Episodes of Anti-Quintilianism in the Italian Renaissance ... · politically as tha art of...

JOHN MONFASANI

Episodes of Anti-Quintilianism in the Italian Renaissance: Quarrels on the Orator as a Vir Bonus and Rhetoric as the Scientia Bene Dicendi*

talian Ranaissanca humanists were a contentions lot. They quarralad among themselves. They assailed politi-cians, philosophers, and clerics. They even turned on

the ancients. Valla attacked Aristotle; George of Trebizond, Plato. Antonio da Rho did not spare a Church Father in his Dialogus in Lactantium. But one current of criticism has not received sufficient attention. I mean the strain of anti-Quintilianism which one can document from the early Quattrocento to tha close of the Renaissance in Italy. The history of Quintilian in the Renaissance waits to be written. It will bave to cover a large array of topics, ranging from broad issues in padagogy to arcane rhetorical precepts such as the status doctrine; and it will bave to take into account cultural developments in ail of Europe and avan the Americas. My goal in this paper is much mora humble. I wish to call attention to reactions in Renaissance Italy to two spécifie points of Quintilian's teachings, namely, his définitions of rhatoric and of the orator.

*I take this opportunity to call attention to a correction of an eariier article of mine published in this journal. Please see n. 103 below.

© The International Society for the History of Rhetoric Rhetorica, Volume X, Number 2 (Spring 1992)

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120 R H E T O R I C A

I

Over the centuries, Quintilian's érudition, good sanse, and moral earnestness usually insulated him from attack. No extant later Latin rhetor criticized him by name. Médiéval teachers may hava confinad their classroom lecturing to Cicero's De inventione and Ps. Cicero's Rhetorica ad Herennium,^ but they demonstrably prizad Quintilian's authority.^ Quintilian's influence expandad in tha Re-naissanca^ with Poggio Bracciolini's discovery of a complète text of the De institutione oratoria at Sankt Gallen in 1416.^ Ironically, Poggio ended his days the enemy of both Lorenzo Valla, tha first Renaissance propagandist for Quintilian, and of George of Trebizond, the first Renaissance critic of Quintilian.

In 1428, young Lorenzo Valla scandalized tha humanist world by assarting Quintilian's superiority over Cicero as a teachar of Latin éloquence. 5 Five years later, in 1433-1434, George of Trebizond published the Rhetoricorum libri V, where he implicitly and explicitly disagreed with Quintilian.* George's anti-Quintilianism reflectad mora than mare humanist rivalry. George opposed Quintilian's very conception of rhetoric.

Quintilian altered, or, if one believes his critics, distorted in a fundamental way the classical conception of rhetoric. In his theoretical pronouncements, as opposed to the implications of his prac-

'See J. O. Ward, "From Antiquity to the Renaissance: Glosses and Commentar-ies on Cicero's Rhetorica," in J. J. Murphy, éd.. Médiéval Eloquence (Berkeley, 1978), 25-67; and idem, "Renaissance Commentators on Ciceronian Rhetoric," in J. J. Murphy, éd., Renaissance Eloquence (Berkeley, 1983), 126-73.

^See J. O. Ward, Artificiosa Eloquentia in the Middle Ages: The Study of Cicero's De Inventione, the Ad Herennium and Quintilian's De institutione oratoria from the early Middle Ages to the Thirteenth Century, with spécial référence to the schools of northem France, 2 vols, (diss., University of Toronto, 1972), 1:64-65, 70-71, 133-50, 418-82; and J. Cousin, Recherches sur Quintilien: Manuscrits et éditions (Paris, 1975), 1-38.

^See Ward, "Renaissance Commentators"; and Cousin, Recherches, 39-167, 171-75.

''See R. Sabbadini, Le scoperte dei codici latini e greci ne' secoli XIV e XV, 2 vols. (Florence, 1905-14), ad indicem and 2:247-48; for the Renaissance recovery of classical rhetoric see J. Monfasani, "Humanism and Rhetoric," in A. Rabil, J r , éd.. Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms, and Legacy, 3 vols. (Philadelphia, 1988), 3:171-235, at 177-84.

Tor clarification on the content of this lost work see S. 1. Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla: Urrmnesimo e teologia (Florence, 1972), 89-95.

''See J. Monfasani, George of Trebizond: A Biography and a Study of his Rhetoric and Logic (Leiden, 1976), 262, 267, 289; cf. 38, 82, 291-92.

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Anti-Quintilianism 121

tical advice, Quintilian unequivocally restricted the true orator to the morally upright man, tha vir bonus,'' and ha defined rhetoric not politically as tha art of persuasion but ballatristically as tha art of fine speaking, bene dicere.^ In both instances, we may nota, ha had accaptad a Stoic viaw of rhetoric '

I will take up first tha issue of the orator as the vir bonus.

II

Quintilian was not tha first to moraliza rhetoric. Cato the Cen-sor had categorized the orator as a vir bonus dicendi peritus.^'' Isocrates had voiced moralizing sentiments." A century after Quintilian, Aelius Aristides argued that the orator who put rhetoric to avil purposa was not an authantic orator.'^ Ona could aasily mock this morahzation of rhatoric. Doubtiass, as Michael Winterbottom has argued, it stems, in the case of Quintilian, from his deeply felt sensé of responsibility as a taacher of boys whom he wished to mold into morally good leaders of society." But this moralization was also an attampt to sanitiza rhetoric from the criticism, most

^De inst. orat. l . p r 9, 1.2.3, 2.21.12, 2.16.11, 2.17.43, 2.20.4, 2.21.12, and 12.1. See G. A. Kennedy, Quintilian (New York, 1969), 34-35, 58, 123-24; M. Winterbottom, "Quintilian and the Vir Bonus," fournal of Roman Studies 54 (1964): 90-97; and O. Seel, Quintilian oder die Kunst des Redens und Schweigens (Stuttgart, 1977), 39, 48, 85-89.

'De inst. orat. 2.15, which concludes (38): "rhetoricen esse bene dicendi scientiam . . Nam si est ipsa bene dicendi scientia, finis eius et summum est bene dicere." See also 2.16.11, 2.17.23 and 37, and 5.10.54. Quintilian may hâve understood bene dicere as also containing a moral dimension, but that understanding was unknown to Quintilian's Renaissance defenders and his critics.

'See G. A. Kennedy, The Art of Persuasion in Greece (Princeton, 1963), 292-94; idem, Quintilian, 32 and 58; and J. von Arnim, éd., Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, 4 vols. (Leipzig, 1905-1924), epislemetoueu legeinandhosophosmonos rhetor: \.\V).\i-l8 (= 2:95.18-22), 2:95.24-26, 2:95,28-31, 3:65.38, 3:155.21-22, 3:163.17-18; 3:237.11-12, 3:241.31-32. On Quintilian's own reaction to Stoicism see the comments of B. Appel, Dos Bildungs- und Erziehungsideal Quintilians nach der Institutio oratoria (Donau-wôrth, I9I4), 15 and 39; J. Cousin, Études sur Quintilien, 2 vols. (Paris, 1935-36; repr as 2 vols, in 1, Amsterdam, 1967) 1:739-70.

'"See G. A. Kennedy, The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World (Princeton, 1972), 55-57.

