SOURCE: “Ancients and Moderns in the Renaissance: Rhetoric and History in Accolti's Dialogue on the Preeminence of Men of His Own Time,” in Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 43, No. 1, January-March 1982, pp. 3-32.

[In the essay that follows, Black analyzes Benedetto Accolti's Dialogue, one of the first long pieces about the quarrel between ancients and moderns. Placing this work within the history of the dispute, the critic considers the Dialogue “a forerunner of the development of the quarrel in the later Renaissance.”]

The comparison of ancients and moderns, so prominent a theme in western thought until the nineteenth century, was a child of epideixis or panegyric, the rhetoric of praise and blame.¹ As in the other branches of rhetoric, there were five stages in composing a pangyric: invention, disposition, diction, memory, and delivery. Of these invention, or thinking of what to say, was the most important,² and was based on a series of standard arguments or commonplaces called loci communes or topoi koinoi, intellectual themes suitable for development or modification according to the circumstances, which could be used on the most diverse occasions.³ One such topos was the contrast between ancients and moderns or between antiquity and modern times. A writer could censure contemporary individuals or institutions by declaring that they were inferior to their predecessors; on the other hand, he could praise them by showing that they were superior to their counterparts in the past.

In Antiquity, for example, Horace censured his contemporaries as impious, factious, and degenerate by contrasting them with the early Romans portrayed as paragons of gravity and severity;⁴ similarly, Vergil condemned the corruption of modern Rome by citing the simplicity of old Rome,⁵ as did Juvenal, who contrasted old Roman purity with contemporary gluttony, effeminacy, and Greek decadence.⁶ This commonplace continued to be found useful in the Middle Ages, for example, by Charlemagne, who, when he wished to point out the shortcomings of his court scholars, is said to have declared, “I wish I had twelve men with the wisdom of Jerome and Augustine.”⁷ Similarly, Alain of Lille (1114-1203?) wrote of the crudity of modern poetics in contrast to the learning of ancient poets,⁸ and a famous medieval example comes from Carmina Burana:

Once learning flourished, but alas!
'Tis now become a weariness.
Once it was good to understand,
But play has now the upper hand. …(9)

The idea of “il buon tempo antico,” the golden age of the Italian communes, was a version of this commonplace which became a favorite theme in the literature of the Italian city-states in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries:¹⁰ Dante referred to the age of his ancestor Cacciaguida to highlight the deficiencies of contemporary Florence,¹¹ whereas Filippo Villani, writing in the late fourteenth century, saw the time of Dante as a golden age in contrast to the contemporary world.¹² The idea of “il buon tempo antico” may have prepared the ground for Renaissance humanists, who often conjured up a golden age in the past filled with virtues lost to contemporaries. Such, for example, were Petrarch's many condemnations of his own age in contrast to Roman antiquity,¹³ Salutati's denunciation of his contemporaries as botchers who patch together the scraps of antiquity without inventing anything new themselves,¹⁴ Niccolò Niccoli's attacks on the modern age in contrast to classical antiquity in Bruni's Ad Petrum Paulum Histrum Dialogus,¹⁵ and Bruni's own reference to his contemporaries as dwarfs (homunculi) in comparison with the stature of the ancients.¹⁶ The commonplace continued to be useful in the later Renaissance, as was shown by Machiavelli, who censured his contemporaries by making a detailed comparison between them and ancient Romans.¹⁷ Similarly, Lazzaro Bonamico, one of the interlocutors in Speroni's Dialogo delle lingue, illustrated the deficiencies of contemporary Italian by declaring that compared to the Latin language, which he likened to wine, the vernacular was like the dregs,¹⁸ a view shared by Romolo Amaseo, who argued that Latin was superior to Italian because of its antiquity and universality.¹⁹ Later in the sixteenth century, Trajano Boccalini condemned the contemporary world in which there was no longer any love, even between father and son, contrasting it to a golden age in which money had not yet become man's only concern.²⁰ Marcantonio Zimara's view was that the contemporary world in contrast to antiquity had fewer great men because human nature had grown weaker,²¹ an opinion somewhat more extreme than Doni's view in the Marmi, where modern times were censured in comparison to antiquity because “whatever one writes had been said and whatever one imagines has been imagined.”²² This was repeated at the end of the seventeenth century by La Bruyère, who wrote, “All has been said, and it has been seven thousand years since there were men who thought,”²³ which shows that demonstrating the superiority of the ancients over the moderns remained an effective topos of epideictic rhetoric after the end of the Renaissance.

Just as important in classical, medieval, and Renaissance thought was the theme that moderns were superior or equal to ancients, a commonplace of panegyric for the present or recent past. Ovid praised the sophistication of contemporary Rome by contrast with the crude manners of early Rome,²⁴ and Statius said that Lucan was a greater poet than Ennius, Lucretius, and Vergil; this commonplace remained a favorite in late Antiquity, as is shown by many passages from authors such as Ausonius, Claudian, Sidonius Apollinaris, and Fortunatus.²⁵ It was found particularly useful by Cassiodorus, who said that some of his contemporaries possessed the morals of the ancients and who praised Boethius as being the equal or superior of ancient authors in logic and mathematics.²⁶ In the early Middle Ages, Bede said that modern poetry was comparable to Vergil's since both followed the same rules,²⁷ and at the Carolingian court academy Charlemagne was praised as the new David and Aachen as the new Athens,²⁸ while Walafrid Strabo, another Carolingian, declared that someone called Probus wrote better poetry than Vergil, Horace, and Ovid.²⁹ In the eleventh century, Pope Gregory VII praised the modern papacy by maintaining that the pope's jurisdiction was wider than the ancient Roman emperors',³⁰ and Wido of Amiens said that the battle of Hastings was the greatest since the time of Julius Caesar.³¹ In the twelfth century typical examples are Abbot Suger's claim that King Louis VII's triumphs were more distinguished than many in antiquity,³² John Cotton's statement that “moderns had more subtlety and wisdom in understanding all things,”³³ and Abelard's view that it was his task to reveal and correct the imperfections of Aristotle and Boethius.³⁴ In the thirteenth century, Aubry of Trois-Fontaines declared that “the ancients devoted themselves to many things which today are held in ridicule,”³⁵ and the Paduan historian Rolandino scorned the crude works of his father, who in his view had written in the “rude style of the ancients.”³⁶ The appeal of this commonplace did not wane in the early Renaissance: Petrarch said that his law professors at Bologna resembled ancient legislators and praised Cola di Rienzo for his similarity to the two Bruti;³⁷ Giannozzo Manetti said that Brunelleschi's dome rivalled the pyramids;³⁸ Poggio said that Alfonso of Aragon was a greater prince than Augustus, Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, or the Antonines;³⁹ and Flavio Biondo likened the papal domains to the ancient Roman Empire.⁴⁰ This theme remained in wide use in the later Renaissance, as is shown by authors such as Bembo, Speroni, Gelli, and Varchi, each of whom justified and defended the vernacular by arguing that as a language it was equal or superior to classical Latin.⁴¹ One of the most important versions of this theme in the Renaissance was praising the moderns by comparing them to the ancients in more general terms; indeed, the idea of the revival of the arts was a variation of this commonplace in which moderns were praised by showing that they had once more equalled or even surpassed the achievements of antiquity.⁴² Moderns were praised in these terms by such authors as Filippo Villani,⁴³ Palmieri,⁴⁴ Biondo,⁴⁵ Valla,⁴⁶ Alamanno Rinuccini,⁴⁷ Ficino,⁴⁸ Castiglione,⁴⁹ Reuchlin, Melanchthon and Le Roy,⁵⁰ and in the early seventeenth century by Lancillotti and Tassoni, both of whom wrote extensive works comparing ancients and moderns which were in fact encomia of modern times;⁵¹ Tassoni's Pensieri diversi, the last book of which contains his comparison of ancients and moderns, was translated into French and served as the model for Perrault's Parallel of the Ancients and Moderns,⁵² which too was a version of this traditional commonplace of epideictic rhetoric, as were other works in the well-known querelle des anciens et modernes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.⁵³

Among the numerous works using the commonplace of ancients and moderns from Antiquity until the eighteenth century, one of the most notable is the Dialogue on the preeminence of men of his own time by Benedetto Accolti, the Aretine lawyer and humanist who served as chancellor of Florence from 1458 until his death in 1464.⁵⁴ Both versions of the commonplace are represented in Accolti's dialogue, which takes the form of two long speeches, one made by an unidentified young man and the other by Accolti himself, who takes the side of the moderns, leaving his opponent to defend the ancients. They compare ancient and modern warfare, morals, statesmanship, cities, poetry, rhetoric, philosophy, law, and religion; although the young man offers a comprehensive defence of antiquity and condemnation of modern times, all his arguments are refuted by Accolti, who, by an even more extensive defence of moderns and censure of ancients, emerges victorious in the debate.

Accolti's dialogue is particularly interesting because it was the first long work in western literature expressly devoted to the quarrel of ancients and moderns.⁵⁵ Although it was a traditional topos of panegyric, the question of ancients and moderns had never been the subject of a full-scale work before Accolti's dialogue. Moreover, Accolti's dialogue contains a far more extensive and detailed treatment of the question than any previous work; in Bruni's Dialogus ad Petrum Paulum Histrum, for example, only one aspect of the question was discussed—the superiority of ancient or modern authors, whereas in a series of biographies such as Filippo Villani's Liber de civitatis Florentiae civibus, the theme of ancients and moderns was one among many used to praise the author's fellow citizens. Indeed, Accolti's dialogue is unique before the seventeenth century, for there is no subsequent work examining the question in such breadth and detail before the 1620 edition of Tassoni's Pensieri diversi.

