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New Forms of Neo-Latin Pastoral

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2019

W. Leonard Grant*
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia
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Extract

In three earlier essays I examined the Latin epistolary and cryptic eclogues of fourteenth-century Italy and then (in more detail) a considerable number of the derivative and literary eclogues produced in various countries during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In the present essay we shall be concerned with (A) new developments in literary pastoral, especially in Italy, and (B) the use of pastoral as a vehicle, both during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In A there are at least a dozen forms: piscatory eclogues, holitory, vinitory, domestic, mythological, rhetorical, Hebraistic, and humorous eclogues, the hunting-eclogue, the pastoral epyllion, the dream-eclogue, and the quasi-dramatic masque-pastoral.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1957

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References

1 ‘Early neo-Latin Pastoral’, Phoenix IX (1955), 19-26; Studies in Philology LIII (1956), 429-451; the third is forthcoming in SP; in the present essay biographical and bibliographical notices of authors (e.g., of Battista Fiera, Euricius Cordus, Elius Eobanus) are not repeated if already given in these three articles. The preparation of this essay, as of the two in SP, was assisted by a grant from the President's Committee on Research of the University of British Columbia.

2 Biographical details in the Vita of Vulpius in the 1782 edition of his works (cf. n. 3); cf. Enciclopedia italiana xxx, 739-740 and literature cited.

3 Actii Synceri Poemata omnia (Bassani, 1782) includes the De partu virginis, the piscatories, three books of elegies, and three books of epigrams. Of the De partu virginis Carrara (Enc. it.) remarks that despite the epic form the treatment is essentially lyric; it would be more correct to say that the treatment is elegiac: the tone throughout is Ovidian and gently Tibullan, and it is this which distinguishes the style of the work from that of Vida's Christiad. The epigrams are very varied: erotic, ingenious, dainty, or pungent; the elegies are the perfect expression of Sannazaro's gentle, pensive, melancholy nature.

4 The Piscatory Eclogues of Sannazaro (Baltimore, 1911), p. II.

5 Cf. Torraca, F., GV imitatori stranieri di Jacopo Sannazaro (Rome, 1882), pp. 5455 Google Scholar.

6 Mustard cites the relevant passages.

7 Biographical details in Tiraboschi (1787-94), VII, iv, 1404; cf. also Giraldi, Lilio, De poetis nostrorutn temporum, ed. Wotke, (Berlin, 1904), 90Google Scholar.

8 Aelii Iulii Crotti Cremonensis Opuscula (Ferrara, 1564); five of the poems appear on pp. 163-169 of Costa's, Emilia Antologia della lirica latina nei secoli XV e XVI (Citta di Castello, 1888)Google Scholar.

9 Printed in Joannes Oporinus’ Basel anthology (Bucolicorum autores xxxviii, 1546) of eclogues.

10 Printed in Musae priores: sive, Poematum pars prior (London, 1620). So far as I know, no further volume of poems appeared.

11 Like George Buchanan, John Barclay, and other Scottish humanists, he spent much of his life in France and was almost as much French as Scottish.

12 He is not mentioned in Tiraboschi or listed in the Encyclopedia italiana. His poems are Orprinted in Grater's Delitiae poetarum Italorum (Frankfort, 1608), vol. 1 and in vol. III of the Carmina illustrium poetarum Italorum (Florence, 1719 ff.).

13 For Alfonso I, cf. Valeri, N., L'ltalia nell’ età dei principati (Verona, 1949), 464465 Google Scholar, where is illustrated a fine medallion by Pisanello, on the reverse of which appears a hunting-scene showing Alfonso killing a wild boar; the legend ‘Venator Intrepidvs’ appears above his head. For Ferdinand II, cf. Sannazaro, , Eleg. I, xix and xxiiiGoogle Scholar.

14 Cf. nn. 28 and 29.

15 Ovid and his Influence (New York, I928), p. 154.

16 Melisaeus and Adriana refer to Pontano himself and Adriana Sassone, his wife. The nymph Patulcis represents the district in Naples called Vomero today; Antiniana is named after the district (Antignano) in which Pontano lived.

