The Swerve: How the World Became Modern Part 11

207 "I have been relegated" . . . "plenty of men": Ibid., pp. 38, 46.

207 "I saw many monasteries" . . . "you had better": Ibid., pp. 46, 48.

208 "During my four years": Ibid., p. 74.

208 "I am hunting": Ibid., p. 65.

208 "I wanted the Lucretius" . . . "If you send me": Ibid., pp. 89, 92.

209 "Send me the Lucretius too": and the quotes that follow: Ibid., pp. 110, 154, 160.

209 Released from the confinement: The copies Niccoli made of a substantial number of ancient texts have survived and are in the San Marco collection to which he willed his library. These include, in addition to the Lucretius, works by Plautus, Cicero, Valerius Flaccus, Celsus, Aulus Gellius, Tertullian, Plutarch, and Chrysostom. Others-including the copy of Asconius Pedia.n.u.s mentioned by Poggio-are lost. See B. L. Ullman and Philip A. Stadter, The Public Library of Renaissance Florence. Niccol Niccoli, Cosimo de' Medici and the Library of San Marco (Padua: Antenore, 1972), p. 88.

211 "I fished out" . . . "when they arrive": Gordan, Two Renaissance Book Hunters, pp. 147, 16667.

212 a different form of cultural capital: As Lauro Martines notes, power and wealth had shifted in the thirteenth century from the old feudal n.o.bility to the merchant cla.s.s, to families like the Albizzi, Medici, Rucellai, and Strozzi. But, though not any longer very wealthy, the bride's father was reasonably prosperous. "In 1427 Vaggia's father, Gino, claimed one large house with a courtyard and shop, two cottages, four farms, various land parcels, and some livestock. His remaining a.s.sets included an outstanding credit of 858 florins and government bonds with a market value of 118 florins. Altogether his gross capital came to 2424 florins. The debts on this estate amounted to 500 florins, and rental and subsistence deductions reduced Gino's taxable capital to 336 florins. Consequently, Poggio's match with Vaggia was hardly contracted with an eye (on his part) to forming an alliance with a moneyed family. Nevertheless, she brought him a dowry whose value, 600 florins, conformed with the dowries customarily given by the political families of medium stature, or by the distinguished old families (somewhat down at heel) whose major social virtue was their blood"-Lauro Martines, The Social World of the Florentine Humanists, 13901460, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), pp. 21112.

214 "become the protector of men": William Shepherd, Life of Poggio Bracciolini (Liverpool: Longman et al., 1837), p. 394.

216 "I am a witness": Quoted in Charles Trinkaus, In Our Image and Likeness: Humanity and Divinity in Italian Humanist Thought, 2 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 1:268.

CHAPTER TEN: SWERVES.

220 "Listen women": Quoted in Alison Brown, The Return of Lucretius to Renaissance Florence (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), p. 49. Cf. Girolamo Savonarola, Prediche sopra Amos e Zacaria, no. 3 (February 19, 1496), ed. Paolo Ghiglieri (Rome: A. Belardetti, 1971), 1:7981. See also Peter G.o.dman, From Poliziano to Machiavelli: Florentine Humanism in the High Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 140, and Jill Kraye, "The Revival of h.e.l.lenistic Philosophies," in The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy, ed. James Hankins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), esp. pp. 1026.

221 Machiavelli's copy of Lucretius: On Machiavelli's Lucretius ma.n.u.script, see Brown, Return of Lucretius, pp. 6887, and Appendix, pp. 11322.

221 In his twenties, Ficino: See James Hankins, "Ficino's Theology and the Critique of Lucretius," forthcoming in the proceedings of the conference on Platonic Theology: Ancient, Medieval and Renaissance, held at the Villa I Tatti and the Ist.i.tuto n.a.z.ionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, Florence, April 2627, 2007.

222 a heretical adherence: On the controversy, see Salvatore I. Camporeale, "Poggio Bracciolini contro Lorenzo Valla. Le 'Orationes in L. Vallam,' " in Poggio Bracciolini, 13801980 (Florence: Sansoni, 1982), pp. 13761. On the whole problem of orthodoxy in Valla (and Ficino as well), see Christopher S. Celenza's illuminating The Lost Italian Renaissance: Humanists, Historians, and Latin's Legacy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), pp. 80114.

