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Cristoforo Landino's First Lectures on Dante*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Arthur Field*
Affiliation:
New York City

Extract

Like many humanists of the late fifteenth century, Cristoforo Landino (1425-1498) came to consider himself not only a rhetorician but a speculative philosopher as well. Like many of these same humanists, Landino would not allow himself to peddle the merely fashionable: he pretended that he had been drinking from philosophical founts since his youth. In his dialogue De anima, completed about 1471, Landino suggested that from the early 1450s he not only was receiving systematic training in natural philosophy from Carlo Marsuppini but also was learning some Plato from the teenager Marsilio Ficino.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1986

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References

1 Ed. in Annali delle universitd toscane: Book I, ed. A. Paoli, vol. 34 (1915), fasc. 1; Book II, ed. idem, n.s., vol. 1 (1916), fasc. 2; Book III, ed. G. Gentile, n.s., vol. 2 (1917), fasc. 3. Manfred Lentzen is currently preparing a new edition. Cod. Rice. 417 contains an early form of Book I and part of Book II (the manuscript is mutilated at the end) in an unidentified hand, with Landino's autograph corrections, additions, and prefaces. Wherever possible I shall cite the manuscript also. The dialogues are set in April 1453 (see Gentile's introduction to Book III, pp. vii-viii). Marsuppini is the main interlocutor, giving instruction to Landino. Landino praised Marsuppini as a natural philosopher in a poetic eulogy, in Cartnina omnia, ed. Perosa, A. (Florence, 1939), pp. 107-108Google Scholar at lines 99-106. For the reference to Ficino, see the De anima, Book II, ed. cit., pp. 129ff.

2 Landino, , Carmina, pp. 181-87Google Scholar, and Scritti, p. 7; Ficino, Opera omnia (Basel, 1576; rept. Turin, 1959), I, 929; P. O. Kristeller, Supplementum Ficinianum (1937; rept. Florence, 1973), I, clxiii-iv.

3 See especially Cardini, R., La critica del Landino (Florence, 1973), pp. 86-90Google Scholar; and Lentzen, M., “Zum gegenwärtigen Stand der Landino-Forschung,” Wolfenbütteler Renaissance Mitteilungen, 5 (1981), 95-97.Google Scholar

4 For the older interpretations, see Cardini's references in his La critica, p. 235. Cardini's interpretation, first presented in the 1960s, may be found in ibid., pp. 87-89n, 152-54, 192-99, 235-37, and in Landino, Scritti, ed. Cardini, II, 60. Dionisotti's remarks are found in “C. L.,” Enciclopedia dantesca (Rome, 1971), III, 566-68.

5 “A Manuscript of Cristoforo Landino's First Lectures on Virgil, 1462-63,” Renaissance Quarterly, 31 (1978), 19-20. See also Plate 1.

6 I made a brief note on this manuscript as an appendix to my “Studium Florentinum Controversy, 1455,” History of Universities, 3 (1983), 59. The manuscript, on paper, has three blank unnumbered folios at the beginning, followed by 181 folios numbered 1-130, 132-182 in an early hand (the numbering is incorrect: no leaf is missing), and a blank folio at the end. Fols. I4v-I5r are blank and so marked (“vacat“) by the scribe. Gatherings are usually of eight bifolios. The paper measures 14.5 cm. X 21.5 cm. A writing space from 8.2 to 8.5 cm. wide is irregularly defined by vertical lines, but the scribe adhered to the left margin only. See Plate 2. The commentary is preceded by a life of Virgil based on Donatus (inc., fol. 1: Idibus octobribus Pompeio et Crasso consulibus in agro Mantuano ex patre Marone, Maia vero matre, mercennariam artem exercentibus natus est Virgilius, non tamen obscuris signis divini ingenii). The incipit of the commentary, after the first lemma, is on fol. 3: Secundum Servium hoc est hysteron proteron, cum in sua narratione primum errores, deinde bella describat, esseque ex iudicio suo dicendum.

7 Fol. 130v.

8 Catalogus codicum latinorum Bibliothecae Mediceae Laurentianae …, II (Florence, '775), cols. 571-72.

9 I could not confirm Bandini's attribution. At the bottom of the otherwise blank fol. 182v, upside down, is the note of ownership: “Hic liber est Laurenti et suorum amicorum.” In his description of the manuscript Bandini did not identify this Laurentius, but he included him in his index as the cited Guiducci (Catalogus …, V [Florence, 1778], col. 731). For Guiducci see Cianfogni, P. N., Memorieistorichedell'AmbrosianaR. Basilica diS. Lorenzo di Firenze (Florence, 1804), p. 240 Google Scholar; Moreni, D., Continuazione delle memorie istoriche …, I (Florence, 1816), 141, 149-51Google Scholar; A. Delia Torre, Storia dell'Accademia platonica di Firenze (1902; rept. Turin, 1968), p. 771; F. Baldasseroni and P. D'Ancona, La biblioteca della Basilicafiorentina di S. Lorenzo nei secoli XIVe XV (Prato-Florence, 1906), pp. 7-9, 26-31. Baldasseroni and D'Ancona have edited a 1496inven tory of Lorenzo Guiducci's books (ibid., pp. 26-31). They surmise that no. 44 of that list, “Un Vergilio in penna, in bambagina,” is Laur. 52, 32.