"Kennedy The Art of Persuasion, 177-79, 182-84. '2/n Défense of Oratory, 247-53; for a discussion of Aristides see B. Vickers, In

Défense of Rhetoric (Oxford, 1988), 170-78. "See n. 7above.

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effectively voiced in Plato's Gorgias, that rhetoric was the tool of amoral speakers.^^ Another défense would bave been to argue for a relativistic ethics, as did some fifth-century Sophists.^^ A third possibility would hâve been to viaw rhatoric as morally nautral, with its athical value deriving from the good or bad purpose to which it was put, as Gorgias argues in Plato's dialogue.'* Quintilian actually made use of this last solution,'^ but he incoherently combined it with a view of the orator which amounted to equating rhatoric with moral goodnass.

Daspite Plato, the Stoics, and soma moralizing rhetoricians, the Greek rhetorical tradition never baldly equated tha orator with tha vir bonus.^^ Even Aristotle's famous doctrine of ethos involved not the actual moral virtue of the speaker, but rather tha image which the orator artfully projected in his speech." Among the Latins, Cicero never accepted the overt moralism of the vir bonus. Although he made a fetish of joining wisdom to éloquence,^'' Cicero, as several scholars bave pointed out,^' never quoted Cato's définition of the orator. 22 Of the later Latin rhetors, only Fortunatianus

"One could also simply distort Plato; see B. Vickers, In Défense, 167-70, on Cicero and Quintilian.

'^See M. Untersteiner, The Sophists, trans. K. Freeman (Oxford, 1954); B. Vickers, In Défense, 210-13; and B. Brummett, "Relativism and Rhetoric," in R. A. Cherwitz, éd., Rhetoric and Philosophy (Hillsdale, NJ, 1990), 79-103.

"•Gorg. 456c-57c. '^Deinstit. orat. 2.16.5-10. "See G. A. Kennedy, Greek Rhetoric under the Christian Emperors (Princeton,

1983), 108, on the novelty of the late Greek rhetorical authority Sopatros perhaps having some knowledge of the Latin vir bonus tradition. It is interesting that Kennedy entitled his book on rhetoric among the Greeks before ConstanHne The Art of Persuasion in Greece, but that on the Lahns The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World.

'''Rhet. 1.1356.8-10; the persuasive power of character dérives not from the speaker's to prodedoxasthai, but from his logos.

^"Ci. De Inv. 1:1-5; for many relevant passages in the De Orat. and the Orat. see M. L. Clarke, Rhetoric at Rome: A Historical Sun>ey (London, 1953), 53-58.

2'L. Radermacher, "Studien zur Geschichte der antiken Rhetorik. 111. Eine Schrfit iiber den Redner als Quelle Ciceros und Quintilians," Rheinisches Muséum fiir Philologie 54 (1899): 285-92, at 289; Clarke, Rhetoric at Rome, 188, n. 39; and C. Joachim Classen, "Cicero orator perfectus: ein vir bonus dicendi peritus?" in S. Prête, éd., Commemoratio: Studi di filologia in ricordodiRiccardoRibuoli(Sassolerrato, 1986), 43-55.

^For C. Joachim Classen's réfutation of W. L. Grant's attempt to moralize Cicero's orator perfectus see the previous note; J. Cousins, Études, 1:137, notes that at De Orat. 2:85 Cicero has Antonius distinguish between the excellens orator and bonus vir Cf. Seel, Quintilian, 48: "Naturlich ist auch er [QuinHlian] 'Moralist', und er ist es aus tiefstem Herzem und fast noch mehr als Cicero." Seel is much concerned with saving Quintilian from the charge of naivetè; see n. 7 above.

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adopted the définition of the orator as a vir bonus.'^^ Pseudo-Augustina, Iulius Victor, Iulius Sevarianus, Sulpitius Victor, Victo-rinus, Grillius, and Martianus Capella ail ignored it. *

The formula of the vir bonus gained in popularity as antiquity passed into tha Christian Middle Ages. Alcuin did not mention it, but Cassiodorus and Isidore made it a central aspect of their définition of rhetoric.25 In the alaventh century Thierry of Chartres used it,2* and by the twelfth century it had become part of the canonical définition of tha orator popular among Franch commantators on the Ciceronian Rhetorics.'^ For example, the authoritative Alanus, who continued to ba read in Italy into the fifteenth century, en-dorsed this définition, s The most important of the fourteenth-century Italian commentators, Bartolinus de Benincasa at Bologna, continued the moralizing tradition, citing, in fact, Alanus as one of his sources.2'

Early in tha Ranaissanca, however, in his Rhetoricorum libri V of 1433-1434, George of Trebizond rejected this moralization^" and explicitly attacked both Alanus and Bartolinus.î George was swim-ming against the tide. The moralization of rhetoric thrived in the Quattrocento. As is clear from his commentary on the Ad Herennium, Guarino da Varona taught that tha orator was a vir bonus.^^ At

^Fortunatianus, Ars Rhetorica, ed. Halm, 81.5. ^''For ail thèse authors except Grillius see K. Halm, Rhetores Latini Minores

(Leipzig, 1863); for Grillius see J. Martin, Grillius: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Rhetorik (Paderborn, 1927).

^For Cassiodorus see Halm, 495.5; for Isidore of Seville, ibid., 507.17 (cf. also 1ns. 2-3).

^See W. H. D. Suringar, Histôria Critica Scholiastarum Latinorum, 3 vols. (Leiden, 1834-35), 1:223.

2^See Ward, Artificiosa Eloquentia, 2:267, 273-74, 294-95; and H. Caplan, Of Eloquence: Studies in Ancient and Mediaeval Rhetoric, ed. A. King and H. North (Ithaca, 1970), 252-53.

^See the previous note. ^ e e S. Karaus, Sélections from the Commentary of Bartolinus de Benincasa de

Canulo on the Rhetorica ad Herennium with an Introduction (diss., Columbia University, New York, 1970), 85; this text is missing from idem (S. Karaus Wertis), "The Commentary of Bartolinus de Benincasa de Canulo on the Rhetorica ad Herennium," Viator 10 (1979): 283-310.

^Monfasani, George of Trebizond, 267-68. 3'Ibid, 262-64. ^ I consulted Guarino's commentary in Cicero De inv. and Rhet. ad Her., Venice,

1483 (Gesamtkatalog 6736/7), f. A2v. Guarino, ibid., also uses Gorgias' défense of rhetoric ("Quodsi quid mali nascitur ex arte dicendi, non artis est, sed eius qui orat") without apparently seeing how it contradicts the theory of the orator as a vir bonus.

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the and of the fifteenth cantury, Antonio Mancinalli^^ and Francesco Maturanzio^^ were still teaching the same doctrine in their commentaries on tha Rhetorica ad Herennium, although Girolamo Capiduro droppad it from his commentary. ^ in tha middle of the century, when commenting on the De institutione oratoria, Lorenzo Valla andorsed this définition;^* and Rafaello Regio continued the tradition in his commentary on the De institutione oratoria, published in 1493.3^

Interestingly enough, while George of Trebizond studiously ignored the reigning orthodoxy of the vir bonus and whila ha ra-vived Gorgias' argument on the moral neutrality of rhetoric, ^ he did not attack Quintilian by name. In fact, as far as I know, no humanist openly challengad Quintilian concerning tha orator as a vir bonus until the French humanist Peter Ramus did so in 1549. ^ Tha raason for the delay, I believe, was the expansive conception of

On the commentary see R. Sabbadini, La scuola e gli studi di Guarino Veronese (Catania, 1896), 93-95.

