By: Tom Mauro
Head of the History Department, TASIS
Of course, the question whether Piccolomini (Aeneas Silvius, Pope Pius II) was a humanist, counter-humanist, or anti-humanist is, strictly speaking, an anachronistic one. For just as no one in his day heard of the term ‘humanism’, so it is reasonably certain that no one during his lifetime ever called Piccolomini a ‘humanist’. Although having a substantially longer history than the word ‘humanism’, the word ‘humanist’ (‘[h]umanista’) is not attested at all prior to 1490, and would not come into common usage before the sixteenth century, when it was used simply to designate a teacher, usually at a university, of higher rhetorical studies (as opposed to basic Latin grammar).[1] Indeed, in light of the dubious connotations the word has over time acquired, some scholars have preferred to avoid the word ‘humanism’ altogether and speak rather of Renaissance ‘Ciceronianism’, and there is much to be said for this alternative. It is clear, for instance, that although the works of Cicero had never ceased to be read in the West, the early Renaissance witnessed an explosion of interest in his works to the extent that, to judge by extant manuscripts, incunabula, and old library inventories, it would appear that Cicero was in the fifteenth century by far the most popular ancient author. This popularity was both reflected in and stimulated by the works of the early Italian humanists, who tended to esteem Cicero above all others. As Kristeller affirmed, “The ancient writer who earned their highest admiration was Cicero. Renaissance humanism was an age of Ciceronianism in which the study and imitation of Cicero was a widespread concern.”[2]
This Ciceronianism was not limited merely to an esteem for Cicero’s Latin prose style, but often entailed an admiration for a certain lifestyle. This aspect of Renaissance Ciceronianism, which can be traced to Cicero himself,[3] found early expression in the work of Salutati, who pointed to Cicero as a noble example of man who forsook the personal advantages of a contemplative and solitary life to dedicate himself to the service of the commonwealth. Later Leonardo Bruni, in his Vite di Dante e di Petrarca, would praise Dante’s decision to become actively involved in matters of state over Petrarch’s preference for the life of seclusion.[4] Although Petrarch’s choice may have been more prudent, he says, Dante’s life was of greater usefulness for the community.
Bruni, perhaps the fifteenth century’s most prolific translator of classical Greek texts, owed much of his reputation to his translations of various Lives of Plutarch. Although he was the first to translate many of them into Latin, the Vita Ciceronis had already been translated in 1401 by a certain Iacopo Angeli, a fellow-pupil of Salutati whom Bruni would beat out for a position in the papal curia. As he would do later with Aristotle’s Politics, Bruni in 1415 expressed his displeasure with the quality of the by-then standard translation, in this case of a work he considered perhaps the most important of Plutarch’s Lives. Bruni decided not only to translate it anew himself, but, on seeing that even Plutarch had failed to do complete justice to Cicero, this summus vir, he decided to augment Plutarch with material from his own extensive reading among both the ancients and the moderns. The result was Bruni’s Cicero novus[5], whose great success among contemporaries is indicated by the fact that it is found today in over 170 manuscript copies.[6] Apparently reaching the peak of its circulation in the middle of the fifteenth century, it seems to have been a favorite tract of the humanists. It is further evidence that Cicero was valued not merely for his eloquence, but also because he tended to be seen as exemplifying a certain ideal or model of human flourishing, the vir bonus dicendi peritus.[7]
As presented by Bruni, Cicero was truly born to serve his fellow man, both as a statesman and as a man of letters. As consul and as the leading orator at the Roman Bar, he saved countless of his fellow citizens. At the same time, by his literary exertions he lit the light of learning and wisdom not only for the Romans, but for almost all those who speak the Latin tongue.[8] He is not only the pater patriae, but also the font of our learning and of eloquence, the parens et princeps litterarum nostrarum.[9] His energy and versatility, continues Bruni, was truly astonishing. When one considers how many works he wrote, one would think it would have been impossible for him to find time for any other activity. On the other hand, when one considers his res gestae, the numerous controversies and struggles, the battles he fought both in private and in public life, one has the impression that he never could have found time for reading or writing. Bruni knows of no other – he repeats – who was able to combine so effectively the two greatest and most difficult duties there are, the leadership of the state and literary activity, for “he alone … burdened with the affairs of the ruling of the world, wrote more than those philosophers who live solely in leisure and study.”[10]