10 Fol. Ir, at top: “Ant. Petrei no. 7 1 . “ Rostagno, E., L'Orazio Laurenziano già di Francesco Petrarca (Rome, 1933), pp. 45-46, n. 9Google Scholar, lists this and eighteen other manuscripts of the Petrei bequest. For Petrei see R. Ridolfi, “A. P. letterato e bibliofilo del Cinquecento,” La Bibliofilia, 49 (1947), 53-70.

11 For the Casanatense manuscript, I referred to a few passages in my “Manuscript of C. L.'s First Lectures on Virgil,” pp. 18-19. F ° r the Laurentian manuscript, there is an early reference in the accessus, fol. 2: “De actibus poetarum nihil est quod dicam, cum satis perspicue pro ingeniolii nostri facultate apud luvenalem superiore anno de illis tractaverimus.“

12 At Aen. I, 272: Casanatense 1368, fol. 27v (“Andalus Hispaniensis“!) and Laur. 52, 32, fol. 31 (“Britanicus Andalo“!); Landino or the scribe wanted Andalo[-us] Ianuensis. At each place, Andalo is mentioned with Paulus Florentinus (not Paolo Toscanelli, but a fourteenth-century figure: see Bandini, A. M., Specimen literaturae Florentinae saeculi XV …, I [Florence, 1747], p. 136)Google Scholar, as authorities for the length of the annus magnus, the time it takes all planets to return to the same place. Landino cited both in a similar passage in his letter on the calendar, 1460 (ed. M. Lentzen in his Studien zur Dante-Exegese Cristoforo Landinos [Cologne and Vienna, 1971], p. 221) and in his printed commentary on the Aeneid, 1487 (also at Aen. I, 272, in the dedication manuscript, Laur. 53, 37, fol. I50v). His source is Boccaccio, Genealogie deorumgentilium (ed. V. Romano [Bari, 1951], vol. I, VIII, 2, p. 394).

13 Boccaccio is cited in each manuscript as an authority for the existence of giants (at Aen. Ill, 659: Casanatense 1368, fol. 138; Laur. 52, 32, fol. 103) and for the genealogy of Trojan kings (at Aen. VI, 650: Casanatense 1368, fol. 245v; Laur. 52, 32, fol. 160).

14 “Cristoforo Landino's Aeneid and the Humanist Critical Tradition,” Renaissance Quarterly, 36 (1983). 519-46.

15 There is an excellent allegorical summary at the beginning of Aen. VI: see p. 39, n. 1, below.

16 See pp. 40-42 (and nn.), below.

17 Laur. 52, 32, fol. 78: “Et spissus [sic] noctis se etc. [Aen. II, 621]. Hie Servius multa, et Venerem pro lascivo amore capit, quae possent procedere, sed impedirent hanc nostram interpretationem. Capimus enim Venerem pro vero amore, et Troyam incensam pro voluptate.” Cf. Casanatense 1368, fol. 100: “Apparent [Aen. II, 622]. Dicit Servius, et bene: dicit remota Venere, idest voluptate, fuisse illi fas deos videre. Hoc, ut dixi, bene et fortasse optime dictum est. Sed nostro proposito minime convenit. Dicamus ergo ‘apparent,’ quod homo deditus virtuti suam anteactam vitam recognoscit, unde Aeneas vero amore repletus ‘fades diras’ vidit.“

18 For some other comparisons between the manuscripts, see my brief remarks before the editions of the Dante excerpts, below.

19 Cardini, La critica, pp. 16-17, 334-41; my “A Manuscript of C. L. 's First Lectures on Virgil,” p. 18; and my “An Inaugural Oration by C. L. in Praise of Virgil (From Codex ‘2', Casa Cavalli, Ravenna),” Rinascimento, 2nd ser., 21 (1981), 236-38. For the period after 1460, M. Lentzen's chronology in his “Zum gegenwärtigen Stand der Landino-Forschung,” p. 93, is based on Cardini's La critica as well as the new information provided by my study of the Casanatense and CavaUi manuscripts.