'^l used the édition of Venice, 1496 (Gesamtkatalog 6730); see f a5v. Mancinelli's préface is dated Venice, 6 November 1493 (see Ward, "Renaissance Commentators," 143).

«Ibid., f a5r. 351 used the édition of Venice, 1490 (Gesamtkatalog 6729); see f. A2r-v for the

introduction. Î used the Venice 1494 édition of Quintilian (Hain-Copinger 13654); see f. a2v.

That this early part of the commentary reflects Valla's teaching is confirmed, paradoxically, by an interpolation on f. a3r, where the commentary speaks of the superiority of Quintilian over Cicero. The interpolation begins, "Lege, Laurentii, diligentius Ci-ceronis orationes . . . " Later, on the same page, again suggestive of Valla, the commentary attacks philosophy's pretense to being the magistra vitae. On this édition of Valla's commentary and its relationship to the manuscript tradition see A. Perosa, "L'edizione veneta di Quintiliano coi commenti del Valla, di Pomponio Leto e di Sulpizio da Veroli," in Miscellanea Augusto Campana, 2 vols. (Padua, 1981), 2:575-610. See ibid., 588, for the previously mentioned interpolahon. For a discussion of Valla's commentary see L. Cesarini Martinelli, "Le postille di Lorenzo Valla aWInstitutio oratoria di Quintiliano," in Lorenzo Valla e l'Umanesimo italiano. Atti del convegno in-ternazionale di studi umanistici (Parma, 18-19 ottobre 1984), ed. O. Besomi and M. Regoliosi (Padua, 1986), 21-50.

^'I used the later Venice 1506 édition of Quintilian; see f. a4v. ^«Monfasani, George of Trebizond, 258, 368, 371; and M. Fuiano, Insegnamento e

cultura a Napoli nel Rinascimento (Naples, 1973), 71-74. 3'See Peter Ramus, Arguments in Rhetoric against Quintilian: Translation and Text

of Peter Ramus's Rhetoricae Distinctiones in Quintilianum (2549), trans. C. Newiands, introd. J. J. Murphy (DeKalb, IL., 1986), 84-86 (English), 168-70 (Latin); Ramus published his attack on the vir bonus theory in a revised form in his Scholae in Libérales Artes (Basel, 1569; repr Hildesheim, 1970, introd. W. Ong), 322-26.

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rhetoric sharad by tha Italian humanists. Arguments that threw into sharp reUef tha amoral possibilities of rhatoric undercut their attempt to make rhatoric tha central force in éducation and culture. Patar Ramus, on tha other hand, held a reductionist conception of rhetoric, removing from its province ail but elocutio.'^° So he was free to mock tha inanity of Quintilian's position. Inter alia, Ramus mada tha obvious point that the rulas of rhetoric no more require virtua of thair practitionar than do the rules of grammar of a spaakar.

III

Quintilian's équation of bene dicere with rhatoric had a différent history. To begin, uniika tha theory of the vir bonus, the belletristic définition of rhetoric as bene dicere makes a certain amount of sensé. It corresponds to what George Kennedy would call secondary rhetoric.*'

The later Latin rhetors varied in their reaction to Quintilian's formulation of rhetoric as bene dicere. Only Sulpitius Victor fully embraced it.*2 jn varying dagraas of muddledness, Fortunatianus,'*^ Ps.-Augustine,^ and tha anonymous author of the Excerpta Rhetorica in Halm*5 combined it with the traditional notion of rhetoric as the art of persuasion. On the other hand, Iulius Severinus,^ Victorinus,*^ Gril-

'"'On Ramus' notion of rhetoric see W. J. Ong, Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue (Cambridge, MA, 1958), 270-92 and passim (see the index under "Talon, Rhetoric").

"Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World, 3, 385-87. •• See Halm, 313.14-15; "Rhetorica est bene dicendi scienHa in quaestione

civili." ''Îbid., 81.4-8: "Quid est rhetorica? Bene dicendi scientia. Quid est orator? Vir

bonus dicendi peritus. Quod est oratoris officium? Bene dicere in civilibus quaestion-ibus. Qui finis? Persuadere, quatenus rerum et personarum condicio patiatur in civilibus quaestionibus."

"Ibid., 138.11-12: "ut sit finis oratoris officii bene dicere, finis bene dicendi persuadere."

''Îbid., 585.7: "Finis oratorii officii est bene dicere; finis bene dicendi persuadere."

•«•Ibid., 356.9-11: "finis autem oratoriae virtutis est verisimilia dixisse vel tantum contendisse, quantum res passa sit ad victoriam."

•"Commenting on the De Inventione, he approved without any belletristic qualifications Cicero's statement that "officium autem eius facultatis videtur esse adpo-site dicere ad persuasionem; finis persuadere dictione" (ibid., 173.1).

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lius,*8 Iulius Victor,^ and Martianus CapellaS" simply ignored it. So, apparently, did the obscure third-century rhetor Marcomannus.^'

The late antique-early médiéval Christian authors on rhetoric wara more sympathetic. Alcuin accepted Quintilian's belletristic définition," whila Cassiodorus'^ and Isidore^* joined it in syncra-tistic fashion to a Ciceronian définition of rhetoric as persuasion. I am not clear on the views of eleventh-century writers on rhetoric. Thierry of Chartres seems not to hâve accepted the belletristic définition.55 But certainly Alanus and other twelfth-century northem commentators on the Rhetorica ad Herennium appropriated Quintilian's définition of rhetoric as bene dicere.^ In fourteenth-century Italy, Bartolinus taught a confused and rather ignorant compromise position: he attributed to Victorinus Quintilian's définition ("Rhetorica est scientia bene dicendi") and to Quintilian Cicero's formula ("rhetorica est ars [dicendi] apposite ad per-suadandum in causa").5^

In one respect, however, Bartolinus represented a departure from the twelfth-century French commentators. Starting with Victorinus, commentators had repeated Varro's distinction batwaan the intrinsic and axtrinsic ands of an art, that is to say, between the rules

"Grillius also was commenting on the De Inventione (ed. Martin, 37, 19ff ). •"Halm, 373.2-3: "Oratoris officium est in qua quaestione quae versatur in

negotiis civilibus posse probabili et apta ad persuadendum oratione uti." ^Îbid., 454.11: "Officium vero meum est dicere apposite ad persuadendum." siAccording to Victorinus (ed. Halm, 173.26-29), Marcomannus "dixit finem

oratoris officii non esse persuadere nec finem medicinalis officii sanare; etenim saepe oratorem non persuadere et médium non sanare, ideoque addidit: quatenus rerum condicio personarumque patiatur." I take this to mean that he wished to préserve the définition of rhetoric as the art of persuasion; on Marcomannus see O. Schissel, "Marcomannus," in Real-EncyclopSdie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, 14.2 (1930): 1637-42.

