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Sansovino's Concetti Politici and Their Debt to Guicciardini

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Vincent Luciani
Vincent Luciani*
Affiliation:
The City College New York 31, N.Y.
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Extract

Francesco Sansovino (1521-83), prolific translator, publisher, editor, and polygraph, deserves a place in the history of Renaissance culture, not because he can lay any real claim to originality but because he played a significant rôle in the dissemination of Italian literature. Of his many works one of the most popular and most important was without doubt his Concetti politici, a collection of maxims which first appeared in 1578, but which was subsequently republished in modified form in 1583, 1588, 1598, and 1608, together with Guicciardini's Av-vertimenti and Lottini's Avvedimenti civili. More important still, the original text of 1578 was translated into English in 1590 by Robert Hitchcock under the title of Quintessence of Wit, and as such was to make its contribution to the development of the English maxim and the English essay, as Elbert N. S. Thompson pointed out some years ago. In the preface to the 1578 edition, Sansovino states that he drew his 805 maxims from two histories and thirty-four authors, whom he lists by name. Among these authorities are Aristotle, Bembo, Cicero, Comines, Giovio, Guevara, Guicciardini, Livy, Plato, Polybius, Sallust, Tacitus, and Thucydides. The list, however, lacks one name, that of Machiavelli, the one writer that Sansovino consulted perhaps more than any other.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 65 , Issue 6 , December 1950 , pp. 1181 - 1195
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1950

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References

1 The definitive study on Sansovino has yet to be written, but the best information on him so far available is to be found in E. A. Cicogna, Dette Inscrizioni Veneziane (Venice, 1824-53), iv, 32-91, and in G. Sforza, “Francesco Sansovino e le sue opere storiche”, in Memorie delta R. Accademia dette Scienze di Torino, Series ii (1897), xivii, ii, 27-66.

2 The full title of the 1578 edition is Concetti politici di M. Francesco Sansovino, raccolti dagli Scrilti di diuersi Auttori Greci, Latini, & Volgari, à benefitio & commodo di coloro eke attendono à gouerni dette Republiche, & de Principati, in ogni occasione cosi di Guerra, come di Pace (Venice: Giouanni Antonio Bertano, 1578). Although the last one of the Concetti is numbered 803, two of them are numbered 478 and two, 479. The B.M. Catalogue also lists a 1603 reprint of the 1578 text. No mention of this edition, however, is made by Cicogna, Sforza, Negri, Nicéron, Fontanini-Zeno, Haym, Brunet, or Graesse, nor is it registered in the L.C. and B.N. catalogues. The edition of 1583 and the three others based upon it go under the title of Propositioni, overo Considerations in materia di cose di Stato, sotlo titolo di Auuertimenti, Auuedimenti Ciuili, et Concetti Politici, di M. Francesco Guicciardini, M. Gio. Francesco Lottini, M. Francesco Sansovino. Di nuouo posti insieme, ampliati, et corretti … (Venice: Altobello Salicato, 1583). The 1583 text contains 804 concetti even though the last one, erroneously numbered 729, is supposed“ to be No. 799. It is next in importance to the edition of 1578 since it was the last one to be personally revised by Sansovino, whose death occurred on 28 Sept. 1583, but whose dedicatory letter to William Parry (which prefaces the entire volume) bears the date 15 April 1583.

3 The Seventeenth-Century English Essay (Iowa Univ. Press, 1927), pp. 27-28.

4 See N. H. Thomson, “Introduction” to his translation, Counsels and Reflections of Francesco Guicciardini (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner & Co., 1890), p. xvi; Thompson, op. cit., p. 27; N. Kempner, Raleghs staatstheoretisclte Schrijlen: die Einfuhrung des Machiavellismus in England (Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1928), passim; V. Luciani, Francesco Guicciardini and His European Reputation (New York: K. Otto & Co., 1936), pp. 356-358; N. Orsini, Studii sul Rinascimento italiano in Inghilterra (Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1937), pp. 77-99.

