beginning to loom
as spectral
Part Five:
Roman anomalies associated with Francesco Petrarch
by
Damien F. Mackey
“Apollo was rumoured to have been an astrologer, the
devil, and the god of the Saracens!
Plato was considered to have been a doctor, Cicero a knight and a troubadour, Virgil a mage who blocked the
crater of the Vesuvius, etc”.
Could some of the following, at least, be true?
(I do not necessarily accept the dates given below):
…. How Petrarch created
the legend of the
glory of Italian Rome
out of nothing
….
In 1974 the world celebrated 600 years since the death of Francesco Petrarch
(1304-1374), the first prominent writer of the Middle Ages who, according to
Leonardo Bruni, “had been the first who… could understand and bring into light
the ancient elegance of the style that had been forlorn and forgotten before”
([927]).
The
actual persona of Petrarch is nowadays perceived as mysterious, vague and
largely unclear, and reality often becomes rather obfuscated. But we are
talking about the events of the XIV century here! The true dating of the texts
ascribed to Petrarch often remains thoroughly unclear.
Already
an eminent poet, Petrarch entered the second period of his life – the period of
wandering. In the alleged year of 1333 he travelled around France, Flanders and
Germany. “During his European travels, Petrarch became directly acquainted with
scientists, searching the libraries of various monasteries trying to find forgotten ancient manuscripts and studying the
monuments to the past glory of Rome”
([644], page 59). Nowadays it is assumed that Petrarch became one of the first
and most vehement advocates of the “ancient” authors who, as we are beginning
to understand, were either his contemporaries, or preceded him by 100-200 years
at the most.
Mackey’s
comment: Or, some of these were - as according to this present
series - fictitious, and based on real characters of the Hellenistic era.
The article
continues:
In 1337 he visited the Italian Rome for the first time ([644], page 59).What did he see there? Petrarch writes (if
these are indeed his real letters, and not the result of subsequent editing),“Rome
seemed even greater to me than I could have imagined – especially the greatness
of her ruins” ([644]).Rome in particular and XIV century Italy in general had
met Petrarch with an utter chaos of legends, from which the poet had selected the ones he
considered to fit his a priori opinion
of “the greatness of Italian Rome.” Apparently, Petrarch had been among those
who initiated the legend of “the great ancient Italian Rome” without any solid basis. A significant
amount of real mediaeval evidence of the correct history of Italy in the Middle
Ages was rejected as “erroneous.” It would be of the utmost interest to study
these “mediaeval anachronisms” considered preposterous nowadays, if only
briefly.
According
to mediaeval legends, “Anthenor’s sepulchre” was located in Padua ([644]). In
Milan, the statue of Hercules was worshipped. The inhabitants of Pisa claimed
their town to have been founded by Pelopsus. The Venetians claimed Venice to have been built of the stones of the destroyed Troy! Achilles was supposed to have ruled in Abruzza, Diomedes in Apulia,
Agamemnon in Sicily, Euandres in Piemont, Hercules in Calabria. Apollo was
rumoured to have been an astrologer, the devil, and the god of the Saracens!
Plato
was considered to have been a doctor, Cicero a
knight and a troubadour, Virgil a mage who
blocked the crater of the Vesuvius, etc.
All
of this is supposed to have taken place in the XIV century or even later! This
chaos of information obviously irritated Petrarch, who had come to Rome already
having an a priori concept of the “antiquity” of the Italian Rome. It is
noteworthy that Petrarch left
us
no proof of the “antiquity of Rome” that he postulates. On the contrary, his
letters – if they are indeed his real letters, and not later edited copies –
paint an altogether different picture. Roughly speaking, it is as follows:
Petrarch is convinced that there should be many “great buildings of ancient
times” in Rome. He really finds none of those. He is confused and writes this about it:
“Where are the thermae of Diocletian and
Caracallus? Where is
the Timbrium of Marius, the Septizonium and the thermae of Severus? Where is the forum of Augustus and the temple of
Mars the Avenger?
Mackey’s
comment: These various, supposedly Republican Roman,
characters, Marius, Cicero, Augustus, are (tentatively) given Hellenistic real
identities in this series.
The article
continues:
Where are the holy places of Jupiter the
Thunder-Bearer on the Capitol and Apollo on the Palatine? Where is the portico of Apollo and the basilica
of Caius and Lucius, where is the portico of Libya and the theatre of Marcellus?
