see the original matter and its
amplification; they are told the method by which the first matter is expanded and can see it
for themselves.
Amplification became a standard method for composing literature, as this example
from book seven of Paradise Lost shows. Here, Milton takes the bare skeletal account of the
creation from Genesis and imitates it through amplification. Where Genesis says "Let there
be light," Milton substitutes:
Let there be light said God, and forthwith Light
Ethereal, first of things, quintessence pure
Sprung from the Deep, and from her Native East
To journey through the airy gloom began,
Spher’d in a radiant Cloud. . . . (7.243-47)
To be more specific, Milton adds descriptive appositions of light as well as a narrative
structure, describing light’s journey to creation. The dates of Milton’s poetic productions fall
outside of the current study, but his education does not. What we discern in Paradise Lost
is evidence of the training Milton received at St. Paul’s School, the grammar school whose
curriculum Erasmus devised in 1512 at the request of Dean Colet.3 6 In that school, a
prototype of Renaissance humanist education, students practiced amplification according to
3 5 Quoted and trans. in Charles Sears Baldwin, Medieval Rhetoric and Poetic to 1400 (New York:
Macmillan, 1928), 24.
3 6 Donald Lemen Clark, John Milton at St. Paul’ s School: A Study of Ancient Rhetoric in English
Renaissance Education (New York: Columbia University Press), 1948.
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the progymnasmata, and learned various kinds of amplification by consulting Erasmus’s
important work on that topic.
The refinements made to the practice of amplification subsequent to Barzizza had
to do with specifying and multiplying specific methods by which one could add to one’s
model. Amplification would receive its most extended treatment in Erasmus’s De duplici
copia verborum ac rerum (1512). The means for amplifying multiply according to the criteria
by which literature can by analyzed and by combining with these the other transformative
methods of imitation. Composing multiple variations became the chief exercise in
amplification. Through variations, students could achieve original compositions that began \
I
in imitation of models, and adapt the various virtues of their imitated models to novel i
\
circumstances.3 7
Imitation and Composition (21: The Transformative Method of Subtraction
Of the four transformative methods of imitation that Barzizza describes, he is briefest
regarding subtraction. In one place he merely says it is to be understood as the contrary to
addition; in another, he says subtraction "occurs when a given speech is long and we must
then reduce it to something briefer" (349, line 4). This is in fact a definition of epitome,3 8
The making of epitomes was not unique to the Renaissance nor to schooling. From antiquity
had stretched a long tradition of summary making that had diverse manifestations in history,
3 7 See the section on De copia in chapter 6, and the discussion of decorum and judgement in
chapter 7.
3 8 Today we would call this a summary or paraphrase. However, paraphrasis meant something
quite different from a summary (epitome) in the Renaissance and should not be confused with it. See
the section on transformation through substitution, below.
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philosophy, and religion, not the least of which were books of commonplaces, florilegia, and
redactions of moral wisdom for the use of preachers in composing sermons in the middle
ages.3 9 Epitome-making became a common publishing venture in the Renaissance at the
advent of print, as authors re-presented the works of earlier writers in abbreviated form.
Significant epitomes in the Renaissance were issued for important works by Lorenzo Valla,4 0
Rudolph Agricola, and just about any other famed author.4 1
Roger Ascham mourned the ubiquity of epitomes in the Renaissance. He claimed
the epitome "hath hurt generally learning itself very much" (199).4 2 Through summary, he
lamented, had been lost much wisdom, especially in philosophy and divinity. While he grants
some use to commonplace books as "very necessary to induce a man into an orderly general
knowledge" — even complimenting the commonplace books of Peter Lombard and Philip
Melanchthon — he fears that too many people dwell in these second-hand sources rather
than immersing themselves in the primary texts (201).
We should be careful not to confuse the long textual tradition of summaries and
commonplace books with the rhetorical exercise of abbreviation known as epitome. The
notebooks that Renaissance schoolchildren were required to compile were sometimes
3 9 Examples include the Gesta romanorum, the Exemplorum liber, the Speculum laicorum, and most
especially the medieval Summa predkantium of John of Bromyarde.
'“For example, Erasmus’s Paraphrasis seupotius epitome in elegantias Laurentii Vallae (written 1488,
published officially 1531).
4 1 Georg Major appears to have made a steady living from making epitomes of humanist texts.
He reduced Erasmus’ s De copia verborum ac rerum to tabular form in 1526 and at another time made
a similar redaction of Melanchthon’s Rhetorica.
4 2 Amusingly, we find Ascham’s qualms over epitomes set to one side when the prospect of making
them could resolve his own financial need. Around 1540 he made an offer to Edward Lee, archbishop
of York, to epitomize any books the archbishop had no time to read. Lee did employe Ascham, but
for translating rather than epitomizing.
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referred to as commonplace books, often including in abbreviated form what students culled
from their reading at large. However, these differed widely from the summaries with which
Ascham found fault by the simple fact that the students composed their contents. This made
the entire difference. Ascham’s dissatisfaction is directed toward those who depend upon
summaries for their knowledge, not to those who exercise themselves by making an
abbreviation of another’s work. On this he is clear: "Epitome is good privately for himself
that doth work it, but ill commonly for all other that use other men’s labour therein" (200).
Johann Sturm concurred in this principle. Like Ascham, he saw the value of
abbreviated accounts to be had in their making. After describing the three kinds of
notebooks he recommends for analyzing literature (one for words, one for ideas, one for the
principles of art), he cautions:
though some men also have indevoured to gather togither common places of
thinges, and so store us therewithall: yet is it both profitable for memorie:
and the gayness [sic] waye to perfection that every man should gather and
dispose his owne places. . . ."4 3
Although Ascham ascribes some benefit to the making of epitomes, this is necessarily limited
in its utility,4 4 chiefly because the epitome is "a way of study belonging rather to matter, than
to words" (199). By being restricted to res, this exercise paid insufficient attention to verba.
Ascham’s attitude is understandable given the attention humanists devoted to the linguistic
nature of knowledge, to its formal qualities. When attempting to abbreviate a text, students
would not seek to imitate the language or form in which they found it, but to concentrate
solely on the content. Ascham finds this activity far inferior to his favorite imitative exercise,
4 3 Johann Sturm, A ritch Storehouse or Treasurie for Nobilitye and Gentlemen (Nobilitas literata
1549), trans. T. Browne (London, 1570), 23r .
wHe suggests it is not so much for grammar school scholars as it is for "learned men."
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double translation (discussed below). For it, unlike epitome, engaged students not only in
the res but the verba of the model.
One of the great fears regarding imitation (and translation, too) is that violence will
be done to the form or content of the original during the imitation. But what if the original
could use emendation? It is in this case that Ascham finds epitome a profitable exercise.
Consider the author who "either by lustiness of nature, or brought by ill teaching to a wrong
judgment is over-full of words and sentences and matter" (203). Ascham identifies Hall’s
Chronicle, for example, as a work in which "much good matter is quite marred with indenture
English" (202). To abbreviate such an author would be an improvement. In so doing
Ascham suggests (adding the transformation of substitution to subtraction) that one "change
strange and inkhorn terms into proper and commonly used words; next, specially to weed out
that that is superfluous and idle" (202).
Such an exercise, Ascham continues, would be of even greater benefit when practiced
on one’s own writing (207). He cites the example of Virgil, of whom it was reported that
"when he had written forty or fifty verses [he did] not cease cutting, paring, and polishing of
them, till he had brought them to the number of ten or twelve" (207). Ascham enjoins such
paring for all kinds of writing; one is "to peruse diligently, and see and spy wisely, what is
always more than needeth" (208). He compares overcharged prose to an overcharged
stomach, and epitome is the physician to remedy the situation. "And therefore is he always
the best English physician, that best can give a purgation: that is by way of Epitome to cut
all over-much away (208). Here we see imitation as revision: one imitates one’s own writing,
copying the sense but leaving behind the "superfluities" that impede understanding. This
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depends, of course, on seeing imitation as a form of substitution as well, not simply
subtraction, as will be shortly discussed.
Ascham’s is the fullest account of epitome I have found in Renaissance pedagogical
texts. Conceivably, subtraction or abbreviation was possible along the same lines that
addition or amplification was. We find it mentioned paired with amplification from
Hermogenes’ progymnasmata to Erasmus’s De copia. But little exposition and fewer
examples of it are to be found in pedagogical texts. Erasmus accounts for why subtraction
or abbreviation is more mentioned than shown.
In his introduction to a book devoted to the amplification and abundance of words
and matter, Erasmus discusses the dangers of an overabundant style and the necessity of
brevity. However, he claims, the way to know how to speak in a compressed manner is by
becoming acquainted with all of the ways by which one may in fact amplify his or her
discourse. This is because amplification does not merely mean the heaping up of utterance,
but becoming aware of specific linguistic strategies by which discourse is composed and
arranged. Amplification implies a critical faculty, not just an accumulative one. Erasmus is
convinced that the knowledge of how to amplify language and matter is identical to the
knowledge of how to compress language and matter:
To take compression of language first, who will speak more succinctly than
the man who can readily and without hesitation pick out from a huge army
of words, from the whole range of figures of speech, the feature that
contributes most effectively to brevity? And as for compression of content,
who will show the greatest mastery in setting out his subject in the fewest
possible words if not the man who has carefully worked out what are the
salient points of his case, the pillars so to speak on which it rests,
distinguishing them from the subsidiary points and things brought in merely
for embellishment? No one in fact will see more swiftly and surely what can
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be omitted without disadvantage than the man who can see where and how
to make additions.4 5
This may indeed explain why the subject of subtraction or abbreviation is more mentioned
than developed in pedagogical treatises.
One may find the quality of brevity, if not the activity of abbreviation, treated in
Renaissance discussions of style or in those catalogues of authors, mentioned above, that
assess the virtues of various authors.4 6 These fit into the imitation tradition insofar as they
develop standards and inform the critical faculties of students, but such discussions only
imply the need to imitate the virtues of one style and avoid the vices of another; they do not
necessarily provide directions on how, for example, to achieve Seneca’s abbreviated style.
Imitation and Composition (31: The Transformative Method of Inversion
After addition and subtraction, Barzizza sets forth inversion {transferendo) as the next
method of imitative transformation. This is defined rather simply as the transformation that
occurs "when that which was placed before is placed after" (349, lines 4-5). It is, in fact, a
transposition (Sturm replaces Barzizza’s transferendo with transpositio). This appears to apply
either to exchanging the order of words or of ideas. Barzizza refers to the former, while
Sturm defines transpositio as "a migration of ideas to another location in the phrase, period,
or arrangement, all the while retaining their same meaning" (Transpositio, cum manentibus
4 5 Desiderius Erasmus, Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style: De duplici copia verborum ac
rerum Commentarii duo, trans. and ed. Betty I. Knott, in Collected Works of Erasmus: Literary and
Educational Writings 2, ed. Craig R. Thompson, vol. 28 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978),
300.
4 6 The close of Ascham’ s Schoolmaster includes detailed discussions of various authors’ styles. For
example, he takes to task the Portuguese bishop, Osorius, famous for his prolixity, for badly needing
to abbreviate his style.
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sententiis, in eadem conversione aut circumscriptione, collocatione, solum in alii locum migrant
sententiae).4 7
These definitions seem to restrict inversion largely to the sentence level, but Barzizza
later specifies that the same can be said regarding the alteration of ideas (sententiis) as has
just been said relative to changing words. "When I say 'words’ I refer to any part of language
whatsoever" (351, line 13). The exchange of ideas, of course, could involve a sentence-level
transposition or something as large as the entire arrangement of a composition. Elsewhere
in his treatise Barzizza points out that imitation may be practiced on the level of an entire
speech, specifically in terms of its invention or its arrangement.4 8
Given this, we may understand the inventive nature of inversion or transposition when
Barzizza suggests that "we may use for the introductions of our orations or epistles what we
may draw from the concluding remarks of our adversaries" (350, lines 47-48). Classical
rhetoric made clear distinctions between the exordium and theperoratio, the introduction and
conclusion of a speech. One could even say these parts of an oration constituted separate
genres. For example, one would not consult the section of a rhetorical manual regarding
conclusions in order to compose one’s introduction. Yet the concept of inversion or
transposition makes it possible to imitate the peroratio of the former speaker as a source of
invention for the exordium of the speaker to follow. More than just a set of methods for
4 7 Johann Sturm, De imitatione libri tres (1574), 3.3.1.
4 8 "There are as many varieties of imitation as there are parts by which a speech is composed. For
if I desire to imitate invention, I will see how Cicero did it both where he wrote concerning invention
and where he composed his own speeches. If I desired to imitate arrangement, I will see how Cicero
has employed arrangement, and so on with the other (parts of rhetoric). I would except memory,
since these things cannot be given by writing" (351, lines 119-20).
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changing extant writings into something more original, imitation appears to provide a unique
methodology for invention.
Transposition, the reordering of material, is inherent in the other transformative
methods of imitation — particularly substitution. It may in fact be considered a subset of
substitution, since changing the places of a pair of elements is simply a double substitution.
It will thus be mentioned in the following section, particularly in regard to the changes
suggested for words and their features in the discussion of enallage, and again when the
subject of amplification is resumed in connection with copia and variety.
Manipulating a source by inverting its order was an inherent part of learning to
translate either into or out of Latin and the vernacular. The inflected nature of Latin was
a primary difference from word-order vulgar tongues, requiring students to recognize how
Latin could accommodate various word orders that their native languages could not. Several
pedagogues formalized instruction in transposition as part of learning Latin grammar,
including the anonymous author of Certaine Epistles of Tully verbally translated (1611), and
the more famous John Brinsley in his Ludus Literarius or the Grammar Schoole (1612). Both
educators provided elaborate systems of construing Latin and analyzing Latin models that
included making a "grammatical translation." This consisted of transposing the Latin syntax
into English word order prior to proceeding with the translation. While far from being a
complete translation, such a transposition would require the correct identification of speech
parts, inflections, and their syntax. These books included examples arranged in columns,
-Brinsley’s being the most elaborate, with one column allotted to the original sentence, the
second to the grammatical translation, a third to an English rendering of the grammatical
translation, and a fourth to a more polished vernacular version. Apparently Brinsley’s
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method caught on, for around the same time as his text a spate of "grammatical translations"
whole editions of classical authors "translated" from their original Latin to Latin in English
word order. Like the epitomes lamented by Ascham, these probably profited far more those
who made the "translations" than those who read them.
With Brinsley’s help or not, students necessarily employed inversion in order to
translate Latin. Imitative transpositions merely extended this process from the sentence to
multiple levels of composition, from the parts of speech to the parts of a speech, from
inverting word order in a sentence (a feat more feasible in the inflected tongues of Greek
and Latin), to inverting the beginning and the end of an oration. Thus, students acquired
a certain linguistic flexibility by acquiring the ability to "transpose" various elements of
discourse.
Transposition is a term that seems closest to translation itself, since in moving formal
elements from one place to another students had to perform the same task that occurs in
translation proper, preserving the sense while the nature of the language alters. Transposition
also suggests a general pattern of transference that is at the heart of rhetorical activity,
evident on the local level of "transferred" meaning in the figures of speech, as well as on a
grander scale, the transference of classical wisdom and eloquence through literary
translations. These may be considered merely different orders of the same general activity
of transposition or translation.
Imitation and Composition C4L The Transformative Method of Substitution
Barzizza discusses substitution at greater length and in more detail than any of the
other methods by which imitation occurs. Substitution is indeed a key concept in
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understanding imitation because by it we can understand both general as well as highly
specific kinds of imitation.
Barzizza recommends many kinds of substitutions, but these can all be classed under
two heads: substitution of res, or subject matter; and substitution of verba, the words or form
of expression. In other words, to imitate by substitution meant either to substitute different
subject matter while maintaining the same form as one’s model, or to substitute a new form
of expression while keeping the same subject matter as the model. We are reminded once
more of Ascham’s useful definition of imitation (coming some 150 years after Barzizza), that
encompasses these two sorts of substitutions: "Giving different matter similar treatment, or
giving similar matter different treatment" (dissimilis materiel similis tractatio; similis materiei
dissimilis tractatio; 214).
Under the heading of substitution Barzizza lists first the method of proceeding in
eadem re, using the same matter or content. "For example, let’s say Cicero or someone else
defends a charge of bribery; I may imitate by addressing the same issue" (349, lines 6-7).
As mentioned above in connection with addition, one may simply develop the given model’s
theme or content, substituting new arguments. However, imitation typically involved
following one’s model more closely than this. When imitating from the same matter
(substituting different verba), Barzizza says this can be done either in part or as a whole:
By part would be if someone defending Horace had spoken well, I could
myself through imitation defend Peter in the same way. As a whole would
be more involved. For example, if someone has praised Scipio; I could in
turn praise Peter, by imitation employing the same material and the same
subject matter throughout, but all the while altering the words and diligently
tempering them. (350-51, lines 84-87)
The substitution of new words was a principle means of imitation and received a great
deal of attention by Barzizza and many after him. Not to substitute words, merely to lift
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words wholesale out of an author and sew them into one’s own composition, was considered
plagiarism, furari, not imitation (according to Vives and Erasmus). Barzizza and many others
provided specific suggestions on how to alter the words of one’s model both in order not to
be accused of slavishly copying and in order to better fit the new subject and new
circumstances of the imitation (see chapter 7). We will see that the easiest method of
substituting new words is by finding synonyms or periphrastic constructions. This is the
substitution of words according to semantic signification. But Barzizza suggests the
substitution of words according to their grammatical signification:
If the Latin which we desire to imitate is in the nominative case, we should
take and alter this into another case insofar as it can be altered. Likewise if
something were singular in number we may change this into plural. (350,
lines 39-41)
And elsewhere:
By substitution or exchange (commutando) comes the altering of words,
namely replacing one word for another, or a number for another number,
whether singular or plural or the reverse, or exchanging one case for another,
whether nominative or genitive (and so on for the other [cases]). (351, lines
106-07)
What Barzizza outlines here rather barely would be thoroughly developed later in grammar,
translation, and imitation treatises under the title of (per)mutatio, commutatio, or more
commonly in its Greek rendering, enallage.
Thomas Linacre published an important new grammar in the first quarter of the
sixteenth century, De emendata structura Latini sermonis (London, 1524).4 9 He divides his
lengthy discussion of enallage into the four permutations possible in substituting declinable
4 9 Percival claims this to be, with Curio Lancellotti Pasi’ s De rebus non vulgaribus, (1504) among
the few "theoretical" grammars to be composed since the Middle Ages. W. K. Percival, "Grammar
and Rhetoric in the Renaissance." Studies in the Theory and Practice of Renaissance Eloquence, ed.
James J. Murphy ( Berkeley, 1983): 303-30.
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or undeclinable parts of speech.5 0 To take a brief example for each (he provides many),
enallage occurs when an adjective is substituted for an adverb (such as recens for recenter,
which he cites from Virgil). This is an example of a declinable part being inserted for an
undeclinable speech part. When a preposition is substituted for a verb, this is an
undeclinable part being substituted for a declinable one. A verb for a noun is an example
of changing a declinable part for another declinable part; and when an adverb is substituted
for a conjunction, this shows an undeclinable part substituted for another undeclinable part.
Unlike Barzizza’s treatment, Linacre’s grammar is descriptive, not prescriptive.
Enallage is not presented as a strategy of composition or imitation, but as a means for
understanding how authors have used Latin in literature (an important component of
imitation, as examined in chapter 4, but only half of it). Melanchthon’s preface promises the
grammar to be useful for helping students learn Latin, but this is the extent of its imitative
application.
Sir Lawrence Humphrey’s treatise on translation5 1 does discuss enallage as a strategy
of writing in the translation process. Referring to it as a tropum licentiae, Humphrey claimed
enallage or mutatio provided the translator a certain libertas mutandi ac variandi, "liberty of
changing and varying" (445). Humphrey divided enallage into three sorts of alteration or
mutatio: 1) mutatio verbi, which allowed for synonyms or circumlocutions (as opposed to
strictly equivalent diction); 2) mutatio partis orationis, by which one part of speech could be
substituted for another; and 3) mutatio qualitatis, by which the various permutations of
5 0 Thomas Linacre, De emendata structure Latini sermonis (London, 1524), 88-121.
5 1 Sir Laurence Humphrey, Interpretatio linguarum seu de ratione convertendi et explicandi autores
tam sacros quant prophanes (1559). This is the most complete Renaissance translation treatiase
according to Rener,
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accidence could be substituted for one another: of verbs, one could substitute their genus,
tempus, modus, or coniugatio; of nouns, one could exchange their persona, numerus, casus,
declinatio, or genus (455-56). This is simply a greater specification of the same kinds of
substitional transformation Barzizza mentioned. Humphrey further qualified enallage,
dividing it into mutatio necessaria, those grammatical substitutions required for understanding
the source text, and mutatio venusta, those rhetorical substitutions that could supply a more
copious or elegant rendition. The transformation of addition is implied in the latter, since
he suggests two nouns could be substituted for one (478).5 2
Not only an important methodological strategy in translation practice, enallage will
be discussed again in connection with De copia in chapter 6 as a method of variation and
amplification. At this point enallage may be understood as substitutive strategy that operated
either semantically or grammatically (by content or by form). To effect such a substitution
implied acquaintance with literature (for the development of vocabulary) and with grammar
(to be acquainted with the kinds of exchanges of linguistic forms possible). Since many of
the exchanges possible through grammar involved sentence order inversions, enallage was
equally a method of transposition.
When Barzizza next considers imitation through the substitution of new subject
matter (res) while keeping the same form of expression (verba), he first suggests replacing
the given subject matter with something that is similar: "For example, if someone accuses
another of extorting money, I myself may accuse them of the crime of bribery, because this
is something similar" (349, lines 8-9). In another example: If "someone has praised a civil
5 2 "Doubling" was a principle of translation that had been articulated as early as Cicero.
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law, I will praise a canonical law, since there is a great similarity between the one and the
other" (351, lines 89-90).
In addition to using similarity, one may substitute new subject matter by maintaining
the same rhetorical purpose but seeking proofs from other commonplaces. "For example,
if someone praises one from [the commonplace] of prudence, I may praise them from [the
commonplace] of temperance" (349, lines 8-9). The same rhetorical purpose is maintained
(praise), and the same genre of rhetorical resource is employed (a commonplace or topoi);
one simply consults an alternate commonplace from which to draw the actual subject matter
that constitutes the praise. We should note that being able to come up with new subject
matter in this case depends upon being aware of the rhetorical resources that were known
as commonplaces. This implies prior acquaintance with rhetorical categories. As we will see,
the many different kinds of substitution (for both form and content) that are proposed not
only by Barzizza but by later humanists all depend upon knowledge of rhetoric and grammar
(and to a lesser extent, logic). The same categories by which students would analyze or parse
literary authors as they first became acquainted with literature would become the variables
by which they could alter the form or content of their models.
In addition to substitutions of similar matter or of different commonplaces, Barzizza
suggests substitution through opposition. "For example, if someone praises another, I can
[instead] blame." Or, with more specificity, the reverse: "If anyone has vituperated another
for their injustice, I may by imitation through opposition praise another for their equity"
(349, lines 9-10). In the latter case, one reverses the rhetorical purpose of the model (from
blame to praise), changing the subject matter, but preserving the same source for rhetorical
proofs, the commonplace of (injustice. These examples similarly presuppose familiarity with
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the rhetorical tradition, specifically the oratorical genres of encomia and vituperation.
Students might receive this through the progymnasmata, which included exercises in encomia
and invective, or through the pseudo-Ciceronian Ad Herennium (upon which Barzizza
lectured), a staple of rhetorical doctrine throughout the Renaissance. It is most likely that
students perfected their understanding of this rhetorical genre in the actual act of imitation.
As they studied a speech of praise and, through substitutive imitation, inverted this to blame,
they would understand the essential similarity of the two genres as they consulted common
topoi to make their case. Once again, instruction in rhetorical theory would be
complemented by the integrated activities of critical analysis and discursive production
through imitation.
Two exercises that Roger Ascham describes in his pedagogy were clearly based on
imitation through substitution: paraphrasis and metaphrasis. We should not confuse
paraphrasis with our modern understanding of "paraphrase." Today paraphrase denotes a
pithy summary of something, closer to what Ascham described as epitome (see "subtraction,"
above). Ascham twice defines paraphrasis. First, he says it is "to take some eloquent oration,
or some notable common place in Latin, and express it with other [Latin] words" (175).
Next: "Paraphrasis... is not only to express at large with more words, but to strive and
contend ... to translate the best Latin authors into other Latin words, as many, or
thereabouts" (181). From this we learn that paraphrase involved not only the substitution
but the addition of new words, and that this was perceived to be a sort of competition with
the original to better express the matter of the model. Ascham is dissatisfied with this
exercise because it tended to turn better language to worse and was inferior to his preferred
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method, double translation (described below). In this he echoes Cicero’s judgement
regarding this exercise in De oratore.
Another reason for Ascham’s dissatisfaction may have been that Paraphrase was less
oriented to aiding students acquire linguistic ability and was far more concerned with the
mere interpretation of texts. It is true that paraphrasing was closely tied to hermeneutics.
Similar to the tradition of epitome-making in the Renaissance was that of publishing
paraphrases. Perhaps the most notable Renaissance paraphrases were those published by
Erasmus on the New Testament. These were strictly interpretive in nature. In the
Renaissance classroom, however, paraphrase meant to express given matter in other words,
to substitute one verbal incarnation of an idea with an alternate one. This invited students
to vie with one’s model, to say better what (presumably) had already been best said. For this
reason, Ascham discouraged fledgling writers from writing paraphrases and reserved this
exercise for the most advanced.
Metaphrasis can be considered either a kind of substitution or a sort of translation.
In essence, it consisted of substituting one generic form for another (or translating from one
genre to another). Ascham describes it as a change "out of verse either into prose, or into
some other kind of metre; or else out of prose into verse, which was Socrates’ exercise and
pastime ... when he was in prison, to translate AEsop’s Fables into verse" (192). Students
were "to take some notable place out of a good poet, and turn the same sense into metre,
or into other words in prose" (175-76). Ascham provides an example of how in his Republic
Plato has turned a selection from the Iliad into prose.
This sort of exercise would train students, obviously, in the distinctions between
genres and would aid them to understand what was appropriate to each. For example,
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Ascham points out how Plato’s metaphrastic prose rendition of Homer "doth not ride aloft
in poetical terms, but goeth low and soft on foot, as prose and pedestris oratio should do"
(195). Implicit in these distinctions is the idea that different verbal forms were not
equivalent, that however much students attempt to conserve the matter in substituting a
different form, that matter would undergo a substantive change.
In the field of literary translation, rendering a poet in prose was considered to be a
dishonor to the original material precisely because the ornaments and graces of verse were
sacrificed in the process.5 3 This was the reason that Salutati urged Pietro Loschi to put a
Latin prose rendition of Homer into verse, to amend this fault. However, other translators,
such as Charles Estienne, who translated Terence’s Andria into prose, defended prose
renditions on the grounds that this was being more faithful to the content of the original
(Rener 211).
It is not my intention to settle this controversy over translating verse. Such a question
is only relevant in a context quite different from the classroom, where finished translations
for publication were not the goal. Rather, I would argue for a recognition of the pedagogical
efficacy of confronting the very difficulties of such a difficult inter-generic transfer. As one
considers rendering something from verse to prose (or the opposite), it forces one to
confront the question to which humanists continually drove themselves and their students:
how does the language in which something is embodied influence the meaning it carries and
the effects it produces?
5 3 Because of its greater formal properties, poetry was considered difficult not only to translate but
to imitate (in verse). In William Kempe’ s curriculum, detailed in chapter 6, he qualifies imitation
when it comes to poetry: "the forme of argumentation or syllogisms, the words and phrases, the verse
will not suffer to be imitated, save only in some places." He provides many examples in which Virgil
was unable to imitate Homer as thoroughly as he directs is possible for prose imitations.
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Addition, subtraction, inversion, and substitution are the categories of transformation
first set forth by Barzizza that remain constant across the various uses of imitation in the
Renaissance. These were the transformations that configured imitation pedagogy in the
Renaissance. They will be apparent as I now review the pedagogies of several humanist
educators who have been most explicit regarding how to go about imitating in their
instructions and their sample exercises. We will see that these pedagogues maintained the
necessity of having some instruction in grammar, rhetoric, and logic prior to performing
imitations; that, as was described in chapter 4, detailed literary analysis preceded student
attempts to write; and that throughout, imitative methods maintain a close proximity to
translation procedures.
2 2 5
C h a p t e r S ix
Imitation in Renaissance Pedagogy
In the previous chapter I surveyed the basic types of imitative changes that students
were directed to perform upon their models. In this chapter, I describe the imitative
curricula of individual educators from across Renaissance Europe and assess the breadth of
imitative practice in the sixteenth century. With minor exception I am presenting the
educational doctrines of the most prominent and influential sixteenth-century humanist
educators, those who played principal roles in founding schools and establishing national
curricula and whose educational treatises were widely acclaimed and distributed.
