Poggio Bracciolini

Italian scholar

• Born: February 11, 1380
• Birthplace: Terranuova, near Arezzo, Tuscany, Republic of Florence (now in Italy)
• Died: October 30, 1459
• Place of death: Florence (now in Italy)

Through his tireless efforts, Poggio discovered and copied manuscripts of classical Latin authors that had been lost for centuries and that, if not for him, might have remained lost forever.

Early Life

Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini, better known as Poggio (PAWD-joh), received his earliest education in Arezzo, but at the age of sixteen or seventeen moved to Florence to complete his studies and train for the profession of notary. He was taught Latin by John of Ravenna and may have been a student in Greek under Manuel Chrysoloras, although this is disputable because Poggio never gained mastery of Greek. Because he was from a poor family, Poggio copied manuscripts for the book trade to support himself in these endeavors in Florence.

Poggio’s knowledge of Latin caught the attention of Coluccio Salutati, a student of Petrarch and Florence’s first Humanist chancellor. It was probably at this time that Salutati nurtured in the young Poggio a love for the classics and the determination to search for lost manuscripts. Also at this time, Poggio met and became a close friend of Niccolò Niccoli, a wealthy Florentine with whom he shared a lifelong passion for classical artifacts and classical manuscripts. These two men, along with Leonardo Bruni, Ambrogio Traversari, and Leon Battista Alberti, carried on the intellectual movement begun by Petrarch in the late 1300’s and continued by Salutati in the early 1400’.

In 1403, Poggio entered the Papal Curia as a scriptor (scribe). He soon advanced to the post of apostolic secretary and, except for an unhappy interlude from 1418 to 1422, when he served Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester, in England, spent the next fifty years in service to five different popes.

During the early years of his career in the Curia, Poggio developed the Humanist style of writing. The letters of this hand, simpler and rounder in formation and easier to read than Gothic, directly imitated the Carolingian script of the eleventh century. The earliest example of Humanist script is in a manuscript of Cicero’s letters to Titus Pomponius Atticus in Poggio’s own hand and dated 1408.

Life’s Work

Poggio’s main interest throughout his lifetime was in the area of classical studies including archaeology, architecture, coins, epigraphy, and statues, as well as manuscripts. On entering Rome for the first time in 1403, Poggio was struck by the decay of the once-noble city. He was the first to use a truly scientific approach to the study of the city’s ruins. Comparing the sights with descriptions from Livy, Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, and Sextus Julius Frontinus, Poggio was able to catalog in part the remains of ancient Rome. He accurately assigned to the Republican era a bridge, an arch, a tomb, and a temple. Among the buildings dating to the Empire, he described several temples, two theaters (including the theater of Pompey the Great), the Colosseum, the Column of Trajan, and the mausoleums of the emperors Augustus and Hadrian. His treatise, De varietate fortunae (1431-1438; on the vicissitude of fortune), is the most important document for the physical state of Rome in the fifteenth century. Many artifacts that he discovered on his travels were used to decorate his villa outside Florence.

Poggio’s most significant contribution to classical scholarship came in the area of ancient manuscripts. It is reported that as early as 1407 Poggio was in the monastery of Monte Cassino looking for lost texts. The Council of Constance in 1414-1418, however, opened up the monastic libraries of the transalpine countries to Italian scholars. The council meetings, designed to establish one single pope in Rome, afforded the apostolic secretary much leisure time in which to explore the monasteries in search of ancient Latin manuscripts.

From 1415 to 1417, Poggio made his most important and most numerous discoveries in the monasteries of France, Germany, and Switzerland. In 1415, at Cluny, Poggio unearthed two previously unknown orations of Cicero. At Saint Gall the next year came his astounding discovery of the entire Institutio oratoria (c. 95 c.e.; On the Education of an Orator, 1856; better known as Institutio oratoria) by Quintilian, which had previously been known only from a mutilated copy found in Florence by Petrarch in 1350. In the same expedition, Poggio also found most of the first half of Gaius Valerius Flaccus’s Argonautica (c. 90 c.e.) and a ninth century manuscript of Asconius Pedianus’s commentaries on Cicero’s orations. On other trips in 1417, he unearthed Sextus Pompeius Festus’s De significatu verborum (second or third century c.e.), Lucretius’s De rerum natura (c. 60 b.c.e.; On the Nature of Things, 1682), Marcus Manilius’s Astronomica (c. 14-27 c.e.), Silius Italicus’s Punica (first century c.e.), Ammianus Marcellinus’s Res gestae (c. 378 c.e.), Apicius’s De re coquinaria (late fourth century c.e.; The Roman Cookery Book, 1817), and Statius’s Silvae (c. 91-95 c.e.). Also in 1417, Poggio found a manuscript of Cicero’s oration on behalf of Caecina, a Roman general.