20 Besides the glosses cited by Cardini (Bartolomeo Fonzio's zibaldone, Rice. 646), there are similar but undated glosses by Fonzio in a manuscript owned by Professor John Sparrow, Oxford University (on deposit at the Bodleian Library as codex “ 2 “ of the Sparrow collection). The glosses on the Ars poetica are on fols. 30v, 71-79v; fol. 79“ records a sententia “secundum Christoforum.” (Albinia de la Mare first identified the scribe, and my reference to the manuscript is taken from the typescript of the forthcoming Vol. IV of Kristeller's Iter Italicum, seen in 1980 at the Warburg Institute, London.) For other sources, see now Filippo di Benedetto, “Fonzio e Landino su Orazio,“ in Tradizione classica e letteratura umanistica. Per Alessandro Perosa, eds. R. Cardini et al. (Rome, 1985), II, 437-453.

21 See the introduction to the edition by P. Lohe (Florence, 1980), pp. xxx-xxxiii.

22 See Lohe's edition ad indicem. Also in the Disputationes Landino rather boldly identified Aeneas’ love for Dido with a love of the active life (on the novelty of which, see Kallendorf s remarks, “Cristoforo Landino's Aeneid,” pp. 54iff.); in both the Casanatense and Laurenziana manuscripts, Carthage indeed stands for the active life, but Dido remained what she traditionally had been, voluptas.

23 Laur. 52, 32, fol. 146v. Cf. Servius, In Vergilii Aeneidos libros VI-VIII commentarii, ed. G. Thilo (Leipzig, 1883), II, 47.

24 Cod. Rice. 417, fol. 97v. Everything from “Quod autem Aristoteles” is Landino's marginal addition (seen. 1, above). The edition (1916, as cited above, n. 1), p. 63, reads definiamus for diffiniamus, and ita dictum intelligere for ita dictum intelligas.

25 Milan, Bibl. Ambrosiana, cod. J 26 inf., fol. 173v.

26 Ed. cit. (1915), p. 11; cf. Rice. 417, fol. 5. v

27 See Cardini, La critica, pp. 78-79n.

28 See Gentile Becchi's poem from the latter 1460s, “Cur non ederet de anima Landinus, ad Ficianum [sic] excusatio,” edited and discussed by Grayson, C., “Poesie latine di Gentile Becchi in un codice Bodleiano,” in Studi offerti a Roberto Ridolfi, ed. Biagiarelli, B. Maracchi and Rhodes, D. E. (Florence, 1973), p. 292.Google Scholar

29 See Cardini's lengthy discussion, La critica, pp. 334-41.

30 See pp. 42-43, below.

31 That is, even if the chronology is inexact enough to allow lectures on Juvenal, it cannot allow a second year's “intervention” for Dante.

32 Scritti, I, 171: ”… perche le parole non commesse alle lettere presto volano de' petti umani e spesso nessuno vestigio di se lasciano, tentai quelle medesime sentenzie mandare alle letere le quali avevo molti anni nel vostro celeberrimo ginnasio a voce viva espresso.“

33 Ed. in Scritti, I, 41-55, and Reden, pp. 22-35.

34 For the manuscript, see P. O. Kristeller, Iter Italicum, I (London and Leiden, 1963), P. 132; E. N. Tigerstedt, “The Poet as Creator: Origins of a Metaphor,” Comparative Literature Studies, 5 (1968), 484-85, n. 95; Cardini, La critica, p. 327.

35 Specimen, II (Florence, 1751), p. 131.

36 La critica, p. 87n.

37 Scritti,!, 15, 28.

38 Cardini, La critica, pp. 86-87, 88-89n. Lentzen has argued that Landino's reference to a previous discussion of divine frenzy in his Juvenal lectures, 1461-62 (“Diximus alias” etc.), is to the oration on Dante (Reden, p. 20). I view the reference as too general for such a conclusion (for this see also Cardini, La critica, p. 107n).

39 See Sabbadini, R., Il metodo degli umanisti (Florence, 1920), pp. 35ffGoogle Scholar, and E. M. Sanford, “Inaugural Lectures on the Classics,” The Classical Journal, 48 (1953), 263-64. Cf. P. R. Hardie's remarks on Landino's prolusion to his Virgil lectures of 1462 (Humanist Exegesis of Poetry in Fifteenth-Century Italy and the Medieval Tradition of Commentary [M. Phil, thesis, U. London, 1976; copy at Warburg Institute, London], p. 37): “It is dangerous … to conclude … that at this time Landino had not developed his allegorical schemes, in the absence of the text of the actual lectures (as it is always dangerous to argue from the inclusions or omissions in a humanist prolusion, more often than not a fairly independent piece of epideictic rhetoric, to what followed).“

40 Opera, I, 612-15. For some improved readings, see the notes to The Letters of Marsilio Ficino, tr. Language Dept., School of Economic Science, London (London, 1975), I, 42-48. See also S. Gentile, “In margine all'epistola ‘De divino furore’ di Marsilio Ficino,“ Rinascimento, 2nd. ser., 23 (1983), 33-77. Gentile is currently preparing a new edition of Ficino's letters.

