Virtually anyone acquiring some kind of higher education in Western Europe during the Renaissance was expected to be well-versed in the art of crafting letters in Latin for various purposes. Increasingly, this was accompanied by a requirement to learn Greek.
It appears that the work published in the present volume—an anonymous collection of thirty-seven short letters in Latin and Greek—represents a combination of these two requirements: to master letter writing and to become proficient in Greek. It has come down to us in four manuscripts of the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries, was printed for the first time in 1548, and then a further three times during the sixteenth century, but never thereafter. It is now published in its first critical edition by a team of scholars under the direction of Eleanor Dickey.
The volume consists of an Introduction in seven chapters (pp. I-CXLI), followed by the edition of the Latin and Greek texts together with a French translation and commentary (pp. 1-187). At the end of the volume, there is a bibliography (pp. 189-202), an index locorum (pp. 203-205), a list of manuscripts (p. 206), and an index of names (pp. 207-209).
The Introduction is substantial and contains much of value to anyone interested in not only the present corpus but in understanding Renaissance education in general and, as part of this, how Greek was taught.
Chapter 1 (pp. XIII-XVII), “La nature des lettres,” gives an overview of the content and the different types of letters represented in the corpus. Most of the letters are hortatory, or express criticism, or defense against this, in a given situation, with personae like the worried father and the student son taking the stage. There is no reason to doubt that all of this is entirely fictitious. Also, sources and parallels are briefly discussed. Among these are some of the more commonly cited authors of antiquity, such as Plato, Demosthenes, Cicero, and the Bible. Of some interest in order to fix the letters in time and space, Petrarch is mentioned, as well as a mid-fifteenth-century inscription known from a church in Pavia.
Chapter 2 (pp. XVII-LIII), “Le contexte des lettres,” offers a valuable overview of comparable works in Latin, such as the manuals of Giovanni Filelfo and Poggio Bracciolini. Despite similarities, it is concluded that there is no clear connection to any specific work that might have served as a model, although several of the works mentioned may have been known to the author of our collection. The most obvious difference between other works and the present one is, of course, that the latter is bilingual—Latin and Greek—and for this reason appears to have served purposes different from those of any other letter collection. On this follows a discussion of possible Greek sources or parallels, the result of which remains equally negative. In short, actual letters, especially those circulating under the names of Plato and Phalaris, seem to have been known and used by the author of our collection. However, no reference is made to manuals of letter-writing so popular in the Greek-speaking world (see for this: A. Riehle (ed.), A Companion to Byzantine Epistolography. Brill᾽s Companions to the Byzantine World 7. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2020; and Dmitrij Chernoglazov, ῾From Letter Collections to Letter Writing Manuals. Some Notes on Cod. Heid. Palat. Gr. 356᾽, in Frühmittelalterliche Studien 57:1, p. 193-205).
Chapter 3 (pp. LIII-LXXIII) “La tradition du corpus” contains descriptions of the manuscripts and a discussion of their relationship to each other. There are four manuscripts (A, B, K, T) and an editio princeps from 1548 (C), followed by some subsequent printed texts, all from the sixteenth century and of no value for the reconstruction of the original, since they are derived from existing manuscripts. In sum, the entirely convincing analysis demonstrates that no existing manuscript is the original and that AB constitute one group against C KT (KT forming a sub-group of their own).
Chapter 4 (pp. LXXIII-LXXIX), “Citations et intertextes,” contains a further discussion of sources and parallels (see also Chapters 1 and 2), now with focus on how earlier works are used. One of the observations made is, as stated on p. LXXIX, that there is a primauté des sources latines sur les sources grecques. In other words, more Latin sources have been used than Greek, and even Greek sources are cited by way of Latin, i.e., they are retranslated from Latin. For instance, Bible citations in the Greek text are translated from the Latin rather than taken from the Greek Bible directly. This, in its turn, is used as evidence for the primacy of the letters in their Latin form over the same in Greek. In other words, the Latin text is the original, and the Greek a translation thereof.
Chapter 5 (pp. LXXX-CXII), “Éléments sur le grec des lettres,” discusses the linguistic form of the Greek text. For the Byzantinist reader, this is of particular interest, although it raises some concerns. This is especially so when certain features of the language are classified as errors or inadvertencies. It is true that the work most likely was written in Italy and by a non-Greek, and that the Greek text is a translation of the Latin (for all of this, see Chapter 6). All the same, to categorise deviations from actual classical Greek as errors without further ado is not without its problems. In fact, the norm was not classical Greek but rather a variety of high-level Greek with its own rules and standards.
Chapter 6 (pp. CXII-CXXXIX), “A genèse du corpus bilingue,” has as its main, entirely convincing, conclusion that the work was written after 1458 in Lombardy, possibly Pavia (a place famous for its Greek studies), and in any case in an environment with close ties to the Sforza family of Milan.