Almost half a century later, when Pius’s court poet Giannantonio Campano came to speak of his former patron, recently deceased, echoes of Bruni’s Cicero novus would again be heard, even though there was no explicit mention of it. Campano surely took it for granted that his readers would recognize the allusions to the small work that had become a classic among the humanists.[11] Campano stresses that it was his total commitment to the res publica which entitled Pius to the highest praise as an orator. Not only was he extraordinarily well-read and erudite, not only was he possessed of a deep understanding of men and affairs, not only was he an outstanding historian, geographer, and statesman, he was also a good and courageous man. In short, he was the ideal orator, capable of almost everything, and destined as no other for the leadership of public affairs.[12]
Campano praises Pius both as a statesman and a scholar, and in doing so compares him favorably with Cicero. According to Campano, Pius too had both in literary activities and in public affairs surpassed all others in his accomplishments. It is astonishing that in the midst of so many official duties he still found time for writing, and on the other hand that someone who wrote so much could still immerse himself in public life to the extent that he did.[13] Was there ever anyone who has been able to combine so successfully the “active” and the “contemplative” life, negotium and studium? He fulfilled his duties as pope meticulously, and yet – continues Campano – “amidst such great and important affairs, he was so devoted to letters that in hours stolen from sleep he was able to write more than those who commit their days exclusively to writing.”[14]
It would be wrong, however, in Campano’s opinion, simply to equate Pius and Cicero, for the former was in fact greater than the latter. Not only because one was a Christian and the other a pagan, but because Pius devoted himself more than the Roman rhetor had to public affairs and the public welfare. Pius had given exclusively public orations of universal interest, while Cicero’s were mostly private. This was evident from the beginning. Pius’s oratorical debut was no mere defense of a Roscius Amerinus, but tried to resolve a pressing issue for all Christendom: Which city should be chosen for a council of reunion with the Greeks? For such important and far-reaching matters Cicero had rarely exerted himself; he had not spoken in public either as often or about so many issues of common concern as Pius, whose Forum had been the civilized world. As to the formal, external elements of his expression, the beauty and clarity of his language, Pius showed himself Cicero’s peer (although the twenty-four years spent living among the barbarians was bound to affect at times the purity of his prose).[15] All things considered, however, according to Campano (who was known inter alia for his comparison of the works of Cicero and Quintillian), Pius more closely approached the ideal of the orator than any other, living or dead, ancient or modern. No mortal had spoken on so many occasions, in so many locations, on such great matters.[16] With Pius, it is evident that the moderns have in some areas not only matched the ancients, but have surpassed them.[17]
Of course, these are the words of a eulogist and professional rhetorician[18], written perhaps at the wish of the papal nephews. Nevertheless, it would have been difficult for Campano to find a more appropriate exemplar of the contemporary Ciceronian ideal of literary activity combined with public service at the highest level. Campano was not alone among fifteenth-century contemporaries in seeing Pius as a “new Cicero”.[19] More recently, it has been pointed out that none of his fellow men of letters approached him in making history as well as writing it, that none so immersed himself in political and public life as did Piccolomini.[20] If we do not insist, as Baron did, on republicanism as an essential component of ‘civic humanism’, then we might even conclude that Piccolomini was the outstanding fifteenth-century exemplar of ‘civic’ or, better, ‘public-spirited’ humanism, and was not merely the aesthete and individualist so greatly admired by the early Burchhardt. Some may prefer to the term ‘humanism’, with its protean and sometimes contradictory connotations, the word ‘Ciceronianism’, and this alternative may be unobjectionable, provided one does not understand it in the later, Erasmian sense of a linguistic fanatic[21], and furthermore keeps in mind that the Roman rhetor was far from being Piccolomini’s only model.[22] Some recent work has claimed to see an affinity between the “political thought” of Cicero and that of Piccolomini.[23] But more important perhaps for the latter was Cicero well-known emphasis on the importance of studying history.[24] Indeed, as a glance at Aeneas’s literary activity will show, Cicero’s praise of history as the testis temporum, lux veritatis, magistra vitae, nuntia vetustatis seems to have resonated with few others as much as it did with Piccolomini.