My purpose is not to trace the rise and fall of imitative methodology, as though it
were a completely uniform educational method that appeared and disappeared between two
sets of dates.1 Rather, I intend to show that imitation was employed broadly by influential
humanists, that it was a flexible methodology that could be geared towards various grade
levels, and that it suited both the rudimentary goals of language instruction as well as the
practical ends of a rhetorically oriented education. Through the methodology of imitation
we can understand how a continuity was maintained in Renaissance education between the
concerns of grammar and the demands of rhetoric. Imitative methods also made possible
^rant Boswell has found a turning point, if not a terminus, for Renaissance imitation by
tracing the epistemological reorientations in seventeenth-century England that resulted in the
diminished importance given to humanist imitative curricula. See Grant M. Boswell, "From Imitation
to Experience: Changing Assumptions in Humanist Education in Seventeenth-Century England"
(Ph.D. diss., University of Southern California, 1986); and Boswell, "The Rhetoric of Pedagogy:
Changing Assumptions in Seventeenth-Century English Rhetorical Education," Rhetoric Society
Quarterly 16 (1986): 109-23.
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a fruitful complementarity between dialectic and rhetoric that is sometimes passed over
because of the radical curricular reforms by Ramus dividing the two fields.
This integration of the language arts upon the axis of imitation attains its culmination
in Erasmus’s De copia verborum ac rerum (1528). There we find the various approaches to
imitation brought together within the concept and practice of copia. The achievement of
copia was the end at which Renaissance imitation ultimately aimed: imparting to students
a flexibility with language and ideas, based upon a proficiency in varying models, that
prepared them to adapt to and address specific needs of discourse. That important concept
and the influential text that defined the imitative methodology necessary for achieving copia
will conclude this chapter. I begin my survey of the imitative curricula of humanist
pedagogues in Renaissance Germany, where the educational methods of Quattrocento Italian
schools were being transplanted north of the Alps due to the influence of such important
educators as Philip Melanchthon and Johann Sturm. These men did not bring simply the
love of classical literature and the desire for eloquence to sixteenth-century education in
Northern Europe; they institutionalized imitation in humanist pedagogy.
Philip Melanchthon
Philip Melanchthon (1497-1560) earned his greatest fame as a reformer who was
closely linked with Luther. He composed the Augsburg Confession in 1530 and one of the
principal theological works of the sixteenth century, his Loci communes rerum theologicarum
(1521-22). However, Melanchthon was not a reformer of religion alone, but of education,
a role for which he has not received the attention he merited in this regard. Known as the
C h a p t e r S ix : I m it a t io n In R e n a is s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 2 7
praeceptor Germaniae, Melanchthon revolutionized education in Northern Europe in light of
the Quattrocento humanist program.
Educated at Heidelberg and Tubingen, the precocious Melanchthon was installed as
the chair of Greek at Wittenberg in 1518 at the tender age of twenty-one. There he
delivered his famous inaugural address championing a humanistic liberal education, De
corrigendis adulescentiae studiis (August 1518) and introduced the practice of rhetorical
declamations as a substitute for the prior scholastic exercises. It was during this period that
he wrote influential works on grammar, rhetoric and dialectic. His works on grammar and
dialectic were very popular.2 As to Melanchthon’s many rhetorical texts, his works were
adapted, pirated and republished variously, but consisted in the main of three books: De
rhetorica libri tres (1519,12 editions through 1537); Institutiones Rhetoricae (1521, 24 editions
to 1533); and Elementa rhetorices (1531, 36 editions through 1559).3
Melanchthon positioned imitation very prominently within his rhetorical instruction.
In the final version of his rhetoric, Elementa rhetorices (1531), he introduces the classical triad
of nature, art, and imitation, but stresses the last. The rhetorical precepts to be learned in
2 Melanchthon’ s Grammatica graecae integra (1518) saw 36 editions by 1560; his Grammatica
Latina 94 editions between 1517 and 1560. As for dialectic, Melanchthon’ s Compendaria dialectices
ratio (1520), Dialecticae libri quatuor (1528) and the later Erotemata dialectices (1547) earned an
important place in the Renaissance reshaping of that art. In this regard, he furthered Agricola’s
revisions of that art. See Peter Mack, Renaissance Argument: Valla and Agricola in the Traditions of
Rhetoric and Dialectic (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1993), 320-33.
3 Melancthon’s rhetorical works were hardly limited to his formal treatises on the subject. In
the prefaces he gave to other books, in the account of his own education prefixed to his complete
works, and especially in his numerous orations he underscores again and again his commitment not
only to humanistic studies but to the role that rhetoric and eloquence are to play in preparing youth
for important civic and religious participation. See, for example, his oration, "De studio artium
dicendi" in Selectarum declamationum Philippi Melanthonis, quas conscripsit, & partim ipse in schola
Vitebergeni recitavit, partim aliis recitandas exhibuit (1564 n. p.), or his autobiographical account of
discovering the rhetorical study of texts in the introductory epistle to the third volume of his Opera
omnia (1562).
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his book will first help students properly to understand the authors they read; subsequently,
to imitate them:
I treat rhetorical precepts to this end, that they help you in the reading of
good authors, who indeed can in no way be understood without this
method. . . . Thereafter, it will not be difficult to imitate authors once
understood.
Quare & nos ad hunc usum praecepta trademus, ut in legendis bonis
autoribus vos adiuuent, qui quidem sine hac via nullo modo intelligi
possunt. . . . Deinde autores intellectos imitari non difficile erit.4
As discussed in chapter 4, the general pattern of Renaissance imitation required guided
literary analysis to precede and prepare the way for student imitations. Imitation for
Melanchthon is an informed procedure, one that works conjointly with the student’s growing
understanding of the art of rhetoric, making the two closely interdependent: "And indeed
neither can orators be produced without imitation; nor does imitation proceed without an
understanding of the art [of rhetoric]" (Etenim neque sine imitacione effici Oratores possunt,
neque imitacio sine cognitione artis procedit; AT). Obviously imitation for Melanchthon was
not a subsidiary or secondary concern. It provided the praxis which complemented the
theory of the rhetorical art.
Accordingly, Melanchthon’s treatise on rhetoric contains a large chapter on imitation
(some 4000 words in length) in which he defends imitation as the primary method for
acquiring eloquence, delineates several basic kinds of imitation, identifies what aspects of
literary works are to be imitated, takes up the issue of imitating Cicero, and spends
considerable time describing the imitation of Ciceronian compositio in particular.
‘ ‘ Elemen to rum rhetorices libri duo (Wittenberg, 1531), ATT
C h a p t e r S i x : I m it a t io n I n R e n a is s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 2 9
It is imitation, not rhetorical precepts, that brings about eloquence, he says. This is
not to say that rhetorical rules are inessential. On the contrary, they hold an important
place, but not a prescriptive one directing students to compose their own speeches or writing
directly. Rules have been discovered, Melanchthon explains, "not for making one eloquent,
but for showing youth a way and method for analyzing the speeches of the eloquent"
(praecepta inventa esse, non ut eloquentes efficerent, sed ut viam ac rationem ostenderent
adolescentibus iudicandi de disertorum orationibus; F4V ). Such analysis has imitation as its
immediate goal, a process that Melanchthon describes first generally, and later in detail:
Having, therefore, acquired an understanding of these rules, one places
before oneself sample passages of the eloquent, then contemplates these with
all the power and understanding of the mind in order to imitate (effingat) or
translate (exprimat) them.
Cognitis igitur praeceptis proponat sibi quisaue disertorum exempla, in quae
toto animo, totaque mente intueatur, ut ea effingat, atque exprimat. (F4V -
F5r)
Melanchthon divides imitation into two sorts according to the overall division that comprises
eloquence generally: subject matter and expression (res and verba). To the former pertain
invention and arrangement (inventio anddispositio); to the latter, style (elocutio). "Wherefore,
at the outset one should be skilled in a certain general imitation of subject matter (rerum),
which I so term because it is permitted to imitate the invention or arrangement of subject
matter in all good authors" (Quare inicio sciendum estgeneralem quondam imitacionem rerum
esse, quam ideo sic vocamus, quia bonos omnes in inventione ac dispositione rerum imitari licet] ;
F5r v ). For this primary sort of imitation Melanchthon directs the "diligent reader" to observe
from which places sound authors draw their introductions (exordia), from
where they take their amplifications, the manner by which they treat the
commonplaces and passions, how they appease or stir up the minds of the
audience, to what extent they seasonably and sparingly intersperse maxims
(sentencias), how diligently they observe proper decorum, with how much
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 3 0
planning they set in order the parts in cases, where they prepare the
audience, where they relate the account of events (narrent), where they
dispute, where they refute their adversary, and in what way they add feeling
and emotion to the speech in their perorations.
Observabit enim diligens lector quibus ex locis boni autores ducant ex ordia,
unde sumant amplificationes, quomodo tractent locos communes, & affectus,
quomodo concilient animos, quomodo pertrubent, quam tempestive ac parce
aspergant sentencias, quam diligenter conservent decorum, quanto consilio
disponant partes in causis, Ubi preparent auditorem, ubi narrent, ubi
disputent, ubi refutent adversarium, quomodo in Epilogis addant motus &
affectus orationi. (F5V )
This level of analysis turns imitation into something much more than simply reading authors
in order to borrow the subject matter upon which they have written. Melanchthon asks
students to discern not only standard rhetorical categories such as the parts of an oration,
but the emotive and persuasive effects that come about due to a given work’s particular
composition. Students are to copy out not simply the places, but the planning, of their
models {locos atque consilia; F5V ), as revealed in their invention or arrangement. "At times
this very same subject matter taken from these authors will be glorious as it is aptly
transferred to our own causes" (Et interdum gloriosum erit res easdem ab illis sumptas, ad
nostras causas apte transferre; F5V ).
The second general sort of imitation Melanchthon identifies pertains to style
{elocutio), but in a grammatical rather than rhetorical sense. It has to do with acquiring pure
Latin words and expressions from authoritative sources, the great concern of Lorenzo Valla
and so many other humanist philologists. Because there are patently bad models of Latin,
the need arises to select as models for imitation those authors who speak most properly and
purely (propriisime & purissime dicunt) in their use of vocabulary, idiomatic phrases, or figures
of speech. Conjoining the idea of imitating both content and style, Melanchthon observes
that those who speak most sensibly (prudentissime) are generally those who speak most
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 3 1
purely. "For this reason one can appropriate from such authors not only their language, but
also their subject matter at times, insofar as its worth is ascertained" (Quare ab his non
tantum sermo, sed interim res quoque cognitione dignae sumi queunt; F6V ). Imitation, then,
according to Melanchthon, ranges across both the two general concerns of eloquence, ideas
and expression, although a student may focus upon one or the other at a given time.
Melanchthon’s description of imitation contrasts sharply with the received understanding of
Renaissance imitation in which imitation is characterized as having to do exclusively with
style. Melanchthon clearly advocates imitation across the entire range of rhetorical concerns,
not elocutio alone.
Melanchthon spends a major portion of his chapter on imitation in a technical
discussion of how to imitate compositio, by which he means stylistic arrangement within an
entire speech as well as at the sentence level. He introduces Cicero as a model of Latin style
not simply in the sense that he communicated eloquently, but in the sense that his eloquent
style made his subject matter more clearly discernable. This is an important observation.
It reveals that Melanchthon’s rhetorical approach to language does not limit the importance
of this art to decorative, aesthetic or purely emotive functions. Rhetorical style clarifies an
issue, sharing this attribute with the domain of dialectic. At the outset of Elementa rhetorica
Melanchthon had taken up the issue of the difference between dialectic and rhetoric,
concluding that the two arts share the concerns of invention and arrangement,5 but that
dialectic pertains to bare ideas while rhetoric pertains to them insofar as they are
5 See Mack, Renaissance Argument, for a discussion of Melanchthon’ s insistence that rhetoric
and dialectic be taught together, despite the artificial division between them that he allowed by
publishing on each art separately (323-24). The copy of Elementorum rhetorices libri duo which I
examined (Wittenberg, 1531), was bound together with De dialectica libri quatuor, a combination
Melanchthon would certainly have approved of if he did not actually authorize.
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 3 2
ornamented for presentation. Unfortunately, such a simplistic definition can lead to the idea
(as it so clearly did subsequent to Ramus’s reforms) that rhetoric has only to do with style
and that style is somehow external or secondary to the substantive concerns of subject matter.
However, the division between style and substance, like that between rhetoric and dialectic,
is an artificial abstraction, and the potential difference or conflict between these two fields
becomes moot when one sets about imitating an effective speaker such as Cicero. In the
process of imitating, students are to be concerned not so much with whether this (or another)
model illustrates a rhetorical or a dialectical principle as they are with attempting to
recapture the means by which this author accomplishes what he does. They are to learn not
by way of theoretical categories but by way of literary examples that resist such artificial
distinctions. Thus, Melanchthon turns attention to Cicero to demonstrate that style should
be imitated not for its aesthetic value (although this may be acknowledged) but for its
cognitive and communicative value: "For there is in Cicero a certain placing of the members
of speech which not only renders his speech more balanced, but seems to lead very much to
greater clarity" (Est enim peculiaris quaedam collocatio membrorum orationis apud Ciceronem,
quae non solum aequabiliorem reddit orationem, sed plurimum etiam ad perspicuitatem
conducere videtur, F8V ). This is true not only of compositio but of figurative speech generally.
For example, Melanchthon finds metaphor useful for increasing clarity and perception as
well.6
The communicative necessity of good style is easiest proven when poor style renders
speech obscure, so Melanchthon describes various vices that lead to this. These include the
uncoordinated piling up of ideas (coacervant sentencias male coherentes — a vice that can
6 Brian Vickers, In Defence of Rhetoric (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 324.
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 3 3
violate even grammatical propriety), truncating ideas and arguments, or giving conclusions
without antecedents (or the reverse). Melanchthon asks a mature degree of stylistic
awareness from students, for they must be able to perceive the organizing virtue of sound
style in examples in contrast to the confusions that result from a muddled style. He points
out Cicero’s sensible arrangement of clauses within phrases, the structure of his periods, and
the way he places these within the parts of an oration. Melanchthon concludes his chapter
on imitation by summarizing and exhorting students to imitate: 1) words and phrases; 2)
methods of invention and arrangement (consilia eius in inveniendo ac disponendo considerent;
H4V ); and finally, 3) the entire form of the speech (totam orationis formam), including the
order of ideas (sentenciarum ordinetri) and the abundance of stylistic ornamentation
(exomationum copiam; H4V ).
Elementa rhetorices was issued during those years during which Melanchthon was so
active in reshaping German and Northern European education, and we can suppose that the
doctrine of imitation expounded in this work accompanied the curricula he established and
oversaw in his travels. Between 1525 and 1557 Melanchthon regulated schools in Thuringia
during visitations, established a new school with a humanist curriculum in Nuremberg
(rechristening the town the "German Florence") and helped reorganize the universities at
Bretten, Leipzig, and Heidelberg. Joachim Camerarius (1500-1574), who taught at
Melanchthon’s Nuremberg gymnasium, spread his influence to such well-established humanist
schools as those of Tubingen and Leipzig. Johannes Kuchler, one of Melanchthon’s students,
brought Melanchthon’s teaching to Poznan/Posen (Poland).7 Melanchthon’s ideas were
7 Josef IJsewijn, Companion to Neo-Latin Studies. Part I: History and Diffusion of Neo-Latin
Literature. 2d ed. (Louvain: Leuven University Press, 1990), 241.
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 3 4
broadly disseminated in England, beginning with Leonard Cox. This Reading schoolmaster
based his Art or Craft of Rhetoryke (London 1530) upon Melanchthon’s text, the "werke of
Rethoryke wrytten in the lattyn tongue" to which Cox refers in his introduction, and upon
the popular outline or study guide of that book put out by Melanchthon’s student Georgius
Maior (George Major).8 Thomas Conley explains that Melanchthon’s importance in England
regarding rhetoric was "particularly conspicuous. Virtually every rhetoric produced in
England from 1530 up to the end of the century shows marks of his influence."9
Melanchthon did not simply establish rhetoric as a primary humanistic study, nor bring
eloquence to the fore as the end toward which a humanistic education should reach; he set
up imitation as the indispensable complement to the art of rhetoric, the means without which
no amount of instruction in rhetoric would be to any avail: "Without examples and imitation,
this art [rhetoric] cannot be perfected" (igitur haec ars sine exemplo atque imitacione perfici
non possit; H2r).
Johann Sturm
If Philip Melanchthon was dubbed the praeceptor Germaniae, Johann Sturm (1505-
1589) earned the appellation of magnus scholarum reformator.1 0 Like Melanchthon, Sturm
was one of the most influential humanists of northern Europe. He taught in Paris from
8 George Major, Tabulae de schematibus et tropis, petri Mosellani; Item. Rhetorices Phil.
Melanchthonis Tabulae.; Item. Libelli Erasmi de duplici copia, scilicet rerum & verborum, Tabulae. I
examined an edition of this popular text printed at Nuremberg: Iohan Petreium, 1540.
9 Thomas Conley, Rhetoric in the European Tradition (New York and London: Longman, 1990
[to which I refer]; reprint, Chicago: Univeristy of Chicago Press, 1994), 135.
1 0 D. Stremooukhoff, "Les Humanistes tcheques a l’ Academie de Strasbourg," L ’ Humanisme
en Alsace (Paris: Societe d’ edition "Les Belles-Lettres," 1939), 42-51.
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 3 5
1529-37, but earned his greatest renown in Strasbourg where he relocated in 1538 to
inaugurate its famous gymnasium (patterned after the one he had attended in Liege).1 1 For
forty-four years Sturm served as its rector, setting up its pedagogical methods and teaching
students and future pedagogues who gathered in Strasbourg from across Europe. His school
was so successful that it was made an academy by the emperor in 1566.1 2 Sturm’ s school and
its methods became the prototype for many other European schools. For example, John
Calvin taught in Sturm’s school for a few years shortly after its founding and then made its
methods the basis of the influential academy at Geneva that he established in 1558.1 3 A
Czech rector of schools named Martin Bachacek propagated Sturmiam methods in the Latin
schools he organized in Bohemia;1 4 and Jesuits apparently applied Sturm’s methods in their
college in Prague (Stremooukhoff, 50). Sturm’s pedagogy reached Poland through the
influential Jean Zamoyski (1542-1605) who studied at Strasbourg from 1560-61 and later
became the royal chancellor. Zamoyski became renowned for his own eloquence, and as a
pedagogue promoted Sturm’s methods enthusiastically, founding the Academy of Zamosca
upon Sturm’s principles and ideas (Zamoyski’s academy would come to rival the university
U C. Engel has written a study of the Strasbourg academy I have not seen, L ’ Ecole latine et
lancienne academie de Strasbourg, 1538-1621 (1900).
1 2 C. J. Classen, "Cicero orator inter Germanos redivivus II," Humanistka Lovaniensia 39
(1990): 167.
1 3 G. R. Elton, Reformation Europe 1517-1559 (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 225, 238.
1 4 See Stremooukhoff, passim, for Sturm’s heavy influence across Renaissance Bohemia.
Stremooukhoff offers the credible suggestion that the great seventeenth-century educator Jean Amos
Comenius was influenced by Sturm’s pedagogical methods, despite some obvious differences between
them (51).
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 236
in Cracow).1 S Nicolas of Ostrorog, a student at Strasbourg in the 1570s, would found a
school at Krylow, as would another Polish Strasbourg student, Raphael, Count of Leszno
(Leszczynski) in his native city (of which Comenius later became rector).1 6 Roger Ascham
developed close ties with Sturm through years of correspondence and attributes his
pedagogical methods (specifically his imitative doctrines) to Sturm. Ascham’s fame at
Cambridge and Elizabeth’s court extended Sturm’s influence to England. What John of
Ostrorog said of Sturm in an encomium of 1581 adumbrates his general fame and influence
across Northern Europe in the sixteenth century:
Ask the Hungarians, the Danes, the Poles, the French, the Bohemians, or any
others that you wish, and to whom would they offer their thanks? "To Sturm!
to Sturm!" they will all respond.
Interroga Hungaros, Gallos, Danos, Polonos, Boemos, aut alios quos voles,
cuius hue se contulerint gratia? Sturmii, Sturmii, inquam, respondebunt
omnes.1 7
Imitation is treated by Sturm in many of his works, including not just his many
educational treatises but his letters and the books he edited. Sturm edited a collection of
1 5 H. De Chelminska. "Sturm et la Pologne" in L ’ Humanisme en Alsace, 56, 62. De
Chelminska names numerous and important Polish students who studied at the Strasbourg academy
from at least 1541 and who owed their formation to Sturm: "C’est toute une pleiade de diplomates,
d’ hommes d’Etat, de publicistes, de pedagogues, brillants humanistes, qui sont, dans une large mesure,
redevables de leur formation a Sturm" (54). Many of these Poles, such as Zamoyski, spread Sturm’s
teaching and methods abroad in their European travels and back in their native Poland.
1 6 De Chelminska also identifies Sturm’s methods being copied in Cracow, Chmielnik, and
Lewartow, the latter two due to A. Kaliszczyk, whose enthusiasm for Sturm’s methods caused him to
copy how Sturm had set up a school in Lauingen: " II fit siennes les devises de Sturm, etablit cinq
classes, choisit les manuels et les auteurs d’apres les indications de Sturm et appliqua scrupuleusement
dans l’enseignement les methodes du recteur strasbourgeois" (61).
1 7 Quoted in D e Chelminska, 57-58.
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n In R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 237
Cicero’s letters intended for use as models of imitation within his pedagogy.1 8 These became
popular and were recommended for such use by other pedagogus (such as William Kempe,
whose curriculum is explained below). Some of Sturm’s own letters, published with Roger
Ascham’ s correspondence, were similarly employed as models for imitation.1 9 Sturm’ s
commentaries on Ciceronian speeches analyzed them for imitative purposes,2 0 and he made
clear what analytical methods he believed needed to precede student imitation in his
Nobilitas literata (1549) (see chapter 4, above). Sturm is also responsible for a thorough
exposition of the imitative transformations he inherited from Barzizza. He augmented and
explicated these in his De imitatione libri tres (1574) (see chapter 5). He composed one
further educational treatise addressing imitation, De literarum ludis recte aperiendis liber
(1538). Here Sturm lays out an entire educational plan, indicating what skills should be
acquired, what studies addressed, and what works should be read at successive stages of the
grammar school. De literarum ludis recte aperiendis liber sets forth the pedagogy that we can
assume was practiced in Sturm’ s famous Strasbourg academy and in those many gymnasia
that copied it. Imitation runs throughout the entire plan.
1 8 See chapter 4, note 45.
1 9 Edward Grant added Sturm’ s letters to the Epistolae of Roger Ascham beginning with the
London edition of 1578 and continuing in the editions of 1581 and 1590. Sturm and Ascham
collaborated on one small volume, De nobilitate Anglicana, which intended not only to demonstrate
good Latin prose but to encourage royalty towards the new learning. Ascham’ s Epistolae duae de
nobilitate Anglicana and Sturm’ s De educatione principium accompanied Conrad Heresbach’ s De
laudibus Graecarum literarum oratio (Strasbourg, 1551). Lawrence V. Ryan, Roger Ascham (Stanford:
Stanford University Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1963), 3 n., 144.
“For example, Johann Sturm, ed. Commentarius in orationem Ciceronispro Plancio, ex scholis
J. Sturmii (Strasbourg: Wendelin Rihel, 1551).
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 3 8
Sturm outlines nine grade levels or forms,2 1 divided roughly between elementary and
advanced studies (nine and five years, respectively), that brought boys from their entrance
into grammar school at age six or seven up to their twenty-first year. The ninth and earliest
form was given over to the basic elements of Latin grammar, including inflections of nouns
and verbs. Sturm urges that Latin literature be immediately introduced, if time allows,
recommending Cicero’s more simple letters to his wife Terentia or his freedman Tiro (14r v ).
While continuing their study of Latin grammar and being formally introduced to
literature through Virgil’s Eclogues and Cicero’s Epistles, students of the eighth form begin
performing the analyses and translations upon which their more mature imitations will
depend. Construing is added to parsing after six month’s time, and students are provided
sententiae to translate. However, this sort of linguistic analysis of literary passages is not yet
to be applied to imitative compositions. Rather, students are first to imitate verses the
master can compose, but in a natural, unmethodized, way. The seeds of later imitative
method are planted in this form, however. In their language study Sturm urges students to
practice not simply inflections but variations (15r). Variation is not simply a good method of
review; closely tied to imitation, variation has as its purpose to aid students in developing
linguistic flexibility, a rhetorical goal made most apparent by Erasmus in his pedagogy of
imitation. Students are also expected to begin speaking Latin in this form.2 2
2 1 In directions for establishing a curriculum that Sturm would provide some twenty-five years
later to the rector of another gymnasium, Simon Ostermann, he would add a tenth form. See his
Classicae epistolae, sive scholae Argentinensis restitutae (Strasbourg: Josias Rihel, 1565).
^Sturm’ s curriculum is curiously tacit regarding the use of colloquia to aid students in
acquiring conversational Latin.
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 3 9
In Sturm’s description of the next (seventh) form we begin to see how closely
imitation was tied to the literary basis of humanistic education. Cicero’s De amicitia and De
senectute and Virgil’s Aeneid are introduced at this point, not simply for their moral or
formative qualities, but as a source for the students’ ongoing language study. Students are
to apply their growing grammatical knowledge to these literary texts by identifying structures
in them and by basing their writing assignments upon these texts rather than upon the
abstract principles of a grammar book, "that they may know where to get vocabulary and
forms oisententiae" (15v ). Students are already to begin practicing imitative transformations
on a limited level based on diction, transposing words found in good verses (16r).
In the sixth form, imitation takes the foreground of studies as students now have
adequate skills to identify and copy out places from their reading. While instruction is to
continue in Virgil, Catullus, and other good poets, most emphasis is given to Cicero and to
that sort of close analysis that will make possible good imitations of this model:
[Students] should have a certain stock of famous or beautiful places selected
out of Cicero, such as his inquiries on profound matters, or his passages in
praise or blame of others .... For there is no shortage of examples in Cicero
of well-wrought arguments which are rightly offered for imitation.
Deligendi etiam ex Cicerone speciosi & illustres quidam loci, ut sunt
magnarum rerum infinitae quaestiones, ut commemorationes quae aliquam
laudem, aut vituperationem .... Sunt etiam argumentationum pulcherri-
marum exempla nonulla, quae recte ad imitandum proponuntur. (17v -18r)
Because these and other worthy literary qualities (such as the effective use of figures of
speech) do not have a tendency to make their way into one’s writing unless one takes sharp
note of them, says Sturm, he proposes students begin gathering these select passages into
carefully organized notebooks (see above, chapter 4). At the same point in the curriculum
when such gleaning into notebooks from literature is assigned, Sturm also requires
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 4 0
composition exercises to begin in earnest. Imitation will be the bridge between the students’
observations and their writings.
In the fifth form students begin with Greek grammar and elementary Greek literature
(Aesop’s fables), while increasing their reading of Cicero (De officiis) to two periods daily,
even at the expense of Latin poetry. After the first three months, orations of Cicero are to
replace the Georgies. Sturm suggests Pro lege Manilia or Pro Q. Ligario (19r). Curiously, it
is not until this point in Sturm’s curriculum that he assigns the study of rhetorical texts, even
though some of the literary analysis already required of students would have depended upon
some acquaintance with the elements of rhetoric. Moreover, Sturm assigns only those
rhetorics or parts of rhetorical texts that deal with figures and tropes, with elocutio rather
than with the full complement of rhetorical doctrine that would include inventio particularly.
He provides an interesting justification for this choice:
For elocutio should precede the method of invention, because the separate
ornaments of speeches are easier to understand. Invention is better learned
in actual compostion than from precepts. Therefore, it is better that
[beginning students] prepare an abundance (copia) of expression and
accumulate formulas of speech.
Elocutio enim ideo praecedere inveniendi rationem debet, quod ad
cognoscendum faciliora sunt singula orationum ornamenta: inventio melius
inter scribendum principio ultro a pueris et a natura adhibetur, quam ab
iisdem docendo possit intelligi. Itaque verborum maior hie copia comparanda
est, & cumulandem sententiarum formulae. (19v )
This method is consistent with the generally inductive nature of humanist education and
accounts for the lack of theoretical instruction in invention: the very act of gathering
examples of good expression is itself a process of finding (inveniendo), and when this supply
of eloquence is adapted to the student’s writing, invention will already have been partly
accomplished. Arguments or other invented matter need not be sought out through artificial
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 241
or formal means, for such elements may naturally suggest themselves to the student due to
his wide reading and careful annotation of worthy passasges.
The fourth form continues by putting Greek literature on par with Latin, coupling
Demosthenes with Cicero and Homer with Virgil.2 3 Rhetorical precepts are now to be
studied from Cicero’s Partitiones oratoriae (or the first book of A d Herennium). Sturm adds
Sallust and Plautus as new reading for this form, but cautions that these authors are to be
perused only for their historical merit, not as literary examples; that is, they are unsuitable
for imitative purposes (20r). The fact that he make explicit such a warning and distinction
helps to underscore the fact that the literature that was studied in grammar school was
intended for imitation unless otherwise specified.
