Misc.

I specialize in the early 14th century and I tell you already from that moment onwards it starts becoming very difficult for a scholar to have a comprehensive awareness of all the sources written at the time even just for a regional scaleW - Schwerpunkt

• The middle ages saw immense literary production, perhaps 750,000 manuscripts survive of an estimated 10 million produced
• Medieval latinitas is generally quite fine, with relatively little to complain about. While the social context of courts etc. did not produce fertile ground to appreciate e.g. Cicero’s orations, people were producing elegant and novel verses. Renaissance achievements stood on the accomplishments and infrastructure of the middle ages
• the (Italian) renaissance saw an increase in oligarchy and elitism
• Poggio Bracciolini was awesome, discovered many lost works!
• Thoughts reaching Spain, Mercurino di Gattinara, Antonio de Guevara, Alfonso and Juan de Valdés sought a Christian, universal Roman Empire a la Dante’s Monarchia. Silva de varia lección described philosopher kings.
• studia humanitatis qua study of human endeavors
• las armas y las letrad - Though Erasmus disagreed with the desire to follow classical warlike “heroes”, Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Castiglione and most Italian humanists praised or were warrior writers. (They did not yet resolve that “the pen is mightier than the sword”.)

Entre las armas del sangriento Marte,
do apenas hay quien su furor contraste,
hurté de tiempo aquesta breve suma,
tomando ora la espada, ora la pluma.

• de la Vega

Key Works

Vivere in modo che ne resti memoria

• Giovanni Pontano wrote treaties on magnificentia, splendor, liberalitas, beneficentia…
• Book of the Courtier - Baldassare Castiglione (and Juan Boscán’s Spanish translation) - probably the best “mirroir” for princes, de Guevara’s Reloj de Principes, Machiavelli’s the Prince are also nice.
• Oration on the Dignity of Man - Pico della Mirandola - inspiring, the “manifesto of the renaissance” touching the greatest highs and basest lows man may reach
• Benvenuto Cellini’s autobiography describes well and fair the air of the age (…and 4 murders.)
• Commentaries on Plato - Marsilio Ficino
• De pictura - Battista Alberti - the first post-classical art theory detailing beauty through perspective and proportion. Raphael’s Letter to Castiglione sunukarky deals with beauty and the artistic process.

Of the classics, these are quite pertinent:

• De Rerum Natura - Lucretius
• Parallel Lives - Plutarch (in many Latin translations) (his Moralia are relevant too)
• Enneads - Plotinus (Ficino’s translation) (I.6 sees you sculpting yourself)

Historiography

• Vasari uses “bello” far, far too often
• Bruni first named anquitity, middle ages and (15th century) modernity
• Jacob Burckhardt played a huge role for “renaissance” historiography, treating the age in its entirety (and used the term “modernity” for the first time academically) (and foretold of a violent, demagogic 20th century)
• Georg Voigt focused on the renaissance’s new relationship with Cicero and humanitas through Petrarch
• J.W. Binns’ Introduction to Intellectual Culture in Elizabethan and Jacobean England paints well how blind our vulgar lenses leave us. In Shakespeare’s time, half the plays for the masses were in Latin!

Spanish

• Charles V made Spanish the chancellery language
• Baltasar Gracián has crazy Spanish style
• La Araucana

Questions

• political views were wide indeed, how did republicans and monarchists argue? Were republican theorists arested or their works destroyed?
• how did renaissance European reception of Greco-Roman paganism differ from Islamic (and Syriac) readings and translations? The Italians seem to have gone wild with allusions, the Dutch far less, I’ve never seen anything Islamic even mentioning this. (But did the Arabs read/translate Homer?)
• dignity of man vs. misery of man (n.b. Innocent III was a great pope indeed) (Bracciolini expanded on this. Calvin and many protestants went fruther.)