222 It is one thing to enjoy wine: "Nunc sane video, cur in quodam tuo opusculo, in quo Epicureorum causam quantam datur tutaris, vinum tantopere laudasti . . . Bacchum compotatoresque adeo profuse laudans, ut epicureolum quendam ebrietatis a.s.sertorem te esse profitearis . . . Quid contra virginitatem insurgis, quod numquam fecit Epicurus? Tu prost.i.tutas et prostibula laudas, quod ne gentiles quidem unquam fecerunt. Non verbis oris tui sacrilegi labes, sed igne est expurganda, quem spero te non evasurum." Cited in Don Cameron Allen, "The Rehabilitation of Epicurus and His Theory of Pleasure in the Early Renaissance," Studies in Philology 41 (1944), pp. 115.

222 the ma.n.u.script of Lucretius' poem: Valla directly quotes Lucretius, but only pa.s.sages he could have found in Lactantius and other Christian texts.

222 a spokesman for Epicureanism: Indeed that spokesman, not a fictional character but the contemporary poet Maffeo Vegio, makes it clear that even he is not really an Epicurean, but that he is willing to play the role of a defender of pleasure in order to refute Stoical arguments for virtue as the highest good that, in his view, represent a far more serious threat to Christian orthodoxy.

223 "When Antonio Raudense": Lorenzo Valla, De vero falsoque bono/On Pleasure, trans. A. Kent Hieatt and Maristella Lorch (New York: Abaris Books, 1977), p. 319. I will use the better known t.i.tle, De voluptate, throughout.

The text of Valla's in question actually deploys several different strategies in addition to dialogical disavowal to protect its author from the charge of Epicureanism. Valla has good grounds then for indignantly rejecting Poggio's charge of Epicureanism. The Epicurean arguments that take up the entire second book of De voluptate and much of the first are carefully framed by proper Christian doctrines, doctrines that the narrator and the other interlocutors unanimously declare have carried the day.

223 "It is plain": Valla, De voluptate, pp. 21921.

223 "Therefore": Ibid., p. 221.

224 "If you were to see": Ibid., p. 295.

224 an attempt to contain subversion: Cf. Greenblatt, "Invisible Bullets: Renaissance Authority and Its Subversion," in Glyph 8 (1981), pp. 4061.

225 The question itself implies: See Michele Marullo, Inni Naturali (Florence: Casa Editrice le Lettere, 1995); on Bruno and Epicureanism, see, among other works, Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983; orig. Die Legitimitat der Neuzeit, 1966).

225 "no more than a pine nut": "L'anima e sol . . . in un pan bianco caldo un pinocchiato"-Brown, Return of Lucretius, p. 11.

227 "there are no people more Epicurean": Erasmus, "The Epicurean," in The Colloquies of Erasmus, trans. Craig R. Thompson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), pp. 538, 542. On Erasmus's criticism of Marullo, see P. S. Allen, Opus Epistolarum des. Erasmi Roterodami, 12 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 190658), 2:187; 5:519, trans. in Collected Works of Erasmus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974), 3:225; 10:344. Contemporaries of Erasmus: A Biographical Register of the Renaissance and Reformation, ed. P. G. Bietenholz and Thomas B. Deutscher (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 2:39899.

229 "Since their life is so entirely given over": Cited in More, Utopia, ed. George M. Logan and Robert M. Adams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; rev. edn. 2002), p. 68.

229 to convey a sense that was extremely difficult: More plays a characteristically brilliant and self-conscious game in Utopia with the complex factors that led ancient texts to survive or perish, including the role of accident: "When about to go on the fourth voyage," Hythloday remarks, "I put on board, in place of wares to sell, a fairly large package of books, having made up my mind never to return rather than to come back soon. They received from me most of Plato's works, several of Aristotle's, as well as Theophrastus on plants, which I regret to say was mutilated in parts. During the voyage an ape found the book, left lying carelessly about, and in wanton sport tore out and destroyed several pages in various sections," p. 181.