41 Each of these prefaces, except the Horace one (see n. 51, below), has been edited by Cardini, who has carefully noted the particular differences between the texts (Scritti, passim).

42 Landino, Scritti, II, 59 (note to I, 46).

43 I have seen little in print on the question. In his Geografia e storia della letteratura italiana (Turin, 1967), pp. 123-26, C. Dionisotti notes that while Landino's contemporaries were studying and translating the Greek natural philosophers, Landino himself was limited to turning Pliny's Natural History from Latin into Italian. The old notice that Landino studied Greek (or anything else) under George of Trebizond is probably incorrect: see J. Monfasani, George oj Trebizond (Leiden, 1966), p. 44n. Drafts from Landino's lectures indicate that he knew enough Greek to explain, allegorically, Latin proper nouns, to outline the declension of Latin nouns taken from the Greek, and to reproduce a few simple Greek phrases: he never explored Greek rhetorical models for the Latin texts he was explicating. Landino certainly depended on Latin translations and commentaries for more difficult philosophical texts; perhaps for some more mythological and historical works—the materials he would use to “fill out” his lectures—he could have approached the Greek texts on his own: see the arguments and notes which follow (esp. n. 47).

44 For these translations, see P. O. Kristeller, “Marsilio Ficino as a Beginning Student of Plato,” Scriptorium, 20 (1966), 41-54.

45 A. Field, “An Inaugural Oration,” pp. 24i-42n.

46 ’’Ille [sc. Plato] enim in lone dicit poesim non arte humana tradi, sed divino furore nostras mentes irrepere” (ed. P. Lohe, p. III ) . The Ion was probably the fourth of thirteen Platonic dialogues which Ficino translated between August 1464 and April 1466: see P. O. Kristeller, Supplementum Ficinianum, I, cxlvii-clvii; idem, “Marsilio Ficino as a Beginning Student,” pp. 43-45. S. Gentile has shown, correcting Cardini, that Ficino did not use the Ion in his De divinojurore, and that Landino did not later use it independently of Ficino: “In margine all'epistola ‘De divino furore',” p. 58n. For Lorenzo Lippi's translation, dedicated to Piero de’ Medici (d. 1469) sometime after the death of Cosimo (October 1464), see E. Garin, “Ricerche sulle traduzioni di Platone nella prima meta del sec. XV,” in Medioevo e Rinascimento: Studi in onore di Bruno Nardi (Florence, 1955), I, 370-71.

47 See the notes to Cardini's and Lentzen's cited editions. The material taken from Plutarch is brief and only a rough summary, based on lives which already had Latin translations: see V. R. Giustiniani, “Sulle traduzioni latine delle ‘Vite’ di Plutarco nel Quattrocento,” Rinascimento, 2nd. ser., 1 (1961), 3-62. The material from Plato was also available: see E. Garin, “Ricerche sulle traduzioni di Platone,” pp. 339-74. A great deal of the oration of course depended on Ficino, who himself relied on Latin translations: see S. Gentile, “In margine all'epistola ‘De divino furore.’ “

In 1462, Landino used two sources not included in his oration on Dante: Eusebius and Diodorus Siculus. In his inaugural oration for his Virgil course that year, one argument followed verbatim ﹛Latine) the oration on Dante until a notice based on Eusebius' De praeparatione evangelica was added: “Moyses … qui… primus, ut ait Eupulemus Graecus scriptor, litteras adinvenisset, ab Aegyptiis Mercurius Trismegistus appellatus est … “ (Scritti, I, 23). Here Cardini (ibid., II, 28), after quoting Eusebius’ Greek, argues that Landino confused two passages from Book IX of the De praeparatione evangelica, one in ch. 26, based on Eupolemus, and another in ch. 27, based on Artapanus. But Landino was surely following George of Trebizond's Latin translation, completed in the late 1440s (on which see Monfasani, George of Trebizond, pp. 72-73). George melded the said chapters into one and so truncated the arguments that any reading, even a careful one, leaves fully open the possibility that Eusebius is continuously paraphrasing Eupolemus after he has cited Artapanus. The relevant section begins: “Nunc Eupolemum de Moyse audiamus. Ait enim sapientissimum hominem Moisem fuisse, et litteras Iudeis primum tradidisse … .” Then follows very soon a citation of Artapanus: “Arthapanus autem Merin Chenephri Egyptiorum regis filiam ait… .“More citations leave the subject of “ait” or “inquit” obscure, concluding with: “Unde factum esse ait, ut quasi deus ab Egyptiis coleretur, et propter litterarum inventionem Mercuriumappellatum.” (I have used the Medici-owned manuscript, Laur. 17, 25, fol. I I I V, correcting the text with Laur. 89 sup., 20).

