Special Collections- Vatican Film Library : Humanism

RR, Plate 65: This is an example of the process consisting of traditional medieval hymns such as the "Salve Regina" and the "Primum dierum omnium" rewritten in elegaic couplets in the antique fashion. It was the work of Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, who later became Pope Urban VIII.

RR, Plate 66: This volume on display is a presentation copy of Ficino's letters (really letter-treatises on Platonic themes) to one of Ficino's Roman patrons, Cardinal Francesco della Rovere. The portrait medallion by Francesco Rosselli depicts Cosimo de'Medici, Ficino's most important early patron. An exchange of letters between Cosimo de'Medici and Ficino opens Book I.

RR, Plate 67: In the work on display a Platonizing Dominican theologian appealed to the authority of the pagan sibyls to interpret doctrinal differences between Jerome and Augustine. Dedicated to Sixtus IV.
Presentation copy for Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga of Mantua.

RR, Plate 68: The humanists found many opponents among contemporary scholastics, one of whom was Antonio da Rho. Antonio tries to discredit the automatic humanist equation of earlier with better by showing that one of the early Christian writers, Lactantius had made numerous theological errors to which later scholastic writers had not been subject. This dedication copy for Pope Eugene IV has a colorful decorative border with a miniature showing the Franciscan friar presenting his work to the pope.

RR, Plate 57: A collection of letters and orations Cardinal Bessarion composed in the hope of stirring the princes of Europe to action against the Turks. He commissioned illuminators to decorate several copies for presentation to the great princes of Europe. The copy on display was presented to King Edward IV of England.

RR, Plate 58: Demosthenes' speech, written in the fourth century B.C., calls upon the Athenians to take immediate military action against Philip of Macedon while they can still defend themselves -- the parallel to the contemporary Turkish threat was exact, to Bessarion's mind, and his marginal notes, shown here, emphasize the point.

RR, Plate 59: Theophylact, an eleventh-century Byzantine exegete, defended the Roman Catholic position against Greek intransigence on a number of key theological issues. In the fifteenth century his works were translated into Latin by Christoforo Persona. Persona later became the head of the Williamite order in Rome and papal librarian under Sixtus IV. The illumination by Matteo Felice shows Persona presenting his translation to Sixtus IV.

RR, Plate 60: The humanists of the papal court had a special interest in the revival of Christian antiquity. In the scene depicted here, Trebizond presents his translation to Nicolas V; the bearded cardinal is Bessarion.

RR, Plate 61: The humanist and papal bureaucrat Raffaele Maffei, "il Volterrano," recast traditional hymns to San Vittorio (the patron saint of his home town, Volterra) in various Horatian meters, adding a biography of the saint in Ciceronian Latin.

RR, Plate 62: This book, probably the dedication copy, is printed on parchment with illumination added by hand over a woodcut frontispiece.

RR, Plate 63: A classic Counter-Reformation historiography. The manuscript, with its many corrections and additions, gives a good sense of the scale of Baronio's enterprise as well as of the occasional weaknesses of his research and criticism of sources.

RR, Plate 64: This "History" is an example of Ciceronianism (the aim to standardize Latin diction by modeling all prose on the writings of Cicero). In it, Costanzo Felici confected a politically-correct revision of Sallust's "Catilinarian Conspiracy," in which Cicero's role in suppressing Catiline, largely dismissed by Sallust himself, was magnified to superhuman proportions. It is a dedication copy for Leo X.

RR, Plate 69: The documents on display come from the office of the Congregation for the Index, and consist of testimony regarding the orthodoxy of a publication by the famous "liberal" Catholic historian Carlo Sigonio, attacked here for "imitating Lorenzo Valla" in his view on the Donation of Constantine.

RR, Plate 70: The witness whose testimony is recorded in the documents on display charges Sigonio with "insinuating the error of Erasmus, who asserted there could be errors in the books of Holy Scripture owing to the human condition of copyists."

RR, Plate 71: The Congregation accuses the late cardinal in his Neoplatonic love poetry of "mixing holy things with profane, and using false opinions contrary to the faith, while at a masque."

RR, Plate 42: Bruni was the leading literary man of his generation and the best-selling author of the 15th century.

RR, Plate 43: Bembo's autograph letters, such as the one on display, provide a good sample of "chancery italic," a script developed by Roman humanists in the late fifteenth century from the humanist cursive minuscule invented by the Florentine humanist Niccolo Niccoli in the 1420s.

RR, Plate 44: Pius II was the first real humanist pope. As pope, the only work of scholarship he was able to continue was his "Commentaries," a remarkably frank autobiography in which he put his passions and prejudices on full view.

RR, Plate 45: This portrait on the inside cover shows Federigo, duke of Urbino, standing behind a parapet holding a book, gazing intently at his companion, who is probably to be identified with Cristoforo Landino.

RR, Plate 46: This book contains eight recovered Cicero orations.

RR, Plate 47: This volume was the first translation into a western language of Herodotus, "the Father of History," the source and model for much of classical historiography. This was a presentation copy for Pope Pius II's nephew, Cardinal Francesco Todeschini Piccolomini, a great Roman book-collector and a leading patron of fine calligraphy and book illustration.

RR, Plate 48: The book on display is the product of Lascaris's careful Homeric scholarship: a collection of ancient notes on the text, culled from old manuscripts. The colophon tells us that this book was printed on a Greek printing press located in the house of Angelo Colocci, a high curial official who was also a wealthy patron of the humanities.

RR, Plate 49: Though clearly not Christian, and sometimes obscene, the Roman epigrammatist Martial was a favorite author among curial humanists. This manuscript was annotated by both Leto and Perotti. In a marginal note Perotti explains a Latin word by giving its Greek etymology, striblo.

RR, Plate 50: Niccolò Perotti compiled a vast commentary on Martial under the title Cornucopia. Later the work was revised and expanded by Perotti's son Pyrrhus. "In this document we can see how Perotti incorporated the etymology offered in the earlier manuscript into the text of his Cornucopia. We can also see how Pyrrhus has expanded his father's note in a marginal annotation.

RR, Plate 51: Both Niccolò's and Pyrrhus's notes were incorporated in the first printed edition of the Cornucopia.

RR, Plate 52: The text of the treatise is considered the most important Renaissance forbear of Machiavelli's Art of War, while the rather fanciful illustrations are thought to have influenced some of Leonardo da Vinci's designs for war machines.

RR, Plate 53: The basis of all the humanists' achievements was their mastery of Latin and Greek grammar. Grammar in the Renaissance had a broader meaning than it has today, comprising not only the study of accidence and syntax, but also the critical restoration and interpretation of texts--the whole art of textual interpretation. The elegant format and decoration of the present volume testify to the importance of grammatical study in Renaissance culture.

RR, Plate 54: In the Renaissance secular texts began to rival sacred texts for elegance of script, illumination, and binding.The manuscript on display contains the works of Virgil, who, with Cicero, was the most important of all ancient authors for the humanists. This is perhaps the most lavishly illustrated of all copies of Virgil in existence.

RR, Plate 55: A new, classical style, was evolving that had no direct ancient models. Its major innovations were the introduction of capital letters and the treatment of the title page as though it were an inscribed architectural gateway into the book. This manuscript was later owned by Pope Julius II.

RR, Plate 56: This fifteenth-century wedding book records the festivities surrounding the marriage of two minor members of great Italian families. The wedding book contains copies of the poems and speeches written in honor of the occasion, an account of the banquets and jousting, and drawings, shown here, of the costumes and floats.