In a subsection of his treatise inserted between the explanation of the fourth and
third forms (suggesting that these are issues to be considered throughout the curriculum but
at least by this point chronologically), Sturm emphasizes the need for much writing and
memorizing, indicating that some lessons are to be written, others to be impromptu, others
to be composed after meditation. More specifically, he indicates the necessity of assigning
minor Latin compositions such as narrations, praises, vituperations, amplifications, and
commonplaces based upon the students’ reading in Homer or Demosthenes. Though he
does not name them as such, he is describing the various elementary compositional exercises
known as the progymnasmata (discussed above in chapter 5). Sturm was the greatest
Renaissance advocate of Hermogenes, editing and publishing his various works, including his
progymnasmata. Here Sturm makes it clear that these elementary composition exercises are
^Roger Ascham, Sturm’ s longtime correspondent, would suggest an imitative exercise in
comparing Cicero and Demosthenes, analyzing how Cicero had variously adapted Demosthenes in his
imitations.
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 4 2
not to be done in the abstract, but are to be based upon what the students find or translate
into Latin from Homer or Demosthenes.
In the third form (the last of the more supervised forms or "boyhood" period
[puericia]) students are formally introduced to dialectic, to be learned conceptually (and
sparingly) from Aristotle, and to be studied in the examples of philosophers and theologians
(23r'v ). Students are already accustomed to this method, if not this subject, having sought out
literarly illustrations of rhetorical principles they were being taught throughout previous
forms. Not only is the method of seeking examples from literature maintained between the
arts of rhetoric and dialectic, but so is some of the theoretical instruction, for at this point
in Sturm’s curriculum he assigns Cicero’s Topical This book, treating the "places" of
invention, was applicable to both of these language arts. Sturm, as Melanchthon, made quite
a point of insisting that invention, for which the Topica and Aristotle both served, was the
domain of both logic and rhetoric, in marked contrast to Peter Ramus’s stark division
between the two later.
The second form of Sturm’s school requires students to give orations while learning
to perfect both ornate speaking (stylistic rhetoric) and disputation (dialectic, now studied for
its second year). Disputations are to be studied not in the abstract, but by examining a
dialogue by Cicero or Plato. Advanced rhetorical doctrine was to come not only by
memorizing the brief and applicable Partitiones oratoriae of Cicero (for which Sturm prepared
2 4 Sturm adds that Hermogenes may be better than Cicero’ s Topica for this form, but in any
case they should study Hermogenes’ On Stasis, a work on how to arrive at the basic issue of a dispute
that had been famous from its composition in the second century as a useful introduction to dialectic
and philosophical method. Rabe cites over 100 manuscripts in his edition according to George A.
Kennedy, who provides a helpful overview of classical stasis theory and Hermogenes’ role in it; Greek
Rhetoric Under Christian Emperors (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 74; 73-86.
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 4 3
a special edition), but by studying Cicero’s Orator (23v -24r). In the first, final form students
maintain their practice in obtaining eloquence but now expand their studies beyond the
trivium and take up those of the quadrivium, while adding Hebrew if possible. Writing,
composition, and speaking are continually practiced (24v ).
In a separate section of his treatise Sturm sets forth imitation as an overall principle
governing learning in his school. The budding orator, says Sturm, must be trained in such
a way
that he may not only distinguish whatever he hears or reads in an oration, nor
simply identify how a work is constructed; rather, that he may himself create
something similar [to his models].2 5
ut non solum cognoscat quid factum sit ab aliquo in oratione quern vel legit
vel audit, aut etiam quomodo id sit confectum; sed ut & similia ipse efficiat
(20rv)
This summarizes imitation’ s centrality to the humanist pedagogical curriculum. Sturm’s
pedagogy leads students inductively into the language arts, focusing them primarily upon
literary exemplars and gradually adding in the theoretical studies that codify and organize the
process of analysis in which their masters already have engaged them. Composition begins
early, and is directly related to student reading and analysis: the themes of assignments are
derived from literary excerpts and the literary forms and qualities in which the students are
practiced are similarly derived from these sources. To mediate between what is read and
written, Sturm insists on the use of carefully organized notebooks because "unless [these
^Wayne Booth has expressed a similar desire for students of our day: "What is most
important is that students be asked not just to study the texts but to do something like the text, to
practice the rhetoric the texts exhibit, and then to reflect . . . on that practice"; Wayne C. Booth,
LITCOMP': Some Rhetoric Addressed to Cryptorhetoricians about a Rhetorical Solution to a
Rhetorical Problem," in Composition and Literature: Bridging the Gap, ed. Winifred Bryan Homer
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 79.
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 4 4
literary qualities] are duly noted, they do not customarily end up in [the student’s] writing"
(quae nisi notentur, occurrere in scribendo non solent; 18r). In this treatise Sturm does not
dwell upon those transformative methods that ensure student imitations are neither
plagiaristic nor pedantic. His extensive remarks on this subject are reserved for his De
imitatione oratoria libri tres (1574). This work (discussed in the previous chapter) was the
product of many years’ preparation and revision, especially as Sturm worked through his
ideas in correspondence with Roger Ascham.
After twenty-five years of applying the curriculum described in De literarum ludis recte
aperiendis liber at his famed Strasbourg academy, Sturm republished these guidelines in
Classicae epistolae (Strasbourg: Josias Rihel, 1565), a work consisting of letters to various
praeceptores, including Simon Ostermann, rector of the gymasium at Lauingen. In Pauline
epistolary fashion, Sturm’s purpose was to set the schools in order much as the early apostle
did the Christian churches. He modified his original curriculum by adding an additional year
of schooling (stressing more grammatical drill) and a diminishing the amount of poetry
assigned to lower forms, emendations he found necessary as his pedagogy evolved through
actual practice. Overall, however, the imitative core of his teaching persisted, and he spread
this doctrine to the many others who saw him and his school as a worthy model. Among
these was his longtime British friend and correspondent, Roger Ascham.
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 4 5
Roger Ascham
Roger Ascham (1515-1568) achieved notoriety in his position at Cambridge, in his
long association with Elizabeth and her court, and through the educational work that secured
his continued influence published posthumously, The Schoolmaster (1570). Starting in 1551
Ascham began a correspondence with Johann Sturm, sharing with the German a zeal for
Latin, for Cicero, and for imitation as a pedagogical methodology. He brought all of these
to bear in his position as the tutor to Princess Elizabeth,2 6 a position he acquired in 1548 at
the death of her former tutor, William Grindal, Ascham’s own student. Although he was
only her tutor for two years, Ascham maintained contact with her during Mary’s reign and
was attached to her own court until his death. During this time he continued reading Cicero
among other classical texts with her. At his death the Queen is reported to have exclaimed
she would rather have cast £10,000 into the sea than to have lost her dear Ascham. Others,
such as Francis Bacon, were less affectionate in their opinion of Ascham, but even Bacon’s
harsh remarks testify to the notoriety not simply of Ascham but of the pedagogical methods
that Bacon derides.2 7
Ascham discussed imitation at length with Johann Sturm in their long correspondence
^Lawrence V. Ryan, Roger Ascham (Stanford: Stanford University Press; London: Oxford
University Press, 1963), 149.
^Bacon’s famous passage puts Ascham in good company among those who "began to hunt
more afterwords than matter; and more after the choiceness of the phrase, and the round and clean
composition of the sentence, and the sweet falling of the clauses, and the varying and illustration of
their works with tropes and figures, than after the weight of matter, worth of subject, soundness of
argument, life of invention, or depth of judgment. Then did Sturmius spend such infinite and curious
pains upon Cicero. . . . Then did Car of Cambridge, and Ascham, with their lectures and writings,
almost deify Cicero and Demosthenes, and allure all young men that were studious unto that delicate
and polished kind of learning" (Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning [London: Henry James,
1605] in The Collected Works of Francis Bacon, ed James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas
Denon Heath [London: Longmans, 1857-1874], 283-84).
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 4 6
and summarized most of these ideas into something of a booklet on imitation in his last
letter to Sturm in 1568. This letter outlined his chef d ’ oeuvre, The Scholemaster (London:
John Day, 1570). The Schoolmaster is one of the most comprehensive educational treatises
extant from the period and was an immediate success. Four additional editions appeared in
the next 20 years (Day, 1571, 1573, 1579; Abel Jeffes, 1589). In the first of its two books
Ascham relates his general educational principles ("Teaching the Bringing Up of Youth");
in the second, he discusses the "Way to the Latin Tongue." That way is through translation
and through imitation, the core methods of the humanist curriculum. Of the former, he
claims that a person who translates "one little book" of Cicero would come to a better
knowledge of Latin than most do that spend four or five years "in tossing all the rules of
grammar in common schools."2 8 Of the latter, he claims, "All languages, both learned and
mother tongues, be gotten, and gotten only by Imitation. [. . .] Therefore, if ye would speak
as the best and wisest do, ye must be conversant where the best and wisest are" (210).
Translation and imitation together account for the five2 9 methods Ascham describes
for mastering Latin (by which he means not simply understanding, but composing Latin).
Three of these have already been discussed in chapter 5: epitome, as an exercise in
subtraction or abbreviation; periphrasis, as an exercise in the substitution of new for given
words; and metaphrasis, as an exercise in the substitution of one genre for another, as when
^Roger Ascham, The Schoolmaster (1570), The Whole Works of Roger Ascham, vol. 3, ed. Rev.
[J. A.] Giles (London: John Russell Smith, 1864), 179.
M He lists six in the Schoolmaster. The last, declamatio, is not discussed since he left his work
incomplete at his death. A slightly altered list of exercises occurs in the 1568 letter to Sturm. There,
oddly, he omits his favorite method, double translation, and includes two others not listed in the
Schoolmaster, commentatio and scriptio (Ryan, 245).
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 4 7
an epistle is "translated" from prose to poetry.3 0 The fourth was Ascham’s favorite
preliminary exercise, double translation, followed by his fifth, what he refers to as imitation
proper.
Double translation was a method used widely in Renaissance schools. Ascham left
the most detailed directions for its execution and a rationale explaining its virtues.3 1 William
Miller found the use of double translation required in the statutes for the Rivington
Grammar School (1566),3 2 published four years prior to Ascham’s Schoolmaster. The method
also forms the basis of an anonymous grammar that had been popular some 70-80 years
before, Exercitium grammatical puerorum per Dietas distributum (Antwerp 1485; there were
eleven editions in as many years). This interesting volume teaches all of Latin morphology
and syntax in a sequence of logical steps set out over two weeks’ time. Significantly, the
entire regimen is conditional on the scholar’s having mastered the art of double translation.
3 0 Ascham derived these three methods, claims Ryan, from the Elementa rhetorica (1551) of
Joachim Camerarius, employing similar wording and examples (335 n. 32).
3 1 Louise G. Kelly cites one instance of this method being recommended prior to the
Renaissance. In his De recuperatione terrae sanctae (1306), Pierre Dubois suggests that boys and girls
employ this method to master Latin and the oriental tongues as part of a wild scheme for retaking
the Holy Lands. Boys were to learn Latin for administrative posts; girls, hand-picked for beauty and
religious fidelity, were to learn Latin and oriental tongues in order to marry Moslem nobles and then
convert them to Christianity. Twenty-five Centuries of Language Teaching (Rowley, Massachusetts:
Newbury House Publishing, 1969), 177-78. Kelly also attributes to Guarino of Verona the first
instance of double translation as a pedagogical method in the Renaissance (178). However, I am
unable to verify this in primary sources.
3 2 William E. Miller, "Double Translation in English Humanistic Education," Studies in the
Renaissance 10 (1963): 169. The passage includes reference not only to double translation, but to
those exercises that Ascham referred to as paraphrase and metaphrase, putting something into other
Latin words, and translating something from one genre to another: "But weekly . . . they must write
some epistle or verses, which they may more easily do, if they use often to turn their lectures into
English, and then into Latin, again by other words to the same meaning, sometimes in verses, and
sometimes in prose: and after turning Greek into Latin and Latin into Greek, and changing one kind
of verse into another, and verses into prose, an prose into verse, observing the propriety of the phrase,
the purest Latin words, and making the sentences full" (qtd. in Miller, 169).
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 4 8
Thus, the first chapter of its Second Tract is entitled "Of the method of translating Latin into
our vulgar language and vice-versa" (De modo traducendi latinum in vulgare nostrum: &
econtrario).3 3 Double translation may seem to be merely a logical extension of those
translation exercises common to most every foreign language curriculum; however, the second
translation brings certain important innovations that Ascham and others would defend.
The method of double translation, as described by Roger Ascham in his Schoolmaster
begins with the teacher presenting students with a short passage for analysis, such as a
passage from Horace or Ovid. He then provided a prelection, or oral analysis of the passage
to be translated in the manner recommended by Quintilian: students were shown the formal
properties which gave a specific passage its merit: the invention, arrangement and style of
the model, "what design there is in certain passages, and what well concealed artifice," as well
as the use of words and expressions. Students were then required to render the original into
their native tongue. They set this aside, then returned to their translation later and put it
back into Latin without reference to the original. The teacher then aided them in comparing
their Latin versions with the original.3 4
The advantages to this system are numerous. First, it kept the original Latin text as
the standard of Latinity. Should a schoolmaster not have perfect Latin, the Latin text was
his recourse. This preserved models such as Cicero as the conservators and standards of the
language. Next, comparing two Latin texts of a short passage that were supposed to be
3 3 Glyn P. Norton, The Ideology and Language of Translation in Renaissance France and Their
Humanist Antecedents, Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 201 (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1984),
27. Norton claims the tract was inspired by Alexander of Villedieu’s Doctrinale and reflected current
practices at the University of Paris.
3 4 John Cleland, in his "'H p oi-vaiSeia" or the instruction of a Young Gentleman (1607), suggests
the second stage of the exercise wait until the next day. He also proposes introducing other languages,
especially French, into the cycle (Kelly, 179).
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 4 9
identical would bring to the foreground even the most minor deviations. The shortcomings
of students in being able to accommodated the syntax of an inflected language would become
starkly apparent, as would even minor changes in accidence. Trouble spots would reveal how
the model achieved an effect through a specific method which their own translations did not
achieve. Double translation situated the goal of translation as one entirely pedagogical.
That is to say, students were not setting out to make polished literary translations ready for
publication. Instead, translation was purely an exercise in acquiring a feel for and a
knowledge of specific Latin constructions as they occurred in a delimited and literary context.
It helped students apply the grammatical and rhetorical knowledge they had been exposed
to and to acquire a sense of how these coordinated in actual language use.
Juan Luis Vives, whose pedagogy of imitation is explained below, also recommended
double translation as an important methodology in his educational treatise, De tradendis
disciplinis (1531). "Therefore, after they will have recited their syntax, they will render vulgar
speeches into Latin and in turn retranslate these into vernacular language" (Ergo postquam
syntaxin didicerint, reddent vulgares orationes in Latinum, & has vicissim in vulgarem
sermonem). However, Vives reverses the procedure by having students begin and end in the
mother tongue. While this is consistent with Vives’s high estimation of the vernacular, it may
have rendered the method less reliable since it depended upon the schoolmaster’s vernacular
examples rather than a classical standard of Latin language.
Double translation is also found prescribed by the anonymous author of Certaine
Epistles ofTully verbally translated (1611), and in a similar treatment by John Brinsley in his
Ludus literarius, or the Grammar Schools (London 1612). These authors require an
intermediary translation that relies upon Barzizza’s method of transposition. The Latin
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 5 0
exemplar is reordered into English syntactical order ("the naturall order") prior to the actual
translation. Brinsley instructs:
1. When they have made it in the naturall order, onely reade unto them how
Tully, or the Authour, whom their sentence is taken of it, doth place it, &
some reason of his varying, and cause them to repeat both wayes, first as they
have written, after in composition.
When students perform their translations, Brinsley proposes that they line up these versions
in columns, a method he himself adopted in providing schoolroom-oriented "translations" of
classical texts:3 5
2. After that they have practised in the former plaine manner, you may make
them doe this: cause their bookes to be ruled in 3 columnes; in the first to
write the English, in the Second the Latin verbatim, in the third to write in
composition, to try who can come nearest the authour. (cited in Kelly, 178-
79)
Brinsley’s method is certainly thorough, but students may not really have profited from
performing a true double translation. Because the original text would always be before the
student in the initial column, it would elminate the virtue of retranslating without recourse
to the original.3 6
The last method Ascham describes is imitation proper. It is difficult to say whether
what Ascham refers to as imitation proper is a highly advanced method or a very rudimentary
one. In effect, the directions he provides for this exercise are similar to what we have
already seen in that he focuses, intently and specifically, on criticizing a model according to
3 5 Brinsley’s published translations or "versions" are similar to the "grammatical translations"
found in the main body of Certaine epistles of Tully verbally translated, and included Cicero’ s officiis
(book 1, 1616); Ovid’s Metamorphosis (book 1, fables 1-9, and book 2 as a separate volume, 1618,
1655); Virgil’s Eclogues (1620); and Esops Fables, (1624) (Marion Trousdale, "Recurrence and
Renaissance: Rhetorical Imitation in Ascham and Sturm." English Literary Renaissance 6 [1976]: 161
n. 12).
3 6 The method of double translation can be traced forward into the late eighteenth century,
John Clarke approves of it in An Introduction to the Making of Latin (London, 1798) (Kelly, 179).
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 25 1
criteria that derive from the language arts. However, this particular exercise in imitation
does not call for the student to borrow the artistry of a literary model, but to imitate
another’s imitation. It is a kind of imitation twice over, for Ascham calls for the student to
carefully compare the texts of two authors, one of whom is known to have imitated the other.
The student notes how that imitation was accomplished as a means of guiding his own future
imitations. What will guide the student’s understanding of how one important author has
imitated another? Barzizza’s four transformative methods.
Cicero, Ascham reminds us, imitated the Greek orator Demosthenes. A student
would do well to place the orations of both men side by side. For this analysis Ascham
provides a numbered list, asking students to observe
1) What Cicero retains from his source in matter, sentences, and words;
[The reverse of asking what was substituted (immutando — Barzizza’s
fourth method)]
2) What Cicero leaves out, and to what purpose he makes omissions;
[Barzizza’s subtrahendo]
3) What he adds; [Barzizza’s addendo]
4) What he diminishes; [Barzizza’s subtrahendo, although apparently
different from #2]3 7
5) How he reorders his source, and why; [Barzizza’s transferendo] and
6) What he alters, "either in property of words, in form of sentence, [or] in
substance of the matter" in light of the author’s present purpose
[Barzizza’s transferendo or immutando]. (215)
In another place Ascham recommends a similar analysis of Plato’s imitation of a portion of
the Iliad. Ascham recaps Barzizza’s transformative methods, for knowledge of these is
necessary to perform this analysis: "And therefore would I have our schoolmaster . . . mark
diligently these four points; what is kept, what is added, what is left out, what is changed
3 7 As Sturm did with Barzizza’ s addendo, breaking it into addition and amplification, Ascham
seems to do with subtrahendo, breaking it into omission and diminishment. This makes it possible to
consider the kind of abbreviation that happens, for example, when the forcefulness with which
something is treated is cut short. It does not simply name the process of removing words.
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 5 2
either in choice of words or form of sentences." Through these methods one manipulates
language for one’s own purposes. Taking manipulation as a metaphor, Ascham concludes,
"Which four points be the right tools, to handle like a workman this kind of work" (215).
Ascham’s directions indicate that Barzizza’s transformations are as much critical
categories for analysis as they are compositional strategies. But more than that, Ascham
requires students to note the occurrence of a given imitative transformation that occurs
between a given author and his source, and then to account for that change. Ascham is
strident in this respect, deriding those like Macrobius who identify Homeric sources in Virgil
without bothering to account for Virgil’s changes to his model. Naked comparisons and
contrasts between a model and its imitation are insufficient, for "only to point out, and
nakedly to join together their sentences, with no further declaring the manner and way how
the one doth follow the other, were but a cold help to the increase of learning" (215).
Imitation is never to occur simply by way of these transformations; there must be reasons
behind the changes made.
Ascham’s imitative curriculum may have been considered pedantic by the likes of
Francis Bacon, but a close inspection of his methods reveals that each of his exercises
demands students to engage critically in an appreciation of how ideas and expression relate
to one another by forcing them to attend to possible changes of meaning that always
accompany changes of form. Moreover, Ascham requires students not only to be able to
translate or transform sources between languages, genres, or other formal constraints, but
to be able to assess the reasons by which another imitator has proceeded. Imitation is
superficial, pedantic, or inane when it attends only to superficial forms, but Ascham’s
imitative pedagogy constrained pupils to develop a sense of judgment regarding their
imitative choices. If they could justify the choices other writers had made, they would prove
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 5 3
themselves capable of justifying their own imitative compositions. Attending to the imitations
of others was a critical innovation Ascham shared with Juan Luis Vives, to whose pedagogy
I now turn.
Juan Luis Vives
The Spaniard Juan Luis Vives (1492-1540) was a humanist educator whose
importance rivaled that of his master, Erasmus (though his acclaim would in later years wane
while that of Erasmus would rise). Vives, who was educated at the University of Paris
according to the scholastic model, used that experience as a negative model as he
championed humanistic reforms for education. He criticized the inordinately logic-centered
education he received there in his first major work, Liber in pseudo-dialecticos (Louvain,
1519). Vives settled in Flanders (Bruges) and wrote his main works there and in Brabant
(Breda, Louvain) and England (Oxford, London). He shared with Roger Ascham the
distinction of tutoring a monarch, Mary Tudor (which partly accounts for the eclipse of his
fame with Catherine’s, since she had hired him). While Mary’s tutor, Vives composed De
Institutione feminae christianae and De ratione studii puerilis (1523), the former being one of
the most eloquent appeals for female education in the period and a principle source of his
fame. He was also widely known for his Introduetio ad sapientiam (Bruges, 1524), a brief
educational treatise, and his Linguae latinae exercitatio (Bruges, 1538), schoolroom colloquies
for learning Latin that competed well with those of Erasmus and Corderius. As an index of
his influence, Vives’s Exercitatio was adapted by Mexico’s first professor of eloquence,
Francisco Cervantes de Salazar from Toledo (1513/14-1575), who published Vives’s Latin
colloquies in 1554, the year following the founding of the University of Mexico.
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 5 4
Vives contributed significantly to the history of education, championing education not
only for women { [Instituto feminae Christianae', Antwerp, 1524) but for the poor (the subject
of his De subventione pauperum [Bruges, 1526]), and providing some of the first penetrating
analyses of educational psychology in his De anima et vita (Bruges, 1538). Not only did Vives
stress the divine obligation of education and the breadth of its content, but he emphasized
the need for right method in attaining it.3 8 Accordingly, Vives very carefully delineated the
role of imitation in the curriculum he proposed.
That curriculum, though scattered throughout his various educational works, is set
forth in De tradendis disciplinis (Bruges 1531), Vives’s magnum opus of education. This
includes a chapter on imitation. The importance of imitation within pedagogy comes across
in Vives’s summarizing title:
On imitation: what it is, how much power is available through imitating, who,
according to whom, and in what way to imitate; with a discussion of those
ancient writers who, because of their great characteristics, are most worthy
of imitation.
de imitatione; quid sit, quantarumque virium imitari. quis cuique et in quo
imitandus; antiqui scriptores in qua quisque maxime virtute floruit, indicatur.3 9
While some of his discussion in this chapter is a standard assessment of various authors and
their desirable and/or imitable characteristics, Vives nevertheless provides some of the most
specific detail of any Renaissance pedagogue regarding the process of imitation itself.
The necessity of imitation, claims Vives, derives from the fact that nature allows us
to be born ignorant and absolutely skilless of all arts. As Melanchthon, Vives does not offer
3 8 William Harrison Woodward, Studies in Education during the Age of the Renaissance 1400-
1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1924): 188-89. By method is not meant "method" as
codified by Peter Ramus later in the sixteenth century. Vives’s most important works were published
prior to Ramus’s influential curricular reforms in the name of method.
3 9 Jean Luis Vives, De tradendis disciplinis, in Opera Omnia, ed. Gregorio Mayans y Siscar
(Valencia, 1782), 6.361.
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 5 5
the language arts themselves as a solution to the problem. Imitation is the necessary
practical complement to theoretical instruction. Vives defines imitation as "the fashioning
of a certain thing according to a proposed model" (imitatio porro effictio est rei alicujus ad
exemplar propositum; 362). However, this simple definition belies the complications of
imitation, for many conditions attend the proper execution of this pedagogy.
First, imitation is to be understood as a graduated process. At the earliest stages
Vives grants that a student may transfer (transferal) from his model those things which he is
unable to "render" (quae reddere non potent), "provided it does not escape him that this is not
imitation, but filching" (modo ne ilium fugiat non id esse imitari sed suppilare; 6.365), an error
into which, he says, too many have fallen. "Gradually," says Vives, "he will truly imitate, that
is, he will fashion (affinget) what he desires according to his model, not ripping out patches
from his examples and just sewing them into his own work" (paullatim autem vere imiiabitur,
id est, ad exemplar affinget quae volet; non de exemplari centones surripiet, quos in opere suo
consuat; 365). This implies a less slavish kind of imitation than the servile imitators had in
mind, one that relies upon the capacities, guided by schoolmasters, of the students’ inner
abilities.4 0
Respecting the capacity of the learner, individually or generally, accounts for the way
that Vives describes imitation as a distinctly different process for those at different levels of
linguistic maturity. At some point a student should become able to imitate the very best
models; but initially, Vives suggests following one of the better students in the class and then
the master. If at first imitation may only consist in transfering or even citing verbatim from
■ “ Vives spends a considerable part of his chapter on imitation discussing the importance of
fitting the imitative process to the individual talent (ingenium) of the student, an important proviso
which I will take up in chapter 7.
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 5 6
sources, this must give way in time to better ways of following. Students should attempt to
imitate not simply words, but certain qualities in their models: copiousness brevity, splendor,
dignity, grace, arguments, arrangement, etc. (effirtgi eadem specie queant, vel gener, vel ut
orationis copia, brevitate, splendore, gravitate, gratia, argumentis, dispositione, ac ejusmodv,
6.366).
Consistent with other humanists, Vives insists that effective imitation of the best sort
requires a learned appreciation of a literary model. In the subsection called "how to imitate,"
Quomodo imitandum, Vives provides his explanation of the kind of literary criticism that
precedes imitation. In words that echo those of Melanchthon’s rhetoric published the same
year in Wittenberg, Vives describes the analytical imitative process:
His chosen model open before his eyes, the imitator will examine it most
attentively, and will consider exactly by what art and what method, he believes
it was constructed by the author. He does this so that, by similar artifice he
himself may accomplish that which he would aim at in his own mind. Indeed
the art and the craftsmanship ought to stand out as it did in the original,
insofar as this is in fact possible. In this way it will be in a sense stolen, but
he will not use the identical matter nor create the same work.
Proposito autem ante oculos exemplari attentissime aemulator contempletur,
ac consideret, qua tandem arte ac ratione ab auctore id putet confectum, ut
simili artificio et ipse quod animo destinarit, perficiat; ars enim et opificium,
quantum fieri quidem possit, idem praestandum est, et quodammodo
surripiendum; non materia eadem, vel opus idem. (6.365)
What would constitute theft, rather than imitation, would be too close an adherence either
to the words or to the content of the original. Vives illustrates with an example showing the
difference between stealing (plagiarism) and imitation. If someone, he says, wanting to thank
another person were to repeat verbatim Cicero’ s speech to the senate (or Ausonius’ to
Gratianus August), this would be plagiarizing (furari).
But indeed it would be imitation if he were to consider what the author
desired to bring about in the exordium of the speech, what in the second,
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 5 7
third and so on in the rest; what he says in the first place, what other things
follow, from where he sought these commonplaces, how he brought things
together and connected them, what analogies he draws, where he obtained
his examples, to what passions of the mind he reaches, where, how and by
which authorities he sustains his own arguments and of whom he gets them.
By all of this study he would not intend to use the same material, but to use
those sources which stand to him in the same relation as his author's did to him.
Let him study how the author joined together the more excellent things
intended to be committed to posterity, what words bound together single
parts, what was the structure of the words. Then indeed let him copy the
same workmanship, but not the same words or concepts {non eadem vel verba
vel sensa).4 1
This passage describes a sophisticated kind of imitation similar to that prescribed by Ascham
in his final exercise, imitation proper. Yes, the imitator substitutes new words and new
subject matter, but the emphasis is not so much upon copying a pattern of syntax or
sequential development it is upon how the previous author composed and handled his subject
matter. The imitator attempts to approximate the relationship that the original author
achieved with his sources.
The transformation of substitution applies here on a grander scale. One not only
substitutes his or her own subject matter; one substitutes oneself into the position of the
original author, arranging around oneself those various resources that the original author did
for himself.4 2 Note the very specific nature of critical analysis that this involves. The imitator
4 1 "Imitari autem fuerit, si consideret quid auctor in orationis exordio velit efficere, quid
secunda parte, quid tertia, et sic deinceps; quae primo dicit loco, quae aliis sequentibus, quibus ex
locis petitis, quomodo colligatis, et connexis, quas similitudines inducat, quae usurpet exempla, quos
animi affectus attingat, ubi, quomodo, quibus auctoritatibus sua fulciat, et quorum; non quo nos
utamur eorundem, sed ut eorum, qui nobis loco eodem sunt, quo illi erant auctori nostro; qua
commissura priora posterioribus compingat, quae verba singulis partibus accommodet, quam verborum
structuram; hoc tu artificium idem effingito, non eadem vel verba vel sensa: subjiciamus verbi gratia
breve aliquod exemplum" (6.365-66). My emphasis.
