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A Lost Letter of Fra Girolamo Savonarola*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Donald Weinstein
Donald Weinstein*
Affiliation:
Rutgers University
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Extract

Among the letters of Savonarola listed as now lost is one to Fra Benedetto di Paolo. The existence of such a letter is known from an entry in the sixteenth-century catalog of Savonarola's letters compiled by Fra Bernardo Castiglione. This catalog has also disappeared but Vincenzo Marchese saw it in the San Marco archives in the mid-nineteenth century and noted Castiglione's seventh entry as follows: 'Scripsit cuidam F. Benedicto Pauli reprehensivam epistolam de quadam eius inobedientia, quae incipit: F. Benedetto. A Dio non è piaciuto questa vostra inobedientia, ec.’ Marchese identified the recipient as Fra Benedetto di Paolo of Florence, the miniaturist and author of Cedrus Libani, a life of Savonarola in verse, which Marchese had just published.The letter itself was lost.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , Spring 1969 , pp. 1 - 8
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1969

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to the John Rylands Library Manchester for permission to publish the letter and to Mr. Ronald Hall, Librarian, and to Mr. Frank Taylor, Keeper of Manuscripts, for information on the manuscript.

References

1 Ridolfi, Roberto, Le lettere di Girolamo Savonarola (Florence, 1933), no. 14, p. 225.Google Scholar

2 Bernardo di Bernardo di Veri di Danti Castiglione, ‘detto in seculo veri,’ was born in Florence in 1541, took the Dominican habit in San Marco on June 1, 1560, and died in San Domenico of Viterbo in 1581, having been forced to leave San Marco by Archbishop Ottaviano de’ Medici (later Pope Leo XI) for promoting the cult of Savonarola. San Marco Ricordanze C, Biblioteca Mediceo-Laurenziana (hereinafter BLF) San Marco MS. 904, fols. 29, 117V. Also, Annalia Conventus Sancti Marci de Florentia, BLF San Marco MS. 370, fol. 37.

3 Vincenzo Marchese, ed., ‘Lettere inedite di fra Gerolamo Savonarola e documenti concernenti lo stesso,’ Archivio storico italiano Ser. 1, Append, VIII (1850), 140-141. Marchese also noted that the letter was listed in a brief catalog of manuscripts in the Dominican monastery of S. Vincenzo di Prato which he had seen in the San Marco archives. My own search for these catalogs as well as for other copies of the letter, in which I have had the generous help of Professor Charles Trinkaus, has been unsuccessful.

4 Cedrus Libani ossia vita di Fra Gerolamo Savonarola, ed. Marchese, Vincenzo, Archivio storico italiano Ser. 1, Append. VII (1849), 41–95.Google Scholar

5 Tyson, Moses, ‘Hand-list of the Collections of French and Italian Manuscripts in the John Rylands Library, 1930,’ Bulletin of the John Rylands Library Manchester, XIV (1930), 619 Google Scholar.1 wish to thank Professor Cecil Grayson for calling the Savonarola materials in the Rylands manuscripts to my attention.

6 For a description see Tyson, pp. 601-603.

7 This and all other information on Sta. Caterina da Siena from , Walter and Paatz, Elizabeth, Die Kirchen von Florenz, 6 vols. (Frankfurt a. Main, 1940-54), 1, 434–435.Google Scholar

8 Schnitzer, Giuseppe, Savonarola, tr. Rutili, E., 2 vols. (Milan, 1931), 1, 205 Google Scholar. Schnitzer says that Camilla took the veil of a tertiary together with other noble Florentine women from Savonarola himself and that they founded the convent on the Via Larga in 1495 (p. 418).

9 Included in lot no. 239, one of 250 lots sold. I owe this notice from the Stuart sale catalog (pp. 28-29) to the kind assistance of Mr. A. E. B. Owen, Under-Librarian, University College, Cambridge. I wish also to acknowledge the help of Mr. Gabriel Austin of the Grolier Club, New York City, and Mr. Francis Johns, Rutgers University Library Bibliographer, for help in locating a copy of the sale catalog. The Stuarts of Aldenham Abbey were considerable book collectors. William Stuart Esq. (1798-1874) was the son of William Stuart, Bishop of Armagh, and of Sophia Perm, granddaughter of William Perm, the famous Quaker. After Stuart died his library was disposed of in two large sales, one in 1875, at Sotheby's, the other in 1895, at Christie's.