5 R. Spongano, Per Vedizione critica dei “Ricordi” del Guicciardini: Introduzione al testo con le varianti tra le due prime redazioni (Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1948), p. 36.

6 Spongano lists avvertimento 7 (Fra Sisto edition) as the source for both concetti 205 and 638 and avvertimento 68 as the source for both concetti 327 and 342. In reality, only Nos. 638 and 342 are derived from the aforesaid avvertimenti, whereas the other two are drawn from Books v and vii respectively of the Storia d'ltalia. Compare, for example: Avvertimento 7, however, reads as follows: “Le cose che sono universalmente desiderate rare uolte riescono, la ragione è, che li pocchi [sic] sono quelli che communemente danno il motto [sic] allé cose, et alii fini, di che sono contrarij assai, gli appetiti di molti.”

1 The Fra Sisto text, which contains 145 maxims, is entitled Avrei Advertimenti di M. Francesco Guicciardini. It was published in Fra Remigio Fiorentino's Consideralioni civili sopra l'Historié di M. Francesco Guicciardini, e d'altri Historici (Venice: Damiano Zenaro, 1582). Moreover, it is the text used in the four editions of the Fropositioni, overo Consideralioni in materia di cose di Stato (see note 2 above). Hence, it is the redaction best known and most readily available both here and abroad. We shall quote from it consistently.

8 The avvertimenti from which Sansovino made the most important deletions are those numbered 48, 127, 73, 103, the sources for concetti 571, 581, 584, 585 respectively. The sections omitted are: 1. “et cosi s'ha da intendere quel prouerbio, che dicono i saui, che si

9 The title of Corbinelli's edition is Piv Consigli et Awertimenti di M. Fr. Guicciardini …in materia di republica et di privata; nuouamente mandati in luce .... (Paris: Federigo Morello, 1576). It comprises 158 reflections.

10 According to Rostagno, there are 11 editions of the Storia that contain a separate “Raccolta di tutte le Sententie sparse per l'Opera.” They all appeared in Venice from 1567 to 1640: cf. E. Rostagno, “Indice delle edizioni della Storia d'llalia”, in Storia d'ltalia, ed. A. Gherardi (Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1919), i, clxxi-clxxvi. It must be emphasized, however, that these raccolte do not by any means include a complete list of sententie from the Storia.

11 Thomson, op. cit., p. xvi; V. Luciani, op. cit., p. 357.

12 The question naturally arises: Did Sansovino borrow his maxims directly from the Storia or did he resort to one of the Raccolte? We have examined the list of sententie in both the 1587 and the 1640 editions and have found that Sansovino could not possibly have drawn more than 10 complete concetti from them; and so we can affirm with certainty that he consulted the Storia directly.

13 The Torrentino page consists of 54 or 55 lines. Of the six sections into which it is divided, a, b, c, d, and e contain 9 lines, whereas f sometimes is composed of 10 lines.

14 The reference is to Paolo Vitelli, commander of the Florentine forces besieging Pisa.

15 Since the Torrentino text comprises only the first 16 books of the Storia, we have been obliged to consult the Farri edition (Venice, 1587) for the last 4 books. These, one must note, have a separate pagination from the others.

16 Note that the Torrentino edition, which, incidentally, has quite a few errors in pagination, contains two pages numbered 145 and two numbered 146.

17 Although the first English translation to be published was that of Emma Martin (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1845), there existed an English MS version dated 1585, which was recently discovered by N. Orsini in the Earl of Leicester's Library in Holkham Hall, Norfolk (cf. Orsini, op. cit., p. 98).

18 This statement applies to the editions of 1579 and 1599, but not to the revision of 1618. For a detailed description of the first (or 1579) edition of Fenton's version, see R. B. Gottfried, Geoffrey Fenton's “Historié of Guicciardin” (Indiana Univ. Publications, 1940).

19 N. Kempner, op. cit., pp. 63-66, 86-100; V. Luciani, “Ralegh's Cabinet-Council and Guicciardini's Aphorisms”, SP, xlvi (1949), 20-30.