In another passage from the oration of 1462, dealing with the power and respect the poets had in antiquity, the arguments again follow the oration on Dante until a notice based on Diodorus Siculus is inserted: “Sed quid mirum eruditum ilium populum [i.e. the Greeks] gravissimis versibus esse commotum, cum, ut Diodorus Siculus scribit, apud Gallos, gentem ea tempestate efferatissimis moribus horrendam, tantum poetae, quos illi bardos appellant, valere soliti sint ut iam collatis agminibus in ipso belli ardore in medium prodeuntes suis carminibus a pugna armatos revocent? Tantum etiam apud immanissimos, ut turn illi erant, barbaros valet sapientia tantumque Musas reveretur Mars!” (Scritti, I, 25). As Cardini correctly notes, the passage is in part closer to the Greek than Poggio's translation (I have checked the Medici-owned copy of the latter, Laur. 67, 9, fol. i66v). However, Rice. 138 contains a different Latin translation of Diodorus Siculus copied in Landino's own hand (see Plate 3; cf. Plate 4, Landino's autograph letter to Lorenzo de’ Medici [1464]). (I was led to this discovery by Kristeller, Iter Italicum, I, 186, who describes the relevant section as excerpts of Diodorus: it may more precisely be described as an anonymous translation of Diodorus I-V, truncated in sections, with Diodorus’ prefatory and non-descriptive sections eliminated. Incipit: Erga deos nonnuUam benivolentiam homines habuerunt.) The relevant section of the manuscript reads (fol. 166, new foliation): “Ipsi autem poete persepe iam collatis agminibus strictisque ensibus in ipso ardore belli in medium prodeuntes illos a pugna suo carmine cessare faciunt: tantum potest sapientia apud barbaros tanquam Musas reveretur Mars.” This, then, is Landino's source for Diodorus. The manuscript contains some corrections, some words left in Greek, and some sections cut short apparently because the Greek was difficult. Unfortunately, the manuscript raises questions which I could not here answer. Was it Landino's own translation, or was he working from, perhaps, an interlinear translation or notes? And why would he prepare or even copy a translation when Poggio, whom Landino worshipped, had already published one?

48 Scritti, I, 20; Lentzen, Studien, p. 235.

49 Ed. P. Lohe, p. III.

50 Scritti, I, 141.

51 In Q. Horatii Flacci opera omnia interpretationes (Florence: A. Miscominus, 1482), fols. 156v-57 (preface to Arspoetica).

52 Scritti, I, 45; cf. Reden, p. 22.

53 As Cardini and Lentzen note in their editions, the reference to Lactantius is probably based on a passage in Salutati's De laboribus Herculis.

54 Opera, I, 759; cf. Kristeller, Supplementum Ficinianum, I, c.

55 Opera, II, 1836.

56 See the author index to Ficino's works in P. O. Kristeller, II pensiero filosofico di Marsilio Ficino (Florence, 1953), at p. 457.

57 I am following the indices to the various editions cited.

58 I am following the notes and indices of P. Lohe's edition.

59 In his La critica, pp. 87-80n., Cardini discusses at length a passage from Landino's oration of 1481 to the Florentine Signoria, presenting his printed commentary on Dante, where he stated that he was explicating the same teachings which he had already explained in Latin in his allegorical commentary on the Aeneid (i.e. Disputationes Camaldulenses, Books III and IV). Cardini concludes from this that Landino did not develop any allegorical interpretation of Dante (nor indeed give any other sort of explanation of Dante) until he had published his allegorization of the Aeneid. But Cardini seems to assume that Landino would not have distinguished a published work from a set of lectures. All Landino was really stating in his Dante commentary of 1481 was that having presented to the public his allegorization of Virgil, he decided to prepare a similar exposition of Dante. The brief excerpt from this oration reproduced above, n. 32, makes Landino's statement clear.

60 “Cristoforo Landinos Antrittsvorlesung im Studio Fiorentino,” Romanische Forschungen, 80 (1969), 62ff.

61 La critica, p. 236.

62 Ed. in Scritti, I, 33-40.

63 Scritti, I, 45; Reden, p. 22.

64 See P. G. Ricci, “Francesco Filelfo,” Encyclopedia dantesca, II (Rome, 1970), 871- 72, and K. Park, “The Readers at the Florentine Studio According to Communal Fiscal Records,” Rinascimento, 2nd. ser., 20 (1980), 287, 288, 290. For Landino and Filelfo in the 1450s, see my “Studium Florentinum Controversy, 1455,“passim.