In its genesis, Accolti's dialogue is surrounded by circumstances which account for its unusual scope. Accolti's dialogue was dedicated to Cosimo de'Medici,⁵⁶ who had also received the dedication of another work in which the question of ancient and moderns had a prominent place. Francesco di Mariotto Griffolini, the Greek scholar,⁵⁷ translated for Cosimo eighty-eight homilies on the Gospel of St. John by Chrysostom and in the dedicatory letter Griffolini argued that the moderns were equal or superior to the ancients in order to praise Cosimo himself as well as other leading figures of the fifteenth century.⁵⁸ Griffolini was a fellow citizen of Accolti's from Arezzo, but they were rivals for Cosimo's attention and there is evidence that Accolti wrote his dialogue in competition with Griffolini in order to demonstrate that he was the better rhetorician and humanist.⁵⁹ Indeed, their rivalry seems to have inspired Accolti to outdo Griffolini's version of the ancients and moderns, especially in the number of examples and arguments, and it was apparently Accolti's attempt to surpass Griffolini which led to the unprecedented scale upon which his dialogue was conceived. Accolti was not a Greek scholar and so could not compete with Griffolini as a translator of the Greek classics, but as Florentine chancellor he was a proficient Latinist and rhetorician.⁶⁰ Indeed, Accolti made no secret of his concern to display his skill in eloquence, admitting in the preface of the dialogue that he was eager to show how “copiously” and “ornately” he could write and that he would be encouraged to continue as a humanist if the dialogue were a success. Moreover, Accolti clearly hoped the dialogue would gain Cosimo's support for his literary endeavors in the future:

If in your view [he declared to Cosimo] I do not feel myself inadequate, I shall devote myself more boldly to scholarship and letters in the future, confident above all in the support of your name.⁶¹

In fact, there is internal evidence that Accolti's dialogue was written about the time that Griffolini's translation reached Florence, which was sometime between May and November 1462.⁶² A terminus post quem is provided by a reference in the past tense to Guarino Veronese, who died on December 4, 1460;⁶³ a terminus ante quem may be inferred from Accolti's mention of Cosimo de'Medici's “sons,” indicating that Giovanni, who died in November 1463, was still alive when Accolti was writing.⁶⁴ Indeed, Cosimo did not keep his copy of Griffolini's translation as a private possession but personally donated it to the “public library” in San Marco in Florence⁶⁵ where Accolti would have been able to gain easy access to it. Further evidence that Accolti composed the dialogue in response to Griffolini's preface to the translation of Chrysostom is the similarity in the encomia of Cosimo de'Medici, which occupy prominent places in both works. Both praise Cosimo for his essential role in making Francesco Sforza Duke of Milan; both celebrate his great wealth, his liberality, his charity, his civic and religious munificence, and his devotion to scholarship; both refer to him as the “first citizen” (princeps) of Florence and emphasize his role as one of the arbiters of Italian diplomacy.⁶⁶ Similarly, Accolti was particularly concerned to display his knowledge of early Christian history and Latin patristic literature in the dialogue, obviously in competition with Griffolini's knowledge of the Greek fathers; praise of the modern church also formed an important part of both texts.⁶⁷ Moreover, Accolti's praise of Cosimo as more god than man, which was almost unprecedented among encomia of Cosimo during his lifetime,⁶⁸ was probably an attempt to outdo Griffolini's panegyric in which Cosimo was compared to the most distinguished mortals of the Roman republic including Pompey, Cato, Lucullus, Crassus, and Cicero.⁶⁹ Similarly, the greater detail and broader scope of Accolti's dialogue would have demonstrated his superiority in eloquence since abundant use of arguments and examples (copia) was regarded in the Renaissance as a sign of rhetorical proficiency and literary excellence.⁷⁰ If it is correct that Accolti wrote his dialogue in response to Griffolini—and the evidence seems to point in that direction—then the dialogue can be dated sometime between May 1462 and November 1463.

Accolti intended his dialogue as a rhetorical work in which he would have the opportunity to demonstrate how copiously he could illustrate the theme of the ancients and moderns. But at the same time he wrote it as an historical essay, in which he could consider the relationship between two historical periods, antiquity and modern times, examining the changes since the fall of the Roman Empire. Accolti would have seen no contradiction between his intention of displaying his proficiency as a rhetorician and his desire to explore important historical questions in the dialogue; indeed, he regarded history and rhetoric as inseparable because it was eloquence which enabled the historian to perform his essential function of rescuing the deeds of great men from oblivion.⁷¹ Accolti's preoccupation with history is clear from the impressive and even profound passages in the dialogue analyzing the changes which had taken place since the fall of the Roman Empire; one example is his discussion of why histories similar to Livy's and Sallust's ceased to be composed after the fall of the Empire:

I think this happened because, with the Roman Empire in decline and then collapsing, the barbarians who entered Greece and Italy changed the entire pattern of life; and, because they were hostile to learning, learned men saw that there would be no reward forthcoming and so they preferred to be silent rather than record the deeds of their times for posterity. … Nor do I think there was any lack of learned or intelligent men then, for it is manifest that in those days every kind of literature was distinguished by men of accomplishment who, if they had applied their minds to history, would have been able to write with eloquence not inferior to that of previous writers. There was perhaps also another cause, namely, that learned men of the Christian faith wanted to devote their labor to the deeds of the saints and the defence of their religion rather than to this kind of history; and once the tradition of writing history had disappeared and men's intellects had been turned time and again elsewhere, history was rendered almost mute so that the memory of the most eminent men has been obliterated, from the end of barbarian rule up to the present day.⁷²

Another example is Accolti's critique of ancient historiography, where he argues that ancient historians were unreliable and exploited their literary skill to exaggerate the merits of their subjects, and that modern men appeared inferior to the ancients only because the moderns lacked competent historians to celebrate their deeds:

According to Sallust the deeds of the ancients were certainly great and magnificent; nevertheless, their writers had such genius that they made mediocre and often even trifling deeds seem great through the force of their eloquence. … Among the Greeks especially, innumerable fables are found in their books; the Latins too are not innocent of this offence. According to Livy … there was no limit on the falsehoods contained in history, authors including lies in their works according to their whims without regard for truth. … Not long ago many Christian princes gathered to recover the city of Jerusalem and Christ's sepulchre from the infidels—how great, how admirable, how similar to those of the ancients would their deeds seem if worthy authors had only celebrated them!⁷³

This passage shows that Accolti was contemplating a longer work of history while writing the dialogue, and, indeed, soon after completing that work he began a history of the first crusade, De bello a christianis contra barbaros gesto.⁷⁴ This work, itself finished shortly before his death in 1464, demonstrated his dedication to the study of history: it was not merely a translation of a medieval chronicle into humanist Latin, but a newly composed history based on three medieval sources, one of which was contemporary with the events narrated. Moreover, in line with his views on the importance of eloquence in history, Accolti went to great lengths to raise his work to the standards of classical historical writing.⁷⁵ Accolti's preoccupation with history impressed his fellow Florentine, Vespasiano da Bisticci, who wrote that he “had universal knowledge … of histories,” and that “he wanted to pursue history up to his own times, part of which he completed, having written the history of Godfrey of Bouillon's expedition to the Holy Land.”⁷⁶

It is interesting that Accolti used the rhetorical theme of ancients and moderns as a tool of historical analysis not only in his dialogue but in his history too. To assess the achievement of Godfrey of Bouillon at the end of De bello, Accolti compared him to Alexander the Great, who, he argued, was no more than Godfrey's equal. Accolti here developed the theme with an argument he had already used in the dialogue: Alexander appeared more famous than Godfrey only because no author “distinguished in eloquence and learning had celebrated his deeds,” whereas the Greeks, who were “extremely erudite, championed Alexander with praise based not only on truth but even on fiction, without regard for the limitations of history.”⁷⁷ Besides Accolti, other historians had used the contrast of ancients and moderns as a tool of historical analysis. A famous example is the opening of the Catiline Conspiracy, in which Sallust drew a comparison between early Rome and the Rome of Catiline's day, showing how Roman society had degenerated since the end of the Punic Wars.⁷⁸ Similarly, Carolingian historians and biographers such as Einhard and Walafrid Strabo observed that Louis the Pious's reign did not measure up to Charlemagne's, which they regarded as a golden age in contrast to their own times.⁷⁹ Thietmar of Merseburg (975-1018) used the terms antiqui and moderni in his discussion of the history of the Ottonian empire, contrasting the shortcomings of modern times, that is, his own age, with the golden age of the ancients, who for him were Emperor Otto I (d. 973) and his contemporaries.⁸⁰ The crusading historian William of Tyre described the disintegration of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem in the twelfth century, contrasting former times when friendship with Egyptian Moslems had brought prosperity to the kingdom with the present day when hostility with neighbors was leading the Latins to the brink of destruction.⁸¹ A similar use of ancients and moderns to present an interpretation of history was made by Giovanni Villani, who, writing in the early fourteenth century, showed how the Florence of his day, riddled with faction and dissent, had degenerated from the good old days of the 1250s, when there had been a true spirit of the common good.⁸² Indeed, Petrarch's analysis of the periods of ancient and modern history is perhaps the most famous example in the Renaissance of how the theme of ancients and moderns offered scope for historical reflection and analysis.⁸³

Accolti therefore did not conceive of history as distinct from rhetoric; on the contrary, rhetoric not only provided the historian with eloquence to immortalize the deeds of great men but also gave him the tools of historical interpretation. The influence of rhetoric on his dialogue, therefore, was not confined to form and style, but very much determined the content of his comparison of antiquity and modern times. For example, the critical judgment used by Accolti to evaluate differences between ancients and moderns often derived from his attempt to compose a panegyric. This can be seen clearly in his discussion of Dante and Petrarch which begins with a conventional comparison between them, as modern poets, with Vergil and Homer as the ancients: “I should think that there were two men namely Dante and Francesco Petrarch, neither of whom was inferior to Vergil or Homer in elegance, suavity, and abundance of wisdom.”⁸⁴ Comparing modern and ancient authors was a standard technique of panegyric, and Accolti here was working within a well-established tradition.⁸⁵ However, rhetoric could also help the humanists to develop a more critical approach. This could occur when they were praising individuals who, like Dante and Petrarch, had received frequent praise before. In the attempt to compose a better encomium, they formed at the same time a more critical judgment. Sometimes they endeavored to concede in advance arguments which might otherwise be held to refute their own—a rhetorical figure, known as hypophora or subiectio.⁸⁶ Thus, Salutati conceded that Petrarch's Latin style (facultas dicendi) was inferior to that of the ancients;⁸⁷ Bruni admitted that Dante's Latin was poor⁸⁸ and that Petrarch's was imperfect;⁸⁹ and Manetti said that their Latin was inferior not only to that of the ancients but to the Latin of many of his contemporaries.⁹⁰ Accolti too concedes that, although Dante's Eclogues and Petrarch's Africa are not entirely without merit, they are nevertheless not equal to many ancient works.⁹¹ A further refinement came by way of the observation that Dante and Petrarch were more versatile than the ancients. Thus Salutati, Bruni, Niccoli (in Bruni's dialogue), and Manetti argued that Petrarch was greater than Cicero or Vergil because he excelled in composing both poetry and prose whereas they were proficient in only one or the other genre.⁹² This, of course, was a veiled criticism and implied that Petrarch was, as a prose writer, inferior to Cicero and, as a poet, inferior to Vergil. Accolti himself varies this commonplace slightly when he praises Petrarch and Dante for writing in both Latin and Italian, thereby conceding by implication that their Latin was inferior to that of the ancients.⁹³

Certainly the use of commonplaces could lead to unoriginal historical arguments in a work such as Accolti's dialogue; nevertheless, in the Renaissance as well as in the Middle Ages and Antiquity, no stigma was attached to commonplaces, which formed the basis of the rhetorical method. They were essential ingredients of eloquence, and the more of them, the better. According to Quintilian they were the seats of argument (sedes argumentorum).⁹⁴ For the humanists a knowledge of commonplaces was a sign of erudition; originality was not always a virtue. Nevertheless, sometimes rhetoric could lead an author onto an unusual and even adventurous course. An orator, said Protagoras, can make the weaker cause seem the stronger,⁹⁵ and such power was attributed to rhetoric by later writers.⁹⁶ In his dialogue, Accolti apparently wished to show that he was capable of defending the indefensible, for he chose to concentrate on a number of weak causes. In this way rhetoric influenced Accolti's choice of topics in his historical comparison of antiquity and modern times, leading him to select subjects in which he could defend an unusual point of view; indeed, Accolti's adherence to the precepts of rhetoric may have stimulated originality in the dialogue.