'^Halm, 526.11-12: "Karolus. Ad quem finem spectat? Albinus. Ad bene dicendi scientiam."

53Ibid., 495.3-7: "Ars autem rhetorica est, sicut magistri tradunt saecularium literarum bene dicendi scientia in civilibus quaestionbius. Orator igitur est vir bonus dicendi peritus . . . Oratoris autem officmm est apposite dicere ad persuadendum."

Îbid., 507.2-3: "Rhetorica est bene dicendi scientia in civilibus quaestionibus ad persuadendum iusta et bona."

551 consulted the text in Suringar, Histôria Critica; cf. 219, where Thierry refers the reader to Quintilian for définitions of rhetoric, but does not mention Quintilian's own définition.

^•Ward, Artificiosa Eloquentia, 2:265, 267, 273, 280, 286; Caplan, Of Eloquence 252.

'TCaraus, Sélections, 79.

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of an art and the product of an art. 5» Book 4 of Boethius' De Differ-entiis Topicis encouraged the same distinction.5' However, in the fourteenth century, Bartolinus—or, mora probably, his source— introduced a new twist to the distinction. Bartolinus identified as the intrinsic end of rhetoric persuasion according to the rules of rhetoric and, as the extrinsic end, persuasion to the degree that it was possible.*" Francesco Maturanzio achoad this Ciceronian emphasis on persuasion whan he treated the intrinsic and axtrinsic ands of rhetoric in his commentary on the Rhetorica ad Herennium.^^ Yat, alraady in tha first half of the fifteenth century, Guarino of Verona attempted to move the tradition toward a more Quintil-ianasqua view. Guarino conceded that the extrinsic end of rhetoric was persuasion but, in Quintilianesque fashion, he defined tha instrinsic and as something theoretically separable from persuasion, i.e., as copia dicendi and vis argumentorum.''^

Guarino's contemporary, George of Trebizond, broke this tradition. He did away altogether with talk of extrinsic and intrinsic ends in rhetoric. Ha furthar broke with tradition by ignoring Quintilian's définition of rhatoric. Instead, he more or less followed the Rhetorica ad Herennium and called rhatoric tha science of discourse for the purpose of persuasion in civic mattars.*^

In contrast with tha gênerai reserve of his written works, George openly attacked Quintilian in the classroom. Lorenzo Valla tells us that he, Lorenzo, dacided to teach rhatoric at Rome in 1450 precisely bacausa he wished to défend Quintilian against George's lectures at the University of Rome.^ George himself relates a relevant anec-

58See Victorinus, ed. Halm, 170.24-33; on this thème see Ward, "The Date of the Commentary on Cicero's 'De Inventione' by Thierry of Chartres (ca. 1095-1160?) and the Cornifician Attack on the Libéral Arts," Viator 3 (1972): 218-73, at 249-58, 272; Ward, Artificiosa Eloquentia, 1:303-06; and N. M. Haring, "Thierry of Chartres and Dominicus Gundissalinus," Mediaeval Studies 26 (1964): 271-86, at 273-74.

' 'On this work's médiéval popularity see M. C. Leff, "Boethius' De differentiis topicis, Book IV," in Murphy, Médiéval Eloquence, 3-67.

"•Karaus, Sélections 91; see Boethius, De differentiis topicis 4, in Patrologia Latina 64:1208D: "Finis autem tum in ipso, tum inaltero. In ipso quidem bene dixisse, id est dixisse apposite ad persuasionem; in altero vero persuasisse."

' 'Ed. cit. (n. 34 above), f. a5r: "Igitur finis est instrinsecus in ipso persuadendi, extrinsescus in auditore ut persuaderi velit."

«Ed. cit. (n. 32 above), f. A3r ' 'See n. 38 above. "See L. Valla, Opéra omnia (Basel, 1540), 335; Monfasani, George of Trebizond,

79n. and 82.

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dote.és In tha lata 1440s, the Greek humanist Théodore Gaza came to Rome aftar savaral years at the University of Ferrara, where he had associated with George's old foe Guarino da Verona. In Rome, Gaza quickly became a rival to George of Trebizond and a friend to Lorenzo Valla. One day Gaza showed up in George's rhetoric class and proceeded to argue against George that rhetoric had two ends, an extrinsic one, which was persuasion, and an intrinsic one, which was bene dicere. George responded to this interloper in his class by emphatically rejecting bene dicere as an instrinsic end and asserting that no one had ever held such a view except Gaza and Quintilian. Gaorga was wrong. Boethius had also identified the intrinsic aim of rhetoric with bene dicere, and bene dicere with apposite dicere ad persuasionem.^ But whalever may bave been Boethius' position, in a manner reminiscent of Guarino, Gaza had clearly found tha old intrinsic-extrinsic distinction useful as a means of harmonizing Quintihan and Cicero.

Surprisingly, despite George of Trebizond's conflicts with Guarino, Valla, and Gaza, the first person actually to writa against Quintilian in tha Renaissance—perhaps the first ever in history— was not George of Trebizond but the Italian humanist Matteo Collazio.*^ In or about 1477, Collazio pubhshed at Venice, where he taught school, a pamphlet entitled On the Purpose of the Orator

'sSee L. Mohler, Kardinal Bessarion, 3 vols. (Paderborn, 1923-1943), 3:279-80; and Monfasani, George of Trebizond, 81-82.

"See n. 60 above. ''Littie is known about him. In titles he styled himself "Matthaeus Colatius,

cognomento Siculus, Neocastri [= Nicastro], Calabrae urbis, civis." He lived as a teacher in Venice (he began one work thus [Opuscula, f. dlv]: "Diuturna cura docendi Venetiis tandem liberatus relaxandi animi gratta in balneas proficiscor"). He seems to hâve been in Venice since the 1450s (see the epitaph for Foscari in the next note) and was active into the 1480s (see n. 70 below). In the 1480s Bonifacio Bembo described him as "Homo sexagenario maior in litteris versatus ad hanc aetatem a puero et quod dicere pudet veteranus doctor et grammahcus et rhetor et philosophus in haec deliramenta delabitur" (f. a5v of the editton cited in n. 84 below). In the De fine oratoris, f. a3r, he gives the following bibliography: "Scripsi urbem Patavium, urbis civitatem et omnem eius agrum [= laudatio]. Scripsi compara-tionem regum; comparahonem item rei militaris et iuris scienttae. Scripsi quid et quae esset vera nobilitas; laudes item perspecHvae subselliorum quae chorum dicunt aedis divi Antonii Patavii [see n. 70 below). Scripsi Vincenttnum Scledum [ = schio] dum ibi rusticarer ob eius amoenissimum situm, situm me iudice dignissi-mum magnis musis. Scripsi de dicendis agundisque causis. Nam non est facile unicuique excerpere nudam acttonem causarum ex tanto rhetoricorum pelago. Scripsi separattm de pronunciatione. Scribo ettam nunc de digestione omnium scientiarum.