65 Ed. in Lentzen, Studien, pp. 205-210 (references at pp. 207, 209).

66 Scritti, I, 171.

67 F. Pintor, in Bull. Soc. Dantesca Italiana, n.s., 7 (1899-1900), 271-73 (the document he cites is now M. A.P. 89, 122).

68 A. Verde, Lo Studiofiorentino, 1473-1503, II (Florence, 1973), p. 175.

69 These two years of lectures are mentioned in a letter of Donato Acciaiuoli in March-April 1455, ed. Fossi, F., Monumenta ad Alamanni Rinuccini vitam contexendam (Florence, 1791), pp. 79-82Google Scholar; cf. Landino's letter ed. by M. Lentzen, Studien, at pp. 207, 209.

70 Lettere ed orazioni, ed. V. R. Giustiniani (Florence, 1953), p. 18; see also my “Studium Florentinum Controversy,” p. 44.

71 Monte Comune, vol. 1784, fols. 3V, 16, 25” (modern foliation). This fragmentary volume, damaged by fire, contains records of payments (uscite) of the Monte during 1457. The first of these mentioning Landino (fol. 3v) reads: “Cristofano di bartolomeo dappratovecchio per parte di suo lettura, in q(uattrin)i, vanno acchonto di studio, in questo carta 35,… lire 80 … . “ The date for this part is evidently destroyed by fire, but the next section is 4 March 1456/1457. Fol. 16 (28 June 1457) reads: “Uficio di studio per lui et cristofano di bartolomeo da prato vecchio per salario di suo lettura, per ist(anziament)o, in q(uattrin)i, in questo carta 35, … lire 80 … .” Fol. 25v (20 October 1457) reads: “Cristofano [etc.] … per suo lettura, vanno di conto di studio, in questo carta 35 … lire 80 … .” University salaries were paid thrice yearly, a lira in 1457 was worth about 0.185 florin, so Landino's salary during 1456-57 was 45 florins (for the conversion ratios, see R. A. Goldthwaite, The Building of Renaissance Florence [Baltimore and London, 1980], pp. 301, 429-30). These records of the uscite record daily payments from the Monte (only a small percentage of which are university payments), which are then reproduced on separate pages according to their category: here the Studio payments were recorded as a group on “carta 35,” missing from these fragmentary records. When Anthony Molho made his inventory of the Monte, he kept a separate list of those pages which recorded payments on behalf of the Florentine Studio; K. Park subsequently analyzed these payments in her “Readers at the Florentine Studio,” pp. 249-310- Park, of course, omitted those scattered records where the pages reserved for university salaries were missing. I am indebted both to Professor Molho, who told me where I might begin looking for other records, and to Father Armando Verde, who assisted with the above transcriptions.

72 A. Gherardi, ed., Statuti delta Università e Studiofiorentino dell'anno 1387 … (Florence, 1881), pp. 467, 468, 469, 470.

73 A. Field, “The Studium Florentinum Controversy,” p. 42.

74 Ibid.,pp. 31-59.

75 Ibid., pp. 38, 42; andn. 71, above.

76 Scritti, I, 45; Reden, p. 22.

77 V. R. Giustiniani, Alamanno Rinuccini, 1426-1499: Materialien und Forschungen zur Geschichte desflorentinischen Humanismus (Cologne, 1965), pp. 122-24.

78 Ed. in Kristeller, Supplementum Ficinianum, I, 68-69.

79 Ibid., I, clxiii-iv.

80 lbid.

81 Ibid. To be sure, the divinus juror is not often associated with Plato's Timaeus. But Ficino's tract does deal in large part with the origins of the soul in its relation to the cosmos, a major theme of the Timaeus (cf. n. 84, below). Moreover, Ficino composed his De divinoJUrore for Pellegrino degli Agli, in response to a letter and poem from Agli complaining of spiritual depression (ed. in Kristeller, Supplementum Ficinianum, II, 205ff.). The best Platonic description of melancholy is in the Timaeus (85 seqq.). In Ficino's commentary on the Symposium, from 1469, preceding the section on the divinus Juror is a discussion of melancholy (VII, chs. I2ff.: Commentaire sur le Banquet de Platon, ed. R. Marcel [Paris, 1956], pp. 256ff).