In the Renaissance it was, of course, unusual to criticize ancient rhetoric, since it had been the admiration of Roman eloquence that had inspired early humanists such as Petrarch to launch their revival of classical learning; nevertheless, Accolti maintains that modern oratory and eloquence compare favorably with the ancient.⁹⁷ What is particularly interesting about this section of the dialogue is that, although he was defending an unusual position, Accolti constructed his argument entirely out of commonplaces; in this way he was able to demonstrate his skill as a rhetorician not only through knowledge of commonplaces but also by successfully defending a weak cause. He begins by stating that the ancients' proficiency was the result of fortunate circumstances. Here he uses an argument from Cicero: “honos alit artes,” or an art flourishes so long as it is held in esteem;⁹⁸ since in antiquity oratory was honored and in constant use, it is no wonder that it flourished. Hence the apology for modern times: since rhetoric is no longer put to practical use, modern orators cannot be expected to equal the ancients. He then goes on to point out the shortcomings of rhetoric in antiquity by showing that the Romans were inferior to the Greeks because orators were less prominent in political life in Rome than in Athens.⁹⁹ Here Accolti is using two commonplaces of ancient rhetoric: that the Greeks, especially the Athenians, excelled in rhetoric and were ruled by orators,¹⁰⁰ and that in learning the Romans were inferior to the Greeks.¹⁰¹ Accolti then goes on to say that in Rome rhetoric began to be practised only with Cato the Censor, who was frequently cited in Latin literature as an example of one of the first orators,¹⁰² and that few great Latin orators came after him, also a commonplace in antiquity.¹⁰³ Accolti next says that oratory at Rome ceased to flourish under the Empire, for, with all power in the hands of one man, the art of persuasion was neither needed nor valued.¹⁰⁴ Here Accolti makes a specific reference to the elder Seneca,¹⁰⁵ and there were many others who also said that rhetoric was in decline during and after the collapse of the republic.¹⁰⁶ Accolti's argument that the decline was due to political conditions certainly goes back to Antiquity—Cicero says that monarchy is inimical to orator,¹⁰⁷ which generally flourishes among free nations.¹⁰⁸ But the point that the cultural decline of Rome was the result of the rise of the principate played an important role in humanist literature too: it was, for example, Leonardo Bruni's argument for condemning the Empire in his Florentine history.¹⁰⁹ Accolti concludes this section of the dialogue with an encomium of modern rhetoric by pointing to the eloquence of many of his contemporaries.¹¹⁰ The revival of letters was one of the fundamental aspirations of the Renaissance, other humanists like Accolti finding it a useful way to praise their contemporaries.¹¹¹

Another unpromising cause which Accolti chose to defend in the dialogue was contemporary military practice, and in particular, the mercenary system. Most authorities in Antiquity and the Middle Ages had said that a citizen militia was superior to a mercenary army,¹¹² and for most humanists contemporary military institutions had become a subject of ridicule.¹¹³ Nevertheless, there were occasions on which it was appropriate for humanists to praise contemporary practice: Stefano Porcari had once had the task of praising the Florentine Signoria for its military policy,¹¹⁴ while Giannozzo Manetti on one occasion had had to deliver an oration after he had handed over a commission to a condottiere.¹¹⁵ Accolti's arguments were much the same as those used by other humanists faced with the same task. Different customs, he said, might be equally praiseworthy since the same practice was not suited to all times and places. All pursuits admitted of different types of excellence, not least the art of war; indeed, the ancients themselves used different forms of military organization.¹¹⁶ Accolti took this argument from Cicero's De oratore, where it had been applied to sense perception, painting, sculpture, poetry, and oratory.¹¹⁷ It was used by other humanists in defence of mercenaries and is found in Manetti's speech, in Campano's life of Braccio, and in Crivelli's life of Muzio Attendolo.¹¹⁸ Accolti also claims that moderns excel in the subtler military arts of trickery and deceit, a claim based on a statement attributed to Hannibal by Livy that the Romans were unacquainted with the fine points of warfare;¹¹⁹ like Accolti, Campano regarded his contemporaries' ability to deceive the enemy as a reason for their military superiority over the ancients.¹²⁰ Accolti, moveover, cited the support of ancient authority to demonstrate that ancient armies lacked discipline.¹²¹ Campano made the same point,¹²² and like Accolti¹²³ praised contemporary discipline by way of contrast.¹²⁴ Finally, Accolti in common with other humanists argued that contemporaries because of the invention of the cannon were superior to the ancients in siege warfare,¹²⁵ and that modern cavalry was superior to ancient, especially because of advances in armor.¹²⁶

Scholastic philosophy, usually held by the humanists in high disfavor,¹²⁷ was another weak cause that Accolti chose to defend in the dialogue. He points out that philosophia means sapientiae studium which requires sound arguments, not ornate language. He finds many modern philosophers to praise, while maintaining that in ancient Rome philosophers were for a long time unheard of, and later were accepted only with hostility.¹²⁸ Significantly, Accolti fails to mention Cicero among the few Roman philosophers, in contrast to other humanists such as Bruni, who assigned him the highest rank among philosophers.¹²⁹ Bruni and other humanists in fact condemned the scholastics for their bad style and maintained that philosophy was inseparable from eloquence.¹³⁰ For the source of Accolti's arguments about the merits of scholastic philosophy, one has to consider the influence of Johannes Argyropulos, who began lecturing in Florence in 1457. From the beginning Argyropulos criticized humanists such as Bruni for their ignorance of philosophy, for their insistence that philosophy and eloquence were necessarily linked, and for their disdain of speculative philosophy. Some of Argyropulos's pupils, such as Alamanno Rinuccini, gained from him a respect for the scholastics,¹³¹ which resembles Accolti's views in the dialogue; since the dialogue appears to have been written between 1462 and 1463, the passage on philosophy may show the influence of Argyropulos's early lectures. There is certainly evidence that Accolti was part of Argyropulos's circle in Florence. In the 1450s and 1460s, Accolti's closest friend in Florence was Otto Niccolini, a lawyer and prominent Florentine statesman. The two worked together in the Studio Fiorentino¹³² and on private cases,¹³³ and they came to share intellectual interests. Together with Piero de'Pazzi, they may well have had learned discussions with Argyropulos on such subjects as the relative merits of law and philosophy.¹³⁴ Also in Florence at that time was Marsilio Ficino, who as early as 1454 was expressing ideas about philosophy and scholasticism similar to those of Argyropulos.¹³⁵ Accolti, Niccolini, and Pazzi befriended Ficino and supported his early career and studies, encouraging his translation of Plato's Minos.¹³⁶

Another difficult cause which Accolti chose to defend in his dialogue was the modern church, which was often compared unfavorably with the ancient or primitive church.¹³⁷ The idea of Christian antiquity, implying a division of religious history into an ancient and a modern period, goes back at least to the fifth century when it seems that the writings of the church fathers contain the first references to the primitive church and Christian antiquity. From its first appearances the idea of the early church implied that Christian antiquity was a model for the reform of the modern church and therefore was superior to the modern period in religious history. The primitive church continued to be cited as an ideal for reform throughout the early Middle Ages and provided a justification for the Hildebrandine reform after the middle of the eleventh century. In the writings of twelfth-century moralists such as St. Bernard, the contrast between the ancient and modern churches was drawn even more sharply than before, and in the thirteenth century, with the appearance of the mendicant orders and their call for apostolic poverty, which was supported by heterodox movements such as the Waldensians, Fraticelli, Beguines, and Beghards, the superiority of the ancient church was asserted all the more emphatically. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the superiority of the ancient church was an assumption so widely accepted that advocates of conciliarism as well as champions of papal supremacy supported their claims by citing the example of Christian antiquity; moreover, the major heresies of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, such as Lollardy and the Hussite movement, were based on a call to return to the primitive church.¹³⁸

In his panegyric of the modern church, therefore, Accolti could certainly claim to be defending the indefensible; moreover, Accolti was going against the mainstream of humanist thought, in which the superiority of Christian antiquity was a commonplace.¹³⁹ Petrarch preached apostolic poverty and condemned the Donation of Constantine as the source of corruption in the modern church;¹⁴⁰ another example is the chapter on poverty in Salutati's treatise, De seculo et religione,¹⁴¹ a widely-read work in the fifteenth century.¹⁴² Salutati argues that although Christians for the first three hundred years were poor, yet by virtue of their sanctity they spread the faith throughout the world; on the other hand, since the Donation of Constantine, although the church has become rich in temporal goods, it is spiritually impoverished, too weak to combat Saracens and schismatic Greeks, and even divided within itself.¹⁴³ Another famous instance is Lorenzo Valla's De Constantini donatione, in which Pope Sylvester I is cited as an example of Christian simplicity in contrast to Eugenius IV.¹⁴⁴ The theme of Christian antiquity as an ideal for the reform of the modern church has an important place in the thought of the Florentine humanist and Greek scholar, Ambrogio Traversari, who contrasted the almost universal sway of Christianity in the patristic age with shrinking Christendom in his own day; Traversari, general of the Camaldulensian order, wanted to restore his order to the sanctity of ancient cenobitic life, and in his active role at the Councils of Basel and Florence he upheld the general councils of the primitive church as models by which to judge modern councils.¹⁴⁵ A similar assumption that religion in antiquity was superior to modern Christianity was implicit in the comparisons made by the humanists between the bad style of the scholastics and the eloquence of the church fathers.¹⁴⁶ This view of Christian history was even taken by a member of Accolti's own family, his maternal uncle, Antonio di Rosello Roselli,¹⁴⁷ who wrote an anti-clerical and anti-papal poem, “Quelli or' veggiam,” in which he contrasts the purity of the ancient with the corruption of the modern church, distinguishing two periods in Christian history. He maintains that in the modern church appointments go to unworthy candidates to the neglect of better men, argues that the modern clergy misgovern Christendom and lead people to sin, and contrasts the leaders of the modern church, surrounded by luxury, with the ancient saints who suffered martyrdom and persecution.¹⁴⁸