4 2 This all-encompassing sort of imitation is compares to the sort of substitution Johann Sturm
would prescribe for his students some years later in De exercitationibus rhetoricis, liber academicus
(1575). Sturm there instructed his students to put themselves into the place of Cicero and give
orations as standing before a Roman court.
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 5 8
would not begin to write until having considered: 1) the specific purpose behind each part
of the oration; 2) the order of presentation; 3) the commonplaces consulted; 4) the
transitions and connections between material; 5) the specific analogies and examples
employed; 6) the emotions to which the author was appealing; 7) the sources he employs for
his proofs; 8) the authorities he consults and how he employs them; and 9) the manner by
which the author connected ideas and words. This is asking much more of the imitator than
to copy ideas or content. It is asking the imitator to copy the orator’s modus operandi; or
perhaps more accurately, his modi inventiendi dispositiendi oranandique, the author’s specific
methods of invention, arrangement, and ornamentation.
Vives’s examples follow. Unlike other pedagogues, Vives shows how imitations can
be better or worse. He takes a speech quoted in Cicero’s Orator by Carbo, tribune of
Thebes:
O Marcus Drusus, I mean the father; thou was accustomed to say that the
republic was sacred; and whoever should violate it, he should be punished by
all. Thy saying of the father was wise, the rashness of the son has confirmed
it.
O M. Druse, patrem appello: tu dicere solebas sacram esse rempublicam,
quicunque earn violavissent, poenas esse ei ab omnibus persolutas: patris
citum sapiens, temeritas filii comprobavit:
Then, Vives provides two imitations of the passage, one unacceptable, the other acceptable,
respectively:
(U nacceptable:)
O holy Paul, I mean the native of Tarsus: thou was accustomed to say that
charity was sacred and whoever should violate it, he should be punished by
all. The saying of the Apostle was wise, the rashness of the wicked has
confirmed it.
O Dive Paule, Tharsensem appello: tu dicere solebas sacram esse caritatem,
quicunque earn violavissent, poenas esse ei ab omnibus persolutas: Apostoli
dictum sapiens, scelerum temeritas comprobavit. (6.366)
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 5 9
The unacceptable imitation clearly relies too literally upon its model, retaining all but seven
of the twenty-six words of the original and using unsophisticated substitutions: Dive Paule
instead of M. Druse, Tharsensem (of Tarsus) instead of patrem (Sr.), caritatem instead of
rempublicam, etc. Vives’s dissatisfaction suggests that simple substitutions which merely alter
the subject matter (as those of the first imitation do) are of little value. At last, the
acceptable imitation:
(Acceptable:)
O holy Paul, I mean, Paul of Tarsus, thou was in the habit of preaching that
great was the strength of charity, and that whosoever did not live in
accordance with it was no member of Christ’s kingdom. The familiarity men
have had with what is wicked has disowned this gracious precept of the
Apostle.
O Dive Paule, Tharsensem appello, tu semper praedicare consuvisti magnas
esse vires caritatis, quicunque secundum earn non viverent, nec pertinere ad
regnum Christi: Apostoli sententiam piam consuetudo scelerum abdicavit.
(6.366)
Of this second imitation, Vives says "there is everything which was felicitously expressed in
the previous [original] passage, the same incisive clauses, and the same rhythmical conclusion
of the double-trochee (dichoreus)" (6.366). The second differs from the first in the kinds of
substitutions it makes. Not only does it substitute the subject matter of love for that of the
republic, but it introduces additions and deletions that accommodate what becomes less an
echo of the model, more an original thought. The imitation begins in a fashion essentially
parallel to the model: Tu semper praedicare consuvisti magnas esse vires caritatis clearly
echoes Tu dicere solebas sacram esse rempublicam (though with more variety of synonymous
substitutions to make it appear less derivative from the model); but this better imitation stays
only peripherally close to the model in what follows: quicunque earn violavissent is imitated
with quicunque secundum earn non viverent. "whosoever did not live according to it" rather
than "whosoever violated it" (This includes a grammatical substitution of a prepositional
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 6 0
phrase instead of verb-plus-object) — and leaves the model altogether in the following
phrase: nec pertinere ad regnum Christi, "would neither belong to the kingdom of Christ," in
lieu of something similar to poenas esse ei ab omnibus persolutas: "would deserve to be
punished by all." The imitation employs a grammatical parallelism to match the semantic
parallelism of condition and result: quicunque. . . non viverent, nec pertinere, "whoever would
not live . . . would not belong.” This is absent in the model, whose violavisset is not parallel
with its stated result, poenas esse ei. In this case, By reversing the model’s negative verb
violavisset, with a negated positive verb, non viverent (Barzizza had suggested the use of
opposites when substituting), it made possible a parallelism between this condition and its
result, non pertinere, that would have been impossible without this exchange. This
transformation results in no mere rhetorical flourish; it heightens the intended meaning by
making its semantic content more clear and forceful.
As Vives’s example shows, there comes a point at which the imitator comfortably
takes leave of his model and ventures out on his own. In this case, the imitation improved
upon the form of the original passage by supplying additional clarity through certain
grammatical transformations. As part of the graduated nature of imitation, Vives encourages
pupils to reach for this independence both in making their own assessments of their models
and in writing their own imitations or compositions:
When you have had sufficient exercises on the racecourse (so to speak) of
this imitation, begin to emulate, and to compare yourself with you guide, to
see where you can approach near to him, and how far you are left behind
him. As a fair and diligent critic, examine his virtues and defects, what is
becoming in him, and what is to be accounted faulty, which virtue is easy of
reproduction, which is his own particular grace, and if it is incapable of
reproduction by others. You will compare these passages with your own,
either what is said in them with adequate expression, or otherwise. You will
yourself correct your own work, while avoiding the mistakes of the model and
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 261
at the same time you will give your attention to his beauties. Try to attain to
his great beauties, and afterwards even to excel them.4 3
Not all efforts to vie with one’s model will meet with success, and Vives actually cautions
against attempting to copy those who are superior, such as Cicero. In the attempt, he claims,
one will only fall into absurd excesses.
Vives’s pedagogy stands out for his efforts to establish imitation not simply on a
graduated scale, but on par with a given individual’s abilities and current capacities. Unlike
Sturm or William Kempe (as will be shown), Vives does not map various stages of imitation
onto a strict curricular plan, allowing for variation of ability even within a given class. In this
sense Vives may have been far ahead of his time, for Renaissance schooling was moving
towards a more regularized and codified institutional structure inimicable to such
individualized pedagogy. Peter Ramus stood at the head of this reorientation.
Peter Ramus and His Followers
One of the students Johann Sturm taught in Paris would later change forever the
nature of language studies and educational curriculum in the sixteenth century. This was
Pierre de la Ramee (1515-1572). In the 1540s while teaching at the University of Paris, Peter
Ramus catapulted into the limelight as he issued a series of iconoclastic treatises attacking
4 3 "quocirca ubi satis te in imitationis hoc (ut sic dicam) stadio exercueris, aemulari incipe, et
te cum duce tuo conferre, qua parte accedas propius, qua longe a tergo relinquare; virtutes illius et
vitia aequus et diligens censor examina, quid in illo deceat, quid habeat vitandum, quam virtutem
redditu facilem, quam gratiam paene propriam, et aliis inconcessam; haec comparabis cum tuis, et ex
eorum vel recte dictis, vel secus, ipse corriges tua, sive dum vitium devitas, sive dum te componis ad
pulchra: conare ut magnas virtutes aeques, mox etiam ut vincas" (6.367).
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 6 2
the three great pillars of Renaissance education — Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian.4 4
Ramus merits his own chapter in the history of Renaissance rhetoric and dialectic for his
attempts to divide and coordinate these two disciplines within a single, integrated educational
program. While this is not the place for that history,4 S Ramus does merit special attention
in the history of Renaissance imitation because of his Ciceronianus (1557) and (more
importantly) because of the pragmatic and popular nature of his "Method."
In his Ciceronianus (1557) Ramus took his turn to speak against extremist and
superficial imitators of Cicero. In a manner consistent with Erasmus’s Ciceronianus issued
two decades prior, Ramus calls for the imitation of Cicero’s life, wisdom, and overall manner,
not simply his words. He describes imitation in ethical terms rather than pedagogical ones,
indicating for the latter only the desirability that many models rather than a single exclusive
one be imitated. More important than this work were his earlier treatises that laid out his
revolutionary curriculum and established his pragmatic approach that would become so
M Aristotelicae animadversiones (1543); Brutinae quaestiones (1547); Rhetoricae distinctions in
Quintilian (1549). The latter two have recently appeared in newly edited, bilingual editions: Peter
Ramus’ s Attack on Cicero: Text and Translation of Ramus’ s "Brutinae Questions," ed. James J. Murphy,
trans. Carole Newlands (Davis, California: Hermagoras Press, 1992); and Arguments in Rhetoric Against
Quintilian: Translation and Text of Peter Ramus’ s "Rhetoricae Distinctions in Quintilianum" (1549),
trans. Carole Newlands (Dekalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 1986).
4 5 In addition to the standard studies of Ramus by Walter Ong, Ramus, Method, and the Decay
of Dialogue (Cambridge, Mass., 1958; reprinted New York, 1972); Ong, Ramus and Talon Inventory
(Cambridge Mass. 1958); and C. Waddington, Ramus: sa vie, ses ecrits et ses opinions (Paris, 1855), see
Peter Sharratt, "The present state of studies on Ramus" (Studi Francesi 47-8 [1972]: 201-13); Sharratt,
"Recent Work on Peter Ramus (1970-1986), Rhetorica 5 (1987): 7-58; Anthony Grafton and Lisa
Jardine, "Pragmatic Humanism: Ramism and the rise of 'the Humanities’," chap. 7 oiFrom Humanism
to the Humanities: Education and the Liberal Arts in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Europe.
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986); Kees Meerhoff, Rhetorique et poetique au XVIe siecle
en France: Du Bellay, Ramus et les autres (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1986); and Nelly Bruyere, Methode et
dialectique dans Voeuvre de La Ramee — Renaissance et age classique (Paris: Vrin, 1987).
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 6 3
famous. Ramus’s ideas and pedagogy were a wild success in France, Germany, and America.
During the hundred years following his first major works in the mid sixteenth-century, some
750 separately published editions of Ramus’s works appeared (Ong, 5).
Most pertinent to this study is Ramus’s codifications of method in humanistic
teaching. "Method" was the hallmark of Ramus’s reorientation of the language disciplines.
Ramus introduced this term in the expanded version of his 1543 Dialecticae institutiones,4 6
along with two others that merit special attention in the history of imitation: "analysis" and
"genesis." "Method," for Ramus, generally meant a more organized, efficient, and systematic
arrangement for teaching. However, we can isolate three distinct kinds of Ramistic "method."
First, method for Ramus was principally a curricular matter of streamlining and coordinating
the three language arts. He faulted the redundancy that had become traditional in teaching
inventio, dispositio and the figures and tropes in both the discipline of logic and that of
rhetoric. He therefore restricted the study of invention and arrangement to dialectic and
relegated style and delivery to rhetoric. Grammar would remain restricted to syntax and
etymology, no longer overlapping with rhetoric in presenting figures and tropes. Second,
"method" for Ramus also comprised an approach to the presentation of arguments in
dialectic specifically or of knowledge generally. The "natural method," according to Ramus,
was to arrange ideas in descending order of generality, whether in the course of an argument
or in the pages of a textbook. This general-to-specific arrangement tended to take place in
terms of dichotomies that could be readily charted schematically. The legacy of Ramistic
"method" can be seen in the many tree-diagram texts that appeared beginning in the latter
‘ “This occurred under the name of his colleague Omer Talon (ca. 1510-1562), since Ramus
was at that time prohibited from publishing: Dialectici commentarii tres authore Audomare Taleo editi
(Paris: Ludovicus Grandinus, 1546).
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 6 4
part of the sixteenth century, neatly organizing knowledge according to logical categories.4 7
This attractiveness of this method of intellectual-textual presentation derived both from its
logical organization and its economy.4 8
While these first two instances of Ramististic method are the most identifiable of the
Ramist legacy, it is the third that pertains most to the present study. In his revised Dialectic
of 1546, Ramus presented imitation as a universal pedagogical method for instruction.
Imitation is described as a twofold process divided between "analysis" and "genesis": one
observed extant works to see how the rules (of dialectic or of rhetoric) obtained within them,
then generated one’s own writing in light of it.4 9 Analysis and genesis are terms that, quite
independent of Ramus’s contributions, describe how literature was studied and imitation was
taught from the time of Bruni and Barzizza. As we have already seen throughout the various
pedagogies examined in Part II of this study, very specific kinds of literary analysis led to
various compositional exercises that proceeded according to certain transformations. By
4 7 Conley asserts that Ramus derived his method of dichotomous arrangement from Johann
Sturm’ s 1529 lectures in Paris on Hermogenes (131). Given Sturm’ s interest in "figurative draughts"
(see above, chapter 4) and the nature of Hermogenes’ works, this is highly plausible. Hermogenes’
On Staseis is based upon a dichotomous procedure and is readily charted diagrammatically (for an
example diagram, see George Kennedy, Greek Rhetoric Under Christian Emperors, 83). Hermogenes’
Peri Ideon (On Types of Style) is written in such a way that lends itself to diagrammed divisions. See,
for example, the chart prefacing Cecil W. Wooton’ s translation, Hermogenes’ "On Types of Style"
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987).
“ “Ramus, for example, applied this sort of method to the treatment of schemes and tropes,
providing four master tropes (the part-to-whole relations of metonymy and synecdoche and the part-
to-part relations of metaphor and irony) from which all others derived. Hitherto the schemes and
tropes had been treated variously and lengthily but with no distinguishing organizing principle.
Ramus’s rhetoric fills only a hundred pages, compared to Quintilian’ s two books devoted to the
subject (Conley 131).
4 9 Classen, "Cicero orator inter Germanos redivivus II," 170. Ramus provides an explanation
of this in P. Vergilii Maronis Georgica . . . praelectionibus illustrata (Paris 1556), praefatio, 14, and Pro
philosophica . . . disciplina oratio (Paris 1551), 12v -13r.
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 6 5
prescribing imitation as a general method for teaching both dialectic and rhetoric, and by
coining "analysis" and "genesis” as the two activities that make up this imitative pedagogy,
Ramus was not so much revolutionaizing as codifying established humanistic pedagogical
practice.
Ramus’s terminology for the process of imitation turns up in educational works
beginning in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. Gabriel Harvey is one prominent
example. Having experienced a "conversion" to Ramus around 1569, Harvey expounded the
doctrine of imitation in Ramis tic terms during his brief professorship at Cambridge (1575-
76). Harvey’s inaugural oration, delivered in the spring of 1575 and later published as his
Ciceronianus (1577), was "designed to introduce a series of lectures concerned with the
analysis of rhetorical models which the students were expected to imitate and emulate in
their own rhetorical exercises."5 0
While he gave credit to many, Harvey’s procedure was clearly dictated by Ramistic
"method," for he taught imitation as a process consisting of analysis and genesis. He
explicated these two facets of imitation in another oration at Cambridge, published as. Rhetor,
vel duorum dierum oratio, de natura, arte, & exercitatione rhetorica (London: Henry Binneman,
1577), where he glorified them as arch principles.5 1 Harvey describes analysis as the detailed
5 0 Harold S. Wilson, ed., Gabriel Harvey’ s "Ciceronianus." (1577), trans. Clarence A. Forbes,
Studies in the Humanities, No. 4 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1945), 5. Harvey used this
occasion to comment on the Ciceronian controversies that had preceded him, relating his own
conversion from the servile sort of Ciceronianism to the enlightened doctrine of imitation he learned
from Erasmus, Sturm, Ramus, and Johann Freigius, each of whom (excepting Sturm, who edited and
lectured on Cicero), had composed their own treatise entitled Ciceronianus.
5 1 "Haec porro miracula exhibebunt Analysis, atque Genesis: languentes & sopitos artis sensus
excitabunt: calore viventis sanguinis, motuque eloquentis spiritus animabunt adeo ut summam in illis
dicendi virtutem, ac prope solam esse affirmare audeam. Quid dici a quoquam mortali potuit
magnificentius? & tamen meosis haec, non auxesis est" (Llr v ).
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 6 6
investigation into the virtues of any art whatsoever (providing comparisons to the arts of war,
growing crops, and of painting). Analysis is the left hand; genesis, the right. He defines
genesis as imitation — following the same method that one finds in other arts. Just as many
men have followed or imitated the art of war, he says, none of them did so precisely the
same way, apparently assuaging worries over unoriginality (L2r). Harvey retains the Ramistic
pattern in explaining imitation both in his Rhetor and his Ciceronianus, although his
explanation is neither very lucid nor very specific pedagogically.
A more rigorous treatment of Ramistic imitative pedagogy is that by the anonymous
author of Certaine Epistles of Tully verbally translated (1611), a text examined above in
connection with double translation and humanist methods of literary analysis. Analysis and
genesis head this author’s textbook and constitute general terms that describe language
instruction as a whole:
Paideutico — Grammatice, or the right way to instruct Youth in Grammer:
. . . is by Analysis and Genesis. Analysis is a resolving or undoing of the
matter of Grammer, wisely fitted to the understanding and capacity of the
learners. Here we are specially to take heed, that nothing bee passed over,
either not sufficiently made plaine by the Teacher, or not well understood by
the Learner: then which evill, nothing is more pernicious in a Schoole. And
Analysis, is either of the precepts of the art itselfe, or the examples. (A4r)
The author first lists precepts of grammar that are to be analyzed (dividing these into
etymological [morphological] and syntactical analyses — parsing and construing), then
stresses the importance of analyzing examples from literature, a process which includes "a
skilfull applying of the example to the precept. Whence it commeth to passe, that the very
precepts do more clearely appeare in the understandings of the learners, and are more surely
kept in their memory" (A4v -A5r). Analysis is either of a briefer kind, in which texts serve as
brief examples of a given grammatical principle, or of a longer kind, "which explaines the
longer examples and treatises of Oratours, Historians, Poets, and others whatsoever" (A3r).
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 6 7
Genesis complements this grammatical activity, which the author defines as
the making of a Grammer exercise handsomely and wor[k]manlike fashioned
to the rule of the precepts. And it is either an imitation of some approved
author, or the invention of the maker. An imitation is a Genesis, made after
the examples of the best Authors, as of Cicero, Cesar, Livy, Virgill, Ovid,
Horace, Terence, and so forth. (B2r v )
The genesis or imitative composition is to be governed by four guidelines. First, the
schoolmaster is to guide them; second, that "every Genesis [is to be] made in the very steps
of the Grammaticall Analysis"-, third, students are to "spend their chiefest pains upon those
elegant phrases and sentences, which differ most from our owne tongue"; and fourth, that
"the practise of no Genesis is to be left of, or intermitted, untill the Scholar, both by tongue
and pen, be able, very readily, and upon any occasion, to use any word, phrase, sentence, the
matter it self, colloquy, Epistle, and so forth" (B2V ). By this we understand that imitation is
a guided and thorough process, centered on grammatical and rhetorical features.
Like Melanchthon, Vives, and William Kempe, this author sees imitation as a method
to be employed in a graduated curriculum. He sets forth four levels or kinds of imitation.
Each of these requires of students the "genesis" of increasingly difficult Latin. They begin
with a kind of imitation obviously intended simply to drill students in the rudiments of Latin
by employing Barzizza’s substitional transformation — in this case, to teach grammatical
agreement and accidence: "The first imitation is of the word governing, and the word
governed alone, with any least alteration of number, case, gender, tense, or person" (B3r).
That is, a student learns to "generate" Latin by taking model sentences and altering single
components within it.5 2 The pupil then graduates to a second kind of imitation, taking on
5 2 We will see below that William Kempe described in detail this sort of rudimentary imitation
in his pedagogy.
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n In R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 6 8
slightly larger components of discourse, "Phrases & formulae loquendi," and whole sentences
containing multiple clauses. The author suggests "changing therein one, two, or moe [sic]
words." The "third imitation" is to be attempted only after long practice at the first two, and
consists of an exercise much like Ascham’s and Vives’s double translation. After having
performed "grammatical translations" (inverting Latin to English syntax) or completed
Englished versions of a given passage, students are then to compose in Latin "as every word
had beene before artificially composed, and cunningly placed in their Authour: yea and to
make every word and phrase in their Dictates sutable, and every way answerable to the same
elegant composed stile" (B3r). This two-part imitation calls upon the student to generate not
simply the content of their translated passage but its expressive style. The "fourth imitation"
is to be attempted after long practice in the former three, and consists of taking a longer,
harder passage from literature and substituting new subject matter, as Barzizza recommended
and Vives demonstrated. "This is chiefly made by changing the purpose of the Author, and
his course of speech: so that it may seeme to be their owne invention, rather then the
imitation of another" (B3V ). Unsurprisingly, the author recommends this be done according
to the Barzizzan transformations. "It is either addition, which thereunto applieth some thing
divised by themselves, or borrowed elsewhere: or else detraction, whereby those things are
cut away which most bewray their imitation, or serve not so fitly to their present purpose"
(B3V ). In the process one generates new material, retaining only the form of the model as
a prompt or guide. By accomplishing this fourth, highest form of imitation, the student in
fact invents new material.
Invention is what the anonymous author perceives as the great virtue of imitative
genesis. It is, he says, the great culmination of study, "very notably painting out the Summum
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 6 9
bonum of the Art itself, as beeing indeed the very marke whereat we aime, and the true
perfection of all professions in learning" (B41 ). By tying imitation to invention through
Ramistic "genesis," the author of Certaine Epistles of Tully brings to the foreground the way
in which Ramus was essentially in harmony with his humanistic forbears and contemporaries,
despite the apparent novelty of his curriculum. Even though Ramus divided invention from
rhetorical instruction (and has for this reason been derided for diminishing or impoverishing
the study of rhetoric), the imitative method he prescribed for both dialectic and rhetoric
perforce united the two. As easily seen above in the pedagogies of Melanchthon or Sturm
(who like Ramus believed dialectic and rhetoric to be complementary), the imitative
compositions that students would generate subsequent to their analyses of literature would
reflect the excellencies of their models on all linguistic levels — grammatical, dialectical, and
rhetorical. These three arts could be addressed separately theoretically; but in the praxis of
imitation they came together. So long as Ramus’s realignments are considered in the
abstraction of his curricular divisions, there appears to be an opposition or hierarchy between
rhetoric and dialectic. However, imitation turns the focus of language arts pedagogy away
from theoretical abstractions and towards those specific literary examples in which grammar,
dialectic, and rhetoric functioned coordinately and interdependently. Ramus brought to the
university of Paris the inductive approach to language that was a basic humanist tenet. He
held that "merely to know the universal rules without knowing particular usage is not real and
absolute knoweldge."5 3 However, if one takes particular usage (literature) as a baseline, then
one may indeed arrive at both knowledge and competence in the arts that authors display
by way of imitation. Those who focus on Ramus’s watershed treatises on the three language
5 3 Quoted by Kelly, Twenty-five Centuries of Language Teaching, 37.
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n In R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 7 0
arts and their apparently sharp divisions should also pay heed to the integrative praxis Ramus
recommends in the commentaries he wrote. For example, in summing up his commentary
on Cicero’s second agrarian speech Ramus claims that even if one had never acquried any
sort of rhetorical or logical competence, the Aristotelian principles of induction and
observation would provide a knowledge of both arts, so long as the elements of rhetorical
elocution, invention of topoi, and logical arragement are unravelled (through literary analysis
like that which his commentary provides). A large and welcome number of logical and
rhetorical qualities were there to be seen within an eminent and outstanding example.5 4
The Ramus legacy is difficult to sort through. While he proclaimed the unity of
philosophy and eloquence, his curricular reforms seemed to polarize the language arts rather
than unite them. While he seemed only to be codifying established humanistic practice by
naming the two constitutent parts of imitation, analysis and genesis, he also seemed to have
diminished the rhetorical orientation of imitation by making it the universal method for
dialectic as well. While he adhered to an inductive, literary-based approach to language
learning in contrast to scholastic methods, his iconoclasm seemed to undermine both the
worthiness of models for imitation and the merits of extant methodologies not really so
distinct from his own.
The effects of that iconoclasm may have finally frustrated Ramus’s legacy by
emphasizing one part of his "method" at the expense of another. For example, in his Rhetor
(1577) Gabriel Harvey taught his Cambridge students that Ramistic method required them
5 4 "Nam si nullam umquam rhetoricam et logicam artem ante didicisses, tamen haec Aristotelis
eirayuyyrj Kai ' urropia ita retextis et rhetoricae elocutionis et topicae inventionis et analyticae
dispositionis partibus magnam tibi utriusque artis informationem afferrent, cum in nobili praestantique
exemplo omnium fere et rhetoricarum et logicarum virtutum tantam frequentiam tamque gratam
videres" (cited by Classen, "Cicero orator inter Germanos redivivus II," 170-71).
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y
2 71
to put aside all the apparatus by which rhetoric has traditionally been taught, disregarding
everything except perhaps Aristotle’s topoi. Ramus’ s simplified scheme, he asserts, required
no phrase books, no collections of commonplaces, no apophthegms or "other such apparatus
of sloth or pedantry popular in the schools."5 5 The students may even set to one side the
many Ciceronian commentators (Harvey lists fourteen of them). Harvey explicitly names
Ascham’s Schoolmaster as a text to be cast away in favor of Ramus’s method (172-73). In
Harvey’s zeal to clear away all but Ramus’s method, he leaves nothing remaining of that
method except its demand for distinct curricular divisions. As mentioned above, even when
repeating Ramus’s principles of analysis and genesis Harvey is at a loss to say what they are
for or how exactly they work. Having eliminated the various commentaries and pedagogical
techniques which, among so many others, Ramus had himself supplied, Harvey ends up
diminishing Ramist imitative method while attempting to exalt it.
Ramus is credited with institutionalizing (and transforming) humanism. I now turn
to another, far more minor figure on the Renaissance educational scene, a man who did not
bring about any great curricular reforms, did not found academies, nor issue best-selling
educational texts. Rather, William Kempe’s pedagogy usefully reflects one way in which
imitative practice had become institutionalized in humanist grammar school curriculum by
the late sixteenth century — without, apparently, any influence from Ramus.
5 5 Quoted by Harold S. Wilson , "Gabriel Harvey’ s Orations on Rhetoric,"ELH12 (1945): 172.
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 7 2
William Kempe
William Kempe (15637-1601) was the master of an English grammar school in
Plymouth from as early as 1581 up to the time of his death around the turn of the century.
Unlike other figures discussed in this chapter, Kempe was not a broadly influential
schoolmaster or humanist. However, as Robert Pepper asserts, Kempe’s value lies in the fact
that he was "the first to discuss the English common-school curriculum in a systematic piece
of detailed expostion.” 5 6 That detailed exposition is contained in Kempe’s educational
treatise, The Education of Children in Learning (1588), which lays out how imitation could
function pedagogically across a range of grade levels and across a range of educational goals.
Kempe considered imitation useful at every stage of grammar school and even beyond
it into the university. In his curriculum imitation is a graduated procedure that begins with
tightly controlled linguistic transformations. Later in the curriculum, imitation is practiced
in freer forms and students are trusted to make many kinds of transformative moves
independently. Kempe’s work is useful for demonstrating that imitation may at first seem
pedantic in the sense of being rudimentary, academic, or somehow distant from more
substantial concerns (it is applied to the most minute details of linguistic apprehension and
manipulation). However, Kempe shows that imitation is a useful means for carrying students
from a position of great dependence upon their master and models to a relative position of
much greater freedom of expression in which they deal with very substantive issues in
eloquent ways.
^Robert D. Pepper, ed., Four Tudor Books on Education, (Gainesville, Florida: Scholars’
Facsimiles and Reprints, 1966), vii. See also Pepper, " The Education of Children in Learning (1588)
by William Kempe of Plymouth: A Critical Edition" (Ph.D. diss, Stanford University, 1963).
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 7 3
Few humanist pedagogues are as specific as Kempe, who identifies what level of
imitation is appropriate for each form of the grammar school. Gasparino Barzizza, for
example, makes only passing remarks regarding where in the timetable of grammar school
that the practice (exercitatione) of imitation should occur. Barzizza says imitation is most
convenient "among those who are closer to [the study of] grammar" but who are moving
beyond it and learning to narrate tales [one of the progymnasmata exercises]."5 7 By assigning
specific kinds of imitation to specific forms in the grammar school, William Kempe
demonstrates the extent to which imitation had become institutionalized in sixteenth-century
England, some 150 years following Barzizza’s early Renaissance instruction in Pavia, Padua,
and Milan.
Acquiring basic competence in Latin is the first end to which Kempe’s imitative
pedagogy is oriented, and this included the humble necessity of learning to spell. Kempe
explains how to go about "making words, first by imitation."5 8 This proceeds by way of
substituting vowels. After learning one word, students were to imitate its consonants while
replacing vowels, thus learning spelling in families of words with similar patterns: "As the
scholler having learned that band is spelled with b-a-n-d, so he shall imitate to spell bond
with b-o-n-d: as bold with b-o-l-d, so told with t-o-l-d" (225).5 9
5 7 George W. Pigman III, "Barzizza’ s Treatise on Imitation," Bibliotheque d ’ humanisme et
Renaissance 44 (1982): 351, line 124.