82 G. Miccoli, “Pellegrino Agli,” Diz. biog. ital., I (Rome, i960), 401.

83 For the provenance of the translation and preface, see P. O. Kristeller, “Marsilio Ficino as a Man of Letters and the Glosses Attributed to Him in the Caetani Codex of Dante,” Renaissance Quarterly, 36(1983), 21-22. For the scribe of the preface, Giovanni Pigli, see P. G. Ricci, “Aneddoti di letteratura fiorentina,” Rinascimento, 2nd. ser., 2 (1962), 37-39.

84 That Ficino's Institutiones and not his De divino Jurore was Landino's source for the Dante prolusione may help account for one of Landino's “departures” from Ficino. In the De divinojurore Ficino described the Platonic theory of the soul's descent with these words: “ob terrenarum rerum cogitationem appetitionemque animi ad corpora deprimuntur“ (Opera, I, 612). Landino's version reads: “dalla apetizione e desiderio delle cose terrene agravati furono per sette cieli ne’ corpi mortali spinti” (Scritti, I, 46; cf. Reden, p. 23). This section is part of a continuous paraphrase, and the “seven heavens“ seems to be a gratuitous insertion. But if our hypothesis is correct, Landino was not tampering with Ficino's Platonism but following a different text. In his De divinojurore, Ficino's arguments seem to derive in large part from Macrobius’ Commentary on the Dream o/Scipio, I, 12, which mentions Plato's Timaeus and Phaedo and describes the descent of the souls through seven spheres. At one point Ficino cites Macrobius di rectly. One manuscript of Macrobius, datable to the 1450s, was owned by Ficino and contains his early annotations (Rice. 581; see Marsilio Ficino e il ritomo, pp. 3-4 no. 3). These annotations, however, throw no light on Ficino's early opinion of the “seven spheres.” Another Latin source for the notion was Calcidius’ commentary on the Timaeus. In Ficino's incomplete copy, Ambros. S 14 sup., transcribed and annotated in early 1455, at Calcidius’ commentary on Timaeus 36 c 7 - d 2 (Commentarius, I, 94, ed. J. H. Waszink in Plato Latinus, IV [London and Leiden, 1962], p. 147, lines 18-23), Ficino glossed the text as follows (fol. 35v): “Septies secuit quia anima ex 7 numeris est et celum inferius in 7 partes divisum.” Certainly Macrobius and Calcidius would have to figure prominently in a commentary on the Timaeus based on Latin Platonic sources. If, as our hypothesis requires, Ficino reproduced the Macrobian and Calcidian theory of the seven spheres in his commentary on the Timaeus, he appears to have been less specifically committed to it by late 1457. Then in his commentary on the Symposium (1469), again discussing the divinus juror, Ficino described the descent of the soul not through seven spheres but through four gradus, or mens, ratio, opinio, and natura (VII, 13: ed. cit., p. 257).

85 Besides the oration and excerpts, there are two early epigraphs on Dante by Landino, one mentioning Dante's universal knowledge, the other equating Florence's Dante with Greece's Homer and Rome's Virgil ﹛Carmina, p. 114; cf. p. 112, lines 199- 200, and p. 124, lines 23-24).

86 See now P. O. Kristeller, “Marsilio Ficino as a Man of Letters,” esp. pp. 8-11.

87 Ed. as Libro del Poema chiamato Citta di Vita composto da Matteo Palmieri Florentino by M. Rooke (Smith College Studies in Modern Languages, 1926-28; Northampton, Mass., ,1927-28), introduction. Roberto Cardini is currently preparing a new edition.

88 E. Wind, “The Revival of Origen,” in D. Miner, ed., Studies in Art and Literature for Belle da Costa Greene (Princeton, 1954), pp. 412-24 (Palmieri discussed pp. 418-22).

89 Ed. cit.,Bk. III.

90 Laur. 11, 53: see A. M. Bandini, Catalogus …, V, 74-78, and G. Boflito, “L'eresia di Matteo Palmieri,” Giom. stor. lett. ital., 37 (1901), 2.

91 D. de Robertis, “Antonio Manetti copista,” in G. Bernardoni Trezzini et al., eds., Tra latino e volgare: per Carlo Dionisotti, II (Padua, 1974), pp. 38iff., 3908”.; now in De Robertis's Editi e rari (Milan, 1978).

92 P. O. Kristeller, “Marsilio Ficino as a Man of Letters,” p. 9 and n.

93 Ed. in Kristeller, Supplementum Ficinianum, II, 184-85, and P. Shaw, “La versione Ficiniana della Monarchia,” Studi danteschi, 51 (1978), 327-28. The brief quotation is from Kristeller, “Marsilio Ficino as a Man of Letters,” p. 10.