Accolti's rival, Francesco Griffolini, had undertaken a brief defence of the modern church in his dedicatory letter to Cosimo by praising Pope Pius II, as well as his predecessors, Martin V and Nicholas V:

What shall I say of Martin V, who on his accession to the pontificate found the condition of the church weakened and disturbed by various misfortunes? He settled the long-standing schism and reunited the church into one body, guiding the endangered ship of Peter into the most tranquil harbour out of the greatest disorders and tempests with the skill of a considerable pilot. What was lacking in Nicholas V in comparison with the most distinguished prince? Even though his pontificate was brief, nevertheless in Italy he reestablished the peace of Augustus, and under his auspices and through his leadership the city of Rome and the Roman language were renewed. Even if unwelcome death had not suddenly removed him in the midst of his work, one could boast that he, no less than Augustus, transformed the city from brick to marble. What is equal to the piety of Pius II? Truly I say pious of a man who has refused no labour with his infirm and weak body in order to care for the church and the Christian religion entrusted to him.¹⁴⁹

Accolti may have felt that Griffolini had not taken full advantage of the opportunities for rhetorical display offered by a weak cause such as the modern church; certainly a number of arguments in Accolti's defence of modern Christianity show him at work mainly as a rhetorician. For example, Accolti censures ancient pagans who had the opportunity of witnessing many miracles and yet tenaciously clung to their false beliefs; on the other hand, he excuses modern clerics who sin on the grounds that they are only human and argues that in general wicked men would not become members of religious orders in which they would have little opportunity for indulging in sin.¹⁵⁰

Such arguments have no real historical dimension, but most of Accolti's defence was expressed in historical terms and sometimes based on historical research.¹⁵¹ Moreover, Accolti brought the critical judgment and wide perspective of an historian to his discussion of church history. He criticizes the allegations, for example, that modern clerics are corrupt, arguing that, however virtuous a man is, he will always find calumniators, and that this is especially true of clerics, whose lives are scrutinized with particular zeal. Denunciations of the modern church must be regarded with caution according to Accolti, for there are many sinners who criticize virtuous clerics in order to draw attention away from their own vices; indeed, not even Christ and the apostles escaped calumny. Moreover, if modern clerics had not been of a high standard, Accolti asks critically, how could the church have survived for so many centuries? In evaluating both the ancient and modern churches, Accolti uses the balanced judgment of an historian: in antiquity, there may have been saints, martyrs and scholars, but there were apostates, heretics, and illiterates as well; similarly, in modern times there may be wicked clerics but there are also many saints. Accolti as an historian was able to see the church as a particular historical institution whose character changes in the course of time: poverty may have been appropriate to the primitive church, but riches and luxury are needed by modern clergy in order to maintain the respect of the people; cardinals and popes as princes of the church need magnificence to make their authority effective. Accolti points out that it is not men but historical circumstances which have changed: if there were more martyrs in antiquity, that was because there was more persecution; given the opportunity, men in the modern church would die for their faith. The mendicant orders were founded to revive the customs of the early church, but Accolti with his sense of history realized that they were a novelty of the modern church, different from any religious order of antiquity: from St. Francis and St. Dominic “grew new religious orders the likes of which antiquity never saw.” Particularly impressive is Accolti's sense of the historical evolution of civilization under the influence of Christianity. Modern men, he argues, may not be faultless, but the Christian religion has restrained their vicious inclinations; men have gradually abandoned barbarous religious rituals, indiscriminate slaughter in warfare, and cruel pillaging of cities as the influence of Christianity has grown pervasive.¹⁵²

The prevailing opinion during the Middle Ages and particularly the later Middle Ages was that the ancient church was superior to modern Christianity; however, it is clear that the modern church had sometimes been defended during the Middle Ages too. Eleventh- and twelfth-century canonists, for example, often distinguished between ancient and modern ecclesiastical customs without implying that the practices of the primitive church were to be preferred; moreover, canonists occasionally implied that the modern church represented a completion or further development of Christian antiquity and therefore was superior to the primitive church.¹⁵³ Similarly, a later medieval theologian such as Gerson looked to Christian antiquity as an ideal for the reform of the modern church, but sometimes he pointed to instances when the modern church had fulfilled the potential of the early church,¹⁵⁴ which implied a sense of historical development similar to Accolti's. Medieval canonists and theologians also demonstrated an acute capacity for historical criticism, as for example in Rufinus's discussion of conflicting interpretations of Scripture in which he resolved an apparent disagreement between Augustine and Jerome on the reliability of texts of Scripture by refering to divergent manuscript traditions.¹⁵⁵ Moreover, a fundamental principle in the interpretation of canon law and scripture was that attention had always to be paid to circumstances of place, person, and time,¹⁵⁶ so that a theologian such as Gerson was by no means adopting an unprecedented method of argument when he maintained, like Accolti, that in the ancient church the success of Christianity was achieved through poverty and simplicity, whereas in the modern age of materialism it is more appropriate for the ecclesiastical hierarchy to win respect with magnificence and external splendor.¹⁵⁷

What distinguishes Accolti's justification of the modern church from that of a theologian such as Gerson is that his arguments are predominantly historical, whereas Gerson mixes history with logic, analogy, and prophecy by arguing, for example, that the whole is greater than the parts, by comparing the modern church to a queen brought in splendor to her king, and by citing the prophecy from Isaiah that “Kings shall be your foster fathers.”¹⁵⁸ Accolti's predominantly historical outlook derives from rhetoric, for a fundamental way of praising or blaming an individual was to place him in an historical context. This is actually praise by reference to external circumstances, a basic rhetorical commonplace.¹⁵⁹ The humanists often praised Dante and Petrarch by putting them in historical perspective: “they did very well considering when they lived” or “it must be remembered that they were the first to revive the study of letters.”¹⁶⁰ Thus Accolti praises the modern church by reference to external circumstances when he says that miracles are no longer necessary and criticizes the ancient church with the same topos by pointing out that in antiquity there were more martyrs because there was more persecution. Similarly, a commonplace of rhetoric was to praise an individual as the sole possessor of a certain accomplishment: hence Accolti's praise of the mendicant orders as a unique characteristic of the modern church. Medieval scriptural exegesis and canonical interpretation were deeply influenced by the classical rhetorical tradition, particularly after the twelfth century when more emphasis began to be placed on the literal or historical significance of the text;¹⁶¹ this influence of rhetoric is clear for example in Gerson's historical interpretation of the ancient and modern churches. What is significant is that medieval theologians and canonists did not offer such an exclusively historical analysis of the development of Christianity as did Accolti because they were not primarily rhetoricians and so included philosophical, analogical, and prophetic as well as rhetorical material. As a Renaissance humanist and professional rhetorician, on the other hand, Accolti developed predominantly historical arguments as a matter of course in his discussion of the ancient and modern churches.

Interestingly, it was another humanist who, like Accolti, developed in the fifteenth century an almost exclusively historical defence of the modern church. Lapo da Castiglionchio, in his Dialogus super excellentia curie Romane,¹⁶² insisted that, whereas poverty suited the early church, the modern church needs wealth. Christ had to be poor, Lapo argues, in order to convince the world of his own divinity because in that materialistic age a rich man would have gone unnoticed. Moreover, Christ had to confute extremely learned opponents, but since reason and argument were inadequate, he had to resort to miracles, which must have seemed all the more wonderful when invoked by a man of modest social background and position. However, not all periods in history are the same. The church, well established in Lapo's time, needed wealth, for he lived in an age that admired riches and despised poverty. How ridiculous it would be to see the pope riding a donkey!¹⁶³ Lapo's defence of the modern church does not have the wide range of Accolti's arguments, but it confirms that the germ of Accolti's historical interpretation of the modern church came from rhetoric.

Great significance has generally been attached to the development of the quarrel of the ancients and moderns; it has usually been assumed that in the history of thought a progression occurred in which the first stage was characterized by deference to antiquity, the second by self-confident equality with the ancients, leading to the idea of progress and a sense of ever growing superiority over the ancients. Sometimes the classicism of the Renaissance has been identified as the first stage and the development of modern science in the seventeenth century as the second;¹⁶⁴ recently this has been challenged by the view that Renaissance humanists developed a sense of equality with or superiority to the ancients which prepared the way for the emergence of the idea of progress in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.¹⁶⁵ Similarly, it has been shown recently that medieval authors had a concept of modern times equal or superior in merit to antiquity, and that some of their writings even contained reference to an idea of progress.¹⁶⁶

However, all these schemes skirt around the fact that the quarrel of the ancients and moderns was a rhetorical argument for praise and blame, and therefore throughout much of the history of western thought one can find supporters of the moderns and denigrators of the ancients, and vice-versa; it is difficult to detect progression or development because both sides of the argument were present from Antiquity until the end of the eighteenth century—in other words, for as long as rhetoric remained a fundamental technique of composition. By attaching particular historical significance to the support of one side or the other, one can overlook the role of rhetoric, which always made both sides of the argument available to an author; when, for example, Griffolini, Accolti, and Rinuccini chose to defend the moderns, they were not so much marching forward in the vanguard of an historical progression which would eventually lead to the overthrow of the authority of the ancients, as choosing the side of the argument which was appropriate to the task with which they were faced as rhetoricians.

Moreover, the attempt to see the history of the quarrel as the gradual triumph of modernity over classicism is bedevilled by the unnerving habit of the leading protagonists to argue on both sides of the question. The case of Leonardo Bruni is now famous,¹⁶⁷ and he is joined by Horace,¹⁶⁸ Einhard,¹⁶⁹ Otto of Freising,¹⁷⁰ Ermenrich,¹⁷¹ John of Salisbury,¹⁷² Petrarch,¹⁷³ Salutati,¹⁷⁴ Alberti,¹⁷⁵ and Machiavelli.¹⁷⁶ Indeed, Accolti himself, the author of the most comprehensive defence of modernity before the seventeenth century, composed a poem on friendship, in which he went beyond his paraphrase of Cicero's De amicitia to give his own view of how the moral standards of his century had declined since the days of his ancestors.¹⁷⁷ Such inconsistency, problematic though it may be for some modern scholars, is inherent in the traditions of rhetoric, in which an orator proved his virtuosity by arguing on both sides of a question.