10 Ricci, Seymour De, English Collectors of Books&Manuscripts (1530-1930) And Their Marks of Ownership (New York, 1930), p. 161 Google Scholar; The John Rylands Library Manchester in Commemoration of the 25th Anniversary of its Inauguration; a Record of its History, 1899-1924 (Manchester, 1924). The present Earl of Crawford kindly informs me that he has no further information as to the provenance of the manuscript.

11 See Ridolfi, Roberto, The Life ofGirolamo Savonarola, tr. Cecil, Grayson (New York, 1959)Google Scholar. for the most recent scholarly account of these events.

12 Biographical details are from Benedetto's own writings, except where otherwise indicated. (See notes 18-25 below.) The following works may be consulted. Marchese, Cedrus Libani (see n. 4 above); Schnitzer, Savonarola, II, 468-472; Patetta, Federico, ‘Fra Benedetto da Firenze, compagno ed apologista del Savonarola, al secolo Bettuccio Luschino,’ Atti della Reale Accademia delle Scienze di Torino, LX (1925), 623–659.Google Scholar

13 On illuminated manuscripts which have been attributed to fra Benedetto, see Marchese, Vincenzo, Memorie deipiu insigni pittori, scultori e architetti domenkani, 2 vols. (Florence, 1854), 1, 171–173.Google Scholar

14 Ridolfi, Life of Savonarola, pp. 244-249.

15 Ibid., p. 290.

16 This work has disappeared. See Ridolfi, Life of Savonarola, p. 298.

17 Ferrara, Mario, Per la storia del proverbio nel sec. XVI Fra Benedetto da Firenzc e la sua ‘Divisio proverbiosa’ (Lucca, 1925), p. 14.Google Scholar

18 See n. 4 above.

19 BNF Magliabechi MS. xxxv. 90, fols. 97-224.

20 Ibid., fols. 1-96.

21 Books I and n in BNF Magliabechi MS. XXXIV. 7; Book III in Biblioteca Riccardiana of Florence MS. 2985.

22 Known from Benedetto's reference to it in Vulnera diligentis.

23 BNF Magliabechi MS. xxxv. 90, fols. 259-272. On the importance of Fra Benedetto's work for the survival of Savonarola's poetry, see now Martelli, Mario, ed., Savonarola, Girolamo, Poesie (Edizione Nazionale delle Opere di Girolamo Savonarola, Rome, 1968), pp. 123–124 Google Scholar et passim.

24 Book 1 is lost. Book n in BNF Rinuccini MS. n. vni. 123.

25 Included in BNF Magliabechi MS. xxxv. 90, fols. 284-296v which is a Benedetto autograph but with no attribution to him.

26 Risposta dello indegno servo di Christo Jesu, Benedetto octogenario sacerdote, contro al mendace libello di Ambrosio Catherino sanese de Puliti (1549). The only known copy of this work was in a codex (which also contained the related correspondence) reported by Patetta to have come into his possession from France, where it had been used by Father E. C. Bayonne for his Studies on Girolamo Savonarola. Patetta gives a detailed description of it in his ‘Fra Benedetto da Firenze,’ pp. 638-657.

27 I wish to thank my student, Miss Paris Legrow, for assistance in transcribing the letter. In transcribing I have made the following changes: substitution of v for u according to the modern usage; modern punctuation, including the use of apostrophes to indicate elisions; the addition of diacritical marks; elimination of abbreviations.

28 Fol. 3. The previous letter is signed ‘Servus Iesu Christi inutilis Frater Hieronimus de Ferrara.'

29 Text: ‘hauto.'

30 ‘For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.’ The Letter of James 2:10 (Revised Standard Version).

31 The only Fra Stefano I can identify is Stefano da Codiponte, a devoted Savonarolan of Santa Caterina in Pisa. (See Savonarola's letter to him, Le lettere, ed. Ridolfi, pp. 17- 18). He would have been quite eligible for a mission of this kind, but since Florence and Pisa were at war with each other, it is unlikely that he would have been in Florence at this time.

32 ‘Abocca’ is lined out in the text.

33 The address of the letter, La Loggia de’ Pazzi, probably refers to the Villa La Loggia then owned by the Pazzi family or to the borgo which took its name from the villa, today the neighborhood simply known as La Loggia, on the Via Bolognese. The villa itself seems to have derived its name from the beautiful fifteenth-century loggia it contained. See Cardini, Giulio Lensi Orlandi, Le ville di Firenze di qua d'Arno, 2d ed. (Florence, 1954), pp. 50–51 Google Scholar; Firenze e dintorni (Guida d'ltalia del Touring Club Italiano, Milan, 1950), p. 315. Whether Benedetto was at the Villa La Loggia itself or some other place in the vicinity cannot be determined.