231 his own unjust society: At the time I am writing this essay, in the United States one out of every nine African Americans aged twenty to thirty-five is incarcerated, while the United States has achieved the greatest disparity in wealth of any time in the past century.

234 "that today at noon": Ingrid D. Rowland, Giordano Bruno: Philosopher/Heretic (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008), pp. 1718, translating s.p.a.ccio de la Bestia Trionfante, 1, part 3, in Dialoghi Italiani, ed. Giovanni Gentile (Florence: Sansoni, 1958), pp. 63337.

236 "The fewer the better": Walter L. Wakefield, "Some Unorthodox Popular Ideas of the Thirteenth Century," in Medievalia et Humanistica, p. 28.

236 "When we were Jews": John Edwards, "Religious Faith and Doubt in Late Medieval Spain: Soria circa 14501500," in Past and Present 120 (1988), p. 8.

237 "The world is fine": Giordano Bruno, The Ash Wednesday Supper, ed. and trans. Edward A. Gosselin and Lawrence S. Lerner (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1977), p. 91.

237 "a delightful companion": Jacopo Corbinelli, the Florentine secretary to Queen Mother Catherine de Medicis, cited in Rowland, Giordano Bruno, p. 193.

238 "ordained by the G.o.ds": Ash Wednesday Supper, p. 87.

238 there were multiple worlds: De l'Infinito, Universo e Mondi, Dialogue Quinto, in Dialoghi Italiani, pp. 53233, citing De rerum natura, 2:106776.

239 Thomas Harriot: See J. W. Shirley, ed., Thomas Harriot: Renaissance Scientist (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974) and Shirley, Thomas Harriot: A Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983); J. Jacquot, "Thomas Harriot's Reputation for Impiety," Notes and Records of the Royal Society 9 (19512), pp. 16487.

239 "By the light of his senses": Ash Wednesday Supper, p. 90.

CHAPTER ELEVEN: AFTERLIVES.

242 were only rarely called to investigate: A famous exception was the inquisitorial investigation of Paolo Veronese for his 1573 depiction of the Last Supper, whose intense materiality-the swirling life, the food on the table, the dogs scratching and scrounging for sc.r.a.ps, and so forth-triggered accusations of irreverence and even heresy. Veronese avoided unpleasant consequences by renaming the work The Feast in the House of Levi.

243 whose own signed copy: Jonson wrote his name on the t.i.tle page and, tiny as the book is-only 11 by 6 centimeters-he made many marks and jottings in the margins, evidence of an attentive and engaged reading. He seems to have been particularly struck by the pa.s.sage in book 2 in which Lucretius denies that the G.o.ds have any interest in the behavior of mortals. At the foot of the page, he penned a translation of two of the lines: Far above grief & dangers, those blest powers, Rich in their active goods, need none of ours.

Cf. 2:64950: Nam privati dolori omni, privata periclis, ipsa suis pollens opibus, nil indiga nostri.

Lucy Hutchinson translates the lines as follows: The devine nature doth it selfe possesse Eternally in peacefull quiettnesse, Nor is concernd in mortall mens affairs, Wholly exempt from dangers, griefes, and cares, Rich in it selfe, of us no want it hath.

244 "I am not excessively fond": The Complete Essays of Montaigne, trans. Donald M. Frame (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957), pp. 846, 240.

246 "that imaginary kingship": Ibid., p. 318.

246 "Why shall a gosling": Ibid., p. 397.

246 "the quiver of pleasure": Ibid., p. 310.

247 s.e.x and death: The quotations that follow are from ibid., pp. 464, 634, and 664.

248 "I want death": Ibid., p. 62.

248 "Go out of this world": Ibid., p. 65.

249 Scholars quickly confirmed: M. A. Screech, Montaigne's Annotated Copy of Lucretius: A Transcription and Study of the Ma.n.u.script, Notes, and Pen-Marks (Geneva: Droz, 1998).

249 "Since the movements of the atoms": "Ut sunt diuersi atomorum motus non incredibile est sic conuenisse olim atomos aut conuenturas ut alius nascatur monta.n.u.s."-Ibid., p. 11. I have altered Screech's translation: "Since the movements of the atoms are so varied, it is not unbelievable that the atoms once came together, or will together again in the future, so that another Montaigne be born."