Where are
the temple of Hercules and the Muses built by Marius Philip, and the temple of
Diana built by Lucius Cornifacius? Where is the temple of the Free Arts of Avinius Pollio, where is the
theatre of Balbus, the Amphitheatre of Statilius Taurus? Where are the numerous constructions erected by
Agrippa, of which only the Pantheon remains? Where
are the splendorous palaces of the
emperors? One finds everything in the
books; when one tries to find them in the city, one
discovers
that they either disappeared [sic!] or that only the
vaguest of their traces remain”. ([644])
These
countless inquiries of “where” this or the other object might be, especially
the final phrase, are amazing. They indicate clearly that Petrarch came to the
Italian Rome with an a priori certainty that the great Rome as described in the
old books is the Italian Rome.
As we are now beginning to understand, these books most probably were referring
to the Rome on the Bosporus. However, in the early XIV century or even later, it was ordered to assume that
the ancient manuscripts referred to the Italian Rome. Petrarch had to find “field traces” of the “great Roman
past” in Italy;
he searched vigorously, found nothing, and was nervous about this fact.
However,
the letters attributed to Petrarch contain traces of a Roman history that
differs considerably from the history we are taught nowadays. For instance, Petrarch
insists that the pyramid that is now considered to be “the Pyramid of Cestius”
is really the sepulchre
of Remus ….
The
real parochial Italian Rome of the XIV century surprised the poet greatly,
since it strangely failed to concur with his a priori impressions based on the
interpretation of the ancient texts which he considered correct. This most
probably means that he had rejected
other
evidence contradicting this “novel” opinion. The gigantic Coliseum, for
instance, proved to be the castle and the fortress of a mediaeval feudal clan, and
the same fate befell such “ancient” constructions as the mausoleum of Adrian,
the theatre of Marcellus, the arch of Septimius Severus, etc. Plainly speaking,
all of the “ancient” buildings turned out to be mediaeval. This presents no
contradiction to us; however, for Petrarch, who apparently already perceived
Rome through the distorting prism of the erroneous chronology, this must have
been extremely odd.
Apparently,
we have thus managed to pick out the moment in the Middle Ages when the
creation of the consensual erroneous version of the history of Italian Rome
began. This couldn’t have preceded the first half of the XIV century – although
we should add that it is possible that all of these events occurred
significantly later, namely, in the XVI-XVII century.
According
to Jan Parandowski, “Petrarch’s arrival marks a new era in the
assessment of the state of the great city’s decline. Petrarch had been the first person of the new era whose eyes filled with tears at the
very sight of the destroyed columns, and at the very memory of the forgotten
names” ([644]). Having wiped off the tears, Petrarch became quite industrious
in what concerned the creation of the “true history” of the Italian Rome. He
searched for statues, collected Roman medals, and tried to recreate the
topography of Rome. Most of Petrarch’s energy was however directed at finding
and commenting on the oeuvres of the “ancient” authors. The list of books that
he allegedly owned survived until our days, the list that he compiled himself
in the alleged year of 1336 a.d., on the last page of the Latin codex that is now kept in the National
Library of Paris. Whether or not Petrarch had been in the possession of the
original works of the authors, remains unknown. The following names are mentioned
in the list:
Horace,
Ovid, Catullus, Propercius, Tibullus, Percius, Juvenal, Claudian, Ovid, the
comedians Plautus and Terentius; the historians Titus Livy, Sallustius, Suetonius,
Florus, Eutropius, Justin, Orosius, Valerius Maximus; the orators and
philosophers Quintillian, Varro, Pliny, Apuleius, Aulus Gellius, Macrobius, Vitruvius,
Marcian Capella, Pomponius Mela, Cassiodorus, Boetius. As well, the names of a
large number of holy fathers are listed.
We
ask the following questions:
Can
we trust in Petrarch’s ownership of these volumes?
How
was the list dated?
Did
Petrarch actually hold any of the oeuvres written by the abovementioned authors
in his hands, or did he just collect the names?