5 8 William Kempe, The Education of Children in Learning (1588) in Four Tudor Books on
Education, ed. Robert D. Pepper (Gainesville, Florida: Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, 1966), 225.
5 9 Kempe is writing during a period when the vernacular language was becoming a more
legitimate medium for use in the schools, but was still secondary to Latin. Consequently, he
sometimes relies upon English examples to make his point, although his should not be mistaken as
a vernacular-based curriculum. His later examples demonstrate that Latin is the primary language to
be learned, while English plays an intermediary role for the attainment of Latin proficiency.
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 7 4
After basic instruction in Latin grammar that included agreement, accidence,
conjugations, and declensions, a grammar student entered the second form, where he
practiced an "artificiall expounding of other men’s works" by which the student was "tryed
how he can referre the examples of his Lecture to the rules of Art" (227). This literary
analysis preceded and made possible student imitations. While encountering their first
literature, students were still mastering the language of that literature, and imitation served
Kempe’s purposes of teaching Latin through translation exercises. Kempe’s mainstay for
drilling students in vocabulary and morphology was the imitative transformation of
substitution. This process began with the schoolmaster giving a sentence in English, "which
the Schollar shall expresse by like phrase in Latin" (227). The master is then to "propound
the like sentence with diversitie, first of Nombers, then of Genders, thirdly of persons,
fourthly of Tenses, fiftly of the forme of the Verbe, and lastly of the words" (227).6 0 Kempe
claims that this kind of exercise would lead the student "to understand the congruitie and
syntaxes of speach, and also make him expert in forming of Nounes and Verbes" (229). It
is accomplished by drilling the student through a series of imitative additions and
substitutions. Once students take hold of a simple locution, that particular Latin sentence
is added to and varied until the student has achieved fluency in transposing the Latin. As
an example, if the student is to be able to render the English "Good fathers love honest
sonnes" into Latin the master was to proceed as follows:
Master: a father.
Schollar: pater.
fathers. M.
“Kempe is in effect describing the substitutions that Linacre and Barzizza mentioned as
enallage or mutatio.
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S. patres.
M. a good father
S. pater bonus.
M. good fathers.
S. patres boni.
M. a good father loveth.
S. pater bonus diligit.
M. good fathers love.
S. patres boni dMgunt.
M. a good father loveth a sonne.
S. pater bonus diligit filium.
M. good fathers love sonnes.
S. patres boni dMgunt fUios.
M. a good father loveth an honest sonne.
S. pater bonus dMgit filium probum.
M. Good fathers love honest sonnes.
S. patres boni dMgunt filios probos
(227-28)
Once the goal sentence is achieved, the student is ready to vary this by substituting,
respectively, another gender, person, verb tense, verb form, or new words entirely:
Secondly, followeth the variation of Genders, as, "a good mother loveth an
honest daughter." Mater bona diligit fUiam probram. And againe, "good
mothers love honest daughters," matres bonae diligunt filiasprobas [masculine
gender replaced with feminine first for subject, then object]. Thirdly of
Persons, "thou lovest an honest child," tu diligis fttiumprobum [Second person
substituted for third, both pronoun and verb]. Fourthly of Tenses, "he hath
loved an honest child," Me dilexit filium probum [Perfect tense substituted for
present verb]. Fifthly of the forme of a Verbe, "an honest child is loved of
a good father,'"filiusprobus a patre bono dMgitur [passive voice substituted for
active, with attendant changes to declined forms of the inverted subject and
object]. Sixtly of the words, "a skilfull Maister teacheth a diligent Schollar,"
praeceptor peritus docet discipulum sedulum [general sentence form is kept
while new semantic content is substituted]. (228)
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 7 6
Kempe adds that these variations can be compounded rather than done individually, "so that
many wayes may the imitation of this one sentence be fashioned and expressed" (228).
This kind of linguistic drilling seemed pedantic even to Kempe, who ends this display
on a seeming note of exasperation: "thus the teacher, as a painefull nursse, omnia minima
mansa infantibus pueris in os infert, cheweth it all to small peeces, and thrusteth it into the
childs mouth" (228). He does not, however, back away from the utility of this method. This
method is in fact true to a primary principle of educational psychology codified in our own
century: new information is always best learned when linked to known information. While
the imitation on this level is rudimentary, more mature and freer kinds of imitation would
be useful for the same reasons these drills in grammar would be. It is easier to acquire
expertise in new ways of expression when those new ways are closely linked with known ways.
When only a single factor of a locution is substituted for something of a like category, this
process facilitates ready comprehension since most of the locution remains the same. More
advanced kinds of imitation merely multiplied the kinds and numbers of transformations
relative to one’s model, but followed this same principle.
As students advanced to the third form, Kempe continues, they would use imitation
more directly with literature as they began to do minor compositions based upon what they
had read. Kempe prescribes reading "Tullyes Epistles collected by Sturmius,6 1 learning them
in such manner as is shewed afore, and noting moreover the principall phrases in a
notebook" (229). That is to say, students were to continue the process of reading critically,
identifying grammatical, rhetorical, and logical features of Cicero’s letters, and employing the
ubiquitous notebooks that would aid them to learn and recall the virtues of the literature
6 1 Johann Sturm, ed., Ciceronis Epistolarum libri IV, a J. Sturmio puerili educationi confecti
(Epistolae minores) (Strasbourg, 1539). Kempe most likely refers to the 1572 edition (Strasbourg:
Josias Rihel).
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 7 7
read. The imitations students would perform at this level would be of a freer sort than the
highly regulated ones of the second form, although they would depend upon the proficiency
in Latin that those earlier imitative lessons were to have developed. Kempe prescribes "a
translating of the same speach into another like sentence, but altered with many varieties at
once, and chiefely with the last varieitie of the words" (229). To illustrate what he means,
Kempe provides an example. Students might imitate this short letter of Cicero:
Marcus Tullius Cicero Terentiae Uxori salutem
Si vales bene est, ego valeo. Nos quotidie tabellarios vestros expectamus, qui
si venerint, fortasse erimus certiores quid nobis faciendum sit, faciem usque
te statim certiorem. Valetudinem tuam era diligenter. Vale. Calendis
Septembris. (229)
In order for a translation or imitation of "like sentence" (similar meaning) to be effected, one
whose formal variation from the original occurs principally in its "varietie of the words,"
Kempe suggests the following substitutions:
Cicero writeth to his wife, let us imagine the Father to write to his Sonnes:
he writeth of her messengers, of certaintie what to do, of care for her health:
let the father write of their letters, of certaintie what to looke for, of care for
their learning. (229)
Here follows the English version Kempe suggests that the schoolmaster provide, including
the suggested variations, followed by Kempe’ example of how the student might turn it into
Latin, aided by knowledge of Cicero’s original:
Peter Cole to John and Charles his sonnes, sendeth greeting.
If ye be in good health, it is well. I my selfe am in good health. Oftentimes
I finde lack of your letters, the which being brought, verely I shall be more
certayn what I am to looke for, and will certifie you therefor foorthwith.
Apply your Studye diligently. Farewell. The Ides of December.
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 7 8
Petrus Colus Ioanni & Carolo filiis salutem
Si valetis bene est, ego valeo. Ego saepe literas vestras desidero, quasi allate
erunt, profecto ero certior, quid mihi expectandum sit, faciamque vos statim
certiores, studia vestra colite diligenter. Valete. Idibus Decerabris. (229-30)
Here is Cicero’s original, for comparison with the student’s Latin imitation:
Marcus Tullius Cicero Terentiae Uxori salutem
Si vales bene est, ego valeo. Nos quotidie tabellarios vestros expectamus, qui
si venerint, fortasse erimus certiores quid nobis faciendum sit, faciem usque
te statim certiorem. Valetudinem tuam cra[?] diligenter. Vale. Calendis
Septembris. (229)
Obviously the student preserved the content of the greeting, "if you are well," but (addressing
two persons), substituted the plural valetis for Cicero’s singular vales. The same semantic
content is preserved for the following sentence, the idea of expecting the letter of the other
person(s). However, the student substituted synonyms for most of Cicero’s words: saepe
(often) instead of quotidie (daily); literas vestras for tabellarios vestros; desidero for expectamus,
true to Kempe’s requirement that the words be varied. Substitution appears to be the main
imitative transformation Kempe urges for his students, although the remainder of this letter
includes some abbreviations and minor inversions from Cicero’s epistle.
Kempe suggests that, having had the training wheels of imitation, "having gotten some
footing in the Latin toong," students could begin to practice without imitation, both in
speaking and writing (230). However, imitation still remained useful for later exercises,
including those involving further translations. He instructs schoolmasters to have students
make translations from Latin into English, and from English into Latin. To this common
method of language instruction Kempe adds an interesting twist. Some, he says, suggest that
the master "translate into english the sence out of some place of Tully unknown to the
Schollar, and then give him the english to translate again into latin" (230). In so doing, the
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 7 9
master could rely upon Cicero’s Latin as the measure of the student’s translation. When the
student’s Latin translation is completed, he (the student) is "to see him Tullyes latin,
wherewith he shall conferre his owen, and correct it: this counsell is good, and may be used
when opportunitie and leisure will serve" (230). This method compares to double translation.
Such imitations and translations continue in the third and fourth forms, becoming longer and
harder. Cicero’s epistles continue to be a good model, since they vary in length and difficulty
and accommodate a graduated curriculum. In the fifth form Kempe suggests adding other
literature, including Terence’s comedies, Cicero’s treatises on friendship and old age, and
Ovid’s De tristibus (230).
When students graduate to more substantive Ciceronian texts, they are ready for
more advanced kinds of imitation. Kempe inserts a passage from De amicitia (230-31).
Although the length and difficulty of the passage will require more of the student, the
method Kempe describes is a simple substitution of subject matter: "Laelius [is] heer
speaking concerning friendship, let us speak concerning religion, and prosecute our matter
with the same arguments disposed after the same fashion and the same syntaxes may serve
to expresse them" (231). Kempe provides an English translation/imitation (which,
presumably, the schoolmaster would provide to his students) followed by the Latin version
that Kempe says an actual student of the fifth form had performed on this English version.
While the length of these three passages prevents me from including them whole, it
is still possible to get a sense of how the transformations of imitation operated in this case
between Cicero’s Latin and the schoolmaster’s English, and between that version and the
student’s Latin imitation, by referring to a small part of it. What begins as a Latin exposition
on friendship is transformed through imitation into an exposition on religion, mutatis
mutandis:
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 8 0
Haec igitur prima lex in amicitia sanciatur ut neque rogemus res turpis, nec faciamus
rogati ("This law in friendship ought first to be sanctified, that we neither ask anything
shameful, nor do anything shameful if asked") becomes "This law in religion ought first to
be established, that thou intice no man to false doctrine, nor embrace it when thou art
indeed of other" (232). English words are substituted wholesale for Latin words, but the
content is only altered through the simple substitution of "religion" in place of friendship
(amicitia). Other transformations, principally inversion and subtraction, occur between
Cicero’s Latin and Kempe’s English to accommodate the grammatical differences between
Latin and English, but Kempe’s real focus is on how the student will employ Cicero’s Latin
given the new subject matter. For this first sentence, the student remains very close to
Cicero’s actual language in the first clause, but shifts considerably after that:6 2
Cicero: Haec igitur prima lex in amicitia sanciatur ut neque rogemus res turpis, nec
faciamus rogati.
Student: Haec prima lex in religione sanciatur, ut nemintem solicites ad falsam
doctrinam, nec amplectaris solicitatus. (232)
By subtraction, the student omits the pleonastic igitur from Cicero. By substitution, the
student replaces rogemus (we ask) with solicites (you entice); faciamus (we do) with
amplectaris (you embrace); rogati (asked for) with solicitatus (solicited). These semantic
alterations were suggested by the master’s English version. Unprompted, by substitution the
student replaces the grammatical form ofverb-plus-object (rogemus res turpis) with verb-plus-
6 2 It is unclear from Kempe’ s treatise whether the student is allowed to refer to Cicero’s text
in performing his translation/imitation from the master’ s English. Roger Ascham, as described above,
insists that student re-translations into Latin be done without consulting the original Latin.
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 8 1
prepositional phrase (solicites ad falsam doctrinam). By addition, the student includes
nemintem (no one), an emphasis absent in Cicero’s version.6 3
Students move on to imitating more difficult texts, accompanied by more advanced
instruction in rhetoric and logic to make possible a more mature "handling [of] good authors:
as are Tullies office, his Orations, Ceasars Commentaries, Virgils Aeneis, Ovids
Metamorphoss, and Horace" (232). Grammar is also to be reviewed along the way.
And so let him take in hand the exercise of all these three Artes at once in
making somewhat of his owne, first by imitation; as when he hath considered
the propertie of speach in the Grammaticall etymologie and syntaxis: the
finesse of speach in the Rhetoricall ornaments, as comely tropes, pleasant
figures, fit pronunciation and gesture: the reason and pith of the matter in
the Logicall weight of arguments, in the certeyntie of the axiomes, in the due
fourme of syllogismes, and in the easie and playne method. (233)
Imitation recurs at this advanced level (beyond the fifth form or age twelve), at a level
advanced proportionately with the student’s expertise in the language arts and critical
apprehension of literature: "Then let him have a like theame to prosecute with the same
artificiall instruments, that he findeth in his author" (233).
Once again, Kempe suggests the substitution of a new subject matter while adhering
to the model’s grammar, rhetoric, and logic. However, this time, the student is not to have
the intermediary help of a schoolmaster’s vernacular translation/imitation. As an example,
Kempe suggests that a student will have "noted all the arte" in a short passage he provides
from Cicero on ambition; then, choosing "some like vice, as agaynst covetousnesse," he will
"prosecute it step by step, like unto this agaynst ambition" (233, 234). Kempe’s directions
“Edward Erdmann has pointed out the ethical indoctrination inherent in Kempe’ s suggested
substitution of content. This is more apparent later in the passage, when Kempe substitutes for
Cicero’ s discussion of the political turpitude of the Roman emperor a parallel discussion of the pope’ s
turpitude. The student’ s Latin version retains this anti-papal animus. "Imitation Pedagogy and Ethical
Indoctrination," Rhetoric Society Quarterly 23.1 (Winter 1993): 1-11.
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 8 2
accord with Barzizza’s suggestion to substitute new subject matter through choosing similar
subject matter — in this case, a corollary vice.
In ambitionem
Miserrima est omnino ambitio, honorumque contentio, de qua praeclare
est apud eundem Platonem, similiter facere eos, qui inter se contenderent
uter potius rempub. administaret, ut si nauta certarent quis eorum
potissimum gubernaret. Idemque praecepit, ut eos adversarios existimemus,
qui arma contraferant, non eos qui suo iudicio tueri remp. velint. Qualis fuit
inter P. Africanum & Q. Metellum sine acerbitate dissensio.
The student’s imitation:
In avaritiam
Teterrima est omnino avaritia divitarumque cupiditas. De qua praeclare
est apud Ciceronem, similiter facere eos, qui multis incommodis
conflictarentur propter pecuniam adipiscendam, ut si qui liberi homines
certarent propter eum dominum, qui eorum etiam mentes teneret obstrictas,
easquenullo tempore respirare permitteret. Idemque praecepit ut eos avaros
existememus, qui ea qua habent turn perpetua libidine augendi crucientur,
turn pari amittendi metu; non eos qui honesta ratione rem familiarem
amplificent, atque ad largiendum sint pro modo facultatum parati. Qualis fuit
in maioribus nostris sine aviditate frugalitas & diligentia. (233-34)
In analyzing how this imitation came out, Kempe is pleased with the fidelity with which the
it conforms to its model: "Here though in some place we have swarved a little from our
example, as neede requireth, yet for the most part wee have expressed phrase for phrase,
trope for trope, figure for figure, argument for argument, and so of the rest" (234). Kempe
will go on to give one further example of a yet longer and freer kind of imitation, again in
which the student is provided a model and the direction to substitute his own theme.
Following these many examples of imitation, Kempe appends four guidelines for the
student to observe in imitating. With the exception of the first, these instructions correspond
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 8 3
to Barzizza’s methods of transformation.6 4 The second rule for the imitating student is "that
he may leave out the imitation of some sentence or arguments" (236). This is subtraction
(or abbreviation). Likewise, Kempe suggests that all the details of an extended comparison
used for a proof may not be necessary in order to make the same point in the imitated
matter; therefore, such may be abbreviated. Kempe’s third guideline corresponds to
Barzizza’s first. The student "may add more than his author hath" (236). Addition
compensates, he explains, if (for example) a comparison employed in the model happens to
be weak. In such a case, a comparison of one’s own may be added. Kempe’s fourth guideline
is a general rule of mutation, corresponding most closely to Barzizza’s transformation of
substitution, immutando, although perhaps involving transposition as well. The student "may
in some part alter the method, forme of syllogismes, axiomes, arguments, figures, tropes,
phrases and words" (236). We have already seen how Kempe’s examples demonstrated this
when students most often used some sort of substitution (such as the use of synonyms) to
alter the original.
Kempe concludes his treatise by suggesting that after several years of such imitating,
both in prose and verse, the student is ready to try to write by his own skill, now trusted to
go forward without examples to follow:
And thus the maisters duetie of orderly teaching by precepts and by practise
of them, not only in unfolding other mens workes, but also in making
somewhat of a mans owne, and that either by imitation of examples, or
without imitation wee have breefly declared. (237)
“The first is that "if the author whom he imitateth, have generall sentences, sometime he may
reteyne the very same" (236). That is, a statement of sufficient generality may serve the student’ s
subject matter as well as it had the author’ s, and so in such a situation, copying verbatim would be
appropriate. Kempe provides the example from Cicero of the words ex quo nascuntur, "from which
arise," which is common enough to be applied to more than one topic. Good wording was worth
repeating. In a sense, this is merely a subsidiary consideration of substitution, since Kempe essentially
is suggesting that given form (wording) be retained while new subject matter is substituted.
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 8 4
While students are eventually to graduate from its consraints, imitation is clearly the mainstay
of Kempe’s grammar pedagogy, providing an elastic methodology for the various tasks of
acquiring and perfecting the Latin language: from the earliest introduction to Latin words
and grammar, through drills in translation teaching inflections and syntax, to the critical-
engagement of literature, to a range of preliminary writing exercises in which the student
relies upon a model to take him to a point where he can invent and compose on his own,
confident that his own work is comparable to those he has so assiduously followed both
linguistically and stylistically.
Erasmus and De copia
In prior chapters I have shown that the Erasmian doctrine of imitation is only partly
to be understood from his Ciceronianus, the polemic in which he was addressing extremes,
not laying out pedagogy. De mtione stM dUJfoe curriculum he devised for St. Paul’s school
at the invitation of Dean Colet, and his De duplici copia verborum ac rerum contain his core
educational doctrines, supplemented by his letters and miscellaneous school texts such as De
recta pronuntiatione, his letter-writing manual, and his ever-popular colloquies. In these
Erasmus followed his predecessors in recommending the study of literature for imitative
purposes, guided by preliminary and modest instruction in the language arts, aided by
keeping a notebook in which to record examples of verba and res from one’s reading, and
leading towards preliminary kinds of composition such as the progymnasmata based on
imitative principles and procedures. This pedagogy culminates in Erasmus’s educational chef
d ’ oeuvre: De copia. While some have considered this to be at best a style manual and at
worst an unorganized commonplace book, it was in fact a key text that brought together
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 285
imitative theory and practice within the |He framework of a rhetorically-oriented humanist
education.
It is hard to overstate the importance of De duplici copia verborum ac rerum in its
time. This famous Renaissance school book for developing abundance of expression and
subject matter, first published in (l512,saw at least(180 editions, 140 of which came out
within its first sixty years, with editions trailing into the second quarter of the nineteenth
century.6 5 Full editions of De copia account only partially for how widely it spread, since
various parts and versions of the work had their own broad publishing history: formulas and
examples from De copia (such as the variations on Tuae literae me magnopere delectarunt)
were included in Erasmus’ Colloquia, itself extremely popular; the later chapters of book 1
of De copia were appended to Erasmus’ epitome of Valla’s Elegantiae (often published in the
1530s and ’40s); the two books of De copia were published separately, at least twice apiece,
from 1515 forward; and, significantly, both books were reduced to schematic form by Georg
Major in 1526. This tabular version of De copia, making it more accessible to its
schoolchildren audience, was sometimes appended to full versions of De copia, but more
frequently it appeared in a little volume containing Mosellanus’ Tabulae de Schematibus et
Tropis and Major’s Tabulae of Philip Melanchthon’s Rhetorica. Rix claims that a hundred
editions of this particular textbook appeared from 1526 to the century’s end. This immensely
popular [compact versionofDe.copia} together with its editions proper and the publication
of parts of De copia in others of Erasmus’ work, effectively brings the exposure of Erasmus’
“Herbert David Rix, "The Editions of Erasmus’ De Copia," Studies in Philology 43 (1946):
595-618; Buisson, Repertoire des ouvragespedagogiques du XVIe siecle Paris, 1886; F. Vander Haeghen,
Bibliotheca Erasmiana: Repertoire des Oeuvres D ’ Erasme: Liste Sommaire et Provisoire des diverses
Editions de ses Oeuvres (Gand: Bibliotheque de l’Universite de l’Etat, 1893).
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 8 6
De copia to 300 editions across Europe, with most occurring prior to 1600. It was nothing
less than a blockbuster. Philip Melanchthon, writing within only two decades of De copia’s
initial appearance in his own famous Elementorum rhetorices (1531), feels it both essential
to include copia in his analysis and superfluous to deal with it in detail, since Erasmus’s text
is so widely known: "But I will be more brief [in discussing copia of words and ideas] since
Erasmus’s books are at everyone’s fingertips" (Sed nos breviores erimus, quia omnibus in manu
sunt Erasmi libelli; D3V ). By 1531, apparently, Erasmus’ famous work was already an
institution.
De copia was indeed institutionalized, at least so far as English grammar schools are
concerned. What began as an experimental curriculum written for St. Paul’s (detailed in
Erasmus’ De ratione dicendi, for teachers, and the De copia, for students) ended up
contributing to an incipient national curriculum. Baldwin explains (in a chapter entitled "The
Egg Which Erasmus Laid at St. Paul’s") that a curriculum which Cardinal Wolsey published
in 1529 for Ipswich was patterned after the one Erasmus provided for St. Paul’s in 1512, but
intended for broad dissemination. Its title page read, "prescribed for all the schools of
England" (o[mn]ibus aliis totiusAnglie scholisprescripta).6 6 At the very time in England when
orders were being given that "oone maner off grammar schould be taught thorowe all the
realme," Erasmus’s methods were those at hand to be so promulgated.6 7
Later evidence for Erasmian dominance of English education can be had by
examining the records of one Oxford bookseller in 1520. In that year, John D om e’s sales
indicate that (with certain exclusions) "one customer out of every seven came to buy a book
“Cited by Baldwin, 1:122.
6 7 Palsgrave, quoted in T. W. Baldwin 122.
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 8 7
written by the great humanist," De copia figuring among those Erasmian works most often
sold.6 8 Indeed, one could speak of the copiousness of Erasmian copia, not only in terms of
the published copies of his work, but in terms of its universal acceptance among Renaissance
humanists and educators.
I have already described De copia in part in connection with the methods of
notebook-keeping many humanists prescribed (see chapter 4). It is true that De copia is a
sort of exemplary notebook, divided, as were Guarino’s, Sturm’s, and Vives’, between
expression and ideas, verba and res. De copia contains lists of locutions and subjects Erasmus
has clearly culled from his wide reading. These are chiefly found in chapters 55-206 of his
first book, categorized according to various subject headings. For example, chapter 55 lists
"Various phrases to express cu stom arychapter 64, a list of words for hindering and
preventing, etc. Indeed, the first kind of copia was to have collected in one’s mind and
notebooks an abundance of words, expressions, examples, and issues taken from reading.
Erasmus introduces De copia with this in mind: "One should collect a vast supply . . . from
all sides out of good authors, provide oneself with a varied equipment, and, as Quintilian
remarks, heap up riches so that we find we have a wealth of words to hand whenever we
require it."6 9
We must not mistake De copia, however, for an overgrown student notebook. De
copia verborum ac rerum, as its title says, concerns itself foremost with instructing one how
6 8 T. M. Lindsay, quoted in Baldwin 1:103.
6 9 Desiderius Erasmus, Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style: De duplici copia verborum ac
rerum commentarii duo, trans. and ed. Betty I. Knott, Collected Works of Erasmus: Literary and
Educational Writings 2, ed. Craig R. Thompson, vol. 28 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978),
307.
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 8 8
to obtain an abundance of expression and subject matter. Its two books contain directions,
with accompanying examples, on how to\amplify and vary either the expression or the subject
matter of what one imitates. Copia, abundance, may be understood in terms of Gasparino
Barzizza’s primary imitative transformation, addition. As was alluded to earlier, the concept
of amplification came to have greater importance in the Renaissance than simply the idea
that one could imitate by way of addition. 1 Amplification became a general principal of
development for composition.
In this context, to practice amplification of expression and ideas (verborum ac rerum)
meant not simply compiling, but becoming versed in every imitative, translative, and
transformative method that could possibly be employed with language and ideas so that one
could express in as many ways possible as many things as possible. Amplification meant
achieving the ability to vary language and ideas infinitely, in order to develop a linguistic and
cognitive flexibility to prepare one for any circumstance. The idea of abundance carries with
it the idea of laying up a stock or store, as in our term cornucopia.1 0 Johann Sturm used this
imagery in his De literarum ludis recte aperiendis liber (1538). There he describes the
gathering of a store of materials as though it were both the means and the goal of an
imitative pedagogy. A student, he claims, should be able to create something similar to what
he reads:
He should accordingly have heaped up provisions, as it were, of all that is
necessary to this end: various subjects and opinions upon them, forms of
speaking and their parts, as well as expressions, so that he fully possesses all
the places of the art, as though he were a rich and well-stocked family head.
7 0 See Terence Cave, The Comucopian Text: Problems of W riting in the French Renaissance
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1979), 3-34 (chap. 1).
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 8 9
quasi quendam penum congestas omnes & res, & rerum sententiarumque
formas, & earum partes hoc est verba habeat, & plena possideat omnia loca
artis, tanquam copiosus & locuples paterfamilias. (20rv)
The notebook method aided students to attain a repertoire of various thoughts and locutions,
and gave them a place to practice varying these by way of those transformative methods by
which imitation has been discussed. We will see those four methods repeated and combined
throughout De copia, all brought together now under the single goal of amplifying in its
broader sense, acquiring an abundance of expressive and discursive means. While addition,
subtraction, inversion, and substitution had, with the principles of translation, governed
imitative practice to this point, with De copia the governing principles of imitation became
amplification and variation.
Variation, as we have seen in the curricula of William Kempe and the author of
Certaine epistles, was employed as a pedagogical tool for drilling students in Latin grammar.
Through substitutions of different accidents, for example, students acquired competence in
inflecting nouns and verbs. But linked with the concept of amplification in De copia,
variation becomes not a method for achieving competence, but one for achieving proficiency.
The abundance of variations one is able to achieve is a measure of one’s ability to speak and
write not just correctly, but well.
Erasmus claims many virtues for learning variation. Not only is it an aid to style, but
variation prevents tautologia, bland repetition, or homoiologia, identical repetition, vices
apparent to those with a rhetorical orientation towards language; that is, to those mindful
of an audience’s response to the language used. Erasmus presents variation as a way of
securing an audience’s attention. "Variety is so powerful in every sphere that there is
absolutely nothing, however brilliant, which is not dimmed if not commended by variety"
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 9 0
(302). The goal is to become the kind of person "who has it at his fingertips [the ability] to
turn one idea into more shapes than Proteus himself is supposed to have turned into."
Erasmus claims achieving copious variation will aid extemporaneous writing or speaking,
commenting on authors, writing verse, and translating (302).
De copia is so crowded with sundry methods of variation that modern readers may
find it a rather disorganized amalgam, its overall division between expression and ideas being
the only governing organizational scheme discernible. Modern editors (particularly those of
the Toronto English editions of Erasmus), have provided chapter headings that bring some
clarity to this large work, giving titles and numbers for each method of variation. However,
there really is a simple scheme underlying this avalanche of suggestions. All of the means
for variation are derived from the elements of grammar, rhetoric, and logic. Those
pertaining to grammar (including vocabulary, accidence, and inflections) occur in the first
book (abundance of expression), those pertaining to logic (the topoi of invention) occur in
the second book (abundance of ideas), while the elements of rhetoric occur divided between
the former (schemes and tropes) and the latter (commonplaces). Each of these elements is
then dealt with variously according to Barzizza’s four basic transformations for imitation:
addition, subtraction, inversion, and substitution. The more specific the elements of the
three language arts, the more multiplied become the possibilities of variation when the
transformative methods are applied.7 1 Let us see, then, how the permutations of the
language arts and the transformative methods of imitation combined to produce variation
and amplification in De copia. As we do so, we should keep in mind the purpose for which
7 1 This accounts for the relative paucity of methods in the second book. Erasmus’ s curriculum
severely curtails the art of logic, restricting its discussion in De copia to the topoi and avoiding
syllogisms or other elements of dialectic altogether.
