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G. B. Gelli and the Rebellion Against Latin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2019

Armand L. De Gaetano
Armand L. De Gaetano*
Affiliation:
Wayne State University
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Extract

Modern European languages reached full development in their spoken and written forms during the middle ages, but it took centuries before the languages of the people became the languages of ‘the books'— those books which are indispensable to serious learning and intellectual progress. Today an intelligent person who can read and write can get a liberal education either in schools or on his own. Yet during the late Renaissance, in Italy and elsewhere, a thorough knowledge of one's mother tongue was hardly enough for one to become literate. There were love lyrics, epic poems, legends, fables, but aside from some legal documents and a few compilations, very little recorded knowledge was available in the vernacular.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in the Renaissance , Volume 14 , 1967 , pp. 131 - 158
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1967

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References

This work and other studies to follow soon on this topic were completed with the support of two grants from the American Philosophical Society, to which I am grateful. I wish also to express my gratitude to Prof. Paul O. Kristeller for his advice and encouragement, and to Profs. Fredric Koenig, Mario Pei, and Joseph Prescott for their kind support. Thanks are due also to the following libraries in Florence for their coöperation: Nazionale, Riccardiana-Moreniana, Marucelliana, Laurenziana, Archivio di Stato.

1 Some critics deny the rebellious nature of Gelli's writings. Among these one of the most recent is Emilio Sanesi, ‘Dell'Accademia Fiorentina nel ‘500,’ Atti della Societa Colombaria Fiorentina, xxiv (1935-36), 237.Google Scholar

2 Leonardo Olschki, Geschichte der neusprachlichen wissenschqftlkhen Literatur, Band. 11: Bildung und Wissenschaft im Zeitalter der Renaissance in Italien (Leipzig, Firenze, Roma, 1922), 171–172.Google Scholar

3 Commentoedito einedito soprala Diuina commedia,ed.C.Negi:om (Firenze, 1887), 2 vols.Google Scholar

4 Paul O. Kristeller, ‘L'origine e lo sviluppo della prosa volgare italiana', Cultura Neolatina, x (1950), 137-156; also in English, Word, 11 (1946), 50-65. Citations are from Cultura Neolatina

5 Kristeller, op. tit., pp. 147-150 ff.

6 Ibid., pp. 150, 154. Also G. Toffanin, II cinquecento (Milano, 1935), ch. 1.

7 The best-known work on the subject is by Remigio Sabbadini, Storia del ciceronianismo e di altre questioni letterarie neU'eta della rinascenza (Torino, Loescher, 1885). In this book, as in most others which treat this topic, the prejudice of the humanists against the vernacular is overemphasized. See P. O. Kristeller, op. cit., p. 9. However, the charges of the humanists which are quoted by Sabbadini cannot be denied, even though they are of a polemical character and do not express the views of the authors in more serene and objective states of mind.

8 Sabbadini, op. cit., pp. 122-123.

9 Attilio Hortis, Studi sulk opere latine del Boccaccio … (Trieste, 1879), pp. 200 ff.

10 Sabbadini, op, cit., p. 128.

11 Giovanni Fioretto, Gli umanisti (Verona, 1881), p. 122.

12 Cf. P. O. Kristeller, op. cit., pp. 147 ff.

13 Fioretto, Gli umanisti, p. 125.

14 Ibid., pp. 125 ff.

15 Sabbadini, op. cit., p. 128.

16 See also L. B. Alberti, La prima grammatica della volgar lingua, ed. C. Grayson (Bologna, 1964).

17 G. TofFanin, Il cinquecento (Milano, 1935), p. 20.

18 Amaseo, De linguae latinae usu retinendo, two orations delivered at Bologna in 1529, before Charles v and Pope Clement VII, in Sabbadini, op. cit., p. 129. A MS of this material is identified by its owner or archivist with these words: ‘Vili orazioni di Romolo Amaseo de Latinae lingue usu retinendu', MS. A. 71 Sec. XVI-XVII, Insert 9, Biblioteca Marucelliana, Firenze.

19 Sabbadini, op. cit., pp. 130-136.

20 Ibid., p . 130.

21 Ibid., pp. 130-131.

22 Ibid., p. 133.

23 Ibid., p . 134.

24 Ibid., p . 136.

25 Dialoghi del Gello (Firenze, 1546), incomplete. For this study I have used Opere di G. B. Gelli, ed. A. Gelli (Firenze, Le Monnier, 1855), and will refer to it as L. M.

26 The 8 eds. are: Doni, 2 eds., 1546; Torrentino, 1548, 1549, 1551; Venice, Rapiro, 1550; Venice, Bindoni, 1550 and 1551. See also my two articles—'The Plagiarism of G. B. Gelli's Capricci del bottaio by Francesco Miranda Villafane', Italica, xxxn (1955), 226-241, and ‘Tre lettere inedite di G. B. Gelli e la purgazione de I cappricci del bottaio', Giomale Storico Letteratura Italiana, CXXXIV (1957), 297-313.