The historical significance of the quarrel therefore is not the overthrow of the authority of antiquity resulting from the final triumph of the moderns over the ancients; rather, what changed in the long history of the quarrel was the definition of antiquity and modern times. Implicit in the quarrel was a concept of historical change, an idea of contrast between two historical periods, and it was what authors meant by these historical labels—antiquity and modern times—that developed in the course of the quarrel. The contrast between antiquitas and modernitas is one of the most important themes in medieval thought; what is interesting is that medieval authors had no conventional definitions for these concepts. Sometimes the dividing line between antiquity and modern times was placed at the birth of Christ, e.g., in John of Salisbury's distinction between antiquae and modernae historiae¹⁷⁸ or in the famous contrast in the writings of the scholastics between the old testament as fides antiquorum and the new as fides modernorum.¹⁷⁹ Another scheme placed the line of demarcation in late antiquity, contrasting church fathers with medieval philosophers and theologians, the decrees of ancient and modern church councils, and ancient authors, including the church fathers, with medieval writers.¹⁸⁰ According to yet another concept the new logic of the twelfth century (logica nova) was contrasted with the old logic of Boethius (ars vetus);¹⁸¹ along similar lines was the distinction between teachers of the trivium and quadrivium as magistri antiqui and moderni,¹⁸² and the famous contrast between realists and nominalists in the via antiqua and via moderna in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.¹⁸³ Another historical scheme, expressed in the concepts of translatio imperii and translatio studii, emphasized the continuity between antiquity and modern times, maintaining that the heritage of the ancients had been handed on to the moderns.¹⁸⁴ According to eschatological theories of history, the most famous of which derived from Joachim of Fiore, the crucial dividing line was not so much in late antiquity or even at the birth of Christ as in the present or near future.¹⁸⁵ One of the most pervasive concepts of antiquity and modern times in the Middle Ages derived from Antiquity itself. In this scheme, in E. R. Curtius's words, “from century to century, the line of demarcation shifts.”¹⁸⁶ As Horace wrote:

A writer who dropped off a hundred years ago, is he to be reckoned among the perfect and ancient, or among the worthless and modern? Let some limit banish disputes. “He is ancient,” you say, “and good, who completes a hundred years.” “What of one who passed away a month or a year short of that, in what class is he to be reckoned? The ancient poets, or those whom today and tomorrow must treat with scorn?” He surely will find a place of honour among the ancients, who is short by a brief month or even a year. I take what you allow, and like hairs in a horse's tail first one and then another I pluck and pull away little by little. …¹⁸⁷

One of the most famous medieval examples of this shifting antiquity comes from Walter Map, who said, “I call modern times the course of the last hundred years,”¹⁸⁸ and this practice of referring to the recent past as antiquity continued throughout the Middle Ages, for example, in the writings of Einhard, William of Malmsbury, Abbot Suger, Albertus Magnus, Aquinas, Roger Bacon and Rolandino of Padua.¹⁸⁹ This concept of an ever-expanding antiquity continues to be found in the fourteenth century: Dante called the contemporaries of Cacciaguida “antiqui” in contrast to “la cittadinanza, ch'è or mista,”¹⁹⁰ and Filippo Villani, contrasting the “saeculi praesentis ignominiam” with “antiquorum virtutes,” still meant by the “antiqui” the contemporaries of Dante “nostri Poetae … Concives multi.”¹⁹¹ Complexity characterized historical thought about antiquity and modern times in the Middle Ages; indeed, a number of authors, for example, John of Salisbury and Walter Map, used several different historical schemes in their writings.¹⁹²

Simplicity, on the other hand, was the hallmark of the Renaissance concept of antiquity and modern times; the ancients, once and for all, had become, in Accolti's words, “those who flourished once among the Greeks or Macedonians, or among the Carthaginians and Romans, under the republic or shortly afterwards under the Roman emperors.”¹⁹³ For Filippo Villani, writing in the medieval tradition, Dante was an “antiquus,”¹⁹⁴ but for Accolti, Thomas Aquinas was a man of his own age, a “neotericus” or modern in the words of Erasmus.¹⁹⁵ From the great variety of medieval schemes of antiquity and modern times, the humanists took one concept in which antiquity ended sometime between the fourth and sixth centuries A.D., and Accolti's dialogue is the clearest example of how the differing views of antiquity and modernity used during the Middle Ages to represent changes and developments in such fields as philosophy, literature, religion, military practice and political life were simplified by the Renaissance humanists into one comprehensive historical scheme.¹⁹⁶

Accolti's dialogue does not exemplify all the uses which the quarrel of the ancients and moderns had as a tool of historical interpretation during the Renaissance; Accolti makes no use of the idea of progress, which, although present in medieval authors such as Otto of Freising or Roger Bacon,¹⁹⁷ became one of the major themes of historical speculation during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, nor does Accolti discuss the fine arts, the concept of which grew out of developments in the quarrel during the late seventeenth century.¹⁹⁸ In one important respect, however, Accolti's dialogue is a forerunner of the development of the quarrel in the later Renaissance. A number of Accolti's contemporaries, such as Palmieri, Manetti, and Rinuccini, defended the achievements of the moderns in general terms, like Accolti, over a wide range of disciplines; only Accolti, however, included a discussion of the merits of the modern church in a general panegyric of the modern age. The idea of a religious revival accompanying the rebirth of learning became one of the fundamental ideas of religious reformers such as Erasmus, Melanchthon, Luther, Bèze, Foxe, and Calvin;¹⁹⁹ the view that the renewal of the church accompanied the renaissance of learning was one of the most important links between humanists and reformers during the sixteenth century.²⁰⁰ The idea that the general revival of culture during the Renaissance embraced religion made it possible for a figure to emerge such as Melanchthon, who was renowned equally as a humanist and reformer, and the first to include religion in a comprehensive historical scheme of antiquity and modern times was Benedetto Accolti.

Notes

1. The fundamental survey of rhetoric from Antiquity to the Renaissance is P. O. Kristeller, “Philosophy and Rhetoric From Antiquity to the Renaissance,” in his Renaissance Thought and its Sources, ed. M. Mooney (New York, 1979), 211-59, 312-27. On epideixis, cf. Rhetorica ad Herennium, III, 10-15; Cicero, De inventione, II, 177-78, De part. orator. 70-82, De oratore, II, 340-49; Quintilian, III, vii; T. C. Burgess, “Epideictic Literature,” Studies in Classical Philology, 3 (1902), 89-261; M. L. Clarke, Rhetoric at Rome (London, 1953), passim; E. R. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, tr. W. R. Trask (New York, 1953), 68-69, 154-82; M. Baxandall, Giotto and the Orators (Oxford, 1971), 45-46 and passim; J. W. O'Malley, Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome (Durham, North Carolina, 1979), 36 ff. Unless indicated otherwise, translations are mine—R. B.

2. Rhet. ad Her. II, i, 1.

3. On the importance of commonplaces, cf. Curtius, 70-71, 79 ff., and passim.

4. Ode III, 6.

5. Eighth Eclogue, vv. 53 ff.; Georgics, II, vv. 458-540.

6. Satires, II, VI, and XI.

7. Cf. E. Goessmann, Antiqui und Moderni im Mittelalter (Munich, 1974), 52.

8. Cf. M. -D. Chenu, Nature, Man, and Society in the Twelfth Century, ed. and tr. J. Taylor and L. Little (Chicago, 1968), 318-19.

9. Cf. Curtius, 94-95.

10. Cf. C. Davis, “Il buon tempo antico,” Florentine Studies, ed. N. Rubinstein (London, 1968), 45-69.

11. Paradiso, XVI, vv. 34 ff.

12. Liber de civitatis Florentiae famosis civibus, ed. G. C. Galletti (Florence, 1847), 5.

13. 6th and 7th Eclogues; Sine nom. 11 and 17; Fam. XIX, 9 and XXII, 14; Sen. VII, 1. For an example of the direct influence of Petrarch's views on the superiority of antiquity, cf. N. W. Gilbert, “A Letter of Giovanni Dondi dall'Orologio to Fra' Guglielmo Centueri: A Fourteenth-Century Episode in the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns,” Viator, 8 (1977), 302, 307-17, 330-38.

14. Ep. VI, 4, ed. F. Novati (Rome, 1891-1911), II, 145.

15. E. Garin (ed.) Prosatori latini del quattrocento (Milan, n.d.), 52-74.

16. Epistolae, ed. L. Mehus (Florence, 1741), I, 28. Bruni, Humanistisch-philosophische Schriften, ed. H. Baron (Leipzig, 1928), 124-25; P. Bracciolini, Epistolae, ed. T. Tonelli (Florence, 1832-61), II, 298-99.

17. Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio, esp. preface to Book II.

18. Cf. G. Margiotta, Le origini italiane de la querelle des anciens et des modernes (Rome, 1953), 102-06; A. Buck, Die “Querelle des anciens et des modernes” im italienischen Selbstverstaendnis der Renaissance und des Barocks (Wiesbaden, 1973), 15-16.

19. Margiotta, Le origini, 100.

20. Buck, Die “Querelle,” 17.

21. Ibid.

22. Margiotta, Le origini, 131.

23. Buck, Die “Querelle,” 16.

24. Ars amandi, III, 144 ff.

25. Curtius, 162-65; another version of the topos was to ridicule the notion that age confers value: cf. Horace, Ep. II, 1, 18 ff.; Curtius, 98, 165-66.

26. Cf. Goessmann, Antiqui und Moderni, 25-29; H. Silvestre, “‘Quanto iuniores, tanto perspicaciores,’ Antécédents à la Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes,” Recueil Commémoral Xe anniversaire de la Faculté de la Philosophie et Lettres de l'Université Lovanianum de Kinshasa (Louvain, 1967), 250.

27. Goessmann, Antiqui und Moderni, 30.

28. Ibid., 39.

29. Curtius, European Literature, 163.

30. Goessmann, Antiqui und Moderni, 46.

31. Curtius, European Literature, 164.

32. Goessmann, 38.

33. Silvestre, “Quanto iuniores,” 235. Cf. New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, IV, 380.

34. Goessmann, 67.

35. Silvestre, 243.

36. Goessmann, 39.

37. Sen. X, 2; Var. 48.

38. Cf. H. Baron, “The Querelle of the Ancients and the Moderns as a Problem for Renaissance Scholarship,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 20 (1959), 18.

39. Epistolae, II, 305-06.

40. Scritti inediti e rari di Biondo Flavio, ed. B. Nogara, in Studi e testi, 48 (1927), xci-ci.

41. Margiotta, Le origini, 101-07, 138.

42. Cf. H. Weisinger, “Renaissance Accounts of the Revival of Learning,” Studies in Philology, 45 (1948), 105-18.

43. Cf. Baxandall, Giotto, 70-72.

44. Della vita civile, ed. F. Battaglia (Bologna, 1944), 36 ff.

45. Weisinger, “Renaissance Accounts,” 110.

46. Ibid.

47. A. Rinuccini, In libros Philostrati De Vita Apollonii Tyanei … prefatio, ed. V. R. Giustiniani, Lettere ed orazioni (Florence, 1963), 104-13.