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against Quintilian in Behalf of Cicero and AU Antiquity.^ The work caused a stir. Shortiy after its publication, Collazio had to put out a response to his critics;*** and a few years later, in 1486, he published a third work, a dialogue, refuting Quintilian onca again on the purposa of rhatoric.ô Finally, in a fourth work entitled De verbo

'^The Define oratoris in Quintilianum pro M. T. Cicérone et omni antiquitate (Venice, lacobus de Fivizzano, c. 1477, according to Gesamtkatalog 7154), dedicated to the Venetian patrician Antonio Donato (c. I422-148I; M. L. King, Venetian Humanism in an Age of Patrician Dominance [Princeton, 1986], 365), whom he called his close friend, compater (De Fine, t. c9v). E clOr carries Collazio's epitaph for Doge Francesco Foscari (d. 1457) (note that Hain 5478 supposedly containing a praise of Foscari is a ghost; see Gesamtkatalog 7154). I consulted the copy in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, with the shelf mark Incun. IV. 432, which also contains the other writtngs of Collazio, Bembo, Barzizza, Porta, and Frandolinus, discussed in this paper. The date c. 1477 fits Collazio's préface to Donato, whom Collazio describes as "presently censor" (nunc censor); according to King, Donato was avogador di comun from 1476 to 1478.

'^Responsio de fine oratoris, Padua, Bernardinus de Céleris de Luere, 1478 (Gesamtkatalog 7155), addressed to Antoninus Adinolphus Siculus, artium et medicine doctor, whom in another préface (see the next note) he called artibus studentium Patavii rector dignissimus.

"The De rhetoricae fine in his Opuscula, Venice, Bernardinus (Rizus) de Novaria, i486 (on the date see the second paragraph of this note) (Gesamtkatalog 7156), ff. b3r-c3v, addressed to "Hieronymum Veronensem et Sanctorum Siculum, viros opHmos philosophos medicosque doctissimos," involving a dialogue between Antoninus Adinolphus Siculus, Hieronymus Veronensis, and Sanctorus Siculus about a dispu-tatton which Collazio had recently held at Padua.

The editton also contains on ff. c3v-4r Collazio's letter to the Vicenzan noble-man Gasparo Trissino ("Gasparus Tressinus") concerning the epitaph Collazio had written for Trissino's recently deceased son Girolamo. The date of the epitaph in the édition, "An. Sal. MCCCCLXXXX, etatts xi. Cal. Mar.," has to be corrected to read 1480; see B. Morosin, Giangiorgio Trissino o Monografia su un Letterato nel secolo XVI (Vicenza, 1878), 6, who cites a copy in the Trissino family archive. So the contradic-tton between the date in this epitaph and the date in the colophon of the editton (MCCCCLXXXVI) on f. c4r should be settled in favor of the latter Gasparo Trissino was the father of the well-known Italian author Giangiorgio Trissino, who was only a child of six in 1480. Therefore, the letter of Collazio cited in MS Paris, Rothschild I 7.13, as being addressed to Giangiorgio (see P. O. Kristeller, Iter Italicum, 6 vols. [Leiden, 1963-1992], 3:329) is probably this letter to Gasparo Trissino concerning Girolamo.

The editton also contains on ff.. alr-b2v Collazio's treattse De verbo civilitate et de génère artis rhetoricae in magnos rhetores Victorinum et Quintilianum, addressed to the Venetian patrician Domenico Morosini (I4I7-I509; King, 409), and on ff. dlr-3v Collazio's laudatio of the fifteenth-century choir of S. Antonio, Padua addressed to its sculptors and preceded by a préface to Antoninus (Adinolphus) Siculus. Because the choir of the Canozi no longer exists, this text has been reprinted by G. B. Pivetta, Le intarsiature deliantico coro délia Basilica di S. Antonio in Padova già deperito nellincendio del

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civilitate and also published in 1486, Collazio criticized Quintilian one more time.^' In the first of thèse four texts. On the Purpose of the Orator of c. 1477, Collazio took a swipe at the dead Lorenzo Valla,72 but otherwise did not name his opponents.

The essence of Collazio's argument is as follows. According to Aristotle and Cicero, the lattar of whom Collazio called noster deus,''^ rhetoric is part of political science and therefore must bave a social end, i.e., its practitioner must aim to affect the minds of others.7" Ail the Greek and almost ail the Latin rhetoricians made persuasion the goal of rhetoric. Only Quintilian argued for bene dicere.''^ Collazio conceded that bene dicere was a rhetorical goal, but a subordinate one.''*

By creating a hierarchy of rhetorical goals and by stressing that the ultimate raison d'être of oratory is to affect others, Collazio not only successfully co-opted Quintilian, but also explicitly refutad humanists lika Gaza, who wanted to establish an equivalency between the supposed intrinsic and extrinsic ends of rhetoric. Collazio also sat out to réfuta what he took to be Quintilian's two arguments against persuasion as the end of rhetoric: first, that persuasion is not peculiar to orators; prostitutes and flatterers can persuade with speech as can also money and power by just their very existence;'''' and, second, that an orator doas not always persuade and is therefore subject to the vagaries of fortune for his influence.^* In response, Collazio turned Quintilian's theory of tha vir bonus against him:''' he pointed out that tha orator parsuadad diffarently than others in that ha appealad to tha mind rather than to the appetites.^ Consaquantly, tha persuasion of the orator dif-fered in kind from the other forms of persuasion cited by Quintilian. Concerning fortune, Collazio used several counterarguments.

MDCCXxxix (Padua, 1829); and excerpted by A. Sartori, Archivio Sartori. Documenti di storia e arte francescana, ed. G. Luisetto, vol. I. Basilica econvento del Santo (Padua, 1983), pp. 263-64, no. 106.

''•See the previous note. '^De fine oratoris, f. b3v. Îbid., ff. a4r 'nbid., ff. a8r-b5r; Responsio, ff. 2v-3r. '^De fine oratoris, ff. a4v. ' 'See n. 74 above, and De rhetoricae fine, ff. b5v-7r. "Cf. De inst. orat. 12.15.6 and 11. ™Cf, ibid. 12.15.12. '"De fine oratoris, ff. b4r, b6v; cf c3r-v. "'Ibid., ff. a5v, b3v-4r, b8r, c3r-4v; De rhetoricae fine, b8r.

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He described the orator in Aristotelian catégories as the agens and the audience as tha patiens which because of some wickedness or ignorance might be ill-disposed to the properly constituted agens.^^ But, if the nature of audience as patiens is unsuitable, such unrecep-tivity does not aller the nature of the orator as a persuading agens. Lastly, Collazio trundled out the examples of medicine and military science: even though both frequently fail of their purpose, health always remains the end of medicine and victory the end of military science. *2

The first to respond to Collazio in print was the young humanist Bonifacio Bembo, then teaching in the Veneto before going on to the University of Pavia and later Rome.*' Some time in the 1480s he published his pamphlet Pro M. Fabio Quintiliano adversus Matthaei Siculi criminationem.^ Bembo knew not only Collazio's Define oratoris but also his subséquent disputation on the same subject at Padua.*' Bembo portrayed Collazio as a dear friend who had gone dotty in his old âge.8* Be that as it may, Bembo accused Collazio of joining the ranks of those who would separate rhetoric from philosophy. ^ He argued that Collazio's agonistic définition of rhetoric and more especially his restriction of rhatoric to civil questions** limited the orator to fictive school debates (controversiae), petty political debates (con-

^'Define oratoris, ff. b6v (cf. ff. b8v-clv on the bad will of the audience); De verbo civilitate, f. a4r.

