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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 July 2016
Any discussion of the intellectual life in fourteenth-century Italy is inevitably directed by the personality and achievement of Petrarch. Although we no longer believe that a whole new age begins with him, although we recognize considerable medieval elements in his work, we still regard him as the father of the strongest movement in the Renaissance–humanism. After his long years of succesful work, that was at once well publicized and well remunerated, there could be no inversion of the hour-glass. From him there proceeded the splendid parade of Boccaccio, Salutati, Guarino, and Bruni. There can be no quarrel with the general truth of this Petrarchan primacy, but, as in all historical abstractions, there are some unfortunate results. These are particularly prevalent in the decades before Petrarch. His shadow is over the whole period. We have difficulty in appreciating his predecessors as anything but precursors. If we resist the temptation to dismiss them all as unimportant, we are nonetheless constrained to deal with them as relative to a later Petrarch, as the very term prehumanism implies. The period is obscure enough without adding this element of ambiguity to it. Unable to jettison the term, we can still underline its inadequacy and establish the substantial nature of the movement, even without reference to Petrarch.
1 See Weiss, Roberto, The Dawn of Humanism in Italy (London 1947); on the Capitular Library of Verona, see my ‘Verona and the Classicist,’ Classical Bulletin 42 (1965) 1–4. The prize of the Capitular was its codex of Catullus, on which see Ullman, B. L., ‘Hieremias de Montagnone and his Citations from Catullus,’ Studies in the Italian Renaissance (Storia e letteratura 51; Rome 1955) 81–115 (originally published in Classical Philology 5 [1910] 66–82); Ullman cites the earlier article of Hale, W. G., ‘Benzo of Alexandria and Catullus,’ ibid. 56–65.Google Scholar
2 da Pastrengo, Guglielmo, Libellus de originibus rerum (Venice 1547) 16; with adaptations, Guglielmo quotes from Catullus, Carm. 1.5–7. For the bibliography on Benzo, see Costanza, Mario, Biographical and Bibliographical Dictionary of the Italian Humanists … (Boston 1962) I 519, V 250. For further aspects of Benzo's work, see my recent articles: ‘The Trojan War in the Chronicon of Benzo d'Alessandria,’ Classical Journal 61 (1966) 219–221; ‘Mythology in Benzo d'Alessandria,’ Classical World 60 (1967) 366–367.Google Scholar
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4 Rajna, P., ‘II teatro di Milano e i canti intorno ad Orlando ed Ulivieri,’ Archivio storico Lombardo 14 (1887) 20.Google Scholar
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6 Benzo, f. 113r: ‘Nam si ceteras in hoc opere conscribendo provincias hanc inmemoratiam obmitterem in qua patriam sum sortitus posset michi ascribi ingrati civis officium.’ This and subsequent references are to the leaves of the MS Ambros. B 24 inf., which I cite from microfilm made available by the Biblioteca Ambrosiana.Google Scholar
7 Rajna, , ‘II teatro di Milano’ 20.Google Scholar
8 See below, p. 255.Google Scholar
9 Benzo, f. 146r ; Berrigan, , Studies 155. (Where the passage cited from Benzo has been published in Studies, I refer, as here, to the pages of that article.) Google Scholar
10 Ibid., f. 147v; Studies 168–169.Google Scholar
11 Ibid., f. 146r; Studies 158.Google Scholar
12 Ibid., f. 146v; Studies 161.Google Scholar
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14 Benzo, f. 149v ; Studies 180.Google Scholar
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16 Ibid., f. 212v .Google Scholar
17 Ibid., f. 233r. Book XXI is a prose version of Statius' Thebaid; in this passage Benzo reveals his mode of operation. In the previous May he had done a preliminary rendition of the poem; in April of 1320 he had taken the task up again and had finished Book XXI on May 9th.Google Scholar
18 Ibid., f. 148r; Studies 171.Google Scholar
19 Biscaro, , ‘Benzo da Alessandria’ 8.Google Scholar
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24 Ferrai, , ‘Benzo d'Alessandria’ 106.Google Scholar
25 Savio, , ‘La Cronaca’ 14.Google Scholar
26 Possibly Can Grande's campaign of 1317; see Studies 179.Google Scholar
27 A misreading of this passage made Benzo into a Franciscan. See above at n. 5.Google Scholar
28 See above at n. 3.Google Scholar
29 See Studies 129 n. 7.Google Scholar
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39 His most important and abundant source was the Capitular Library of Verona, on which see above n. 1.Google Scholar
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41 Loc. cit. Google Scholar
42 Ibid., f. 141r; it is regrettable that no account is taken of this chapter on Rome in the four volumes of Valentini, R. - Zucchetti, G., Codice topografico della città di Roma (Rome 1940–1953).Google Scholar
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44 Ibid. f. 142v: ‘quamquam et vetustate et incursibus hostium et ab ipsis eciam civibus ac a summis pontificibus et imperatoribus multa sunt consumpta et pariter deformata.’ Google Scholar
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48 Loc. cit. The quotation from Ausonius is an adaptation of 11.1, a single-line characterization of the city: ‘Prima urbes inter, divum domus, aurea Roma.’ Google Scholar
49 Loc. cit. For this famous leonine hexameter, see Walther, Hans, Initia carminum ac versuum medii aevi posterioris latinorum … (Carmina medii aevi posterioris latina 1; Göttingen 1959) no. 16838.Google Scholar
50 Ibid., f. 139r: ‘Luca Tuscie lucida civitas dicta est secundum Hugucionem a loco quodam maris, qui Lucus dicitur, unde delati fuerunt quidam a quibus Lucenses originem habuerunt. Alii dicunt quia tempore nativitatis Christi vocabatur Auringa, sed quia prius pervenit ad fidem et primitus episcopum ab apostolica sede recepit et prima reluxit in fide, inde fuit Luca ab hominibus nuncupata.’ For the De origine civitatis , see Hartwig, O., Quellen und Forschungen zur ältesten Geschichte der Stadt Florenz I (Marburg 1875) 37–63.Google Scholar
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57 Inferno 26.1–3.Google Scholar
58 Purgatorio 6.136–138.Google Scholar
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