Do
we interpret Petrarch’s statements correctly nowadays? After all, they reach us
via a filter of the Scaligerian editors of the XVI-XVII century. We perceive them
through the glass of a distorted chronology. Petrarch’s letters are to be
studied again, if they really are his and haven’t been written or edited on his
behalf a great while later. One also has to emphasize that Petrarch didn’t
specifically occupy himself with the dating of the texts he found. He was looking
for the “works of the ancients” – apparently without questioning whether they
preceded him by a hundred years, two hundred, or a thousand. Let’s not forget
that a hundred years, let alone three hundred, is a long period of time.
With
the growth of his income, Petrarch founded a
special workshop with scribes and secretaries, which he often
mentions in his letters. Everyone knew about his infatuation with collecting
old books. He mentions it in every letter he writes to his every friend. “If
you really value me, do as I tell you: find educated and trustworthy people,
and let them rake through the bookcases of every scientist there is, clerical
as well as secular” ([644]). He pays
for the findings bounteously. And
they keep coming to him from all directions. He makes some important
discoveries himself – thus, in the alleged year of 1333 he finds two previously
unknown speeches of Cicero’s in Liège, and in 1334, Cicero’s letters to
Atticus, Quintus and Brutus in Verona ([927], [644]). Let us remind the reader
that according to the mediaeval legends, Cicero
was a knight and a troubadour, q.v.
above.
“Petrarch
had reasons for considering himself to be responsible for the revival of interest in the
philosophical works and essays of the great Roman orator” ([927], pages 87-88).
Petrarch wrote: “as soon as I see a monastery, I head that way in hope of
finding some work by Cicero.” The history of how he “discovered” the Cicero’s
lost tractate titled De
Gloria is very odd indeed. Its existence became
known from a letter to Atticus that is attributed to Cicero. Petrarch claimed that
he had allegedly discovered this priceless manuscript, but gave it to his old
friend Convenevola. Who
is
supposed to have lost it.
Nowadays
Petrarch’s endeavours are usually written about with great pathos:
“It
had really been the first one of those glorious expeditions rich in discoveries
that shall be undertaken by the humanists of the generations to follow, who
have journeyed like Columbus… in their search for parchments gobbled by numerous
rats” ([644]). Cicero’s letters were allegedly discovered by Petrarch in the
Chapter Library of Verona, where no-one
had been aware of their existence. For some reason, the original was soon lost by Petrarch, and he demonstrated a
copy instead.
R.
I. Chlodowsky wrote that:
“Petrarch
proved a naturally born philologist. He had been the first to study the oeuvres
of the ancient Roman poets, comparing different copies and using data provided
by the neighbouring historical sciences… It had been Petrarch the philologer
who had destroyed the mediaeval legend of Virgil the mage and sorcerer, and
accused the author of the Aeneid
of a number of anachronisms; he had
deprived Seneca of several works that were ascribed to him in the Middle Ages,
and proved the apocryphal character of Caesar’s and Nero’s letters, which had a great political meaning in
the middle of the XIV century since it gave
authority to the Empire’s claims for Austria”. ([927], pp. 88-89).
This
is where the really important motives become clear to us – the ones that
Petrarch may have been truly guided by in his “archaeological endeavours.” These
motives were political, as we have just explained. We have ourselves been
witness to countless examples in contemporary history when “science” was used
as basis for one political claim or another. This makes chronology largely
irrelevant. However, today when the characters of that epoch have long left the
stage, we must return to the issue of just how “preposterous” the letters of Caesar
and Nero were, and what was “wrong” in the mediaeval legends of Virgil.
The
poet’s attitude to the ancient documents was far from critical analysis.
Petrarch’s declarations of “antiquity” may have been made for meeting the
conditions of some political order of the Reformation epoch in Western Europe
(the XVI-XVII century). The order had been made to create a dichotomy between “barbaric
contemporaneity” and “beauteous antiquity”. See Chron6
for details. At any rate, one clearly sees
that either Petrarch or someone else acting on his behalf was creating the
mythical world of antiquity without bothering about the exact epoch when Cicero’s
speeches were written, and whether it had preceded that of Petrach by 200
years, or 1400. It is possible that all of this activity really took place in
the XVI-XVII century and not the XIV, during the Reformation in the Western
Europe, and had archly been shifted into the XIV century and ascribed to Petrarch
so that it would gain the “authority of antiquity.” The reality of the XVI-XVII
century, which Petrarch cites as the antithesis of “ancient civilization,” was
later baptized “feudal barbarism.” ….
