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Some Notes on the Contents of Guarino's Library

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Ian Thomson
Ian Thomson*
Affiliation:
Indiana University
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Extract

This article has two purposes: first, to correct the common misconception that Guarino da Verona (1374-1460) brought more than fifty Greek codices with him from Constantinople to Italy in 1408; second, to discuss his collection of Platonica.

Nowhere in Guarino's own writings nor, so far as I know, in those of any of his humanist contemporaries is there mention of his having returned to Italy with a large collection of Greek manuscripts. The story first appears in the brief biography of Manuel Chrysoloras which Pontico Virunio wrote for inclusion in his edition of Chrysoloras' Erotemata at Reggio Emilia in 1501. Virunio says that Guarino on his way home from Constantinople, where he had studied under Chrysoloras, had two chests of Greek codices, but one was lost overboard, and this caused him to go gray overnight.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , Summer 1976 , pp. 169 - 177
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1976

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References

1 See, for example, Sabbadini, R., La scuola e gli studi di Guarino Guarini Veronese (Catania, 1896 Google Scholar; rpt. in Guariniana, ed. M. Sancipriano [Turin, 1964]), p. 13; Le scoperte dei codici latini egreci ne' secoli XIV e XV (Florence, 1905), p. 44; Sandys, J. E., A History of Classical Scholarship (repr. New York, 1967), II, 49; 36, n. 4.Google Scholar

2 Sabbadini, , La scuola e gli studi, p. 13.Google Scholar The biography, a jejune and almost useless sketch, is also contained in the editions of the Erotemata at Ferrara (1509) and Venice (1512 and 1517); cf. G. Cammelli, I Dotti Bizantini e le Origini dell'Umanesimo, 1: Manuele Crisolora (Florence, 1941), p. 83, n. 1.

3 La scuola e gli studi, pp. 13-14.

4 Guarino, Epistolario, ed. R. Sabbadini (3 vols., Miscellanea di Storia Veneta, ser. terza, viii, xi, xiv, 1915-1919), i, Epist. 59, 42: iam circum tempora cani pullulant.

5 Printed in Ashmore, S. G., The Comedies of Terence (2nd. ed., New York, 1908)Google Scholar, immediately after the introduction. The relevant passage is: Q. Consonius redeuntem e Graecia perisse in mari dicit cum fabulis conversis a Menandro.

6 His expenses to Constantinople had been paid by the Venetian merchant Paolo Zane (Sabbadini, Vita di Guarino, sec. 21, in Guariniana, p. 11) and there is a document dated March 1, 1406, in which Guarino is designated notary and secretary of Zane (La scuola e gli studi, p. 12).

7 Guarino, , Epistolario, 1, Epist. 4, 115–118 Google Scholar: laetus enim et sospes venio, sed pauper; quid timeam non habeo, non furta, non ignes. Tuo igitur tuorumque suffragio opus erit, quo efFetos resarciam loculos, unde mihi ac meis vitae fiat adiumentum.

8 Item 52 in the Dupuy list published by Omont (see n. 10) is Suidas Rhodi a Guarino emptum, sed ita vetustate confectum ut multis in locis legi non possit. This codex seems to have perished, but Cod. Laur. 51, 1, written at Mantua in 1422 by Petrus Creticus, may be an apograph: see Suidae Lexicon, ed. A. Adler (1938), v, 228, 262f.

9 Cod. Vat. Palat. gr. 116 bears the inscription Aristophaneos liber mei Guarini emptus Const, anno ab incarnatione domini MCCCCVI die p° martii. See Stevenson, H., Codices Manuscripti Palatini Graeci Bibliothecae Vaticanae (Rome, 1885), p. 55 Google Scholar, where Guarino's note is reported and the full content of the manuscript is given. It also contains Chrysoloras’ Erotemata.

10 ‘Les manuscrits grecs de Guarino de Vérone,’ Revue des Bibliothèques, 2 (1892), 78-81.

11 Guarino, , Epistolario III, 359 Google Scholar (Sabbadini's note on Epist. 735, 13). Sandys, , History of Classical Scholarship, II, 51 Google Scholar, wrongly gives Battista's birthdate as 1434.

12 La scuola e gli studi, p. 57.

13 ‘The Greek codices of Palla Strozzi and Guarino Veronese,’ Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 24, Nos. 3-4 (1961), 317-321.

14 La scuola e gli studi, p. 13: ‘Non dico die non portasse codici, ma non più di una cinquantina e tutti salvi, perche ne possediamo fortunatamente il catalogo.’

15 Apart from the codices he acquired in the East (nn. 8 and 9), we hear only of one containing Xenophon's Anabasis, Oeconomicus, and Hiero, which the Greek bishop Isidores sent him in the period 1410-14 (Guarino, Epist. 930A); a Herodotus sent to him in 1427 by Antonio Beccadelli (Guarino, Epist. 391, 22); and a codex of works by St. Basil the Great, received in 1438 (Guarino, Epist. 724).