17 Sebethis is the nymph of the stream called Sebeto.

18 In the first book of the De amore coniugali and especially in Pontano's second eclogue (Melisaeus, a quo uxoris morsploratur).

19 Printed on pp. 307-312 of the 1782 ed. of Sannazaro. Biographical and bibliographical details in the introduction to his major literary work Deforo et laudibus Brixiae, ed. Giambattista Rodella (Brescia, 1778).

20 Biographical details in Tiraboschi, VII, iii, 959, 971-973 and especially 966-970; Enciclopedia italiana XXVII, 268 and literature there cited, especially Barotti, , Memorie storiche di letterati ferraresi (Ferrara, 1893)Google Scholar, III. His output was extensive in Latin and Italian alike; the Latin verses appear in Io. Baptistae Pignae Carminum libri quattuor (Venice, 1553) in which the Satyrae also appear.

21 Biographical details in Percopò, E., ‘Pomponio Gaurico, umanista napoletano’ in Atti della reale Accademia di archivio letterario e belle arti di Napoli XVI (1891-93), 141261 Google Scholar.

22 Not all have been printed; listed by Paolo Giovio in his Elogia and (more fully) in Giov. Tafuri, Bernardino, Istoria degli scrittori nati nel regno di Napoli, ed. G. Castelli (Naples, 1744-60, 3 vols.)Google Scholar.

23 Printed in the Basel anthology.

24 On this poem cf. PQ XXXII (1954), 17, n. 26.

25 Biographical details in Sabbadini, R., ‘Bartolommeo Facio’, Scritti storici in memoria di G. Monticolo (Padua, 1922), 2746 Google Scholar; cf. also U. Mazzini in Giornale storico e letterario della Liguriaiv (1903).

26 His works include the De viris illustribus (elaborately edited by the tireless Mehus, Florence, 1745); De rebus gestis ab Alphonso … rege (Lyons, 1560; this is the first ed. to contain all ten books); De vitae felicitate (s.l., 1476); De bello Veneto Clodiano (Lyons, 1568; on the war of Chioggia in 1377); De excellentia ac praestantia hominis, printed in Felinus Sandens’ De regibus Siciliae et Apuliae (Hannover, 1591), 11, 149-168 His most famous work was the unfinished Invectivae quattuor in Laurentium Vallam, on which see Valentini in Rendiconti della reale Accademia dei Lincei (CI. di sc. morali…), ser. 5, XV (1906), 493-550.

27 Carmen ad Antonium Campanum, of which the earliest and (I believe) the only printed version is in Anecdota litteraria, ed. Io. Christophorus Amadutius (Rome, 1774), III, 425-436. A few lines appear to be missing after vs. 71.

28 The best modern work: E. Percopò, La vita di Giovanni Pontano (Naples, 1937).

29 The only complete edition is the elaborate one produced by Pietro Summonte at Naples in 1505-12(?); on the Lepidina, cf. PQ XXXVI (1957), 76-83.

30 Biographical details in Tiraboschi, VI, iii, 920-922; Ferri, F., La giovinezza di un poeta (Rimini, 1914)Google Scholar; id., L'autore del Liber Isottaeus (Rimini, 1912).

31 The hexameter works (running to nearly 12,000 lines) are collected in Basini Parmensis poetae Opera praestantiora (Rimini, 1794); vol. I contains the text of the Hesperis, Meleagris, Argonautica, and Astronomical most of all this was written between 1450 and 1454; vol. II contains Ireneo Affò's biography of the poet and other documents. The elegiac works are conveniently available in Ferri, F., Lepoesie liriche di Basinio (Turin, 1905)Google Scholar, which contains a useful bibliography.

32 Prophecy of a new golden age at the accession of some new prince or pontiff is a stock theme in neo-Latin poetry: it appears in Filelfo, Buonincontri, Verino, Boiardo, Urceo, Mantuan, Marullo, Sannazaro, Fracastoro, Calcagnini, Lelio Capilupi, Marcantonio Flaminio, Crotti, Giambattista Giraldi, Girolamo Amalteo, and Ippolito Capilupi (the list is chronological), and many more European Latin poets. The theme is burlesqued in Latin by Crotti, in Spanish by Cervantes; the unpleasant truth about government in Italy's ‘golden age’ appears in a letter (dated 1454) addressed by Pius II to Leonardo Bentivoglio.