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 291
Erasmus prescribes practice in variation. At one level these means of varying continue to
drill students in the elements of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic. However, developing such
a firm mastery of Latin in this way was just the beginning. As Richard Schoeck has written,
Erasmus "aimed at the writing of a Latin that was above all flexible: capable of serving the
needs of a range of situations and for a variety of audiences."7 2 The variety to be cultivated
through copia corresponded directly to the variety of rhetorical situations for which effective
language would be useful.
Book one, concerning copia verborum, contains 21 chapters on varying expression,
beginning with one devoted to synonyms. Knowledge of synonyms is a lexical concern from
the province of grammar (specifically, the area of "etymology").7 3 To replace a word with
another of proximate semantic content is a simple substitutional transformation. If the
original says pulchritudo for beauty, Erasmus offers, the student could substitute forma or
decor. However, substituting one word with another is not to be done by chance. Erasmus
makes it clear that there are as many kinds of synonyms as there are words; to find an
appropriate variation for a given situation meant one needed to be aware of the various kinds
of words and their differences. Consequently, Erasmus includes a long discussion of various
7 2 Richard J. Schoeck, "‘Going for the Throat': Erasmus’ Rhetorical Theory and Practice," in
Renaissance-Rhetorik: Renaissance Rhetoric, ed. Heinrich F. Plett (Berlin and New York: Walter de
Gruyter, 1993), 43-44.
7 3 Renaissance grammar was divided between orthography (spelling, pronunciation and the
sound parts of words); prosody (regarding metrics and the length of vowels); etymology (nominal
declensions and verbal conjugations); and syntax (agreement, accidence, sentence arrangement).
Erasmus does not appear to draw upon the full art, relying mostly for his methods of variation upon
etymological (modem day morphological) qualities and syntactical features. W. Keith Percival,
"Renaissance Grammar" in Renaissance Humanism: Foundation, Forms, and Legacy, vol 3, Humanism
and the Disciplines, ed. Albert Rabil, Jr. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), 67-83.
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 9 2
categories of words, such as poetic, foreign, new — even vulgar — suggesting that each sort
has its appropriate place and time.
The second method of variation he offers is through enallage. As described in
chapter 5, enallage (Barzizza referred to it as commutando), involved the substitution of one
grammatical form for another. This process depended upon student proficiency in the
various elements of morphology ("etymology") and syntax. In providing the numerous
permutations of enallage Erasmus is in fact conducting a review of basic grammar. However,
this is not some rote drill of verbal paradigms. Nor is it an aid for interpreting literature,
as seems to be the discussion of enallage by the grammarian Thomas Linacre (related in
chapter 5). Erasmus’s description of the kinds of grammatical substitution possible through
enallage is in fact very similar to Linacre’s, but is set forth not as an interpretive strategy, but
as a discursive resource for producing one’s own discourse: the more one is aware of the
variations of grammatical categories, the greater number of variations one may produce and
the greater number of rhetorical situations one will be prepared for. Erasmus is in fact
coopting grammar for rhetoric, changing an interpretive description of language use into a
discursive strategy.
Erasmus introduces enallage as "a topic that offers infinite variation," and divides it
into two kinds of substitution: 1) when one part of speech is substituted for another; or 2)
when the speech part remains the same but one or more of its attributes are substituted for
an alternative (attributes being the accidents of number, person, voice, gender, case, word
type, word form, tense, mode, declension, or conjugation). Most of these substitutions are
reciprocal in nature: if a verb in the active voice can be substituted for one in the passive,
then the reverse may also occur. Too numerous to list here, Erasmus’s examples include
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 9 3
exchanging a verbal for a nominal expression, substituting a participle for an infinitive, or a
personal construction for a supine; recasting a single noun as plural, a first person pronoun
as a third, an active verb for a passive, or the reverse of any of these.
A later chapter (32, method 20), includes another sort of grammatical transformation
similarly involving substitutions and inversions. Here Erasmus suggests varying the form in
which a sentence is cast. A statement, inverted, becomes a question: "Death is not bitter"
becomes "Is it then such a bitter thing to die?" Note that this involves not only the
transposition of the concept death from the initial to the terminal position, but includes
enallage, substituting the grammatical form of death (noun) for its verbal correlative (to die).
Sentence form can be varied by recasting straightforward statements not only through
interrogatio, but through admiratio, dubitatio, adiuratio, abominatio, exclamatio, occupatio, and
subiectio. Each of these is a rhetorical alteration to a grammatical structure, accomplished
by way of one or more of Barzizza’s substitutions.
Methods 3-20 for verbal variation (chapters 14-32) derive from rhetorical elements
and depend upon prior student knowledge of the figures of speech in particular. This would
have been gained through exposure to book 4 of the Ad Herennium, and increasingly,
through specific treatises on the tropes and schemes by Mosellanus or Susenbrotus. As
before, the method of substitution is the principle transformation suggested to make these
variations. The first rhetorical variation (method three) is the rhetorical figure antonomasia.
For antonomasia Erasmus gives this definition and example: "substituting something else for
a person’s proper name, like calling Achilles ‘the son of Peleus/" The next method is
periphrasis. Erasmus offers several kinds of periphrasis, all of which share with Ascham’s
description of periphrasis the technique of substituting other words for what is given, but
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 9 4
Erasmus applies this more to single words than to anything on the sentence level or higher.
Thus,periphrasis turns Scipio into "the destroyer of Carthage and Numantia" (331). Chapter
15 later introduces a related kind of substitution based on another rhetorical figure, auxesis.
This shares with periphrasis the concept of substituting one or several words for a given term,
but also includes a sense of augmenting or amplying its semantic content. We are employing
auxesis, explains Erasmus, "when we use a more violent word in place of the normal one in
order to heighten what we are saying." Examples include replacing "killed" with the stronger
"slain," or substituting "profaner of the sacred" for "wicked” (333-34).
Erasmus devotes separate chapters or sections to explaining and providing examples
for many figures of speech well known from contemporary rhetorical and poetical treatises
— metaphor, allegory, catachresis, simile, onomatopoeia, metalepsis, metonymy, and
synecdoche. However, Erasmus does not explain these in a simple descriptive manner as
ornaments of speech (the way rhetorical manuals most often did). Rather, he presents them
as specific transformative methods in the process of imitation, strategies of verbal
composition to develop a fullness of expression.
Metaphor, allegory, catachresis, and simile all share the quality of substituting an
unusual meaning for the proper signification of a word. Erasmus reminds readers of the
Latin term for metaphor, translatio, "transference," suggesting the semantic transference that
lies at the base of this figure. Any transference is a kind of translation, whether taken in the
small-scale level of translatio, metaphor, or the large-scale level of translation proper.
Erasmus’s methods derive from the standard discussions of rhetorical elements, but stand out
because of the emphasis he gives to them as strategies of translation or transformation.
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 9 5
Next comes what Erasmus calls "equivalence." This method combines Barzizza’s
suggestions for addition (or subtraction) with his recommendation to employ opposite
material as a form of substitution. One adds, removes, or doubles a negative and combines
this with its opposite: "He holds the first place" becomes "He is not among the last," and so
on. This is understatement or litotes, as one might learn from extant rhetorical manuals.
The difference is that Erasmus does not merely define litotes or present an example of it; he
describes how it is to be achieved by combining the given transformations.
Like "equivalence," "correlated expressions," the subject of chapter 26, makes use of
opposition, a form of variety Barzizza had pointed out in his section on substitution.
Erasmus places side by side several "correlated expressions," which are ways of saying the
same semantic content but through employing words that mean the opposite. ”1 would not
wish to be in your debt" becomes "I would not wish to have you as my creditor; "How
fortunate I am in my teacher" becomes "how fortunate I am to be your pupil," etc.
To the substitution of opposites Erasmus adds the transformation of inversion in
chapter 25, on paired expressions. "He values reputation above money" becomes "He rates
money lower than reputation." The word lower is substituted for above, and the two objects
of the sentence reverse their position. This produces a semantically equivalent but
rhetorically different expression.
Other standard rhetorical figures follow as strategical variations, including hyperbole
(chapter 28) and meiosis (chapter 29). The former may be understood in light of Barzizza’s
transformation of addition; the latter, subtraction. Hyperbole adds not additional words, but
more semantic content "than the situation warrants, yet the truth can be inferred from the
falsehood." "Swifter than the east wind" is an impossibility, but by adding to the idea of
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 9 6
speed more than is possible, the meaning is still clear. Meiosis is a semantic subtraction
rather than a reduction in the number of words; it is a diminution or "saying less than we
mean, for example, 'touch’ for 'hit,’ 'hurt’ for 'wound”1 (344).
Later chapters add other formal means of varying expression, mostly focusing on the
variation of combinations of clauses or sentences, such as "combining predications" of equal
or unequal weight (chapters 34-38), with a few miscellaneous means added (varieties of the
negative, use of the superlative, etc.).
Book 2, concerning copia rerum, ways of amplifying and varying of subject matter, has
far fewer methods. This is partly due to the fact that many of the means for amplifying
expression are identical to varying matter, as Erasmus has noted along the way in book l.7 4
It is also due to the fact that the discipline of logic, whose topoi chiefly constitute the
methods for varying matter in book 2, received diminished attention from Erasmus (as from
other humanists), reacting to the excesses of the schoolmen from the high middle ages, whose
influence continued in Paris where Erasmus was educated. The topoi are present, however,
derived from Cicero’s Topica or from Aristotle, including division, description, comparison,
exempla, etc.
For example, one method of amplifying subject matter is divisio, for which Erasmus
provides this example. "Take the sentence: He is a total monster,” he says. One may
transform it with divisio this way:
7 4 See, for example, his discussion of varying the ways sentences are conjoined in chapter 30
of book 1. While this involves the use of such figures as asyndeton (the absence of links) and
polysyndeto (plurality of links), it tends to grow into larger levels of discourse associated more with
developing an idea than with varying an expression. Erasmus checks himself and refers to the
following book.
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 9 7
He is a monster both in mind and in body; whatever part of mind or body
you consider, you will find a monster — quivery head, rabid eyes, a dragon’s
gape, the visage of a Fury, distended belly, hands like talons ready to tear,
feet distorted, in short, view his entire physical shape and what else does it
all present but a monster? Observe that tongue, observe that wild beast’s
roar, and you will name it a monstrosity; probe his mind, you will find a
horror; weigh his character, scrutinize his life, you will find all monstrous;
and, not to pursue every point in detail, through and through eh is nothing
but a monster. (574)
"It is clear," Erasmus concludes, "what fullness the speech would acquire if anyone chose to
dwell on the depiction of any of these separate items" (574).
Additions multiply as soon as one divides a subject into parts and then addresses the
addition of each of these parts. The transformation of addition quickly becomes the broader
principle of amplification when so applied. Erasmus teaches many kinds of dividing subject
matter, such as dividing up the circumstances that have led to the result under discussion
(method 2), dividing up the causes for the result (method 3), and dividing up the attendant
circumstances (method 4). In each case he takes a single sentence and through division is
able to add multiple clauses, or lists of words in parallel form that clearly amplify the subject
matter, both in the sense of length and in the sense of its increased rhetorical force. "We
shall blame you for the war" is amplified through division and becomes:
The emptying of the treasury on barbarous troops, the breaking of the youth
of the country by hardship, the trampling underfoot of the harvests, the
abduction of cattle, the burning of farm and village on every side, the
deserted fields, tumbled walls, looted homes, plundered shrines, old men left
childless, children fatherless, mothers widowed, girls shamefully raped, the
morals of the young ruined by licence, so many deaths, so many sorrows, so
many tears, the extinction of the arts, the suppression of law, the obliteration
of religion, the total confusion of every divine and human value, the
undermining of all civil discipline, all this train of evils, I say, which is born
of war, we shall write down to your account alone, i f , on your advice, war is
declared. (576-77)
Later methods in book 2 seem to have been worked in from the progymnasmata, including
suggestions on amplifying through maxims, fables, and narratives. One clear comparison with
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 9 8
Barzizza’s early work, a method quite distinct from the standard inventional commonplaces,
is the suggestion that one may expand by way of the formal divisions of a speech. In one of
the last sections of De copia Erasmus carefully navigates his way through the standard parts
of an oration, stopping along the way to indicate how each of these parts could be
lengthened through a variety of means, and providing illustrations from speeches such as
Cicero’s Pro Milone to illustrate. It will be recalled that Barzizza, though providing less
detail, made this suggestion a century before: "Also note that there are as many varieties of
imitation as there are parts by which a speech is composed. For if I desire to imitate
invention, I will see how Cicero accomplished this . . . where he composed his own
speeches."7 5 So Erasmus, taking one standard section of a speech, instructs, "The proof
section will be expanded . . . by refutation or preparation, and assertion." Providing an
example of expanding the proof section by preparation, he cites Pro Milone: Before I come
to speak about the business with which this court is directly concerned, I ought first to refute
the insinuations often made in the Senate by the evil men who are his enemies, and in the
assembly even earlier by his accusers." Erasmus points out not only that this amplifies the
section, but executes the rhetorical intention of discrediting the opposition (653).
The Virtues of Imitative Pedagogy
Three principal strengths resulting from an imitation-based curriculum can be
identifed: 1) Imitation turned language into a game; 2) it integrated otherwise separated
language studies through its inductive approach; and 3) it developed copia.
7 5 "Nota aliud quod tot sunt species imitationis quot sunt partes ex quibus componitur oratio.
Nam si voluero imitari inventionem, videbo quomodo fecit Cicero ubi. . . composuit orationes suas."
Gasparino Barzizza, "Barzizza’ s Treatise on Imitation [De imitatione]," ed. George W. Pigman III,
Bibliotheque d’ humanistne et Renaissance 44 (1982): 351, lines 116-18.
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 2 9 9
The various kinds of imitations described in this and the preceding chapter may seem
to have acquired a certain tediousness in their exposition, as though they were just so many
permutations of what were essentially only a few methods (addition, subtraction,
transposition, substitution) applied to the features of grammar, rhetoric, and logic. However,
when the pedagogical apparatus of explaining and defining these variations has been stripped
away and the candidatus copiae is asked to engage in imitative variations, these methods take
on a life of their own, lose their pedantic cast, and turn learning language into more of a
sport than a chore.
This is what occurs when Erasmus, having listed hundreds of kinds of variations
students could make, pauses for a practical demonstration. Chapter 33 of De copia’s first
book contains the famous sentence, "Your letter pleased me mightily," and some 165
variations upon the same. Erasmus begins in an ordered fashion, providing synonyms for
each of the five words of the original sentence: one could substitute "epistle" for "letter,"
"exhilarated" for "delighted." But such a cascade of variations soon follows that it is difficult
to see which methods Erasmus employs, for he combines them and extends them in a
crescendo of iterations:
Your pages engendered in me an unfamiliar delight. . . your lines conveyed
to me the greatest joy. . . . At your words a delight of no ordinary kind came
over me .... Your communication poured vials of joy on my head ....
Once I had read your affectionate letter, I was carried away with a strange
happiness .... Your missive by no means failed of a welcome . . . your letter
promptly expelled all sorrow from my m ind. . . Like clover to the bee, willow
leaves to goats, honey to the bear, even so are your letters to me .... Good
God, what a mighty joy proceeded form your epistle!
As though unable to stop himself for the fun of it, he tops this off with another 200
variations of another sentence.
This display shows off the highly inventive and generative nature of exercises in
amplification. Language was a game to be enjoyed, and its constituent arts were means for
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 3 0 0
finessing one’s ability at playing. One can imagine that the minutiae of grammar might seem
purposeless to students until, assigned to amplify, they took up the challenge to find more
ways of expressing the same sentence than their peers. The cases and constructions of
grammar, just as the figures of rhetoric and the commonplaces of logic, suddenly become
their war chest arsenal in the ensuing battle of words.
It is not hard to believe that students and schoolmasters alike took pleasure in
amplifying. Another example of amplification from a popular Renaissance rhetoric, Thomas
Wilson’s Arte ofRhetorique (1553) was sure to pique the interest of young students. Wilson
proposes this as the original matter:
If a gentleman and officer of the king’s, being overcharged at supper with
overmuch drink, and surfeiting with gorge upon gorge, should vomit the next
day in the Parliament house, I might inveigh thus:
Then follows his playfully amplified version:
O shameful deed, not only in sight to be loathed, but also odious of all men
to be heard. If thou hadst done this deed at thine own house being at supper
with they wife and children, who would not have thought it a filthy deed? but
now for thee to do it in the Parliament house, among so many gentlemen,
and such, yea, the best in all England: being both an officer of the kings, and
a man of much authority, and there to cast out gobbets (where belching were
thought great shame) yea, and such gobbets as none could abide the smell,
and to fill the whole house with evil savor, and thy whole bosom with much
filthiness, what an abominable shame is it above all other? It had been a
fowl deed of itself to vomit where no such gentlemen were: yea, where no
gentlemen were: yea, where no English men were: yea, where no men were:
yea, where no company were at all: or it had been evil, if he had born no
manner of office, or had been no public officer, or had not been the king’s
officer: but being not only an officer, but a public officer, and that the kings’
officer: yea, and such a king’s, and doing such a deed: I cannot tell in the
world what to say to him.7 6
7 6 Thomas Wilson, Arte of Rhetorique (1553), ed. Thomas J. Derrick. The Renaissance
Imagination, Vol. 1, (New York and London: Garland Press, 1982), 252-53.
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 3 01
To turn the language arts into a source of inherent pleasure is no small pedagogical boon,
especially given the tedious hours that a curriculum centered on Latin instruction entailed.
The second advanatage to Renaissance imitation pedagogy was its integrated and
inductive nature. Only modest instruction in grammar, rhetoric, and logic preceded
immersion into reading, analyzing and then imitating literature. "For without doubt," Roger
Ascham had insisted, " grammatica itself is sooner and surer learned by examples of good
authors, than by the naked rules of grammarians" (201). As much could be said for the other
two language arts. In the literary text the student could see how these three arts cooperated.
For example, by analyzing and then imitating the grammatical transpositions described by
Erasmus in the section on enallage, a student could see that grammatical know-how has to
do not simply with recte dicendi, speaking accurately, but with the rhetorical province of bene
dicendi, speaking well or to one’s purpose. If the student were to read a passage from the
defense of a criminal in which the active voice was used in the description of the crime, in
his imitation he could transpose the voice to passive, effectively hiding the agent of the
action, something that may be of high interest rhetorically to the defendant.
These imitative exercises integrated the language arts of grammar and rhetoric. They
required students to comprehend grammar and rhetoric in their coordinate relationship, the
way they function in actual discourse, not in the abstractions of grammar charts or the lists
of figures in technical manuals of rhetoric or logic. The same proves true for the relations
between grammar and logic or rhetoric and logic.
One way to measure this integration of disciplines is by noting how imitation bridges
the domains of invention and style. To take an example, let us say a student is imitating a
passage in which there is an extended simile. A simile is a kind of comparison, and
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n I n R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 3 0 2
comparison, as Erasmus indicates, can be both a macro-level topoi for developing an
argument — in the domain of rhetorical or dialectical invention — or it can be a micro-level
strategy for rendering something vivid, a stylistic concern. In the literary example a
pedagogue can point out to the student how an extended simile functions simultaneously as
an argument and as an affective figure of speech. The student can then attempt to repeat
the virtue of such a hybrid, rather than lapsing into disquisitions on whether invention was
indeed the province of rhetoric or dialectic. The analysis and the imitation would give the
student an appreciation for the overlapping nature of these arts.
The third and most important virute of an imitative pedagogy is epitomized in the
concept of copia. Copia comprises both the goal and the method of Erasmus’s teaching:
through amplification, one acquired abundance. But to what end? Terence Cave has traced
the etymology of this word to ops, meaning power and might; and opes, riches. Copia had
a secondary meaning in Latin, "military troops." To achieve copia was to achieve a store
house, the riches of possibility within the language; it was to achieve a certain power and
force, as well. Copia was sometimes associated with the highest of three levels of oratorical
style. It was considered the most grandiloquent and forceful style, used for persuasion in the
most pressing circumstances. Erasmus’s use of copia did not mean specifically this category
of oratorical presentation, but it borrowed the sense of power and persuasion inherent in the
term from this and its military connotations. Quite literally, copia meant empowerment for
students. To the degree that these exercises in variation and amplification readied them with
material and expressive strategies for a variety of circumstances, they were acquiring a kind
of social power that had real clout in Renaissance culture. Imitation, when it worked in this
way, fulfilled the ends of rhetorical education. The power of the Latin language idealized
C h a p t e r S i x : I m i t a t i o n In R e n a i s s a n c e P e d a g o g y 3 0 3
by the Quattrocento humanists was realized through Erasmian pedagogy; as copia was
achieved through a curriculum of imitation, the student acquired the capacity to employ
this tongue eloquently and forcefully.
Imitation, even of the Erasmian sort, was not without its dangers, however. To these
I turn in my final chapter, which gathers together the cautions and safeguards humanists
taught to ensure that imitation avoided the pitfalls to which it was liable, and to ensure that
it did bring copia to those who employed it. However thorough humanist pedagogues may
have been in providing students imitative methods for achieving verbal ability, the results
would be ineffectual unless imitation occurred within the framework of various proprieties.
P a r t T h r e e
L i n g u i s t i c a n d R h e t o r i c a l C o n d i t i o n s
U p o n Im i t a t i o n
3 0 5
C h a p t e r S e v e n
"Proper" Imitation
This study has shown that Renaissance imitation took place within the cultural
context of the revival of Latin and within the specific context of humanist education.
Renaissance imitation should also be understood within one further context, that of the
guiding conditions attached to it by those who discussed its nature, purposes, and methods.
Imitation was held to be of great value in rejuvenating neo-Latin culture and developing
students’ proficiency with the language, but these benefits would not be realized unless the
imitator respected certain proprieties that combined pedagogical, social, linguistic, and even
psychological concerns. Humanists attempted to constrain or shape imitative practice in both
its analytical and generative stages through various provisos or admonitions. These came
either through metaphoric comparisons or through overt discussions of the rhetorical
principles of propriety and decorum.
Guiding Metaphors
Certain recurring metaphors were used to describe proper and improper sorts of
imitation in both polemical and educational treatments of imitation. George Pigman has
catalogued these, tracing them to their classical sources and citing their occurrence
throughout the Renaissance.1 As Pigman claims, these comparisons are not incidental
'G. W. Pigman, "Versions of Imitation in the Renaissance," Renaissance Quarterly 33 (1980):
1-32.
C h a p t e r S e v e n : "P r o p e r " I m i t a t i o n 3 0 6
ornaments; "they usually carry the burden of what the theorist has to say and come at the
crucial moments of his argument" (9). Such metaphors do not themselves constitute imitative
methodology, but they do provide a clear sense of how imitation was conceived and qualified
as a whole. These comparisons also illustrate the lack of consensus over what constitutes
"proper" imitation, since the same comparison is sometimes used to illustrate proper and
improper kinds. This lack of consensus will be most apparent in the metaphors of gathering
and digestion used to debate eclecticism.
Proper imitation was also discussed specifically in terms of decorum, the rhetorical
doctrine of fitting one’s discourse appropriately to circumstances. For this, judgment was
required, just as it was for engaging literature critically — the process of judging the proper
use of one’s model for a new situation was as crucial as ascertaining the properties of
literature that were imitable. Indeed, the former was but an extension of the latter.
However, propriety involved more than judging the rhetorical application of one’s models,
as will be shown. The word propriety and its cognates invites us to examine the web of
allegiances at the center of which was the Renaissance imitator; "propriety" explains the
conceptual and practical difficulty of effecting "proper" imitation.
Decorum
In A ritch Storehouse or Treasurie for Nobilitye and Gentlemen (a translation of
Nobilitas literata, 1549), after Johann Sturm has discussed adding, subtracting, and otherwise
changing the model one imitates, he discusses "framing our matter whereunto we must apply
our stile, as it were our hande." This requisite framing is to be done "with fit and convenient
wordes, and beautifications, which are in steade of colours, shadoings, and lightes, I call
C h a p t e r S e v e n : "P r o p e r " I m i t a t i o n 3 0 7
conveniencie, or fitnesse, that which the Latines name decorum, and in oure englishe tongue
seemelinesse, which in all things, and speciallye in imitation is most necessarie.2
From the earliest Renaissance treatises on the subject, imitation was described not
only in terms of the possible transformations to be wrought upon one’s model, but in terms
of the necessity of employing appropriately the variations those transformations achieved.
While it is true that students were varying language and thought in order to familiarize
themselves with different expressive means, stockpiling a repertoire of discursive strategies
as De copia taught and illustrated, this activity was always framed in terms of fitting one’s
discourse to specific circumstances.'
After outlining his imitative transformations, Gasparino Barzizza says exercise must
be done in light of a set of circumstances, including "where, with whom, when, how, and how
much" {quo, cum quo, quando, quomodo, quantum)? These are rhetorical considerations; one
must frame one’s remarks so they will achieve their intended effect upon the given audience.
Barzizza gives examples for each quality of circumstance. Considering "with whom" {cum
quo) he must consider whether "I speak with a gracious and benevolent man [or not]"; as for
"when" {quando),
the time and the hour should be considered, namely, if we were to write to
an angry man, disturbed by worries, famished before dinner, he would not
accept our letters nor freely listen. A time should be awaited, therefore, in
which he would be refreshed and in good will; then he would more freely
listen.
2 Johann Sturm, A ritch Storehouse or Treasurie for Nobilitye and Gentlemen {Nobilitas literata
1549), trans. T. Browne (London, 1570), 44rv.
3 Gasparino Barzizza, "Barzizza’ s Treatise on Imitation," ed. George W. Pigman III,
Bibliotheque d ’ humanisme et Renaissance 44 (1982): 351, line 123.
C h a p t e r S e v e n : "P r o p e r " I m i t a t i o n 3 0 8
Cum quo: dico cum homine benivolo et grato. Quando: puta considerando
tempus debitum et horam, videlicet, si scriberemus homini irato, sollicito
curis, famelico ante comestionem, non acciperet epistolas nostras nec audiret
libenter. (351, lines 129-30)
Consideration for "how" (quomodo), is also in light of his audience:
As to how, it is necessary that diligent consideration be given as to how we
are to write for a haughty and arrogant man and how to write for a gentle
and pious one. As there are people of very diverse natures, we must thus
accommodate them.
Quomodo: oportet enim diligenter considerare quomodo ad hominem
superbum et arrogantem scribamus et quomodo ad hominem clementem ac
pium, et sicut sunt diversae hominum naturae ita nos accomodare. (351, lines
134-35)
The last condition concerns "how much" (quantum):
We should not write to the point of boredom, either of ourselves or those
who listen or read us, but all things should be tempered by reason. The very
first principle to be considered in this whole matter is how to speak with due
grace.
Quantum: non enim debemus ad fastidium scribere, vel nostrum, vel
audientium sive legentium, sed omnia temperare debita cum ratione.
Considerandum est primum cuius rei gratia. (351, lines 135-37)
One of the graces of eloquence is to defeat potential boredom possible in one’s audience.
Developing adequate variety of expression is therefore necessary, a point Erasmus confirms
in his introcution to De copia when he defends the need for artful variation. "[Boredom in
one’s audience] can easily be avoided by someone who has it at his fingertips to turn one
idea into more shapes than Proteus himself is supposed to have turned into."4 The
development of copia takes place in terms of audience sensitivity.
4 Desiderius Erasmus, Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style: De duplici copia verborum ac
rerum Commentarii duo, trans. and ed. Betty I. Knott, in Collected Works of Erasmus: Literary and
Educational Writings 2, ed. Craig R. Thompson, vol. 28 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978),
302.
C h a p t e r S e v e n : "P r o p e r " I m i t a t i o n 3 0 9
Respecting one’s audience is in fact the first of rhetorical principles, and as such is
the principle that must underlie all imitation. This principle is frequently communicated in
terms of clothing. According to Barzizza,
When we imitate, we must be circumspect to verify that those words and
ideas that we have found in the books of authorities are suitable for those to
whom we write, since just as the same clothes do not fit all people, so neither
do the same words. Just as the clothes of countrymen or carpenters would
sit very foolishly upon judges, so the same language which is written to a
judge would not any better be fitting to be written to a carpenter.