Finally, Chapter 7 (pp. CXXXIX-CXL, accompanied by Sigles p. CXLI), “Les principes de la présente édition,” takes as its point of departure the stemma already established in Chapter 3. However, since it has been demonstrated that the Latin text is less stable than the Greek, the stemma is used only to establish the Greek text, whereas, in the case of the Latin, a best-manuscript principle is employed. All of this seems absolutely justified.
After the Introduction follows the edition of the Latin and Greek texts, together with a French translation made from the Latin and commentary (pp. 2-187). The Latin and Greek texts are followed by an apparatus criticus, whereas what would normally be the content of an apparatus fontium et parallelorum is given as part of the commentary.
In almost every way, this edition makes a very good impression. It contains only a very small number of errors and inadvertencies (some examples: p. 96, l. 1: abitror for arbitror; p. 119, l. 1: tu ne t’émeus pas qu’un peu seems like an odd translation of te non mediocriter angi; p. 168, l. 17: τότε should be τό τε; also, there are several inconsistencies when it comes to the use of the iota subscriptum in the Greek. Another, perhaps equally minor, matter concerns the layout and distribution on the page. The Latin text—being considered the original—is placed first, upon which, always on the left-hand page, follows the Greek. Opposite, on the right-hand side, follows the French translation and the commentary. All this means that the Latin and the Greek texts never occur on the same spread, a fact which, to the present reader at least, is a greater inconvenience than it would have been to have the translation or the commentary tucked away. After all, a reader should be particularly interested in comparing the Latin with the Greek. Finally, it must be said that the commentary is on the meagre side and uneven in its content. Perhaps this is because so many scholars have been involved in the process of its creation.
To conclude, this is an excellent book, and it contains many discussions of great interest. It would be an exaggeration to say that this is remarkable literature and that the letters make for great reading. Yet, they give an insight into education and language study during the Renaissance and should prove a welcome addition to existing scholarship.
Authors and titles
Avant-propos (Arthur Grouard de Tocqueville)
Introduction
- La nature des lettres (Eleanor Dickey)
- Le contexte des lettres
- La tradition du corpus
- Citations et intertextes (Valentine Lévy)
- Éléments sur le grec des lettres
- La genèse du corpus bilingue (Paola Carmela La Barbera)
- Les principes de la présente édition (Eleanor Dickey)
Lettres Fictives d’un Humaniste
- Lettre 1 (Eleanor Dickey)
- Lettre 2 (Élisabeth Lefèvre)
- Lettre 3 (Louis-Jean Tissot)
- Lettre 4 (Mathilde Bernardot
- Lettre 5 (Filippo Mardente et Arthur Grouard de Tocqueville)
- Lettre 6 (Béatrice d’Anselme et Paola Carmela La Barbera)
- Lettre 7 (Ivanne Hermant et Marie de Toledo)
- Lettre 8 (Valentine Lévy)
- Lettre 9 (Emmanuel Domergue et Mathilde Bernardot)
- Lettre 10 (Peter Shi et Eleanor Dickey)
- Lettre 11 (Eleanor Dickey)
- Lettre 12 (Andrea Nicolin et Marie de Toledo)
- Lettre 13 (Paola Carmela La Barbera)
- Lettre 14 (Arthur Grouard de Tocqueville)
- Lettre 15 (Benedetta Trono et Paola Carmela La Barbera).
- Lettre 16 (Antoine Régnier et Louis-Jean Tissot)
- Lettre 17 (Filippo Mardente et Arthur Grouard de Tocqueville)
- Lettre 18 (Mathilde Bernardot)
- Lettre 19 (Cecilia Mambrioni)
- Lettre 20 (Arthur Grouard de Tocqueville)
- Lettre 21 (Ivanne Hermant et Marie de Toledo)
- Lettre 22 (Benedetta Trono et Élisabeth Lefèvre)
- Lettre 23 (Élisabeth Lefèvre)
- Lettre 24 (Paola Carmela La Barbera)
- Lettre 25 (Valentine Lévy)
- Lettre 26 (Louis-Jean Tissot)
- Lettre 27 (Mathilde Bernardot)
- Lettre 28 (Marie de Toledo)
- Lettre 29 (Valentine Lévy)
- Lettre 30 (Filippo Mardente et Arthur Grouard de Tocqueville)
- Lettre 31 (Louis-Jean Tissot)
- Lettre 32 (Peter Shi et Eleanor Dickey)
- Lettre 33 (Cecilia Mambrioni)
- Lettre 34 (Marie de Toledo)
- Lettre 35 (Valentine Lévy)
- Lettre 36 (Mathilde Bernardot)
- Lettre 37 (Arthur Grouard de Tocqueville)
Bibliographie (Marie de Toledo)