94 M. Barbi, Della fortuna di Dante nel secolo XVI (Pisa, 1890), p. 178.

95 Scritti, I, 120-21, 156.

96 Ficino, Opera, I, 840; Landino, Scritti, I, 153-55.

1 The manuscripts have one interesting digression. At the beginning of the sixth book of the Aeneid, there is an extended and elegant allegorical summary of all of the Aeneid, as if that day's lecture was intended to be an independent and self-contained oration. I recently discovered that at least once it has been copied separately, in a manuscript at the Vatican (Vat. lat. 5129, fols. 69-77v: I was led to the manuscript by the description, with the incipit, in P. O. Kristeller's Iter Italicum, II, 370). It is stylistically independent of both the Casanatense and Laurenziana versions. The Vatican version begins (fol. 69):

(E)tsi ubique multiplici atque varia doctrina refertissimus sit noster poeta, tamen in hoc libro quicquid ex philosophia turn ex his(toriis turn ex) scientia Egiptiorum theologorumque tenebat planissime effundisse videtur, adeo ut multi ex priscis, ut hunc solum librum exponerent, grande commentarium facere minime dubitarunt ….

The Casanatense section begins similarly but with more detail (cod. 1368, fol. 203v):

Sic fatur lachrimans classique immictit habenas. Etsi ubique multiplici variaque doctrina refertissimus sit noster poeta, tamen ut videtur, quicquid virium, quicquid usque excerpserat, sive ex antiquis historiis aut ex philosoporum [sic] scientia sive Graecorum sive etiam multo magis Aegiptiorum et priscorum theologorum doctrina, quaeque etiam ex variis(?) poetis et per suam fantasiam effinxerat, in hunc librum congessit, ita ut apud priscos multi ex doctissimis viris grandes commentaries effecerint, ut hunc librum sextum enodarent.

The Laurenziana version is shorter and less specific (cod. 52, 32, fol. 135):

Sic fatur lachrymans classique inmictit habenas. Etsi ubique summa apud hunc poetam atque varia doctrina inspici liceat, tamen quicquid ex priscis litteris turn phylosophiae turn etiam poeticae, quicquid etiam variarum nationum, quicquid denique illustre divino ingenio excogitari possit, in hoc volumen collegisse videtur, adeo ut nonnulli ex priscis grandes commentaries ad hunc librum enodandum confecerint.

2 For Landino's early use of the four genera virtutum, see my “An Inaugural Oration,“ p. 239n. He also mentioned the (our genera in his Juvenal lectures of 1461-62 (at Sat. X, 357), cod. Ambros. J 26 inf., fol. 160, noting accurately that Macrobius' Comm. in Somn. Scip. was his source.

3 The scribe originally had “procedit interpretatio,” then changed interpretatio to interpretari (with potest) but neglected to delete the procedit.

4 Cf. Cicero, De officiis, II, xxii, 77, but dealing with avaritia: “Nullum igitur vitium taetrius e s t … . “ The Casanatense version is closer to Cicero.

5 Inferno I, 39ff.

6 The reference is probably to the discussion of the tria genera virtutum (omitting here the virtutes exemplares) at Aen. I, 92, in the Laurentian manuscript (fol. 17- I7V), and at Aen. I, 89, in the Casanatense manuscript (fol. I2v).

7 Cf. Phaedo, 67b.

8 Here and in the following excerpts I shall not repeat notes for passages which are identical or similar in the Laurentian manuscript.

9 Cf. Cat. 10, 5: “Ambitio multos mortalis falsos fieri subegit … . “ In his commentary on the Georgics (at I, 463), Servius quoted this passage with coegit for subegit. Cf. also Sallust, Jug. 6, 3: “opportunitas … quae etiam mediocris viros spe predae transvorsos agit.“

10 Optime, here an ellipsis, was used often by the scribe or by Landino for “Optime dictum est.” Cf. the passage from fol. 100 quoted in n. 17, above.

11 The repeated lemma Sed nunc is perhaps a play on words.

12 Landino is following Servius (ed. G. Thilo, I, pt. 2 [Leipzig, 1881], p. 641): “Et notant quidam quod … .” Cf. the Casanatense version.

13 Cf. Eccli. 19, 2: “Vinum et mulieres apostatare faciunt sapientes … .” But cf. n. 14, below.

14 Plato, Republic, VIII, 560c seqq. Cf. Cicero, De officiis, II, x, 37: “Nam et voluptates, blandissimae dominae, maioris partis animos a virtute detorquent… .“ Both here and in the Casanatense manuscript the Ciceronian quotation seems to be reflected also in the quotation from Ecclesiasticus.

15 negant… vacuum: cod. add. in marg.

16 For this manuscript, see S. Caroti and S. Zamponi, Lo scrittoio di Bartolomeo Fonzio umanistafiorentino (Milan, 1974), pp. 48-50 and plate XII.