48. P. O. Kristeller, The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino (New York, 1943), 22-23.

49. Margiotta, Le origini, 122.

50. Weisinger, “Renaissance Accounts,” 111-12, 116-17.

51. Cf. Buck, Die “Querelle,” 18-23; Margiotta, 151-61.

52. Ibid., 160-61.

53. On the quarrel of the ancients and moderns, besides the works already cited, cf. A. Buck, “Aus der Vorgeschichte der ‘Querelle des anciens et des modernes’ in Mittelalter und Renaissance,” Die humanistische Tradition in der Romania (Bad Homburg v. d. H., 1968), 75-91; Antiqui und Moderni: Traditions-bewusstsein und Fortschrittsbewusstsein im spaeten Mittelalter, ed. A. Zimmermann, Miscellanea Mediaevalia, 9 (Berlin, 1974); W. Freund, Modernus und andere Zeitbegriffe des Mittelalters (Cologne, 1957); J. Spoerl, “Das Alte und das Neue im Mittelalter,” Historisches Jahrbuch, 50 (1930), 299-341, 498-524; M. -D. Chenu, “Antiqui, Moderni,” Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques, 17 (1928), 82-94; P. O. Kristeller, “The Modern System of the Arts,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 12 (1951), 496-527 and 13 (1952), 17-46, who gives further bibliography in note 158 on ancients and moderns in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; for more recent bibliography on the quarrel in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, cf. Goessmann, Antiqui und Moderni, 9-10, notes 1 and 2, and Buck, Die “Querelle,” 5-6, notes 3-9.

54. The presentation copy of the dialogue is Codex 54, 8 of the Biblioteca Laurenziana (cf. E. Piccolomini, Intorno alle condizioni ed alle vicende della Libreria Medicea Privata [Florence, 1875], 92; A. M. Bandini, Catalogus Codicum Latinorum Bibliothecae Mediceae Laurentianae [Florence, 1774-77], II, 640-41), henceforth cited as dialogue. Other manuscripts are: (a) Bibl. Laur. Ashburnham 924 (855), a copy of a manuscript dated 1626 and presented by Leonardo and Pietro Accolti to Cardinal Francesco Barberini; (b) Biblioteca Landau Finaly, 271. When the collection was sold this codex did not become part of the Biblioteca Nazionale in Florence and I have been unable to trace its location. It is described by F. Roediger, Catalogue des livres manuscrits et imprimés composant la bibliothèque de M. Horace de Landau (Florence, 1885-90), II, 137, who maintained it was the presentation copy to Cardinal Barberini, (c) Archivio di stato, Florence, Carte Strozziane, ser. iii, 102, fol. 252r, a passage of the dialogue praising a member of the Strozzi family, copied by Carlo Strozzi, from a manuscript deriving from the one dedicated to Barberini. The latter three manuscripts date the dialogue in 1440. The presentation copy is not dated, and there is no evidence in Leonardo Accolti's diary (Biblioteca Comunale, Arezzo, 34) that he owned the autograph or a manuscript deriving from it. Moreover, that date is contradicted by internal evidence (cf. notes 64 and 65 infra). The dialogue has most recently been published by G. Galletti, in F. Villani, Liber de civitatis Florentiae famosis civibus (Florence, 1847), 105-28, henceforth cited as Galletti. (In the presentation copy the work is called simply “Dialogus”: cf. fol. 1r.)

55. This point is confirmed by Buck, Die “Querelle,” 12.

56. Dialogue, fol. 1r; Galletti, 105.

57. The basic work on Griffolini is G. Mancini, Francesco Griffolini, cognominato Francesco Aretino (Florence, 1890), nozze Valentini-Faina, which is very rare; there is a review summarizing its contents in Archivio storico italiano, ser. v, 7 (1891), 194-97. Cf. also G. Mancini, “Nuovi documenti e notizie sulla vita e sugli scritti di Leon Battista Alberti,” ibid., ser. iv, 19 (1887), 328-34 and idem, “Giovanni Tortelli, cooperatore di Niccolò V nel fondare la Biblioteca Vaticana,” ibid., 78 (1920), 191-98, 216-17.

58. The presentation copy is Biblioteca Nazionale, Florence, J. 6. 7, henceforth cited as Griffolini (cf. fol. 1v: Iste liber est conventus sancti Marci de florentia ordinis predicatorum quem donavit dicto conventui vir clar. Cosmas Iohannis de medicis civis nobilis florentinus. There are also numerous autograph corrections by Griffolini in the text: cf. for example fol. 130r, 156r, 188v, 215r-v, etc. For Griffolini's autograph hand, cf. Archivio di stato, Florence, Mediceo avanti del principato, XIV, 47 and CXXXVII, 115). Cf. Mancini, Francesco Griffolini, 27-34.

59. The long-standing enmity between Accolti and Griffolini, hitherto unknown (cf. the erroneous interpretation of Mancini, ibid., 36), cannot be discussed here; lack of space also prevents a discussion of the circumstances leading to the composition of Accolti's dialogue in response to Griffolini's translation of Chrysostom. I shall publish this material in my forthcoming biography of Benedetto Accolti; I also hope to correct the work on Griffolini by Mancini, who did not understand Griffolini's relation with Accolti and his other Aretine compatriots, in a monograph on Griffolini which I am preparing.

60. On the traditions of rhetoric attached to the Florentine chancellorship, cf. esp. R. Witt, Coluccio Salutati and his Public Letters (Geneva, 1976), 23-41.

61. Dialogue, fol. 2v: Nec vereor abs te praesumptionis argui, quasi rem aggressus, quam non omnino ample, nec ornate satis explicare potuerim, in hoc scribendi genere minime versatus … pro tua sapientia opinabere, me non ut magistrum sed ut non ignarum discipulum … quod si tuo iudicio non ineptum me esse sensero, audacius posthac disciplinis et litteris incumbam, tuo nomine atque auxilio inprimis fretus. Cf. Galetti, 105.

62. For the date, cf. Mancini, Francesco Griffolini, 33-34.

63. Dialogue, fol. 41r (Galletti, 122); cf. R. Sabbadini, “Guarino Veronese,” Enciclopedia italiana (Milan, 1933), XI, 27.

64. Dialogue, fol. 2v, 35v; Galletti, 105, 119.

65. Cf. note 58 supra and B. L. Ullman and P. A. Stadter, The Public Library of Renaissance Florence (Padua, 1972), 141.

66. Dialogue, fol. 32r-36r (Galletti, 118-19); Griffolini, fol. 2v.

67. Dialogue, fol. 45v-55r (Galletti, 123-27); Griffolini, fol. 2r-2v.

68. Cf. A. M. Brown, “The Humanist Portrait of Cosimo de' Medici,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 24 (1961), 194.

69. Griffolini, fol. 2v.

70. On copia, cf. E. A. Palmer, George Puttenham and Henry Peacham copia and decorum in sixteenth century literature, unpublished M. Phil. thesis, University of London, 1969. Cf. Cicero, Orator, 97; Qunitilian, VIII, iii, 86-87, X, i, 61, X, v, 9.

71. Cf. R. D. Black, “Benedetto Accolti and the beginnings of humanist historiography,” English Historical Review, 96 (1981), 36-38, 55-57, for the views of Accolti and other early humanists on the connection of rhetoric and history.

72. Dialogue, fol. 16v-17v: idcirco accidisse reor, quoniam nutante iam Romano imperio et in occasum vergente, barbari, Graeciam et Italiam ingressi, omnem vivendi normam mutaverunt, et cum essent litteris infensi, atque ideo illarum periti nullum propositum premium viderent, tacere quam monimentis res sui temporis gestas tradere maluerunt … Neque opinor ego tum defuisse ingenia doctissimorum hominum, quoniam liquet per ea tempora multos fuisse claros et in omni literarum genere peritos viros qui, si animum ad hystoriam applicuissent, forsitan non minore quam priores quidam eloquio valuissent scribere. Illa etiam forte suberat causa, quod Christianae religionis homines doctissimi magis in sanctorum rebus gestis et defensione fidei quam in huiusmodi hystoriis laborare voluerunt, et, cum ea scribendi facultas iam obsolevisset, alio iam semel conversis animis, etiam post exactum barbarorum dominatum usque ad haec tempora hystoria pene muta facta est et praestantissimorum hominum memoria obliterata. Cf. Galletti, 111.

73. Dialogue, fol. 16r-v: iuxta Salustii sententiam, res nempe antiquorum gestas satis amplas ac magnificas fuisse, verum ea vis ingenii apud earundem scriptores fuit ut mediocres res plerumque etiam parvas pro maximis sua eloquentia fecerint videri … apud Grecos maxime innumerabiles fabulae in eorum libris reperiuntur; Latini quoque nec talis culpae insontes extiterunt. Apud Livium … sane relatum est … nullum in historia mentiendi modum fuisse; id est, auctores pro libito sua litteris mendacia tradidisse non veritati studentes. Ibid., fol. 18r: Convenere iam multi christianorum principes, ut Hierosolymam urbem et Christi sepulchrum ab infidelibus recuperarent … Horum res gestas, si qui auctores digni celebrassent, quam magnae, quam admirabiles, quam veteribus illis similes viderentur! Cf. Galletti, 111-12.

74. On Accolti's history, cf. R. D. Black, “La storia della Prima Crociata di Benedetto Accolti e la diplomazia fiorentina rispetto all'Oriente,” Archivio storico italiano, 131 (1973), 3-25; id. “Benedetto Accolti and the beginnings,” 36-58.

75. Ibid., 39-51.

76. Vespasiano, Vite, ed. A. Greco (Florence, 1970-76), I, 596-97.

77. Biblioteca Laurenziana, 54, 6, fol. 100v: Quod eius res gestas nemo doctrina et eloquio prestans illustravit; Greci autem, viri eruditissimi, non modo veris laudibus Alexandrum sed etiam fictis extulerunt, modum historie non servantes. Cf. Recueil des historiens des crosiades. Historiens occidentaux, V (Paris, 1895), 611.

78. Bellum Cat. v-xiii.

79. Einhard, Vita Karoli Magni, ed. G. H. Pertz, G. Waitz and O. Holder-Egger, in Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum (Hannover and Leipzig, 1911), XXVIII-XXIX, 2.

80. Goessmann, Antiqui und Moderni, 36-37.

81. C. H. Haskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1927), 270.

82. Davis, “Il buon tempo antico,” 45-69 passim.

83. E.g., Fam. VI, 2. Cf. T. E. Mommsen, “Petrarch's Conception of the ‘Dark Ages,’” Speculum, 17 (1942), 226-42, reprinted in his Medieval and Renaissance Studies (Ithaca, New York, 1959), 106-29.

84. Dialogue, fol. 41v: fuisse imprimis duos, Dantem videlicet et Franciscum Petrarcam, quorum neminem elegantia, suavitate et sententiarum copia Virgilio aut Homero postponendum arbitrarer; cf. Galletti, 122.