^^De fine oratoris, t. c4r; De verbo civilitate, f. a4v (cf. also f. a8v); De rhetorica fine, if. b7r-v, c2v

830n him see the entry by A. Balduino in Dizionario biografico degli italiani 8 (1966): I I1- I2 , who does not mentton Bembo's translation of George Scholarius' commentaries on Porphyry and Aristotle's logical works; see G. Scholarius, Oeuvres complètes 7, ed. L. Pettt, X. A. Sideridès, and M. Jugie (Paris, 1936), iii; and Kristeller, Iter, 2:328b, for MS Vat. lat. 4560, and ad indicem in vols. 1 and 3 for other manuscripts; see also A. Rabil, Jr., Laura Cereta: Quattrocento Humanist (Binghamton, NY, 1981), 57-58, 89-90;

"Pavia, Damiants de Confalonieriis, 1481-83, according to Gesamtkatalog 3808; Milan, loannes Antonius de Honate, according to T. Accurtt, Editiones saeculi XV, 2 vols. (Florence, 1930-36), 1:156 and 2:76.

85See ibid., f. a4r: "Nam cum libellum tuum ad philosophos releges etc." 8'See the passage of the Pro M. Fabio Quintiliano quoted in n. 67 above and that

on f. air: " . amicissimi hominis adversus quem dicendum mihi erat respectu impediebar" At the end of the page, he again said, "contra hominem amicissimum dicendum mihi sit." In between he promised "extra causam in amicum petulanttus nihil dicerem"; and he called Collazio "doctum simpliciter et rhetoricam pluris annos professum quam ego aetatts haberem."

»1bid., ff. alv-2v, 7r-v 8*Collazio, De fine oratoris, f. b7r-v.

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ciunculae), and narrow légal quarrels (lites). Bembo was, of coursa, thinking of Quintilian's assertion that "the matter of rhetoric is everything which is submitted to it for saying."*' Bembo further asserted that Collazio had misunderstood his "god" Cicero.'o In the De oratore Cicero had argued for the univarsal range of eloquentia and had liberated rhetoric from the constrictive bounds of the three causae of the rhetorical manuals.'^ As for the définition of rhetoric, Bembo turned the tables on Collazio and argued that persuasion was a subsidiary end because it concerned only a part of rhetoric. For instance, it did not matter in epideictic speeches; whereas bene dicere, which Bembo identified with eloquentia,^'^ permeated ail aspects of rhetoric and was proper to rhetoric as its end and définition.'^ In short, Bembo defended Quintilian's bene dicere because he understood eloquentia to be not only the purpose of rhetoric but also the reason why rhetoric enters into ail subjects of human discourse.

The naxt participant in tha controversy was the minor Brescian humanist Cristoforo Barzizza,'^ who criticized both Collazio and Bembo in his treatise De fine oratoris pro Ciceronis et Quintilianis assertione, printed at Brescia in 1492.'5 Barzizza wished to harmonize Cicero and Quintilian. Quoting very selectivaly, ha arguad that Cicero defined rhetoric in the De oratore as the ratio dicendi vel summum eloquentiae studium, while Quintilian called rhatoric the vis persuadendi seu scientia benedicendi."^ In the same syncretistic vain, Barzizza denied that there was much différence between those who would bave the orator speak on ail things and thosa who

""De instit. orat. 2.21.4 and 20. '"Bembo liked to refer to Cicero with phrases such as "tuus ille deus" and "ille

tuus Cicero. " ""Pro M. Fabio Quintiliano, It. a2v-3r; cf. a4r: "Ostendi rhetoricen dicendarum

causarum non esse scientiam tantum. " 'Ê.g., Bembo, Pro M. Fabio Quintiliano, f. a6v: "omnes artes aliae sine elo

quentia suum munus prestare possunt; orator sine ea suum nomen obtinere non potest." Cf. also Quint. Inst. Orat. 2.14.2: "rhetorice talis est qualis eloquentia."

«Ibid., ff. a3r-7r. '*He is to be distinguished from the better known Quattrocento doctor with the

same name; see P. Sambin in Dizionario biografico degli italiani 7 (1965): 33b. His only other printed work was a Latin grammar published in 1492 (Gesamtkatalog 3671).

''''Gesamtkatalog 3670. The work is divided into three books: book 1 (ff. a2r-blv), where Barzizza lays out the principles of his synthesis; book 2 (ff. blv-c7r), which is a dialogue between Barzizza, Collazio, and Bembo, where the latter two state their views and are chided by Barzizza; and book 3 (ff. c7r-d4v), where Barzizza sums up.

"Barzizza, De fine oratoris, f. a2r

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would limit the orator to civil questions."' Everyone, he insisted, believes that the orator must be a vir bonus."^^ He also evokad tha always useful expédient of positing a double purpose for the orator, an internai ona, which suited Quintilian's bene dicere, and an external one, which correspondad to persuasion.'' And it is with this distinction that he refuted Bembo and especially Collazio.i*' Barzizza's syncretism was essentially Quintilianesque. Agreeing with Bembo that bene dicere was équivalent to eloquentia,^"^ he argued that bene dicere/eloquentia was the constant characteristic and, therefore, tha constant end of oratory.

Quintilian's opinion on the purpose of rhetoric also entered into tha farocious contemporary battle between Raffaello Regio and Giovanni Calfurmo.i''2 Both were prominent humanist teachers in the Veneto. Regio was the first to deny in print the Ciceronian paternity of the Rhetorica ad Herennium;^°^ Calfurnio was an important editor of, and commentator on, classical taxts.™ Unfortu-

' Ib id. , ff. a3r-6r. '«Ibid., f. a7r-v ««Ibid., ff. a8v-blv, dlr. ™Ibid., ff. dlv-4r. I note that he also took the trouble to réfute Collazio's

opinion that the orator affected the mind of the orator rather than the will (f. c8v). i»ilbid., f. c7r-v '"'^Raphaelis Regii Conclusiones et questiones in nonnullos errorum cuiusdam Calfurnii

bestiae, in 21 quaestiones; quaestio 14 is "Utrum bene dicere an persuadere sit rheto-rices finis." This work forms part (ff. b5r-c8r) of the collection of opuscules by Regio published at Venice in May 1490, beginning with his Epistolae Plynii (= Hain-Copinger 13810), which I consulted at Yale University. The invective was repub-lished, with leftover sheets or by using the same formes of the prior édition, at Venice in 1492 as part of another collection of Regio's opuscules, this time starting with his Ducenta problemata in Quintilianum (Hain-Copinger 13809). I consulted the Yale University copy in which the treatise is détective after f. b3v.

i™On Regio see the bibliography in Perosa, "L'edizione veneta di Quintiliano," 603-10, and A. Belloni, "Tristano Calco e gli scritti inediti di Giorgio Merula," Italia medioevale e umanistica 15 (1972): 283-328, at 300 (I thank John O. Ward for calling this last article to my attention); see Belloni, 299-328, for controversy on the Ad Herennium before Regio. Note that the passage of Battista Guarini concerning the skepticism of his father and of Antonio Loschi about the Ad Herennium quoted by R. Sabbadini, Storia e crticia di testi latini, 2d ed. (Padua, 1971), 22, refers to an interpolation in the text and not to the work itself. I take the opportunity hère to correct my "Three Notes on Renaissance Rhetoric, "Rhetorica 5 (1987): 107-18, at 114-15, where I wrongly state that Angelo Decembrio also rejected Cicero's authorship of the Ad Herennium.