33 Not mentioned in the Encicl. ital. or in Tiraboschi, but listed in DNB. Born in Lucca, he rose to be secretary a libellis of Henry VII of England (acceded 1485) by about 1500; on p. 281 of vol. II of Delitiae poetarum Belgicorum (Frankfort, 1614) appears a poem addressed to him by Erasmus; cf. Opus epistolarum Erasmi, ed. P. S. Allen, I, 455, correcting the account in DNB.

34 The Treaty of Calais (1507) arranged for the marriage of Mary Tudor (1496-1533) to Charles (aged thirteen); the marriage was performed by proxy in 1508 but was never consummated. In 1514 Mary was married to Louis XII (d. 1515); in May 1515 she married the Earl of Suffolk: their daughter Frances was the mother of Lady Jane Grey.

35 The encomium (pastoral or not) of a city was a recognized genre of neo-Latin poetry; there are panegyrics of Genoa, Brescia, Venice, Florence, Siena, Cumae, Ercolano, Pesto, Naples, and other localities in the works of such poets as Tito Vespasiano Strozzi, Mantuan, Campano, Sabellico, Bonfadio, Ariosto, Bembo, D'Arco, Marcantonio Flaminio, Rota, and many others.

36 Cf. Ellinger, Georg, Die neulateinische Lyrik Deutschlands (Berlin and Leipzig, 1929), 294295 Google Scholar. Of his Latin poems (printed in the Delitiae poetamm Germanorum) the most ambitious are the dull Fluminum Germaniae descriptio (elegiac) and the duller Eclipsis, a description of the eclipse of 20 February 1551 (hexameters).

37 Biographical details in Toffanin, G., Il Cinquecento (ed. 4, Milan, 1949), 507512 Google Scholar and cf. 518, n. II, and 519, n. 29; cf. bibliographical references in the Encicl. ital., sub nom. His Latin poems appear in Cynthii Ioannis Baptistae Gyraldi Poemata (Ferrara, 1537); these include an epicedion on the death of Alfonso d'Este, possibly the most florid neo-Latin poem ever written, a panegyric of Ercole d'Este, celebrating his accession, twenty miscellaneous poems making up the Sylvarum liber, eight elegies, and 110 epigrams, many of little but historical interest and most little better than competent verse-composition of the sort that any classical instructor should be able to turn out without too great difficulty.

38 Biographical details in Mazzuchelli, G. M., Baldassare Castiglione (Rome, 1879)Google Scholar.

39 The only complete edition is Opere volgari e latine del Conte Baldassare Castiglione (Padua, 1733); most of the Latin poems appear in the Delitiae poetarum Italorum and a few are printed in the Poemata selecta Italorum (Oxford, 1808).

40 For this identification cf. the eighth poem of Niccolò d'Arco (1479-1546) printed in the Poemata set. Ital., and also Flaminio, Marcantonio, Cartnina I, 33 Google Scholar.

41 I.e., Hernando d'Avalos, Marquess of Pescara.

42 Carmen pastorale (probably Rome, 1513, according to the Bodleian catalogue), a pamphlet of 22 pages.

43 Eclogae tres incerti autoris published in vol. III of the Basel ed. (1567) of Bembo's Latin works, pp. 174-186.

44 Op. cit., 571; cf. Renaissance News IX (1956), 189-192.

45 Biographical details in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie 11, 506-507. Besides commentaries on Horace, Virgil, Ovid, and Lucan, he published volumes of Poemata and Orationes (both Leipzig, 1576).

46 Biographical details in Biographie universelle xi, 274-275.

47 Besides various commentaries on and editions of classical authors, Dousa wrote Return caelcstium liber primus (all published of a work to have been in five books; Leyden, 1591-92); Poemata (the most complete edition is that of G. Rabus, Rotterdam, 1704); Epistulae apohgeticae (Leyden, 1593).

48 Mantuan's prose treatise De pita beata is dedicated to his father in terms of closest affection (ego enim te mihi cariorem inter mortales habeo neminem).