Item quando imitamur, debemus respicere si ilia verba et illae sententiae quas
inveniremus in libris auctorum decerent illos ad quos scriberemus, quia sicut
eadem vestis non decet omnes, ita nec eadem oratio, nam nec unum rusticum
nec unum carpentarium deceret habere vestem more iudicis, ita nec eadem
oratio quae scriberetur ad iudicem deceret scribi ad carpentarium. (350, lines
42-47)
Clothing is the first of many metaphors we will encounter that were to govern or qualify
imitative practice. Language as clothing, a commonplace metaphor reflecting Renaissance
attitudes toward language, emphasizes the social function of style: a similar social propriety
governs how one dresses either one’s body or one’s thoughts. Other writers on imitation
employed this same comparison when emphasizing rhetorical decorum. Johann Sturm
explains that
as horsemen and footemen went not a lyke: nor the Romaynes, nor Grecians
did not alwayes weare one kinde of garment, both in the Senate, in the Court,
and in their houses at home. So in the handelying and wryting upon dyvers
thinges, they followe not one manner of style: nor used not alwayes one
forme of speech. (6v -7r)
Sturm says the orator must "come not alwayes forth in a Silken and precious garment: but
ofte times also in a worne cote, and common attyre, and such as serveth for everie daye,"
depending on the circumstances (46r). Using the same metaphor, Erasmus would defend the
need for developing a variety of expression in De copia on the basis that changing language
C h a p t e r S e v e n : "P r o p e r " I m i t a t i o n
3 1 0
is parallel to changing clothing: "The practice of giving variety to expression is exactly like
changing clothes" (De copia, 306). Erasmus uses the clothing metaphor not only to
emphasize the social decorum of Latin style but also that propriety which names linguistic
purity or latinitas. Just as the cleanliness of clothes needs to be attended to prior to their
style, so one should not seek to acquire acquire copious expression "before equipping himself
with a Latinity that is neat and clean" (306).5
Those who echoed Barzizza’s imitative doctrine did not all employ the clothing
metaphor, but many did add to their discussion of transformative methods similar
exhortations to observe decorum in their use. For example, following the four guidelines that
William Kempe appends to the curriculum he outlines (see chapter 6), he provides this
cardinal principle to govern the various transformations he has suggested are possible: one
may add, subtract, or otherwise make substitutions and changes (in accordance with
Barzziza’s basic transformations); however, "all... must bee done wisely and to good purpose,
according to the circumstances of the matter."6 It is insufficient merely to perform the
changes; they must be done in light of a purpose tied to specific circumstances — that is, in
view of one’s rhetorical intention.
To the author of Certaine Epistles of Tully verbally translated, Barzizza’s transformative
methods of addition and subtraction are tools not just to effect an imitation, but to prune
it to a given purpose: "It is either addition, which therunto applieth some thing divised by
5 Compare the French propre, "clean."
6 William Kempe, The Education of Children in Learning (1588) in Four Tudor Books on
Education, ed. Robert D. Pepper (Gainesville, Florida: Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, 1966), 236.
C h a p t e r S e v e n : "P r o p e r " I m i t a t i o n 3 11
themselves, or borrowed elsewhere: or else detraction, whereby those things are cut away
which most bewray their imitation, or serve not so fitly to their present purpose" (B3V ).
Decorum was the basis upon which Erasmus criticized the Ciceronians. They did not
make Cicero’s words and works pertain to modern circumstances, particularly Christianity.
He takes their lack of propriety as occasion to define and emphasize its importance.
Decorum, he explains, comes partly from the subject, partly from the character of the
speaker and the listener, partly from place, time and other circumstances.7 "We speak
fittingly only when our speech is consistent with the persons and conditions of present day
life" (2.61). When Erasmus presented his doctrine of copia, prompting students to "turn one
idea into more shapes than Proteus himself is supposed to have turned into," his first chapter
is devoted entirely to admonition. He criticizes those who "pile up a meaningless heap of
words and expression without any discrimination, and thus obscure the subject they are
talking about, as well as belabouring the ears of their unfortunate audience" (De copia, 302).
All of the riches of copia, the infinite variations and permutations of thought and language,
mean nothing unless policed by sound judgment and discernment. "The lover of brevity must
not merely try to say as little as possible, but to say the best things as briefly as possible ...
Nothing befits brevity better than elegance and appropriateness" (658). It is no different for
those who speak with amplitude:
The practitioner of copia ... must exercise choice in vocabulary, subject-
matter, [and] expression. He must have no silly ideas, no irrelevant examples,
no flat maxims, no excessively long digressions at inappropriate points, no
strained and far-fetched figures of speech. He must above all take due
7 Desiderius Erasmus, Dialogus Ciceronianus, de optimo dicendi genere [Ciceronianus], in
Controversies Over the Imitation of Cicero in the Renaissance, ed. Izora Scott (1910; reprint, Davis,
California: Hermagoras Press, 1991), 2.58.
C h a p t e r S e v e n : "P r o p e r " I m i t a t i o n 3 1 2
account of order and arrangement lest a mass of unorganized material throw
the whole speech into confusion and disorder. (658)
The various features of language that constitute the categories by which someone could
amplify a theme also constitute critical categories for giving due consideration to whether
element of discourse coordinates with all the others, and whether they together achieve the
desired effect.
Judgment
Erasmus’s remarks on the duty of the "practitioner of copia" to exercise choice and
circumspection demonstrate that fitting one’s speech appropriately to circumstances
overlapped with the requirement for imitators to acquire a sense of judgment, to be able to
discern which things are best to be said, which to be set aside. The term copia, in its broader
sense as discussed at the close of chapter 6, implied the development of such a critical faculty
in connection with its connotations of forcefulness. Terence Cave indicates in his
genealogical essay concerning the term copia that both its etymology and its Renaissance uses
carried joint connotations of a rich supply and capability. For Erasmus, this meant the social
power of rhetorical effectiveness.8
George Engelhardt explains how Erasmus gave to amplification or copia a sense that
was consciously different from the sense it carried in medieval homiletics.9 Amplification in
the construction of a medieval sermon meant expounding the scriptures through simple
Terence Cave, The Comucopian Text: Problems of W riting in the French Renaissance (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1979), 3-34 (chap. 1).
9 George J. Engelhardt, "Mediaeval Vestiges in the Rhetoric of Erasmus." PMLA 63 (1948):
739-44.
C h a p t e r S e v e n : "P r o p e r " I m i t a t i o n 3 1 3
expansion upon them, "extracting every possible meaning implicit and explicit from a given
line of sacred text" (740). However, he suggests the medieval mindset equated size with
importance, and so the only principle guiding amplification or dilation was achieving the
greatest length possible in one’s explication. Erasmus gave to the idea of amplification,
copia, a distinct difference: "The mediaeval theorists use this term with reference to the
length, the ancient rhetoricians and Erasmus with reference to the force, of an expression"
(742). Thus, Erasmus requires his candidatus copiae to be aware of the differences among
his many choices, in order that he may apply that which will achieve its end most forcefully.
Erasmian copia involved not simply achieving an amount of things to say, but applying a
sense of how to arrange and present them. The fullness of abundance was a fullness of
preparation, implying the ability to employ what one had practiced both maturely and wisely.
Copia compares to the term employed by the second-century rhetorician Hermogenes
to indicate the greatest of styles, "force" or "gravity" {demotes). This term is not equal to the
highest of the three standard levels of style in Roman rhetorical tradition. Rather,
Hermogenes meant by this a certain ideal of eloquence that, like Erasmian copia, required
not simply accumulation, but keen judgment. According to Hermogenes, the grave style was
the greatest because it governed the right use of all styles:
In my opinion Force [demotes] in a speech is nothing other than the proper
use of all the kinds of style previously discussed and of their opposites and
of whatever other elements are used to create the body of a speech. To
know what technique must be used and when and how it should be used, and
to be able to employ all the kinds of style and their opposites and to know
what kinds of proofs and thoughts are suitable in the proemium or in the
narration or in the conclusion, in other words, as I said, to be able to use all
those elements that create the body of a speech as [sic] and when they should
be used seems to me to be the essence of true Force. . . . An orator who
C h a p t e r S e v e n : "P r o p e r " I m i t a t i o n 3 1 4
properly uses the circumstances of rhetoric and its material would be
considered forceful.1 0
To use wisely all the elements of rhetoric that one stores up is the goal of copia, not simply
abundance for its own sake. In the closing words of his De copia Erasmus indicates that the
training he has prescribed prepares students for the serious oratorical enterprises that await
them, and "the orator who has any sense will use discretion, and apportion his eloquence to
suit the requirements of his case" (659). Copia meant nothing without discernment or
judgment.
Johann Sturm, the primary editor and popularizer of Hermogenes in the Renaissance,
often used the term "decorum" when referring to Hermogenes’ demotes.1 1 Both copia in the
Roman tradition and demotes in the Greek have been considered merely stylistic labels, but
in the Renaissance these terms meant general principles of decorum necessary for the writer
or speaker to apply the various resources of discourse with judgement. This included
knowing when stylistic ornamentation was appropriate to a given cirumstance and when it
was not, a point Sturm specifically makes in discussing judgment in imitation. Referring to
the picture of Venus that Apelles painted, he remarked:
Wherefore as Apelles left some parte of that picture rude and untrimmed: so
likewise ought a writer, and Imitator to doe, and to consider not howe far a
thing may be beautified and set froth: but howe much polishing is meete
therefore, which being not considered, the speeche must needes be both
swelling and puffed up, and also unapt and foolish. (45v )
“Hermogenes, Hermogenes’ " O n Types of Style," trans. and ed. Cecil W. Wooton, (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1987), 101, section 369.
uSee Annabel M. Patterson, Hermogenes and the Renaissance: Seven Ideas of Style (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1970), 179 and chap. 1, passim.
C h a p t e r S e v e n : "P r o p e r " I m i t a t i o n 3 1 5
Not to be so careful would result in a failure to say what is apt for the circumstances, a
betrayal of decorum, and an utter failure of effect. To make such critical judgments required
a well-developed sense of discernment, something humanists believed to be available through
the longtime study of authors. The many methods humanists prescribed for carefully
observing the grammatical, logical, and rhetorical features in literature prepared students for
their own speaking and writing (see chapter 4, above). Such critical observation meant more
than the ability to identify various linguistic features; it meant to judge their coordinate
similar judgment of one’s own writing.
The concept of developing a critical faculty valuable for both observation and
production of literature is summed up by Philip Melanchthon, who claimed the writings of
the classical authors taught recte dicendi iudicandique facultas, a faculty of speaking and
judging correctly.1 2 Melanchthon called special attention to the overall order and structure
1 2 C. J. Classen, "Cicero Orator Inter Germanos Redivivus, I I Humanistica Lovaniensia 39 (1
C h a p t e r S e v e n : "P r o p e r " I m i t a t i o n 3 1 6
in the model, what he refers to as economia. He wanted students to see how it was put
together, not just what the bricks in the building were. It mattered as much how one
mortared and placed the elements of composition, and this method was to be observed and
copied from the ancient authors, not merely their diction or other strictly verbal features
(Classen, 164).
Juan Luis Vives discussed judgment and imitation throughout his chapter on imitation
in De tradendis disciplinis (Bruges 1531).1 3 While in agreement with the principles of
decorum and imitation so far outlined, Vives added to these an emphasis upon respecting
the individual abilities or talents (ingenium) of the student, an innovation that changes the
very basis upon which imitative pedagogy is conducted. This emphasis has already been
alluded to in the previous chapter in which Vives’s pedagogy was explained. Imitative
exercises were not to be based upon a given timetable in the grammar curriculum but upon
the student’s level of development and personal ability. The same standards apply when
Vives discusses what authors are to imitated and when. Rather than requiring students to
adhere strictly to a single literary model, Vives encourages them to follow their own bent,
imitating those models they feel most akin to.1 4 The master can gauge what models to place
before a given student by observing the delight that naturally arises from the harmony
between a given student’s faculties and the object before him (porro quibus quisque sit rebus
appositus, cognoscetur ex delectatione, quae de conformitate et congruentia quodam oritur objecti
0): 164.
1 3 Jean Luis Vives, De tradendis disciplinis, in Opera Omnia, ed. Gregorio Mayans y Siscar
(Valencia, 1782), 6.362-68.
1 4 Vives develops more fully the point Erasmus also made in this regard, who in his
Ciceronianus claims one must not necessarily imitate Cicero but those models that agree with one’ s
ingenium or natural abilities (2.122-23).
C h a p t e r S e v e n : "P r o p e r " I m i t a t i o n 3 1 7
et facultatis; 6.363). Imitation thus requires judgment on the part of both student and master:
the student exercises judgment in suiting his or her reading to his or her tastes and abilities;
while the master employs judgment by verifying that student selections neither turn to
morally vicious literature nor encourage stylistic excesses. Vives is unique in proposing that
schoolmasters employ alternative models for imitation based upon the vices or tendencies to
which individuals are prone:
Should the student’s genius incline him to some fault, as, for example,
copiousness to the point of exuberant redundancy, or parsimony of words to
the point of aridity and lack of vigor, then indeed the master should redirect
him into a correct and healthy course through the imitation of other styles.
si ingenium ad vitium vergat, ut copia ad exuberantem redundantiam,
parsimonia ad ariditatem, nervi ad maciem deformem, turn vero diversi
generis imitatione ad rectum et sanum habitum deflectitur. (6.363-64)
Vives displays his own judgment by enumerating and describing the styles of various authors
(much as Erasmus does in the last third of his Ciceronianus). Each must be understood in
order for the master to be capable of accommodating the abilities of individual students in
this fashion. Unlike others who make lists of authors to read, Vives presents his not just as
a set of good works to read or good stylists to imitate, but as places where students can
discover authors consonant with their own disposition and where teachers can find models
to serve as stylistic correctives should a student’s style become imbalanced. The teacher is
to monitor the student’s imitations (institutor id animadvertet), and whenever the pupil goes
about them stupidly {quod si juvenis inepte), the teacher is to express this to the student
(effingat), then lead him away from that particular imitation to one corresponding more with
the student’s nature (ab imitatione eum ad suam ipsius naturam sequendam traducet; 6.365).
While Vives hopes to guide and encourage students through well-chosen models, he
akcnowledges that imitation is a method that is not for everyone, precisely because it
C h a p t e r S e v e n : "P r o p e r " I m i t a t i o n 3 1 8
demands a certain "warmth" and powers of judgment (sed neque ad hanc imitandam quivis
est factus; nam eo, qui ad imitationem hanc caloris et viriurn non satis ajfert, nihil est fiigidius;
6.362-63). Those lacking judgment may not be helped by imitation; but those possessing it
may in fact be identified by way of this pedagogical procedure. Vives at one point seems to
set forth imitation not as a practice for obtaining Latin fluency, but as a sort of aptitude test:
"From the beginning good imitation requires quick and keen judgment, as well as a certain
natural and hidden dexterity. Therefore a correct imitation of good things demonstrates a
goodness of natural talent" (Initio est ad bene imitandum opus acuto, et judicio acri; adde
etiam, naturali quadam et occulta dexteritate; itaque recta bonarum rerum imitatio bonitatem
ingenii arguit; 6.365). He holds it as a distinct possibility that there may be those who are
slow in judgment or "out of tune" in their nature with these things (his in rebus absurditate
naturae', 6.365). Such are those hapless imitators who "do not so much concentrate upon
expressing the mind of the orator as they do upon the exterior of his words and the outward
appearance of his style" (isti novi imitatores non tam animum orationis ad exprimendum
contemplantur, quam exteriorem verborum ac stili faciem; 6.362). This was precisely the
problem Vives saw with certain Ciceronians who believed themselves to be following their
model so long as they copied out his words verbatim.
Literal Copying
The imitator lacked judgment who merely copied words out verbatim from model
authors. The words mattered, but to copy these alone was like copying parts from a whole,
as though whatever one constructed in one’s own composition would win merit so long as the
bricks were good. Joachim Du Bellay used just such an architectural metaphor in his
C h a p t e r S e v e n : "P r o p e r " I m i t a t i o n 3 1 9
complaint about the ultra-Ciceronian approach to imitation. He mocked those imitators who
thought they were somehow recapturing the glories of ancient Roman culture when they
culled "from this orator or from that poet, now a verb, now a line, and now a sentence, as
if in the way in which one rebuilds an old edifice they expected to restore by the stones
picked up in the ruined fabrication of these languages its first greatness and excellence."1 5
The architectural metaphor was one of many used to describe this improper kind of imitation
— the verbatim copying of words or passages from another author’s work.
Verbatim copying was the first imitative transgression against which Renaissance
educators warned, a great red flag signaling improper imitation. It was a principal basis for
the charges made against the Ciceronians. Their "imitations" were laughably superficial
because of their literalism. For example, because Cicero sometimes closed his periods with
esse videatur ("it would seem"), some Ciceronians had picked up this habit themselves. To
copy out phrases (or even larger portions of discourse) is the simplest form of imitation (if
it can be called such), but from the beginning, those who recommended imitation insisted
that copying one’s model word-for-word was not imitation, but theft. "If those desiring to
imitate," cautioned Barzizza in De imitatione,
take and steal the sayings of others, not through imitation but by rewriting
and taking literally just as it is found in the very orators, to such an extent the
imitation will prove both a burden and disgrace. For if those from whom we
had extracted our sayings and out of whom we had composed our speech or
epistle were to come and take back those things which were theirs, nothing
written would remain on our paper.
Ita si volentes imitari accipimus et furamur dicta aliorum, non imitando sed
scribendo et accipiendo litteram sicut stat in ipsis oratoribus, talis imitatio
oneri est et dedecori. Nam si venirent illi a quibus extraxissemus dicta sua,
1 5 Joachim Du Bellay, The Defence & Illustration of the French Language (1549), trans. Gladys
M. Turquet (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1939), 54-55.
C h a p t e r S e v e n : "P r o p e r " I m i t a t i o n 3 2 0
ex quibus composuissemus orationem vel epistolam et acciperent quae sua
essent, nihil in papiro scriptum relinqueretur. (350, lines 59-64)
Juan Luis Vives would later caution that if someone, wanting to thank a person, imitated
Cicero by merely repeating his speech of gratitude to the senate (or that of Ausonius’s given
to Gratianus August), this would be plagiarizing (furari = "to steal"). In order not to be
accused of theft, one needed to change either the ideas or the language (non eadem vel verba
vel sensa).1 6 This had been Barzizza’s advice as well:
When we desire to imitate we should not take things from our source in a
strictly literal fashion precisely as we find them in that book we desire to
imitate, but we must change the words and the subjects in such a way that
they do not seem to be the very same words from the selfsame book.
quando volumus imitari, non debemus accipere recte litteram sicut stat in illo
libro in quo volumus imitari, sed debemus mutare verba et sententias ita
quod non videantur esse ilia eadem verba quae sunt in ipso libro. (350, lines
28-31)
Stealing an author’s very words was an "improper" sort of imitation because it did not respect
the "property" of other writers. It was illustrated by a comparison drawn from Aesop’s fables.
Verbatim imitators were compared to the crow who stole the bright feathers of other birds
to dress up his own somber plumage. Horace first made this literary comparison to Aesop’s
tale (Epistles 1.3.19), but it was often repeated in the Renaissance: Petrarch, Pico della
Mirandola, Erasmus, Celio Calcagnini, Sperone Speroni, Bartolomao Ricci, Johann Sturm,
and Gabriel Harvey all employed the crow metaphor to describe this superficial and
dishonest sort of imitation (Pigman, 8 n. 13).
Not all verbatim imitation was considered theft. Barzizza, Pietro Bembo, and Vives
all grant limited allowance to some literal copying. "We may take two or four words from
1 6 Jean Luis Vives, De tradendis disciplinis, in Opera Omnia, ed. Gregorio Mayans y Siscar
(Valencia, 1782), 6.365-66.
C h a p t e r S e v e n : ’’P r o p e r " I m i t a t i o n 321
the beginning of any epistle or oration that we wish to imitate," concedes Barzizza, "but not
more than this, since the beginnings of orations or epistles are more famous than other parts
of a speech or letter" (and so open one to charges of plagiarism).1 7 Bembo condones the
common practice of lifting some material from other authors, but (as more fully shown
below), considers this to be borrowing, not true imitating, a crucial difference he felt many
did not acknowledge.1 8 Vives allows for some literal copying on the elementary level. A
student may transfer (transferal) from his model those things which he is unable to render
(quae reddere non poterii), "provided it does not escape him [the student] that this is not
imitation, but filching (suppilareY (modo ne ilium fugiat non id esse imitari sed suppilare1. an
error into which, he says, too many have fallen. "Gradually," says Vives, "[the student] will
truly imitate, that is, he will fashion (affinget) what he desires according to his model, not
ripping out patches from his examples and just sewing them into his own work" (paullatim
autem vere imitabitur, id est, ad exemplar affinget quae volet; non de exemplari centones surripiet,
quos in opere suo consuaV, 365).
In this variation on the clothing metaphor Vives has compared verbatim theft of
another’s words to ripping out patches of cloth and sewing them into a new garment.
Melancthon also used this comparison in warning how Cicero was not to be imitated:
"Neither truly should he be taught to imitate Cicero, who sews together excerpts, sayings, or
verses from him as though he were making an anthology" (Neque vero is imitari Ciceronem
1 7 "Possemus tamen accipere duo vel quatturo verba in principio alicuius epistolae vel orationis
quam vellemus imitari, sed non plura, quia principia orationum vel epistolanun sunt notiora aliis
partibus orationis vel epistolae" (350, lines 36-38).
1 8 Pietro Bembo, "A Pamphlet on Imitation by Pietro Bembo \De imitatione libellus\," in Scott,
2.17.
C h a p t e r S e v e n : "Pr o p e r " I m i t a t i o n 3 2 2
dicendus est, qui excerptas ex illo sentencias ac versus quasi Centones consuit, quemadmodum
facere non nullos videmus).1 9
Transformative and Non-Transformative Imitation
Pigman divides the various comparisons used to describe imitation into two sorts,
transformative and non-transformative. These are useful categories for understanding
imitation, since Renaissance instruction in imitation took place in terms of transformation
and translation.2 0 Proper imitation consisted of altering and varying one’s sources in order
to adopt and adapt them. Accordingly, those metaphors that depicted improper imitation
seem to be those that are non-transformative in nature — gathering stones from ruins,
gathering feathers, sewing in patches of cloth, etc. Conversely, those metaphors that convey
an idea of proper imitation are transformative. These included comparisons to bees turning
pollen into honey, to food being assimilated through digestion, and to the transformation of
qualities from parent to child. To these I will return.
It seems as though all of these negative, non-transformative comparisons indicate that
the very thing one may properly copy from one’s models are their words. This, however, is
inconsistent with imitation theory in two respects. First, the establishment of latinitas was
precisely the effort to imitate, even mimic, classical Latin vocabulary and usage. This was
no fanatical interest of a small group devoted to Cicero, but a large cultural movement at
the heart of humanist concerns (see above, chapter 1). They did indeed seek to copy the
w Philip Melanchthon, "De Imitacione," inElementorum rhetoriceslibriduo (Wittenberg, 1531),
G3V .
“ See chapters 4 and 6, above.
C h a p t e r S e v e n : "P r o p e r " I m i t a t i o n 3 2 3
words of their imitative models, as the philological, lexical, and grammatical texts of
Renaissance Europe amply show. Second, the verbal elements of communication were those
which received such trained attention by humanists. The content of literature, they believed,
could neither be understood nor imitated without a proper appreciation of the style and
rhetoric of the original. This was as much part of translation theory as it was imitation
pedagogy, as Leonardo Bruni’s treatises in each field demonstrated (see chapters 1 and 4).
One needed to be faithful to the expression, the verba of an author, either to translate or to
imitate properly. So it seems something of an irony that these many metaphoric admonitions
regarding imitation should seem to hold in contempt any imitation that retains, rather than
transforms, the verbal nature of its model. What sort of imitation was proper? to transform
the language of one’s model until it is one’s own "property," or to stay close to the "propriety"
of the model’s pure Latinity?
This seeming conflict is resolved if we understand a distinction between copying the
verba, the stylistic or expressive features of a model, and copying the Latin vocabulary or
syntax of that model. To imitate the latinitas of Cicero in this latter sense might mean
restricting oneself only to his "proper" Latin words and grammar, but it does not necessarily
mean adopting his habits of speech such as ending periods with esse videatur. The danger
which the non-transformative comparisons illustrated were those that involved borrowing
phrases or identifiable features; it meant imitation as quotation.
Most of all, these metaphors seem to indict imitation that does not involve the
reader/writer in those important manipulations of thought and language that are required by
Barzizza’s transformations or by the translation process. Remaining too closely tied to the
wording, the imitator denied himself the fullest possible appreciation of the model. The
C h a p t e r S e v e n : "Pr o p e r " I m i t a t i o n 3 2 4
Ciceronians defended their actions by appealing to the propriety of language that Cicero
represented, but so long as they focused solely on his Latin, they could not fully imitate the
power and importance of his prose, nor could they properly apply what they derived from
him. This required a more thorough appreciation of him than mere philology, as important
as this was. It required an appreciation that had to do not only with lexical or general
expressive features, but with the entire range of res and verba that Renaissance literary
analysis sought.
The kinds of directions provided by Vives or Melanchthon (see above, chapter 6), for
example, required students to see composite structures and their rhetorical purposes in
relation to one another and the overall purpose of the speech. They required an accounting
not only of what was to be found in the model, but why parts were joined together as they
were, why certain sources were consulted, why the order of clauses in a period or arguments
in an oration was arranged as it was. This is anything but mindless imitation. It asks of
students to become simultaneously linguistically and rhetorically aware.
Apian and Digestive Comparisons to Imitation
This brings us to the positive, transformative comparisons for imitation. These imply
the more thorough engagement that Renaissance literary criticism pushed students toward
attaining. Petrarch was the first in the Renaissance to revive Seneca’s comparison of
imitation to bees gathering honey, but Barzziza gave the metaphor its first, fullest exposition:
Just as bees flit across the meadow from blossom to flower, sucking from the
more radiant and select flowers, extracting honey, so we who desire to
imitate, when we read the books of the orators and poets and especially our
Cicero, we should imitate the more select sayings, and just as those bees do
not carry away from those flowers anything with them but that which is able
to be taken from the flowers, namely honey, so we should not draw off
C h a p t e r S e v e n : "P r o p e r " I m i t a t i o n 3 2 5
literally the sayings of the orators and poets that we desire to imitate, but
should imitate in such a way that we do not appear to be stealing them.
Sicut enim apes in prato florenti et floribus pleno vadunt, flores candidiores
et electiores sugunt, et extrahunt mel, ita et nos volentes imitari, quando
libros oratorum et poetarum et imprimis Ciceronis nostri legimus, electiora
dicta imitari debemus, et sicut ipsae apes non auferunt ipsos flores secum sed
tantum id quod potest a floribus accipi, scilicet mel, ita et nos non accipiamus
dicta oratorum et poetarum quos imitari volumus recte secundum litteram,
sed imitemur ita ut non videamur ipsa furari. (350, lines 51-57)
Besides reiterating the admonition against theft, Barzziza’s apian metaphor introduces the
idea of being selective about one’s models, going only to those most choice flowers to extract
honey.2 1 Many others will use this metaphor in the Renaissance, including Angelo Poliziano
and Erasmus. Erasmus included this metaphor when instructing students to create books to
keep together what they noted from their reading: "So our student will flit like a busy bee
through the entire garden of literature, will light on every blossom, collect a little nectar from
each, and carry it to his hive" (De copia, 639).
Closely related to the bee metaphor, and just as popular, was that of digestion.
Quintilian had mentioned this metaphor in his discussion of imitation (10.1.19), as had
Macrobius (Saturnalia l.pr.7). Petrarch repeated it at least twice (Familiares 22.2.12; Seniles
2.3), and it would recur in writings by Poliziano, Erasmus, Calcagnini, Florido, Etienne Dolet,
Joachim Du Bellay, Philip Sidney, and Ben Jonson (Pigman 4-9, esp. p. 8 and n. 13).
Responding to the Ciceronians who were better catalogers than imitators, Erasmus used the
digestive metaphor to relate one’s reading to one’s writing through this proper,
transformative, imitation:
2 1 Pigman observes Barzizza’ s mistake in assuming bees gather honey, rather than pollen. He
says this misunderstanding of the natural phenomenon recategorizes the apian metaphor in this
instance as a non-transformative, gathering sort rather than one in which changes occur within (9).
C h a p t e r S e v e n : "P r o p e r " I m i t a t i o n 3 2 6
That must be digested which you devour in your varied daily reading, must
be made your own by meditation rather than memorized or put into a book,
so that your mind crammed with every kind of food may give birth to a style
which smells not of any flower, shrub, or grass but of your own native talent
and feeling; so that he who reads may not recognize fragments culled from
Cicero but the reflection of a well-stored mind.2 2
The emphasis here is on originality. Angelo Poliziano will champion originality as the goal
of imitation when he calls for more eclectic approaches to models. In his polemic with Scala,
Poliziano supplies this reason for reading more than Cicero: "Someone will say: 'You do
not express Cicero.' I answer: 'I am not Cicero; what I really express is myself '."2 3
Poliziano’s attitude may satisfy our modern-day sense of the primacy and inviolability of self-
expression; however, we should be careful not to read such romantically-derived values of
originality back onto the Renaissance. Poliziano stands out because of his resonance with
those very modern values, but Renaissance directions for imitation occurred less often in
terms of how to be original than they did in terms of how to change sufficiently one’s source
in order for it not to be recognized (for it not to be stolen), and of how to fit one’s imitation
to the proper circumstances (decorum). The achievement of something original without the
attendant value of its social application is not a product of the Renaissance but a later
period. However, it is fair to say that "proper" imitation, as figured in the apian and digestive
metaphors, means to appropriate other sources, not just to make them one’s own through
transformation, one’s properly, but to apply these imitations properly to the present
circumstances, observing decorum or propriety.
2 2 Ckeronianus, 82. This seems to contradict Erasmus’ s directions to students to create
notebooks. See above, chapter 3.
2 3 Angelo Poliziano, "Nemo imitandus!" in Aemilius Springhetti, Selecta Latinitatis Scripta
AuctorumRecentium (Saec. XV-XX). Latinitas Perennis, I. (Rome: Gregorian University, 1951), 130-34.