16 Item 15 (Lucianus) is Wolfenbüttel cod. 2907 (86.7.Aug.fol.); item 23 (Eschinus orationes, ejusdem epistolae, Isocratis et aliorum epistolae, Dionisii Alicarn. de Lysia oratore) is Wolfenbüttel cod. 902 (806 Helmst.); items 31 (Xenophontis omnia) and 32 (Xenophontis alterum exemplar) are Wolfenbüttel codd. 2698 (71.19.Aug.fol.) and 3616 (56.22.Aug. 8vo) respectively.

17 Extant in a number of manuscripts, e.g., cod. Querinianus A vii. 1 at Brescia and cod. Naz. di Firenze, Conv. 1, 1, 31 (San Marco 478). In the latter, as E. Garin points out (Ritratti di umanisti [Florence, 1967], p. 86, n. 23), it is incorrectly attributed to Leonardo Bruni.

18 Pellizzone had been summoned to Ferrara in October 1429 to treat Guarino's patron Giacomo Giglioli (Guarino, Epist. 551, 8-12). He stayed until 1434, meantime becoming one of the best friends of Guarino and his family.

19 Guarino, , Epistolario, III, 270–271.Google Scholar

20 From its incipit (see item 2 in Guarino's list) clearly the Timaeus Locrus, a forgery in Doric Greek dating from not later than the second century A.D. The latest edition is that of Marg, W., Timaeus Locrus: De natura mundi et animae (Leiden: Brill, 1972).Google Scholar

21 Guarino, , Epistolario, III, 271.Google Scholar

22 Bolgar, R. R., The Classical Heritage and Its Beneficiaries (Cambridge, Eng., 1954), p. 458 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, notes only twenty manuscripts of Plato in Italy before 1450. (See pp. 483-485 for his list of Platonica in Italy ca. 1400-92).

23 He cites Diogenes four times in letters between 1408 and 1430: Epist. 4, 101 (Diog. 1, 88); Epist. 17, 371 (Diog. viii, 10); Epist. 59, 89-90 (Diog. vi, 2); Epist. 208, 10 (Diog. vi, 2, 54).

24 Ambrogio Traversari used Guarino's codex for his Latin translation of Diogenes; see A. Traversarii Epistulae, ed. L. Mehus and P. Canneto (1759), vi, 12, 14, 23.

25 He could not, so far as we know, have copied the incipit of Timaeus Locrus from any existing translation, because the earliest Latin version seems to have been that of Gregorius Tiphernas (Marg, p. 48).

26 Leonardo Bruni had translated Epistulae in 1427; see Aretino, Leonardo Bruni, Humanistisch-Philosophische Schriften, ed. Baron, H. (Leipzig-Berlin, 1928), p. 174.Google Scholar

27 Epist. 41, 24-26: Ipsum Iovem imitans, qui, ut auctor est Plato, longe maius tenuia Lacedaemoniorum sacrificia quam reliquorum Graecorum sumptuosissima suscipiebat. Cf. Ale. sec. 149b:

28 Epist. 149, 35-36: Veritas … bonorum omnium deis ac mortalibus principium, ut inquit Plato. Cf. Leges V, 730c:

29 Epist. 259, 58: Platonis quoque Symposium inducta non caret psaltria. Cf. Symp. 212C:

30 Epist. 407, 11: leonem tonderem. Cf. Respublica 1, 341c:

31 Letter published by Lobel, E., ‘A Greek letter of Guarino and other things,’ Bodleian Quarterly Record, 5 (1926), 43.Google Scholar

32 ‘Guarino Veronese e la cultura a Ferrara,’ in Ritratti di umanisti, pp. 69-103.

33 Ritratti di umanisti, p. 86.

34 Epist. 574, 26-36: Itaque cogitanti mihi quidnam hoc potissimum tempore, quo tantis immergor occupationibus scribendum aggrederer, aptissima Platonis persona visa est… . Eum idcirco delegi, quia cum de illo nonnulla disseruisses in eo suburbano Ferrariae proximo … tibi sum pollicitus me de hominis aetate responsurum… . Non contentus autem promissa tantum reddere, ut accumulatius hoc aes alienum tibi persolverem, eius viri genus, vitam ac nonnulla divinis ipsius studiis pertinentia coniunxi.

35 Epist. 576, 51; 595, 7; 626, 8; 654, 7.

36 Epist. 626.

37 Epist. 808, 16, where he connects with the muses, as huntresses after truth (cf. Cratylus 406a); Epist. 862, 10, instar platonicae illius (cf. Respublica x, 614)

38 There is an instructive postscript in Greek to Epist. 911, written in 1459 to his son Battista. Guarino hopes that Battista will find someone to teach him ‘logic or dialectic and philosophy.’ Since Guarino educated all his own sons, this was clearly an area in which he knew his instruction had been insufficient.

39 See Battista Guarini, De modo et ordine docendi et studendi, trans, in W. H. Woodward, Vittorino da Feltre and Other Humanist Educators (Cambridge, Eng., 1897; rpt. Teachers College, Columbia Univ., 1964), p. 172.