'"For literature on him see Perosa, "L'edizione veneta di Quintiliano," 604-08, and my "Calfurnio's Identification of Pseudepigrapha of Ognibene, Fenestella, and Trebizond, and his Attack on Renaissance Commentaries," Renaissance Quarterly 41 (1988): 32-43.

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nately, we bave no text that gives us the détails of what each said about the purpose of rhetoric. From Regio's invective of 1490 we know that Calfurnio claimad during a disputation at Padua to be able to argua for or against Quintilian on whether bene dicere or persuadere was the purposa of rhatoric.'°5 Regio, for his part, in the midst of haaping abusa upon Calfurnio, mentioned that his own préférence was for bene dicere, which is a position we can confirm from his commentary on the De institutione oratoria.'^'^ If nothing else, the fight between Regio and Calfurnio attests to how lively an issue the statement of rhetoric's purpose had become among teachers of rhetoric in the Veneto at the end of the fifteenth cantury.

How much thase late Quattrocento quarrels in the Veneto reso-nated elsewhere in Italy I am not in a position to say. But it is interesting to note that the leading humanist in Naplas, Giovanni Pontano, criticized Quintilian in his wide-ranging and entertaining dialogue Antonius, written in the mid- to late 1480s and first printed in 1491.1'"' Pontano rebuked Quintilian for his mistaken treatment of tha status doctrine;"'* but, mora broadly and mora partinently to our purpose, he attacked Quintilian for departing from Cicero and substituting bene dicere for persuasio as the end of rhetoric.™ Quintilian's définition may work perfectly fine for declaimers, Pontano said, but, for

'*Regio, Epistolae Plynii etc., f. c3r-v: "Quid igitur quisquam miretur si nuUis provocationibus potuisti impelli ut in média academia de rhetoricis saltem quaestionibus disputares cum et omnium sis infantissimus et disserendi rationem pen-tius ignores? Quo namque pacto huius propriae quaestionis, utrum bene dicere an persuadere sit rhetorices finis, alteram partem defendere potuisses cum neque argumentandi neque obiectis respondendi tibi facultas adsit? Quamquam enim cum Quintiliano sentio bene dicere finem esse rhetorices, iisque omnibus quae a quibusdam contradicentur in ils annotationibus respondi quas in depravatores illius operis scripsi, tamen persuadere quoque finem esse facile tibi vi argu-mentorum extorsisse saepiusque tibi ipsi repugnare coegis[s]em, verum fuga[m] tibi pulcherrime consuluisti."

io6p e4r of the 1506 editton (see n. 37 above). '"Tor the dattng of Pontano's dialogues see S. Montt, "Ricerche suUa crono-

logia dei Dialoghi di Pontano," Annali délia Facoltà di lettere e filosofia dell'Università di Napoli 10 (1962-63): 296-305 at 276-85. Antonius is to be read in G. G. Pontano, 7 Dialoghi, ed. C. Previtera (Florence, 1943), 47-119. On Pontano's crittcism of Quinttl-ian see Fuiano, Insegnamento, 74-82; R. Sabbadini, Storia del cicernonianismo e di altre questioni letterarie dell'età délia Rinascenza (Turin, 186), 26; F. Tateo, Umanesimo etico di Giovanni Pontano, 74-78; G. Ferraù, Pontano critico (Messina, 1983), 38-39, 88-89, 100; and L. D'Ascia, "La retorica di Giorgio da Trebisonda e l'Umanesimo cic-eroniano," Rinascimento, ser. 2, 29 (1989): 193-216, at 208-11.

>»8; Dialoghi, 63-66. •««Ibid., 58-61.

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an orator speaking before a judge, persuasion has to ba tha ultimate goal (i.e., rhetoric as power vs. rhetoric as entertainment)."" To compose tha différences between the two Roman authorities, Pontano followed the same tactic that Collazio had developed eariier. Citing Boethius' distinction between internai and external ends, Pontano made bene dicere a subordinate end of rhetoric and persuasio tha ultimate end of rhetoric.i" Some modern scholars bave viewed Pontano's attack on Quintilian as a response to Lorenzo Valla's Comparatio of 1428."2 That may be true, especially since Pontano held George of Trebizond in high regard as his teacher. i" But it seems to ma aqually likaly that Pontano had in mind the very lively contemporary controversy in the Veneto, especially since not only did he appropriate Collazio's distinction of the ultimate and subordinate ends of rhetoric, but he also refuted at length Bonifacio Bembo's équation rhetorica = eloquentia.^^'^

As we bave seen. Peter Ramus attacked Quintilian in 1549 quite independently of the Italian Quattrocento controversy. Ramus' reductionist concept of rhetoric allowed him to debunk the theory of the orator as a vir bonus. By the same token, because he reduced rhetoric to elocutio, he could also applaud Quintilian's defirùtion of rhetoric as the scientia bene dicendi.^^^ Indeed, that définition was one of the very few things he endorsed in his harsh book-by-book critique of the De institutione oratoria. Consequently, for ail its hostil-ity to the classical conception of rhetoric, Ramism became a power-ful force in Protestant Europe for tha acceptance of Quintilian's notion of rhetoric as the art of fine speech.

I know of no controversial works de fine rhetoricae in Italy in the first half of tha sixteenth century. But in the second half of the century the debate took on new life at Piacenza. The controversy doubt-less involved a great deal of parsonal animosity in this provincial

•'"Ibid., 60. i"Ibid., 59. "^Sabbadini, Storia del cicernonianismo, 26; Ferraù, Pontano critico, 38-39; and

D'Ascia, "La retorica di Giorgio da Trebisonda," 209, n. 43. '"See Ferraù, Pontano critico, 73-105. "'•7 Dialoghi, 61-62. Pontano insisted that his purpose was to défend Cicero

from presently living humanists: "Ciceronem a grammaticorum qui nunc vivunt ra-bidis morsibus liberare studeremus" (ibid., 66). For further echoes of the controversy in Naples see Fuiano, Insegnamento, 74-93, who discusses Aurelio Bienato's commentary on Quintilian of 1475, and Franceso Pucci's commentary on the Rhetorica ad Herrenium, ca. I50I (see also Fuiano, 143-44, for a relevant excerpt).

"5Ramus, Arguments, 103 (English), 183 (Latin); Scholae, 338.