85. Cf. Pliny, Ep. VI, xxi; Curtius, European Literature, 163; H. Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance (Princeton, 1955), II, 539, 540 (note 38); Crisis, 1966 ed. 258, 536 (note 24); Galletti, 15, 78; Prosatori latini, ed. Garin, 68.

86. Rhet. ad Her. IV, xxiii, 33; Quintilian, IX, iii, 98.

87. Baron, Crisis, 1966 ed. 258.

88. Bruni, Vita di Dante, in Schriften, 61-62.

89. Bruni, Vita di Petrarca, ibid., 65.

90. Manetti, Vitae, in Galletti, 69.

91. Dialogue, fol. 42r; Galletti, 122.

92. Baron, Crisis, 1966 ed., 259; Prosatori latini, ed. Garin, 92-94; Bruni, Schriften, 67; Galletti, 84.

93. Dialogue, fol. 41v; Galletti, 122.

94. V, x, 20.

95. Plato, Phaedrus, 267 A.

96. Aristotle, Rhet. II, 24, 11; Diog. Laertius, IX, 53; Cicero, Brutus, 47.

97. Dialogue, fol. 38r-41r; Galletti, 120-22.

98. Disp. Tusc. I, 4, quoted by Accolti, Dialogue, fol. 38v (Galletti, 120); for this topos applied specifically to oratory, cf. Cicero, Brutus, 40, 51, 182.

99. Dialogue, fol. 38v; Galletti, 120-21.

100. Cicero, Brutus, 26-29, 44 and De oratore, I, 13; Quintilian X, i. 76-80; Cicero, Opt. Gen. Or., 7-13.

101. Cf. Disp. Tusc. I, 1-6, II, 1-9, IV, 1-7. Cf. also Horace, Ep. II, 1, 90-117.

102. Cicero, Brutus, 61; Quintilian, III, i, 19; Cicero, De oratore, I, 171 and III, 135 and Disp. Tusc. I, 5.

103. Cicero, Brutus, 137-38, 182, 333; De oratore, I, 6-18.

104. Dialogue, fol. 39v-40r; Galletti, 121.

105. Dialogue, fol. 40r; Galletti, 121. Cf. Controversiae, Praef. 7.

106. Petronius, Satyricon, 1-4; Seneca, Ep. 114; Pliny, Ep. II, 14; Quintilian, II, x, 3-5; and V, xii, 17-23; Cicero, Brutus, 6-9, 22-23 and Disp. Tusc. II, 5. Cf. Clarke, Rhetoric at Rome, 100-08; H. Caplan, “The Decay of Eloquence at Rome in the First Century,” Studies in Speech and Drama in Honour of Alexander M. Drummond (Ithaca, New York, 1944), 295-325 (reprinted in H. Caplan, Of Eloquence: Studies in Ancient and Medieval Rhetoric, ed. A. King and H. North [Ithaca and London, 1970], 160-95); E. Norden, Die antike Kunstprosa (Leipzig, 1898), I, 245-48; R. Syme, Tacitus (Oxford, 1958), I, 100-11; C. D. N. Costa, “The Dialogus,” in Tacitus, ed. T. A. Dorey (London, 1969), 19-34.

107. Brutus, 45.

108. De oratore, I, 30. Cf. also Brutus, 6-9, 22-23, 46. It is unnecessary to assume that Accolti knew Tacitus's Dialogus, which became known in Italy only in 1455 (cf. R. Sabbadini, Le scoperte dei codici latini e greci ne' secoli XIV e XV [Florence, 1905-14], II, 254) and in which the same argument is found. Longinus, 44, has the same argument, but it was probably not known until the later fifteenth century: cf. “Longinus” On the Sublime, ed. D. A. Russell (Oxford, 1964), xliii.

109. Cf. Bruni, Historiarum florentini populi libri XII, in Rerum italicarum scriptores, new series, XIX, iii, ed. E. Santini (Città di Castello, 1934), 14-15.

110. Dialogue, fol. 40v-41r; Galletti, 121-22.

111. Cf. Weisinger, “Renaissance Accounts,” 105-18; Palmieri, Della vita civile, 37.

112. C. C. Bayley, War and Society in Renaissance Florence (Toronto, 1961), 178-84.

113. Ibid., 184-231.

114. Stefano Porcari, “Orazioni” in Testi di lingua tratti da' codici della Biblioteca Vaticana, ed. G. Manzi (Rome, 1816), 23-27.

115. G. Manetti and Bernardo de' Medici, “Orazione … quando e' dierono … il bastone a Gismondo … Malatesta,” in Commentario della vita di G. Manetti, scritto da Vespasiano da Bisticci, ed. P. Fanfani, in Collezione di opere inedite o rare, II (Bologna, 1862), 209.

116. Dialogue, fol. 23r-24r; Galletti, 114.

117. III, 25 ff. Cf. Cicero, Brutus, 204 and 285.

118. Manetti and Medici, “Orazione,” 204; G. A. Campano, Braccii Perusini vita et gesta, ed. R. Valentini, in Rerum italicarum scriptores, new series, XIX, iv (Bologna, n.d.), 168; L. Crivelli, De vita et rebus gestis Sfortiae … Historia, in Rerum italicarum scriptores, XIX (Milan, 1731), 635, 639.

119. XXI, 54, 3, paraphrased by Accolti, Dialogue, fol. 25r (Galletti, 115).

120. Campano, 165-67.

121. He quotes Lucan, X, 407-08, dialogue, fol. 27v (Galletti, 116).

122. Campano, 166-68.

123. Dialogue, fol. 26v-27v (Galletti, 115-16).

124. Campano, 166-68.

125. Dialogue, fol. 25r (Galletti, 115); F. Biondo, Decades in De Roma triumphante, etc. (Basel, 1531), 294; Crivelli, 711; Campano, 167.

126. Dialogue, fol. 25r-25v (Galletti, 115); Crivelli, 635; Campano, 166, 168. Bayley, War and Society, 227-28, and Baron, Crisis (1966), 435-37, have assumed that Accolti's defence of mercenaries is connected with declining republicanism in Florence during the later fifteenth century. However, it was a commonplace to praise a citizen militia and criticize mercenaries, and such statements by humanists were not always taken literally as was shown by Roberto Valturio, who dedicated his De re militari, which advocated a militia, to the condottiere Sigismondo Malatesta. Nor did all humanists assume that military excellence and republican liberty went together: Biondo, one of the most outspoken critics of mercenaries, declared that the Empire expanded under many of the Emperors (Decades, 4). Baron's scheme that the defence of mercenaries signalled the decline of republicanism during the “age of Lorenzo de' Medici” has to make allowance for too many exceptions. Porcari was part of Niccoli's and Bruni's circle (cf. L. Pastor, Storia dei Papi [Rome, 1958-64], I, 568-69) and Manetti was, according to Baron, one of the principal continuators of civic humanism after Bruni, but the one in 1427 and the other in 1453 defended the mercenary system; Platina and Patrizi, who according to Baron were connected with Florence, attacked mercenaries as late as 1471 (Crisis, 1966 ed. 437-38). Even Bruni argued for and against mercenaries: in the early books of his Florentine history, Bruni consistently praised the militia, whereas in the later books he consistently praised mercenaries (cf. D. J. Wilcox, The Development of Florentine Humanist Historiography in the Fifteenth Century [Cambridge, Mass. 1969], 96-98). Bruni here was applying the rhetorical commonplace used by Cicero and then later by Accolti, Campano, Crivelli and Manetti that the same practice is not suited to all times and places. Bruni's point is that in the early period of Florentine history, the militia system was adequate, whereas later, when warfare became more complex, professional mercenaries were needed. Bruni's point of view did not change in response to altering conditions in Florence in the course of writing his history; rather, as a rhetorician writing history, he adapted his ideas to the requirements of his subject, using the rhetorical method of arguing for and against to analyze developments in Florentine history.

127. P. O. Kristeller, “Humanism and Scholasticism in the Italian Renaissance,” repr. with bibliographical additions in Renaissance Thought and its Sources, 85-105, 272-87.

128. Dialogue, fol. 42r-44v; Galletti, 122-23.

129. Prosatori latini, ed. Garin, 54.

130. Cf. J. E. Seigel, “The Teaching of Argyropulos and the Rhetoric of the First Humanists,” in Action and Conviction in Early Modern Europe. Essays in Memory of E. H. Harbison, ed. T. K. Rabb and J. E. Seigel (Princeton, 1969), 238-40.

131. Ibid., 240-56.

132. Statuti della Università e Studio Fiorentino, ed. A. Gherardi (Florence, 1881), 462.

133. Cf. Biblioteca Nazionale, Florence, Panciatichi, 139, fol. 138v, 139v; ibid., Magliabecchiano, XXIX, 73, fol. 220v, 222r.

134. Cf. Vespasiano, Vite, II, 203; A. Della Torre, Storia dell'Accademia Platonica di Firenze (Florence, 1902), 391-92.

135. P. O. Kristeller, Studies in Renaissance Thought and Letters (Rome, 1956).

136. Cf. P. O. Kristeller, “Marsilio Ficino as a beginning student of Plato,” Scriptorium, XX (1966), 45; Della Torre, Storia, 545 ff; R. Marcel, Marsile Ficin (Paris, 1958), 216-17, 258-63, 690-93, 731. J. Seigel, Rhetoric and Philosophy in Renaissance Humanism (Princeton, 1969), 233-36, 240-41, gives a sociological interpretation of Accolti's defence of scholasticism, maintaining that Accolti's higher social status made him more secure of his position in Florence than Bruni, whose insecurity led him to attack his scholastic rivals. However, this is an oversimplification of both Bruni's and Accolti's social position in Florence and Arezzo, a complex subject which Seigel clearly has not investigated sufficiently. By that argument, Accolti should have been the one to attack scholasticism, for when he wrote the dialogue he admitted that he had had little experience as a humanist.