49 Biographical details in Tiraboschi, VI, iii, 992-993; Mustard, W. P., The Eclogues of Antonio Geraldini (Baltimore, 1924)Google Scholar, introd.; not mentioned in the Enciclopedia italiana. There is one other eclogue known, a genealogy of the Geraldini family, in MS Vat. Lat. 6940, ff. 60-63; so far as I have been able to learn, the poem is still unpublished. Geraldini's verses include an early group of twenty-three odes (1469?), twelve poems described as epodes that are actually hymns and psalms, and two books of odes (1486) dedicated to John of Aragon and Cardinal Mendoza. His eclogues, like those of Mantuan, were widely used in schools (especially in Germany) in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

50 But Judas, Barabbas, Pilate, and others retain their own names.

51 Biographical details in Biographie universelle VII, 152-154. His major works are a translation of the Bible into Ciceronian Latin (Basel, 1551)—Bembo would have preferred this to the Vulgate's nugae; a similar translation of the Imitatio Christi (Basel, 1563); various translations of vernacular French and German works into Latin: for the purpose of such translations cf. two essays of mine in Phoenix VIII (1954), 64-70, and Studies in the Renaissance (Publications of the Renaissance Society of America) 1 (1954), 120-156; much more interesting to the modern reader than any of the above are: De haereticis (Madgeburg, 1554); and Moses latinus (Basel, 1546), an attack on the death penalty for criminals.

52 Not in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, Biographie universelle, or Ellinger.

53 Luther used Aretius Catharus (‘Virtuous Pure’) as a pen name at least once.

54 Among satirical eclogues we should not forget to mention Mantuan's fourth, a satire on women which repeats all or nearly all of the well-known medieval charges against that greatly-abused sex. Its most remarkable feature is a versified string of adjectives (124-131) put into the mouth of a shepherd, who, incidentally, represents Mantuan's old teacher Gregorio Tifernate (Gregorio da Città di Castello, ca. 1414-ca. 1464).

55 Biographical details in Rossi, Il Quattrocento (ed. 4, Milan, 1949), 388-389; Encicl. ital. VIII, 772, and works, cited there, by Mirici, Picci, and Croce.

56 His works include (besides an excellent school Latin grammar, commentaries on Juvenal, Persius, and other authors) an epic in four books called Gonsalvia, sive de bis recepta Parthenope (Naples, 1506); Cantalycii Epigrammatum libri xii (Venice, 1493), on which Sabbadini (Encicl. ital., loc. cit.) writes, ‘La sola parte viva delle sue poesie è nei dodici libri di epigrammi, pieni di brio e di arguti motteggi, di brevi scene giocose, di complimenti garbati; essi sono una fonte preziosa e immediata del costume contemporaneo.’

57 Epigr. XII, ii (the text is much disturbed, and there are many incomplete lines); Sabbadini (loc. cit.) speaks of egloghe

58 Biographical detail in Allg. deutsche Biogr. XXX, 107-111, and (with an elaborate consideration of his Latin lyrics) Schroeter, Adalbert, Beiträge zur Geschichte der neulateinischen Poesie Deutschlands und Hollands (Berlin, 1909), 129152 Google Scholar. Sabinus’ original Latin works appear in the Delitiae poetarum Germanorum and in Poemata Georgii Sabini Brandeburgensis (Leipzig, 1581); the most important are the six books of elegies, especially those addressed to Anna Melanchthon (Book in).

59 Biographical details in Schroeter, op. cit., 152-164; the difference between Sabinus and Stigel is succinctly put on p. 152: ‘Sein Freund Stigelius war ihm unzweifelhaft überlegen an moralischer Stärke und religiöser Tiefe, nicht aber an Vielseitigkeit und Leuchtkraft des poetischen Talents'; cf. further Manacorda, G., Della poesia latina in Germania durante il Rinascimento (Rome, 1906). His Latin poems appear in Poematum Ioannis Stigelii libri (Jena, 1566-72)Google Scholar; there are also a large number of miscellaneous hymns, letters, verseprayers, and the like.

60 Not entirely; there is also a minor lyric form called the ‘pastoral toy’ (lusus pastoralis) developed by Andrea Navagero and Marcantonio Flaminio; this is discussed in a brief forthcoming article in Medievalia et Humanistica.