C h a p t e r S e v e n : "P r o p e r " I m i t a t i o n 3 2 7
Eclecticism Reevaluated
The apian and digestive comparisons depict not merely transformations found in the
natural world, but transformations that occur after a process of gathering in from multiple
kinds of sources. As a consequence, these particular metaphors were used not only to
demonstrate that imitation was a kind of transformation, but to argue the benefits of seeking
many different models, to choose eclectically from among many.
Whether one should imitate a single model (typically Cicero, although Virgil was
sometimes singled out for poetry) or many was a hotly debated issue in imitation treatises
and polemics. The lines were drawn between the exclusive and the eclectic. Curiously, the
digestion metaphor was used to argue both sides of the exclusive-eclectic argument,
highlighting the ambiguities of what constitutes "proper" imitation.
In general, the Ciceronians were exclusive while their opponents represented the
eclectic approach. Lorenzo Valla, Angelo Poliziano, Giorgio Valla, Pico della Mirandola,
and Erasmus were all outspoken in this regard, emphasizing the necessity of broad reading
and varied imitation in order to develop one’s own style (rather than to adopt the style of
a single author). Erasmus summarizes the arguments for eclecticism in his Ciceronianus:
what is it that could possess people to limit themselves to the virtues of one author when it
is so easy to identify a variety of virtues in so many authors? why would one follow only
Cicero when he clearly has faults and lacks the stylistic excellencies of so many others? Since
a Renaissance literary education consisted of imitating those whom one read, to limit one’s
model meant to limit one’s reading. In effect, it seemed to limit one’s education as a whole.
The most egregious Ciceronian extremism seemed to be exemplified by those who swore, as
did Christophe de Longueil, that they would read nothing but Cicero for a set number of
C h a p t e r S e v e n : "P r o p e r " I m i t a t i o n 3 2 8
years. This offended both learning and religion. Bembo is said to have counseled Sadoleto
to abstain from reading the epistles of St. Paul on the grounds that they could corrupt his
pure Ciceronian style (Scott 1.27).
We modern readers, steeped in the values of pluralism, multiculturalism and diversity,
tend to favor broad-ranging and inclusive kinds of reading. Renaissance opponents of
eclecticism, however, argue persuasively against it, grounding their arguments on the same
metaphor of digestion that seemed to justify eclecticism.
Erasmus mocked the Ciceronians because they exemplified the very worst sort of
literalism. They were so obsessed with Cicero’s words and phrases that they began with these,
rather than with the subject matter at hand, when composing. Nosoponus proudly boasts of
this sort of tail-wagging-the-dog when he explains how he composes:
I read as many letters of Cicero as possible; I consult all my lists; I select
some words strikingly Ciceronian, some tropes, and phrases, and rhythms.
Finally, when furnished sufficiently with this kind of material, I examine what
figures of speech I can use and where I can use them. Then I return to the
question of sentences. For this now is a work of art to find meanings for
these verbal embellishments. (Ciceronianus, 2.31)
This cafeteria-style approach to composition is sure to result in a pastiche in which elements
are thrown incongruously together.
Erasmus used eclecticism as a rhetorical lance to throw against the Ciceronians, but
the kind of false eclectic composition for which he mocks the Ciceronians (imitation as
quotation) was very likely promoted by the kinds of compilations he published, such as his
popular collection of proverbs, theAdagia. Such ready references made possible imitation-
as-quotation, the over-reliance upon verbatim selections from other writers to dress up one’s
prose. We have already seen the metaphors employed to argue against verbatim copying;
gathering stones or feathers, sewing in patches of cloth. These suggest a lack of harmony,
C h a p t e r S e v e n : "P r o p e r " I m i t a t i o n 3 2 9
or propriety, if you will, among the parts of a composition that will exist if judgment is not
employed to coordinate its various elements.
Etienne Dolet presented the digestive metaphor as a counter measure to the pseudo
imitation of patching together quoted material: "Imitation," he claimed, "does not mean
quotation, it means digesting and absorbing."2 4 Others, however, employed the same
metaphor to argue that the eclectic approach would result in the same "literary indigestion"
that is so obvious in the cafe ter ia-style selecting of quotations described by Nosoponus.
"Whatever foods remain as their own kind in the stomach," said Barzizza in his treatise, "are
not digested and prove to be a burden" (350, line 59). Paolo Cortesi would reiterate the
problem of eclectic indigestion in his famous Ciceronian interchange with Angelo Poliziano
in 1489.
Paolo Cortesi argued that one should choose a single author to form and foster one’s
abilities. The advantage in taking only one, he implies, is that doing so provides for one’s
composition a certain consistency between the various elements of language which are
together imitated; whereas, the result of following multiple authors is that one may take a
given feature from one, another from another, which when placed together in the imitator’s
composition do not coordinate well with one another.
\
What pleasure can ambiguous words, misplaced verbs, abrupt sentences, rigid
structure, poor translation, and ill-measured rhythm afford? Yet this must
be the result when thoughts and words are culled from various authors and
no [single] one is imitated.
Quid enim voluptatis afferre possunt ambiguae vocabulorum significationes,
verba transversa, abruptae sententiae, structura salebrosa, audax translatio,
^Etienne Dolet, Dialogus de Ciceroniana imitatione pro C. Longolio (1535), quoted and
translated in Scott, 1.69.
C h a p t e r S e v e n : "P r o p e r " I m i t a t i o n 3 3 0
nec felix ac intercisi de industria numeri? Quod necesse est his omnibus
accidere, qui ex singulis sensus et verba eruunt, et neminem imitantur.2 5
Cortesi employs several metaphors that illustrate this well. The writings of the eclectic are
inconsistent, he claims, "like a field into which have been scattered many antagonistic seeds"
(tanquam in unum agrum plura inter se inimicissima sparsa semina; 134; Scott 21). Such
incompatibility of verbal features is also comparable, he says, to the cacophony in the
collision of falling stones or racing chariots. Adding another variation to the clothing
metaphor, Cortesi claims "their speech will resemble the house of the pawn-broker where all
kinds of garments are found hanging together" (Horum sane omnis oratio est tanquam
Hebraeorum domus, quibus sunt ad quoddam tempus diversorum hominum bona oppignerata;
134; Scott, 21). Finally, Cortesi employs the famous digestive metaphor, but upsetting it like
a turned stomach: "This medley of words so poorly mated might be compared to different
kinds of food which do not assimilate" (varia ciborum genera male concoquantur, 134; Scott,
21).
Pietro Bembo, so reviled for his apparent pedantry and paganism in following Cicero,
makes a very reasonable argument against eclecticism on this same basis. His statements to
Pico della Mirandola make us suddenly realize that the whole question of following one or
many authors is not equivalent to choosing between a simple narrowness of mind and a more
"humanistic" openness to multiple sources. "Do you hold it enough that we borrow from
each what we consider best and thus construct one integral method?" he asks, summarizing
the eclectic position. This is not imitation at all, he contests. "This should rather be called
making excerpts or, if you please, begging; for beggars gain the necessaries of life not from
“Paulo Cortesi, "Minime gentium, sed Cicero prae ceteris imitandus!" in Springhetti, 134. I
have partially modified the translation by Izora Scott, 1.21.
C h a p t e r S e v e n : "P r o p e r ” I m i t a t i o n 3 3 1
one but from many." Bembo makes room for legitimate borrowing, so long as it is not
confused with the more important and inclusive procedures of imitation. He faults Pico for
not distinguishing between these two very different activities. Borrowing is both
commonplace and legitimate, so long as limited:
who does not take thoughts, figures, and brilliant sayings, description of
places and times? who does not take some examples of war or peace or
storms or loves or other things from those whom he has read much and long,
not only in Latin but in Greek and also in the vernacular? This borrowing
is legitimate, but let it be done sparingly and wisely. We can borrow because
great and illustrious men have done it, but not too much;2 6
Borrowing is permitted only in a limited sense, and only if secondary to the more
comprehensive principle of following a model he describes, that of imitation proper.
Because of his emphasis on Ciceronian diction, Bembo has been accused of limiting
imitation merely to the literal copying of words. While later Ciceronians (the kind against
whom Muret complained) may have considered themselves to have imitated their model by
copying his words or phrases alone, it is clear that Bembo saw imitation as a more
comprehensive procedure. "Imitation includes the entire form of writing; it demands that you
imitate the individual parts but it deals too with the whole structure and body of style. . . .
It is necessary for an imitator to express all the features of the style which he wishes to
imitate" (1.11). Imitation, as opposed to borrowing, is necessarily limited to a single author
so that one’s style can achieve a consistent comprehensiveness. This is not possible when one
attempts to imitate more than one at a time: "He who wishes to imitate several at the same
time will gain nothing from any, for he allows his mind to be distracted" (1.11). Bembo
describes how following more than one author’s style also leads one after novelties and leaves
^Bembo concludes, "for it is more distinguished to invent than to borrow," almost echoing
Angelo Poliziano’s emphasis on originality. Quoted and translated by Scott, 1.17.
C h a p t e r S e v e n : "P r o p e r " I m i t a t i o n 3 3 2
the imitator in confusion because one author’s style contradicts one another’s: "When we
learn to imitate the first and then turn to the second we are compelled to reject much that
a little while before we sought with the greatest care and pains." This is not only inefficient
but discouraging. Bembo is concerned that such eclecticism only leads to carelessness as "we
are tossed hither and yon by the variety of examples as if by waves" (1.11).
However laudable eclecticism sounds, its great problem was that it so readily turned
imitation into the copying of parts, which is to Bembo no imitation at all, for one does not
follow an author who does not follow the way those many parts work coordinately: "for what
is best and most excellent in any author is moulded from all his parts, all his virtues, nay, all
his vices if he has any" (1.12). He compares imitation to representing someone’s face. The
virtues of any of the parts — eyes, eyebrows, etc. — are as much due to their being part of
the entire visage as to anything else. Therefore, he concludes, "the individual virtues of the
model we can excel, only if we excel also the whole method of which they are the ornaments"
( 1.12).
Much of the Erasmian harangue against the Ciceronians is based upon this claim that
they do not imitate him completely but limit themselves to various parts — words, phrases,
stock endings of periods — while ignoring the overall qualities of Cicero for which he merits
most praise. "Where is the mind of Cicero?" Erasmus asks,
where the originality so abounding and happy, where the power of
arrangement, where the thinking out of propositions, where the wisdom in
handling arguments, where the power of persuasion, the felicity, the memory
so fruitful and ready, the versatility, where in short that soul breathing even
now in his writings, that genius, manifesting such peculiar, subtle power? If
these are lacking, how indifferent will be our imitation!" (Ciceronianus 2.54).
In his De imitatione libellus Bembo similarly insists upon a more complete sort of imitation,
since one cannot access the full force of a model’s style piecemeal. The virtues of style occur
C h a p t e r S e v e n : "P r o p e r " I m i t a t i o n 3 3 3
in a coordinate fashion with one another that partial "imitation" always negates. For this
reason, Bembo asserts, genuine imitation cannot be achieved by darting among several stylists
as models:
for how can it be brought about that you could coalesce into one style the
speech of writers, one of whom is incoherent, another smooth, a third
vigorous, a fourth ornate, a fifth negligent? How can your speech display
these and six hundred other kinds and qualities of writing? (1.12)
The implication is clear: not only will it be impossible to follow all (or many) simultaneously,
but in so proceeding one will never succeed in following the real excellence of any one.
Bembo and Erasmus agree upon the need for imitation to be of a more complete
nature to have the best result, but Erasmus does not similarly conclude that this means
restricting oneself to the mastery of a single model’s style. He continues to argue for
eclecticism in his Ciceronianus, using for an example the comparison to a certain sculpture
in which the best features of many women were brought together to make the superlative
representation of Helen (2.35). "In general," his spokesman says in calm reason to the
sickened Ciceronian Nosoponus, "would you not take from each [orator] that in which each
excelled?" (2.39). Erasmus states his eclecticism more plainly in an epistle: "I maintain that
the rhetorician, like the painter, must seek his model from many."2 7
Erasmus was not quite the eclectic he gives the impression of being in the
Ciceronianus. As has been shown above, from his early days in Paris he limited himself very
specifically to those whom he would accept as prose models (according to epistle 20 to
Gerard). Similarly, his educational program in De ratione studii includes cautions against
students at first reading too broadly in literature, precisely because they will be too busied
2 7 E ra sm u s, e p istle 899 (O c to b e r 13, 1537), q u o te d in S c o tt, 1.27.
C h a p t e r S e v e n : "P r o p e r " I m i t a t i o n 3 3 4
in this survey of authors to attend to the important training in analysis and imitation that he
recommends. This underscores a very simple fault of eclecticism: however broad-minded
it may sound, it may lead to a more cursory encounter with the many at the expense of a
deepened analysis and appreciation of the few. The Ciceronians were not attempting to limit
imitation by limiting their models to one, but to make possible a more comprehensive kind
of imitation.
Bembo was not alone in the Renaissance in calling for limits to one’s prose models.
Others also saw the dangers that accompanied the attempt to imitate too many at once.
John Monfasani refers to George of Trebizond who in 1426 urged a student "against a
method of imitation that indiscriminately mixed styles by stringing together tacit quotations
from different authors."2 8 Such unblended, imperfect imitation can be seen to stem from
the practices of the Apuleians, one of three schools of literary imitation that John D’ Amico
identifies in the development of Renaissance Latin prose style.2 9
Taking as their model the late antique author Apuleius, the Apuleians cultivated an
obscure and archaic style, "careless of balanced or periodic sentence structure, and willing
to appropriate pell-mell phrasing and vocabulary of different periods, genres, and styles of
Latin literature" (Monfasani, 194). Rather than worry over the dangers of alloying
incompatible verbal elements by bringing together language from wide-ranging sources, they
embraced the prospect as a novel means for erudite display. Both Ciceronians and eclectics
^John Monfasani, "Humanism and Rhetoric," in Renaissance Humanism: Foundation, Forms,
and Legacy, vol. 3, Humanism and the Disciplines, ed. Albert Rabil, Jr. (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1988), 188.
2 9 John D’ Amico, "The Progress of Renaissance Latin Prose: The Case of Apuleianism."
Renaissance Quarterly 37 (1984): 351-92. See above in chapter 3, "Imitation as Pedantry (4): Imitation
as Quotation."
C h a p t e r S e v e n : "P r o p e r " I m i t a t i o n 3 3 5
(the other two imitative schools D’Amico identifies) vigorously opposed Apuleian style
(which they referred to as "African style"), for it put erudition (or the appearance of it)
ahead of Latinity and represented a "heretical" departure from classical decorum. Francesco
Florido Sabino (1511-47), a Ciceronian, objected to Giovanni Battista Pio (who epitomized
Apuleianism) on these grounds (D’ Amico, 376). The Apuleians are more justly accused of
focusing on vocabulary as the primary determinant of appropriate style than were the
Ciceronians, for it was a tenet of their approach to discard considerations of period structure
or any linguistic feature above the level of vocabulary in favor of the uncustomary words by
which they could impress their audiences with their scholarship. D’ Amico concludes that
Apuleianism pushed Latin towards being a more specialized study, more academic in nature
(392). What Apuleianism gained in scholarly repute it lost in its reputation for betraying
humanist standards of Latinity set in Cicero’s classical golden age. We must understand this
to be more than an opting for archaic over classical vocabulary; it also meant the denial of
rhetorical features of language and of the appropriate uses of Latin (decorum) that
humanists idealized in Cicero’s writings and culture.
While the eclectics that D ’ Amico identifies (represented best by Poliziano) shared the
general humanist values of rhetoric and language epitomized by Cicero’s Rome, they allowed
a flexibility that is generally regarded as positive. But the excesses of the Apuleians can in
some ways support Bembo’s misgivings about where an openness to too many models may
lead one. D ’ Amico says they were willing to borrow from any Latin source — archaic,
classical, patristic or medieval. Archaic sources provided the Apuleians with a new and
diminished standard for literary imitation: novelty. This is precisely that against which
Bembo warns those who think they can safely follow multiple authors. When the focus shifts
C h a p t e r S e v e n : "P r o p e r " I m i t a t i o n
3 3 6
from decorum, suiting the expression to the subject matter, speaker, audience and
circumstances, to the source of that expression, it ultimately doesn’t matter whether one is
Ciceronian, eclectic, or anything else. The ensuing imitation will not only prove to be
artificial on aesthetic grounds, but ineffectual on rhetorical grounds. The discourse will fail
to the degree that the primary rhetorical requirement of fitting one’s speech to one’s
audience is ignored in favor of another criterion.
Proper imitation, the Ciceronians and anti-Ciceronians agreed, required substantive,
broad-ranging imitation. They differed regarding the source of that breadth. For the
eclectics, it came from sampling many authors and deriving from each their individual virtues.
The digestive metaphor communicated this, comparing the features of various authors to the
nutrients that are assimilated into one’s body. For the Ciceronians, the proper breadth of
imitation came from the breadth of features within their single model. They turned the
digestive metaphor upside-down, using it to illustrate the fact that when diverse sources come
together, they do not agree with one another and cause a sort of literary indigestion.
The Competing Proprieties of Imitation
We can understand the differences between the Ciceronians and the eclectics in terms
of competing senses of propriety. Both sides sought a "proper" kind of imitation, a
substantive, broad-ranging sort. For the eclectics, the various "properties" of various authors,
like nutrients assimilated from a variety of foods, could be assimilated into the writer’s own
body of discourse. For the Ciceronians, proper imitation came both from adhering to the
proprietas of Latin that Cicero exemplified, and from imitating every feature of Cicero’s prose
proper to communication: his transitions, his order of arrangement, the source of his
C h a p t e r S e v e n : "P r o p e r " I m i t a t i o n 3 3 7
arguments, etc. They turned the digestive metaphor upside-down, using it to illustrate the
fact that when diverse sources come together, they do not have a "proper" relationship, they
disagree with one another and cause a sort of literary indigestion. For the eclectics, the
Ciceronians endangered proper imitation by appearing wholly preoccupied with the "proper"
language of Cicero (something Bembo shows was not the case); for the Ciceronians, the
eclectics endangered proper imitation by not paying attention to the proprieties of fitting
elements of composition harmoniously with one another. Erasmus accused the Ciceronians
of violating rhetorical propriety (decorum) because they did not fit their language to
contemporary Christian society. The Ciceronians accused the eclectics of not respecting the
proprieties of the Latin language. By not respecting the proper bounds of the language and
allowing archaic or barbarous incursions into diction and usage, they endangered the Church
and the advance of learning that so depended on an established medium of communication.
The issue of propriety accounts not only for how people disagreed over whom to
imitate, but for the various dimensions of imitation we have encountered in this study. We
have seen that that propriety operated on a grammatical level in accordance with the
Renaissance pursuit of pure Latin language. Puritas and latinitas depended upon restricting
oneself to proper Latin vocabulary and usage (and banishing improper, barbarous terms).
But propriety was also inherent in grammar itself, where syntax is based upon a system of
agreement: one could not understand or employ Latin unless one understood the proper
agreement of nouns and verbs, pronouns and antecedents, etc. The entire system of
language depended upon respecting the proprieties of correspondence between speech parts.
As humanists studied, translated, and taught literature, they identified these properties of
language.
C h a p t e r S e v e n : "P r o p e r " I m i t a t i o n 3 3 8
The verbal features of a text were essential properties needing to be understood if
one were either to understand or imitate a text. But this invited more than grammatical
analysis. Rhetorical features were also properties of texts to be studied and imitated. The
discipline of rhetoric invited another sense of propriety, one that competed with the simple
propriety of latinitas or that which governed agreement among speech parts. Where
grammarians would seek agreement of number person and gender in seeking a proper
concordance between words, the rhetorician sought a social agreement, a propriety called
decorum that matched up subject, audience, and speaker. Where students of grammar would
exercise all the inflections of language in a closed system, the students of rhetoric would
exercise the inflections of language in an open system — that is, imitative exercises in varying
language were not the permutations of a grammar paradigm, but the effort to find various
combinations that would be suitable, proper, to various subject matter, circumstances, and
audiences. In the case of the Ciceronians, the sense of grammatical propriety — maintaining
pure language — competed with the sense of rhetorical propriety — fitting the language to
contemporary circumstances.
But these proprieties were not dichotomous options; they were closely
interdependent, which accounts for why disagreement was so easy over imitation. It was by
way of grammatical proprieties that rhetorical proprieties were made possible. Unless there
was purified diction and clear syntax, the language could not be aptly (appropriately)
permutated according to either semantic or social variations. A philological and grammatical
rigor literally made possible the flexibility and power of the Latin tongue.
3 3 9
C o n c l u s io n
The humanists revived not only classical literature but classical pedagogy, a pedagogy
which made classical literature the object of a set of specific imitative exercises through which
both competence and proficiency could be achieved in the Latin tongue. Imitation was not
a general stance towards the classical past; nor was its existence theoretical. Rather,
imitation existed as a distinct pedagogy in Renaissance Latin schools controlled by humanists
from the early fifteenth century to the early seventeenth century.
We may be blinded to the presence or importance of imitation because of our lack
of sympathy for the cultural and linguistic assumptions that validated and required it during
this period, but imitation prospered in the Renaissance precisely because it provided a praxis
consistent with those assumptions: the recovery of a more socially powerful linguistic
medium required not simply acquaintance with ancient rhetorical theory nor solely the
exemplars of Ciceronian speeches. A means was necessary for apprehending that pure and
eloquent Latin, and the imitative methods taught in humanist schools provided this means.
The language arts changed in the Renaissance as attitudes towards language shifted
in a definitive reaction against medieval attitudes. We can measure those changes in terms
of grammar becoming less formal or speculative and more based upon literature and usage;
or we may do so in terms of logic receiving a diminished role relative to rhetoric, one more
on par with the practical and literary orientation to language proposed by Valla or Agricola;
or, we can see changes to the language arts in terms of the rise of rhetoric as a discipline.
Imitation, however, provides a way for understanding these three arts as they worked
3 4 0
coordinately within the humanist classroom, for it was the practical application of changes
made to the language arts curriculum.
Imitation was Renaissance literacy. It provided the manner by which language was
learned, texts were read, and discourse produced. Despite so many disagreements, humanists
were united in their pedagogies of imitation insofar as method was concerned: systematic
literary analysis led to transformative imitative exercises by which students learned to invent
and compose on their own. Humanists were also agreed regarding the need for a thorough
and substantive kind of imitation. They disagreed over what constituted "proper" imitation
precisely because propriety described a complex web of relations (not always harmonious)
between the student, his models, his subject matter, and the audience he addressed. While
various forces influenced the Renaissance imitator to respect one or another kind of socio-
linguistic propriety, the element that united all imitative efforts was the belief that specific
methods of appropriating literature could lead to effective and meaningful discourse in
Renaissance society. This stance is best represented by the doctrine oicopia. According to
this doctrine, the persuasive force available through effective language use was put into
students’ grasp as they imitated, varied, and amplified language until they were independently
capable of meeting any social exigency with the appropriate resources of spoken or written
Latin.
But copia was not achieved without thoroughness and diligence. The imitative praxis
that I have illustrated in this study demonstrates that the power of language, insofar as it was
perceived by the humanists, depended not upon the chicanery that has often been ascribed
to rhetoric, but upon a thorough grounding in the linguistic details of the Latin tongue that
would then be coupled with those methods and purposes acquired through training in
341
rhetoric. That is to say, the goal of copious speech — rhetorically effective discourse —
could never be achieved solely through the precepts of rhetoric. One had to know the
permutations of every grammatical category, then to practice these in variations, adding to
accidence and syntax the sounds and figures of speech, which together comprised the
excellencies or elegantia of the language. Imitation carried students along the entire
continuum comprising grammar and rhetoric, but required very specific linguistic knowledge
along the way. To this end every sort of practical means was applied that would lead
students to become intimately acquainted with the facts of the language. Only this sort of
preparation would enable students in turn to manipulate and fashion the language to their
own will and purposes. Analytical prelections, textual annotation, the recording of exemplars
in notebooks, even the "figurative drafting" of a given passage’s metrical contours — all were
pursued so that students would perceive the specific qualities of the language. The more
specific were these exercises, the more open they become to charges of pedantry, but the
artificial and specific nature of imitative exercises should not be mistaken as necessarily
academic or purposeless. Imitation required synthesis to accompany analysis, composition
to complement literary scrutiny. While it is possible that some imitative exercises led to
pedantic extremes, the rhetorical framework of humanist education gave a purpose to the
appreciation of language and literature that rescued these exercises from devolving into
academic or solipsistic busywork. Erasmus’s De copia models this transition from the
painstaking analysis of language and literature to the discursive goals of rhetoric. A student
used his knowledge of the manifold aspects of language not so he could use Latin correctly,
but effectively. The candidatus copiae relied upon his knowledge of supines or synechdoches
in order to vary his language — first for pleasure, but finally for fitting his language properly
3 4 2
to his own thoughts, and appropriately to the circumstances of his discourse. We find it hard
to appreciate imitation generally for the same reason that we find it hard to understand the
success of De copia as a textbook. Distanced now both from understanding Latin as a
powerful medium and from sensing the cultural significance it held, we read De copia as a
strange and unorganized compilation of grammatical commentary and rhetorical figures. The
Renaissance reader, however, consumed Erasmus’s book, for the imitative exercises he
proposed promised to unlock for the present that medium through which the ancient Cicero
had achieved so much glory in the past.
At the very least I hope that this study has amply demonstrated that Renaissance
imitation integrated two fields that are so distinct in our modern perception that we have
difficulty in conceiving of them as ever having comprised a single, integrated curriculum: the
criticism of literature and the production of discourse, whether written or spoken. While this
interrelation between analysis and genesis (as Ramus termed it) seemed to rely upon a
uniformly known and valued literary canon, we need not dismiss the possible benefits of such
praxis for our own day because we lack such consensus over a literary canon. Indeed, the
Ciceronian debates demonstrated how much canons were in question in the Renaissance,
despite the seeming unanimity over Cicero’s preeminence. Modern practitioners of writing
may yet yield positive results by employing the transformative exercises first proposed by
Gasparino Barzizza, or the variations suggested by Erasmus. That, however, is the subject
of another study.
3 4 3
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3 6 9
A p p e n d i x A
Renaissance Discoveries of Ciceronian Texts
Date Discoverer Place Manuscript.
1333 Petrarch Liege Pro Archia
1345 Petrarch Verona Epistolae ad Atticum
1355 Boccaccio Pro Cluentia
1392 Salutati Vercelli Epistulae ad familiares
1415 Poggio
Bracciolini
Cluny
monasteiy in
Burgundy
MS (possibly 8th-century) of Cicero’s orations, including
previously unknown Pro Roscio Amerino, Pro Murena, as
well as Pro Cluentio, Pro Milone, and Pro Caelio.
1416 Poggio St. Gall Asconius’s Commentary on five Ciceronian speeches, a
complete MS of Quinitilian and other MSS.
1417 Poggio France and
Germany
Eight more unknown speeches of Cicero: Pro Caecina, Pro
Roscio comoedo, De lege agraria i-iii, Pro Rabirio
perduellionis reo, In Pisonem, and Pro Rabirio Postumo.
1421 Landriani De oratore, Orator (only partial before), hitherto unknown
Brutus
3 7 0
A p p e n d i x B
Editions of Valla’s Elegantiae and Related Works
Located at the Henry E. Huntington Library
Place, date Author Title (s) Shelf Mark
Venice, 1471 Valla Elegantiae *98575
Rome, 1471 Valla Elegantiae *105188
Paris, 1472 Valla Elegantiae *98574
Rome, 1475 Valla Elegantiae *98576
n.p.,1476 Valla Elegantiae/De pronomine sui *43374
Milan, 1479 Valla Elegantiae/De pronomine sui *98573
Reutlingen, 1485 Valla/
Accursius
Compendium elegantiarum
Laurentii...
*99924
Naples, 1488 Valla/ Bienatus Epitome in L. Vallae elegantias *85009
Venice, 1493 Valla/
Mancinellus
Elegantiae/Lima Laurentii... *104278
Milan, 1494 Valla/ .
Accursius
Compendium elegantiarum *321240
Venice, 1499 Valla/
Mancinellus
Elegantiae/Lima Laurentii *104501
Venice, 1504 Valla/
Mancinellus
Elegantiae/Lima *66647
Paris, 1519 Valla Elegantiae.-.opus Ascensianus per
singula capita
*349601
Venice, 1519 Valla/
Mancinellus
Elegantiarum...Badii Epitomatis *342275
371
Place, date Author Title(s) Shelf Mark
Lyons, 1547 Erasmus/ Valla Epitome in elegantias L. Vallae *374779
Cambridge, 1688 Valla Elegantiae *306082
n.p.,1539 Agostino Dati Elegantiarum linguae latinae *385788
Paris, 1497 Guy
Jouenneaux
In latinae linguae elegantias
interpretatio
*100959
n.p., 1543 Niccolo
Liburnio
Elegantissime sentenze *387508
n.p., 1679 Jean Blumerel Elegantiae poeticae in loco
communes...
*432189
n.p., 1794 Knox Elegant Epistles...from Cicero *359615
n.p., 1784 A. Poliziano L’Elegantissime stanze *425194
n.p., 1588 Muzio Sforza Mutii Sfortiae elegiarum
sacrarum...
*401427

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