After his reinstatement as secretary in the Papal Curia in 1423, Poggio brought to light manuscripts of Sextus Julius Frontinus’s De aquaeductibus (c. 97 c.e.) and Firmicus Maternus’s Matheseos libri (c. 354 c.e.). Other ancient authors rediscovered by Poggio included Columella, Vitruvius Pollio, Nonius Marcellus, Marcus Valerius Probus, and Eutyches. In Poggio’s mind, the end justified the means, and he was not above stealing to appropriate manuscripts, as he makes clear in his letters.

Poggio is not without his critics in the area of manuscripts. The seeker of lost texts was not especially careful with his discoveries after he had copied them, and many of his manuscripts disappeared shortly after they were found. Manilius’s Argonautica was copied, then the original was lost. Asconius Pedianus is only preserved in copies made from the manuscript found by Poggio. The codex of Gaius Valerius Flaccus disappeared shortly after it was copied, and Cicero’s work on the comedian Quintius Roscius is known only from an apograph of the recovered text. This carelessness has caused great anguish, even anger, among modern paleographers and textual critics who are more interested in the contents of ninth century texts than they are in Poggio’s fifteenth century copy.

Poggio’s own writings reveal a multitude of interests and range from moral dialogues to indecent satires on clergy and friars. Two of his more important moral essays are De avaritia (1428-1429; on greed) and De varietate fortunae. Facetiae (1438-1452; The Fables of Poge the Florentyn, 1484, 1879) paints humorous, often obscene, vignettes of priests, monks, and rival Humanists. Of most historical value are Poggio’s letters, published in three separate works. Addressed to 172 correspondents, the nearly six hundred epistles reveal not only Poggio’s own life but also the activities of a number of popes and various rulers throughout Europe, and especially in Italy.

In 1435, at the age of fifty-five, Poggio married the eighteen-year-old Vaggia Buondelmonti. He seems to have been quite happy with his wellborn bride, even though the marriage forced him to forsake his mistress, with whom he had had fourteen children. In 1453, he left the papal court to become chancellor of Florence and devoted the rest of his life to continuing Leonardo Bruni’s Historiarum, Florentini populi (c. 1415; history of the Florentine republic). Poggio died in 1459 and was buried in the Church of Santa Croce, where a statue by the artist Donatello commemorates him.

Significance

Poggio’s contribution to classical studies is threefold. His development of the Humanist script, which was refined by the succeeding generation of scribes, became the prototype for the Roman font when the art of printing was introduced into Italy from Germany. The Roman type, which was easier to read, gradually supplanted the Gothic. Because of Poggio’s calligraphic efforts, books became more legible. His collection of Latin inscriptions, which he compiled in 1429, evolved over centuries into the modern Corpus inscriptionum Latinarum , an ongoing reference work listing all known Latin inscriptions. This reference work provides Latin linguists, Roman historians, Latin philologists, and other scholars with crucial information about early, even pre-Republican, Rome.

Poggio’s most lasting achievements, however, lie in the area of manuscript recovery. Petrarch, initiating the intellectual movement called Humanism, had begun the efforts to find and copy ancient texts, and his work had been carried on by Giovanni Boccaccio. In the next generation, Salutati, who espoused the same philosophy of the importance of the classics, continued their work. In addition, he transmitted his beliefs to a number of his most gifted students, Poggio among them.

Poggio, however, eclipsed both predecessors and contemporaries in the amount and importance of his discoveries. In continuing activities begun by Petrarch, he was advancing the Humanist movement, but, more important, he preserved for posterity classical works that might have disappeared forever. Although succeeding centuries have produced far fewer revelations of ancient manuscripts, scholars continue to devote their lives to searching for lost texts. It is in part because of Poggio’s successes that they do so.

Bibliography

Bracciolini, Poggio. Two Renaissance Book Hunters: The Letters of Poggius Bracciolini to Nicolaus de Niccolis. Edited by Phyllis Walter Goodhart Gordon. 1974. Reprint. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991. This English translation of the Latin reveals Poggio’s excitement and problems at finding and copying old manuscripts. The introduction chronicles Poggio’s life. Includes copious notes and an extensive bibliography.

Fubini, Riccardo. Humanism and Secularization: From Petrarch to Valla. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2003. An examination of Poggio, including the influence received from Petrarch. Bibliography and index.

Kajanto, Iiro. Poggio Bracciolini and Classicism: A Study in Early Italian Humanism. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1987. Analysis and criticism of the life and works of Poggio, especially as they relate to Humanism. Bibliography.

Salemi, Joseph S., trans. “Selections from the Facetiae of Poggio Bracciolini.” Allegorica 8 (1983): 77-183. Published in a bilingual format, this study is a translation of forty of Poggio’s fables, as well as the introduction and conclusion. Provides insight into Poggio’s cynical view toward most of humanity. The footnotes are helpful. Illustrated.

Trinkhaus, Charles. The Scope of Renaissance Humanism. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1983. Contains a careful survey of Humanists, how they interacted, and what they contributed.