27 For the orthodoxy of Gelli's religious convictions see my article ‘Tre lettere inedite di G. B. Gelli ‘

28 The desire of xvi-century academicians to prove the excellence of Tuscan becomes a disease in the academicians of the following centuries, who study the classics mainly to prove that all the subjects treated in those languages can be treated with equal if not greater elegance in Tuscan. See Cochrane, Eric, Tradition and Enlightenment in the Tuscan Academies, 1690-1800 (Chicago, 1961), p. 16.Google Scholar

29 Archivio di Stato di Firenze, ‘Protocollo notarile di G. Battista Giordani', G. 301, C. G. 149-155, 10 Aug. 1557.

30 Epistle to Fra Giov. da S. Miniato in Raffaele Spongano, Antologia della letteratura italiana (Milano, 1948), p. 408.

31 My article ‘Tre lettere inedite di G. B. Gelli… .’ and E. Sanesi, Dell'Accademia Fiorentina nel ‘500 (Firenze: Mori, 1936), repr. from Atti della Societa ColombariaFiorentina, XXIV (1935-36), 242.

32 E. Sanesi, op. cit., p. 240.

33 On Paleario see Giuseppe Morpurgo, Un umanista martire, Aonio Paleario e la riforma teorica italiana nel secolo XVI (Città di Castello, 1912).

34 Delio Cantimori, ‘Rhetoric and Politics in Italian Humanism', Journal of the Warburg Institute, 1, 2 (1937-38), 89.

35 The British and Foreign Bible Society, Catalogue of the Printed Editions of the Holy Scripture (London, 1903), 11, 803.Google Scholar The statement above is taken from the entry on Antonio Brucioli's Nuovo Testamento (Venice, Giunti, 1530). On Brucioli see Spini, Giorgio, Tra rinascimento e riforma: Antonio Brucioli (Firenze, 1940).Google Scholar

36 The prefaces of the following eds. have been consulted: La Biblia (Venice, 1532); II Nuovo Testamento (Antwerp, 1538); LaBiblia (Venice, 1538); Il Nuovo Testamento (Venice, 1540); La Biblia (Venice, 1541); La Bibbia (Venice, 1542-47), 7 vols., with five letters of dedication and a long commentary; La Bibbia ([Geneva], 1562). I am indebted to Mr. Alfred Zambelli, to the British and Foreign Bible Society, and to the British Museum for consulting and microfilming the prefaces to the editions above. Mr. Zambelli was kind enough to transcribe material libraries could not duplicate.

37 In the Circe the snake says that the only reason people do not commit suicide is ‘per lo spovento che vi hanno messo molti, scrivendo di non so che regno di Plutone’ (L. M., p. 36). For Dante, see Negroni, Commento …, I, 72-73.

38 ‘Giusto. Tanti centi di ducati avess'io, quanti io ne conosco e honne conosciuti [who are faithless]’ (L. M., pp. 171 ff.). Cf. pp. 190-191.

39 Note incidentally the information regarding some of the material used for elementary education. Cf. Brucioli, Nuovo Testamento, Venice, 1540, f. 6r. In the Diologhi he prescribes schools for boys and girls ‘dove ogni giorno una lettione delle sacre lettere nella materna lingua si leggesse’ (Spini, op. cit., p. 162 ff.).

40 See Negroni, n, 429. Brucioli not only deplores the religious ignorance of the layman but of the clergy also: ‘tanto ignoranti che pure le prime lettere non sanno', Dialoghi in Spini, op. cit., p. 162.

41 Il Nuovo Testamento, Antwerp, 1538, ff. 5v-6r. The 1540 ed. omits the quotation from Paul.

42 This position is reminiscent of Petrarch's essay On Ignorance.

43 Similar patriotic reasons for enriching one's own language are given by English translators of the sixteenth century: Amos, Flora Ross, Early Theories of Translation (New York, 1920), pp. 97–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Although the Englishmen realized the importance of translating into the vernacular, they did not regard their language as being beautiful; instead they called it barbarous, uneloquent, and considered it the most inferior of the modern languages. They nevertheless wanted to enrich it and bring it to the level of Italian, Spanish, and French. See Jones, Richard Foster, The Triumph of the English Language (Stanford, 1953), Ch. 1.Google Scholar

44 It is interesting to note that identical criticism went on in other European countries during the same century. George Puttenham says that John Southern should be ashamed for introducing into the English language such French words as ‘freddon', ‘egar', ‘suberous', etc.; while Richard Willes disapproves the coining of English words from Latin. Flora Ross Amos, op. cit., p. 96. The third chapter of this book shows a parallel situation in England on the question of translation and secularization of education.

45 See Gelli's prefaces in the following translations, which he made of Simone Porzio's works: Modo di orare christianamente (Fiorenza: Torrentino, 1551), pp. 7-8, 10; Se Vhuomo diventa buono 0 cattivo volontariamente (Fiorenza: Torrentino, 1551), pp. 7, 9; Trattato de colori degl'occhi (Fiorenza: Torrentino, 1551), p. 7.

46 Modo di orare, pp. 10-11, preface.

47 When Verino died the rector of the university refused to attend the funeral because he had not been assigned the first place in the procession. The universities also resented the Academy's jurisdiction on other matters dealing with education and the book industry. There are resentful complaints from the University of Pisa on matters dealing with book dealers (MS. Strozz. Ser. I° , 139, ff. 25-29. Archivio di Stato Firenze).

48 See Olschki, op. cit., II, 184-185.

49 See L. M., p. 175.

50 The reader should recall Gelli's definition of a dead language.