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[1] Kristeller, Renaissance Thought and Its Sources, pp. 99, 283. Cf. Robert Black, Humanism and Education in Medieval and Renaissance Italy. Cambridge, 2001, pp. 31-32.
[2] Kristeller, Renaissance Thought and Its Sources, p. 29.
[3] Cicero, De Officiis, 3, I, 330.
[4] “Dante nella vita activa et civile fu di maggiore pregio che ‘l Petrarca, però che nelle armi per la patria et nel governo della repubblica laudabilmente si adoperò. Non si può dire del Petrarca questa parte, però che né in città libera stette, la quale avessi a governare civilmente, né in armi fu mai per la patria, la qual cosa sappiamo essere gran merito di virtù.” Bruni, Le vite di Dante e di Petrarca, in P. Viti, ed., Opere letterarie e politiche di Leonardo Bruni, Turin, 1996, p. 559.
[5] Bruni, Cicero novus (Vita Ciceronis), in Opere letterarie e politiche, pp. 416-499.
[6] James Hankins, Repertorium Brunianum, Rome 1997, vol. 1, p. 255. For purposes of comparison, it is well to note that such famous works as Valla’s De Falso credita et emendita Constantini donatione and Cusa’s Concordantia catholica are each found today in fewer than twenty-five manuscripts. See W. Setz, Lorenzo Vallas Schrift gegen die Konstantinische Schenkung ‘De falso credita et ementita constantini donatione’. Zur Interpretation und Wirkungsgeschichte. Tübingen, 1975.
[8] Cicero novus, p. 468: “Homo vere natus ad prodessendum hominibus vel in re publica vel in doctrina: siquidem in re publica patriam consul, et innumerabiles orator servavit. In doctrina vero et litteris non civibus suis tantum sed plane omnibus qui latina utuntur lingua lumen eruditionis sapientieque aperuit.”
[9] Ibid., p. 418. Cf. p. 486: “Hic [Cicero] ad potestatem romani imperii dominam rerum humanarum eloquentiam adiunxit. Itaque non magis patrem patrie appellare ipsum convenit, quam parentem eloquii et litterarum nostrarum.”
[10] “Cuius libros monumentaque si evolvas, numquam otium illi fuisse credas ad negotia obeunda; rursus autem si res gestas eius, si contentions, si occupations, si certamina in re publica et privata consideres, nullum tempus illi reliquum fuisse existimes ad legendum vel scribendum. Ita solus, ut credo, hominum duo maxima munera et difficillima adimplevit, ut et in re publica orbis terrarum moderatrice occupatissimus plura scriberet quam philosophi in otio studioque viventes; et rursus studiis librisque scribendis maxime occupatus, plura negotia obierit, quam ii qui vacui sunt ab omni cura litterarum.” p. 469-70.
[11] The parallels between Campano’s “De Commentariis Pii II” and Bruni’s Cicero novus were pointed out by Berthe Widmer nearly forty years ago in her Enea Silvio Piccolomini in der sittlichen und politischen Entscheidung, Basel 1963, pp. 20-22, to which I am heavily indebted for the next few paragraphs.
[12] Campano, “De Commentariis Pii II” (Ep. 1), in Opera a Michaele Ferno edita. Rome: Eucharius Silber, 1495 (HC 2486=2487).
[13] “Quis est qui non miretur in tantis illum gerendis rebus quicquam scribere, aut in tantis scribendis aliquid gerere potuisse?” Ibid., fol. a iiiv.