Vocabulary and Imagerary

• entelechy - (cf. concinnitas - harmony/symmetry where nothing may be added, taken or changed)
• eidolon
• levare e porre - sculpture works by removing, not adding (cf. good API and language design)
• qualities not-reduceable to mere rule: grazia, venustà, leggiadria
• Aquinas said these make beauty: claritas, integritas, consonantia
• Ut pictura poesis
• kairos, occasio - opportunity and fortune
• amat victoria curam - victory loves preperation (yet affettazione vs. sprezzatura)
• grammar of bearing: gravitas, dignitas, comitas, urbanitas, facetiae, festivitas
• enargīa - vividness making a description stand before you
• kosmos in greek is both order and ornament, cosmetics and cosmology…
• agon(istic) - striving/competition as life-feeling (contending with the mters, sharpening through rivalry)
• Imitatio, aemulatio, translatio - copy, equal and innovate on a master (but as a bee, drinking of many flowers, digesting then making honey unlike any)

Fatti non foste a viver come bruti
Ma per seguir virtute e canoscenza

Ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito

• virtus, arete - not merely moral, capacity, excellence and power
• ingenium - unteachable, unlike arte
• thumos - anger and ambition
• magnanimitas - thinking oneself worthy of great things and being so
• ponos - labor and toil, the price of everything worth having
• Virtue and pleasure make their cases to Herculues at the crossroads
• Croton’s maidens - as no one’s perfect, to paint Helen, he combined the best features of 5 girls
• Prometheus and Epimetheus - fore- and hindsight (epimetheus was to give every animal a positive trait, but ran out when he got to Man)
• Pygmalion falls in love with his creation
• after laboring, Machiavelli would change into courtly attire to converse with the ancients in his study

I find the age evocative in the overall imagery of:

• perfection/quest for the ideal form
• virtue and striving (moral virtue, dynamic energy, will, boldly shaping one’s destiny, ambition, decisive action, great deeds) action, moving the will and not merely the mind
• self fashioning, crafting one’s character and persona
• beauty as divine and mathematical, reflecting higher cosmic order, harmony
• fame, glory, civic virtue

My overall goal is to find sharper, more vivid, inspiring descriptions of the Faustian man.

Indeed, what are the virtues? And how do they differ through time and thinkers?

On Virtue

Plato’s cardinal virtues (Cicero latinizes in De Officiis and Ambrose Christianizes them):

• prudence - judging particulars through practical wisdom
• self control/moderation
• courage - controlling fear and confidence
• justice - doing what’s owed (later: what’s good for the community)

Aristotle’s virtues (from Nicomachean Ethics) are middles demanding prudence between lack and excess, each a hexis (settled trait produced by repeated action, you’re just by doing just acts) in a pathos (sphere of action):

• fear and confidence (courage)
• insensibility and pleasure (temperance)
• wealth (vulgar display), pettiness, scrouge (also waste)
• vanity and lack of ambition
• anger and company ??? (language is hard)
• self-presentation truth boasting, false modesty ???
• envy of others and shame ???

I struggle to process them well, but here’s the “chart” with poor/empty names:

Poverity and obscurity block excellence; without money you can’t practice magnificence nor liberality, without danger you can’t practice courage…

Aristotle also gives intellectual virtues (which can be taught/learned):

• nous - first principles
• episteme - knowledge derived from nous
• sophia - nous+episteme, knowledge of the sublime
• techne - reasoned crafting
• phronesis - reasoned, experienced acting-well

The renaissance thinkers promoted techne.

For the Romans, virtus was first manliness/battle courage. Widening from Græcian influence, it became an outward trait the community confirmed. (Without “inner life”, it seems opposite to Socrates’ being vs. seeming and Christian/Stoic inner life but the Roman’d believe it is the outward display.)

• pietas - duty to Gods, country, father
• fides - keeping faith (With enemies?)
• gravitas - seriousness
• constantia
• industria - sustained effort (how different from constantia?)
• frugalitas
• severitas - discipline, strict with oneself and kin
• clementia
• dignitas - standing earned through service
• auctoritas - weight of opinion/earned influence

But the Romans were less abstract than the Greeks. This is basically all Cicero, while e.g. sLivy would just narrate exemplary displays of virtue (whereas Plutarch e.g. judges and disaproves in cases, readers or e.g. Machiavelli’s Discorsi must judge in Livy.)

Neoplatonists e.g. Plotinus (and later Ficino) grade traits:

• political - ordering man’s passions for the city
• purifactory - detatching man (how to distinguish from below)
• contemplative - belong to a soul
• paradigmatic - existing in the divine mind …so being the platonic forms already?

Pontano extended Aristotle’s virtues (and returned to the 4th book on social virtues) with:

• splendor (elegance in daily life, while magnificence is public e.g. buildings)
• conviventia (graciousness with others)
• conversation (well, De Sermone talks knowing oneself and wit.)
• obedience (serving a prince without being servile?)

Machiavelli’s virtù is not sa virtue, but force/capacity.