250 At a book sale in 1625: Trevor Dadson, "Las bibliotecas de la n.o.bleza: Dos inventarios y un librero, ano de 1625," in Aurora Egido and Jose Enrique Laplana, eds., Mecenazgo y Humanidades en tiempos de Lastanosa. Homenaje a la memoria de Domingo Yndurain (Zaragoza: Inst.i.tucion Fernando el Catolico, 2008), p. 270. I am grateful to Professor Dadson's research into Spanish library inventories for all of the glimpses of Lucretius in post-Tridentine Spain.

250 "Nothing comes from atoms": Pietro Redondi, Galileo Heretic, trans. Raymond Rosenthal (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987; orig. Italian edn. 1983), "Doc.u.ments," p. 340-"Exercitatio de formis substantialibus et de qualitatibus physicis, anonymous."

253 "Faith must take first place": Ibid., p. 132.

255 the convicted scientist: Redondi's core argument-that the attack on Galileo for heliocentrism served as a kind of cover for an underlying attack on his atomism-has been criticized by many historians of science. But there is no reason to think that the Church's motivation could only have been one or the other concern and not both.

256 the text used by Montaigne: "At Lucretius animorum immortalitatem oppugnat, deorum providentiam negat, religiones omneis tollit, summum bonum in voluptate ponit. Sed haec Epicuri, quem sequitur Lucretius, non Lucretii culpa est. Poema quidem ipsum propter sententias a religione nostra alienas, nihilominus poema est. tantumne? Immo vero poema venustum, poema praeclarum, poema omnibus ingenii luminibus distinctum, insignitum, atque ill.u.s.tratum. Hasce autem Epicuri rationes insanas, ac furiosas, ut & illas absurdas de atomorum concursione fortuita, de mundis innumerabilibus, & ceteras, neque difficile n.o.bis est refutare, neque vero necesse est: quippe c.u.m ab ipsa veritatis voce vel tacentibus omnibus facillime refellantur" (Paris, 1563) f. 3. I have used the translation of Ada Palmer, to whose unpublished essay, "Reading Atomism in the Renaissance," I am indebted.

257 "had they not by misfortune": Lucy Hutchinson's Translation of Lucretius: "De rerum natura," ed. Hugh de Quehen (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), p. 139.

258 "aspiring Muse": On the contrary, with a backward glance at John Evelyn, Hutchinson observed that a "masculine wit," presenting to the public only a single book of the difficult poem, "thought it worth printing his head in a laurel crown."

258 "one great means" . . . "ridiculous, impious": Lucy Hutchinson's Translation, pp. 2425.

258 "out of youthful": Ibid., p. 23.

259 "The little glory": Ibid., p. 26.

259 "reaped some profit": Ibid.

259 "I turned it": Ibid., p. 24.

261 "In nature nothing": Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, II.ii.

261 to retain a belief in G.o.d: The most powerful philosophical expression of this view is in the works of the French priest, astronomer, and mathematician Pierre Ga.s.sendi (15921655).

261 "That G.o.d in the Beginning": Isaac Newton, Opticks, Query 32 (London, 1718), cited in Monte Johnson and Catherine Wilson, "Lucretius and the History of Science," in The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius, pp. 14142.

263 "I [am] obliged": To William Short, October 31, 1819: "I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us." Cited in Charles A. Miller, Jefferson and Nature: An Interpretation (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), p. 24. John Quincy Adams, "Dinner with President Jefferson," from Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Comprising Portions of His Diary from 1795 to 1848, ed. Charles Francis Adams (Philadelphia, 1874): November 3, 1807: "Mr. Jefferson said that the Epicurean philosophy came nearest to the truth, in his opinion, of any ancient system of philosophy. He wished the work of Ga.s.sendi concerning it had been translated. It was the only accurate account of it extant. I mentioned Lucretius. He said that was only a part-only the natural philosophy. But the moral philosophy was only to be found in Ga.s.sendi."

263 "I am," Jefferson wrote: Miller, Jefferson and Nature, p. 24.

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