137. Dialogue, fol. 45r-57v; Galletti, 123-28.

138. On the primitive church and Christian antiquity, cf. G. Olsen, “The idea of the ecclesia primitiva in the writings of the twelfth-century canonists,” Traditio, 25 (1969), 61-86; E. McDonnell, The Beguines and Beghards in Medieval Culture (New Brunswick, N.J., 1954), passim; and his “The Vita Apostolica: Diversity or Dissent?,” Church History, 24 (1955), 15-31; G. Miccoli, Chiesa Gregoriana: Ricerche sulla Riforma del secolo XI (Florence, 1966), 75-167 and 225-303; Chenu, Nature, Man, and Society, 203-41; H. V. White, “The Gregorian Ideal and St. Bernard of Clairvaux,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 21 (1960), 321-48; P. De Vooght, “Du De consideratione de saint Bernard au De potestate papae de Wyclif,” Irenikon, 25 (1953), 114-32,; E. Kennan, “The ‘De consideratione’ of St. Bernard of Clairvaux and the Papacy in the Mid-Twelfth Century,” Traditio, 23 (1967), 73-115; H. Kaminsky, A History of the Hussite Revolution (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967), passim; H. Kaminsky et al. (eds) Master Nicholas of Dresden, The Old Color and the New, in Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, new series, 55, part 1 (1965); G. Leff, “The making of the myth of a true church in the later Middle Ages,” The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1 (1971), 1-15; idem, “The Apostolic Ideal in Later Medieval Ecclesiology,” Journal of Theological Studies, new series, 18 (1967), 58-82; L. B. Pascoe, “Jean Gerson: The ‘Ecclesia Primitiva’ and Reform,” Traditio, 30 (1974), 379-409; P. Stockmeir, “Causa Reformationis und Alte Kirche,” Von Konstanz nach Trient, ed. R. Baeumer (Munich, 1972), 1-13; idem, “Die alte Kirche-Leitbild der Erneuerung,” Tuebinger theologische Quartelschrift, 146 (1966), 385-480; J. S. Preus, “Theological Legitimation for Innovation in the Middle Ages,” Viator, 3 (1972), 1-26; G. B. Ladner, “Gregory the Great and Gregory VII: A comparison of the Concepts of Renewal,” Viator, 4 (1973), 1-31; S. H. Hendrix, “In quest of the Vera Ecclesia,” Viator, 7 (1976), 347-78.

139. For a general account of ideas on church reform among humanisits, cf. E. Garin, “Desideri di riforma nell'oratoria del Quattrocento,” La cultura filosofica del Rinascimento italiano (Florence, 1961), 166-82.

140. Fam. VI, 1; VI, 3; XIV, 1. Sen. II, 2; XIII, 13.

141. Ed. B. L. Ullman (Florence, 1957).

142. Cf. ibid., vi-xvi for a list of many fifteenth-century manuscripts.

143. Ibid., 128-31.

144. Ed. W. Setz, Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Quellen zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters, 10 (Weimar, 1976), 175. Cf. H. Gray, “Valla's Encomium of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Humanist Conception of Christian Antiquity,” Essays in History and Literature presented … to Stanley Pargellis, ed. H. Bluhm (Chicago, 1965), 40-42.

145. Cf. C. Stinger, Humanism and the Church Fathers: Ambrogio Traversari (1386-1439) and Christian Antiquity in the Italian Renaissance (Albany, New York, 1977), 137-38, 167-210, 283-86, 292-93.

146. Cf. Gray, “Valla's Encomium,” 37 ff; L. Bruni, De studiis et literis liber, in Schriften, ed. Baron, 5-19.

147. On Roselli's life, cf. Biblioteca Comunale, Arezzo, 55, fol. 266r-67v; for examples of his work as an amateur humanist, cf. Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan, C 145 inf., fol. 141r-46r, 195r-99v, 291r.

148. Published in A. Lumini, Scritti letterari, ser. 1a (Arezzo, 1884), 159-63. On the possible attribution of the poem to Francesco Accolti, Benedetto's brother, cf. F. Flamini, La lirica toscana del Rinascimento (Pisa, 1891), 724-25. For another example of a humanist idealizing the primitive church in contrast to the modern church, cf. Vergerio's Pro redintegranda unienda que ecclesia ad Romanos Cardinales oratio tempore schismatis in concistorio habita, a. 1406, novembri, ed. C. A. Combi, Archivio storico per Trieste, l'Istria e il Trentino, 1 (1881-82), 360-74.

149. Griffolini, fol. 2r-v: Quid nam de Martino quinto dicam qui cum primum ad summum est pontificatum assumptus inbecillum et variis casibus agitatum ecclesiae statum et diuturnum schisma ita sedavit, ita in unum corpus redegit, ut ex maximis perturbationibus et procellis in tranquillissimum portum tanti gubernatoris peritia periclitantem petri naviculam appulerit? Quid ad clarissimum principem Nicolao Qunito defuit? Cuius tempora etsi brevissima quantulacumque, tamen in hac nostra inferiore Italiae Augusti paci contulerim. Cuius ductu et auspicio ut urbs Roma ita et romana lingua renovata est. Quem nisi tam repente invida mors e medio substulisset, non minus quam Augustus urbem e lateritia marmoream reliquisse gloriari potuisset. Quid pio secundo pietate par? Vere inquam pio qui ut commisse sibi ecclesiae et christianae relligioni consuleret invalido et imbecillo corpore nullum recusavit laborem.

150. Dialogus, fol. 48r-50v; Galletti, 124-25.

151. Cf. Dialogus, fol. 47v-48r; (Galletti, 124), for his research in Augustine, Jerome, Athanasius, Basil, Chrysostom and Eusebius on early Church history.

152. Dialogus, fol. 45v-55r; Galletti, 123-27.

153. Olsen, “The Idea of the Ecclesia Primitiva,” 70-80.

154. Pascoe, “Jean Gerson,” 380-409.

155. Olsen, “The Idea of the Ecclesia Primitiva,” 77.

156. Ibid., 73, note 34.

157. Pascoe, “Jean Gerson,” 408-09.

158. Ibid., 403-04, 407.

159. Cf. Quintilian, III, vii, 13-14.

160. For examples by Filippo Villani, Boccaccio, Vergeris, Poggio, and Bruni, cf. Baron, Crisis, 1966 ed. 260-68.

161. Cf. B. Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1952), esp. 83-195.

162. Ed. R. Scholz, Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken, 15 (1914), 116-53; H. Baron, “Franciscan Poverty and Civic Wealth,” Speculum, XIII (1938), 29-30.

163. Ed. R. Scholz, 148-50.

164. For example, R. F. Jones, Ancients and Moderns (St. Louis, 1936); J. B. Bury, The Idea of Progress (London, 1920).

165. Cf. Baron, “The Querelle”; Buck, Die “Querelle”; Margiotta, Le origini.

166. Cf. Goessmann, Antiqui und Moderni.

167. Cf. J. Seigel, “‘Civic Humanism’ or Ciceronian Rhetoric?,” Past and Present, 34 (1966), 3-48.

168. Ode, III, 6 and Ep. II, 1.

169. Cf. preface to Vita Karoli Magni, 1-2, where, on the one hand, he criticizes those who find fault with the present and, on the other, sees the age of Charlemagne as a golden age in contrast to developments after his death.

170. Cf. Goessmann, Antiqui und Moderni, 57-58.

171. Ibid., 84.

172. Curtius, European Literature, 163.

173. Cf. notes 13 and 37 supra.

174. Cf. Margiotta, Le origini, 65-72, and note 14 supra.

175. Cf. Margiotta, Le origini, 81-82.

176. Cf. preface to Book II of the Discorsi, where Machiavelli puts both sides of the argument.

177. Ed. E. Jacoboni, Studi di filologia italiana, 15 (1957), 286, 294; cf. De amicitia, IX, 32.

178. Goessmann, Antiqui und Moderni, 70. Cf. ibid., 51 (Augustine), 57 (Hugh of St. Victor), 78 (thirteenth-century scholastics), 100 (Alexander of Villedieu).

179. Ibid., 102-08, esp. 106-07.

180. Ibid., 23-24 (Gelasius), 27 (Cassiodorus), 30 (Bede), 36 (Hrabanus Maurus), 38 (Gregory VII), 40 (Vincent of Lerinum), 46 (Humbert), 94-95 (Conrad of Hirsau).

181. Ibid., 67, 73

182. Ibid., 64-65.

183. Ibid., 109-16.

184. Ibid., 49-50, 81-82, 101

185. Ibid., 56-62.

186. European Literature, 253.

187. Ep. II, 1, vv. 34-46, tr. H. R. Fairclough, (London, 1970).

188. Curtius, European Literature, 255.

189. Cf. Goessmann, 36, 38, 39, 78, 79, 95; Curtius, 251-55.

190. Paradiso, XVI, 49, 91.

191. Galletti, 5.

192. Cf. Goessmann, 70, 73, 79, 96.

193. Dialogus, fol. 3v (Galletti, 106): qui vel apud Graecos et Macedones quondam, vel apud Penos, Romanosque, vigente republica, vel parum postea sub Romanis Principibus floruerunt.

194. Galletti, 5. It is interesting that the letter on ancients and moderns, written by Filippo Villani's contemporary, Giovanni Dondi, still preserves a certain complexity of historical thought reminiscent of medieval writers. In religious history, Dondi places the dividing line at the birth of Christ (Gilbert, “Dondi,” 331-32), whereas in secular history he places it in late Antiquity (ibid., 332 ff.). Petrarch had placed the dividing line at the Donation of Constantine for both religious and secular history (cf. Fam. VI, 2), and his professional humanist successors such as Salutati (cf. De seculo et religione, 128-31) seem to have found it easier to follow his lead than amateur humanists such as Dondi or Filippo Villani, who, as a physician and a lawyer respectively, were on the fringes of the humanist movement.

195. Curtius, European Literature, 251.

196. For a discussion of the influence of this historical scheme established by the humanists, cf. W. Ferguson, The Renaissance in Historical Thought (Cambridge, Mass. 1948), 8 ff. It is interesting that Ulrich von Hutten, in Epistolae obscurorum virorum, parodied medieval usage of the terms “ancients” and “moderns” (cf. K. H. Gerschmann, “Antiqui—novi—moderni in den Epistolae obscurorum virorum,” Archiv fuer Begriffsgeschichte, 11-12 [1967-68]; Goessmann, Antiqui und Moderni, 143), showing how conscious the humanists were of the changes that they had made in the historical concepts implicit in the quarrel.

197. Cf. esp. Silvestre, “‘Quanto iuiores, tanto perspicaciores,’” for a collection of ancient and medieval texts implying an idea of progress.

198. Cf. Kristeller, “The Modern System of the Arts,” 525 ff.

199. Cf. Ferguson, The Renaissance in Historical Thought, 39-57.

200. The close connection between reformers and humanists has recently been stressed by many scholars; for a survey of current opinion, cf. L. Spitz, “Humanism in the Reformation,” Renaissance Studies in Honor of Hans Baron, ed. A. Molho and J. A. Tedeschi (Florence, 1971), 641-62, and his “The Course of German Humanism,” Itinerarium Italicum: The Profile of the Italian Renaissance in the Mirror of its European Transformations, dedicated to P. O. Kristeller, ed. H. A. Oberman with T. A. Brady, Jr. (Leyden, 1975), 371-436.

I am grateful to Professor P. O. Kristeller for his assistance in preparing this article. I should also like to acknowledge the financial support which I have received for this research from the University of Leeds.