[14] “In tantis occupationibus semper est aliquid ocii sufferatus, ut alieno in somno vigilans plura scripserit, quam qui nihil egerunt aliud; plura aegerit, quam qui sese totos ad vitae actiones contulerunt.” Ibid, fol. a iiv. Cf. In exequiis Pii II (included in Campano’s 1495 Opera): “In tantis Pius occupationibus et mole Imperii ac tam incredibili multitudine rerum domi fortisque gestarum semper aliquid suffuratus est ocii. … Quis est igitur, quis est obsecro quem in tantis negotiis quicquam studii, aut in tanto studio quicquam negotii praestare censeamus potuisse; cuius plures vitae actiones quam huius scripta, aut cuius aeque tanta scripta quantae huius actions commemorentur?”
[15] Ibid. Cf. his Vita of Pius (included in the 1495 Opera, as well as the Basel editions of Piccolomini’s Opera omnia) for the admission: “De verborum delectu nonnihili illi Germania detraxerat, coacto saepe apud Barbaros cultiora negligere.”
[16] “Quis est igitur tam iniquus iudex, qui existimet aut Ciceronem, aut quemvis alium, vel magnitudine rerum quas complexus est, vel frequentia dicendi, vel varietate locorum Pio esse comparandum?” “De Commentariis Pii II” (ep. 1), fol. a iiiv.
[17] In exequiis Pii II: “Orationes vero nemo unquam mortalium neque tot neque tanti variis in locis neque tantis de rebus habuit. Vincimus profecto hac in parte vetustatem: numero enim causarum, varietate locorum, magnitudine rerum de quibus fuit dicendum veteres Pius sine omni contentione superavit.”
[18] Before joining the Curia at the invitation of Giacomo Ammananti (to whom the letter cited above is addressed), Campano had made a name for himself as the holder of the chair of rhetoric at the University of Perugia. At the time that Piccolomini was sent to offer the obedience of the Empire to the new pope, Calixtus III, (1455) Campano was sent to perform the same function on behalf of the Perugians.
[19] Cf. the words of the humanistically inclined Cardinal-Archbishop of Cracow to Aeneas, then (1453) Archbishop of Siena: “novellum quondam Ciceronem te dixerem.” FRA 2/68: 247.
[20] “Seine Verbindung von ausgedehnter schriftstellerischer Tätigkeit und politischer Wirksamkeit grossen Stils, dieses Zusammengehen von Gelehrsamkeit und öffentlicher Aktion, von Geschichte-Schreiben und Geschichte-Machen findet man bei keiner andern Gestalt der Frührenaissance in gleichem Masse. An politischer Tätigkeit kommt ihm kein zeitgenössischer Humanist von seiner schriftstellerischen Begabung gleich; an literarischer Tüchtigkeit kein Politiker von seinem Rang.” Widmer, p. 18.
[21] Erasmus, Ciceronianus sive De optimo dicendi genere, where the character Nosoponus is ridiculed for insisting that no word or word form be used that is not found in Cicero.
[22] “Mochte Enea selber einem einseitigen Kulte des alten Rhetors fernestehen, weil er zu vielseitig und zu klug war, um seine Vorbilder nicht vielerorts zu suchen.” Widmer, p. 20. More of a model for his Commentaries was of course Caesar, whom he had already praised highly in his 1443 educational treatise to Sigusmund of Austria: “Quid limatius, quid eloquentius scribi potest quam ea commentaria, quae Julius Caesar de se condidit?”
[23] C. Nederman, “National sovereignty and Ciceronian political thought: Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini and the ideal of universal empire in fifteenth-century Europe.” History of European Ideas 16 (1993), pp. 537-544; idem, “Humanism and empire: Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, Cicero and the imperial ideal.” The Historical Journal 36 (1993), pp. 499-515.
[24] E.g. De Oratore, 120: “Nescire autem quid ante quam natus sis acciderit, id est semper esse puerum. Quid enim est aetas hominis, nisi ea memoria rerum veterum cum superiorum aetate contexitur?” (To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?) Tr. Jaroslov Pelikan, in Paul Oskar Kristeller at Ninety. [New York], 1995, p. 11.