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capital, but tha fact that thèse rivalries played themsalvas out on the issue of rhetoric's purpose attests to the continuing relevance of the question in the schools. In 1577, the obscure Piacentian scholar Petrus a Porta published a Disputatio contra Quintilianum in which he demonstrated from Quintilian's own words that persuasion and not bene dicere was the purposa of tha orator."* He made his case by quoting out of context and recasting into syllogistic form statements from Quintilian, such as "he who speaks aims for victory" (De institutione oratoria 2.17.23)."^ Porta's attack did not go unchallenged. The next year, a priest at Piacenza, losephus Frandolinus, pubhshed a treatise defending Quintilian from inconsistency."* In the process, Frandolinus defended Quintilian's définition of rhetoric as conso-nant with Aristotle's, and with Cicero's mature rhatorical writings." ' Frandolinus also ravived the intrinsic-extrinsic distinction, arguing that persuasion is not intégral (insita) to the art of rhetoric but is, in fact, quita extrinsic and fortuitous (extrinsecus etfortuito).™ Porta responded to Frandohnus that same year, writing a Disputatio secM«dfl.'2i Porta arranged this response in the form of a séries of quotations from Frandolinus (labelled Q[uintilianus]) followed by Porta's comments. One novel élément introduced by Porta was to deny that Quintilian himself was a vir bonus.^^ Again that same yaar, 1578, Frandolinus issued a response that refuted Porta point for point over the length of one hundred five pages.^23

"'The full titie is Disputatio Pétri a Porta Placentini, in qua probatur persuadere esse finem oratoris, contra Quintilianum ex Quintiliani sententia (Bologna: loannes Rossius, 1577), with the text running only five folios (A2-4, Bl-2). Apart from this controversy, the only other publication of Porta I could identify is his In obitum . . fosephi Mascari etc, Piacenza, 1585 (mémorial verses; not seen; Brittsh Library Catalogue).

"Torta, Disputatio, f. A2r, mistakenly placed the passage in 2.16. "'With the tttle, losephi Frandolini Placentii Disputatio, in qua probatur Marcum

Fabium Quintilianum in fine rhetorices et oratoris constituendo sibi ipsum ubique consentire eorumque qui Quintilianum inconstantiae reprehendunt rationes confutantur (Cremona: Christophorus Draonius, 1578, in quires A-F''). On Frandolini see L. Mensi, Dizionario biografico piacentino (Piacenza, 1899; repr. Bologna, 1978), 189.

"«Frandolini, Disputatio, ff. A4v-B2r, E2r-4v 'ôjbid,, f.D4v '2'This has the title Disputatio secunda Pétri a Porta Placentini, in qua Aristoteles et

Cicero ex Quintiliano invito contra ipsum Quint, de fine oratoris defenduntur et quorundam reprehensio prioris disputationis diluitur (Piacenza, "Apud lo. Bazzachium et Anteum Comitem socios," 1578; in 44 pp.).

'2-Porta, Disputatio, f. B2v; Disputatio secunda, 7 (caput. 8) and 17-18. '^^Secunda losephi Frand.ni in aede divi Ant.ni Placentiae canonici disputatio pro M.

Fabio Quintiliano, rhetore praestantissimo (Piacenza, "Apud lo. Bazzachium et Anteum Comitem socios," 1578). The same printers published Porta's Disputatio secunda.

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Porta and Frandolinus wrota no mora aftar this, but still tha issue would not die. I and my survay with Ludovico Carbone, a Thomist doctor of theology at Perugia, who took a great interest in rhatoric. 12'» In 1589 ha pubhshed a Rhetoric entitied De arte dicendi.^^^ He gave ovar a chaptar of tha book to discuss at langth the différant opiniones on the purposa of rhetoric.^2' He included the harmoniz-ers in the mix, and specifically those who distinguished the intrinsic and extrinsic purposas of rhetoric. Carbone did not identify anyone by name but, in another work. De officio oratoris, published in 1596, he did rafar the reader to Matteo Collazio.'27 In his Rhetoric of 1589, aftar avaluating ail tha options. Carbone determined the question against Quintilian and for Cicero. He called rhetoric the art of persuasion.

But, like George of Trebizond and Matteo Collazio, Carbone swam against the tide. Cyprian Soarez, the author of the standard Rhetoric in the Jesuit schools and the most printed contemporary Rhetoric in Catbolic countries, taught that rhatoric was tha ars dicendi, which we might translate as the art of communication.'2* Thus, in a strange alliance, and with soma adaptations, the Jesuits and the Calvinist followers of Peter Ramus combined to make Quintilian's bene dicere the prédominant définition of rhetoric in the schools of the later Renaissance.

'^^There is relatively littie literature on him despite his enormous literary out-put; see C. H. Lohr. "Renaissance Latin Aristotle Commentaries. Authors C," Renaissance Quarterly 28 (1975): 689-741, at 698-99; E. d'Alençon, "Carbone, Louis," Dictionnaire de théologie catholique 2 (1910): I7I2; and H. Hurter, Nomenclator Literarius Theologiae Catholicae, 5 vols, in 6 (Innsbruck, 19II; repr. New York, 1962) 3: 156-57. One of the few modern scholars to analyze any of Carbone's writings is E. J. Ashworth, who cites several times his întroductiones in Logicam in her "The Doctrine of Supposition in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries," Archiv fiir Geschichte der Philosophie 51 (1969): 260-85 (passim).

'^Tabulae rhetoricae Cypriani Soarii . . quibus accesserunt duo libri de arte dicendi . . . auctore Ludovico Carbone (Venice, 1589), with a préface to the whole volume by Carbone. Carbone's De arte dicendi has an independent foliation.

12'Ibid., ff 76r-86r (Bk. I, c. 8). '^Tûdovico Carbone, De officio oratoris libri V (Venice, 1596), 16, in the marg.:

"Colatius dispu. de hac re." '^"C. Soarez, De arte rhetorica libri très ex Aristotele, Cicérone, et Quintiliano

praecipue deprompti. 1 used the editton of Paris, 1573. See f. Ir: "Rhetorica est vel ars vel docrina dicendi." On Soarez see L. Flynn, "The De arte rhetorica of Cyprian Soarez, S.J.," Quarterly fournal of Speech 42 (1956): 356-74; and idem, "Sources and Influence of Soarez' De arte rhetorica," ibid. 43 (1957): 257-65.

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IV

If we may ba permitted some gênerai comments concerning the preceding, it is clear that antiquity had laft postarity two comparing visions of rhatoric. Tha conflict lay dormant during tha Middle Ages. But when the Ranaissanca revived the full ancient art, soma scholars graspad the contradiction bafwaen Quintilian and Cicero on the purpose of rhatoric.'2' One resuit of this contradiction was Renaissance anti-Quintilianism. Statistically, Quintilian won. There were many more éditions of Renaissance manuals which taught Quintilian's définition of rhetoric than of those that taught Cicero's. But the significance of Renaissance anti-Quintilianism goes bayond tha issue of who won or lost. Anti-Quintilianism provided a venue in the Renaissance for debating the meaning and purpose of rhetoric. The arguments used in the debate are interesting in themselves and they suggest many continuities in the history of rhetoric. Most importantly, tha vary existence of anti-Quintilianism gives us fresh perspective from which to study the complax and not yet fully understood history of Renaissance rhetoric and rhetoricians.

'^'On the common syncretistic tendency to deny this différence and to treat the word "Ciceronian" as merely a synonym for classical or "Roman" see the comments of J. J. Murphy, "Ciceronian Influences in Latin Rhetorical Compendia of the 15th Century," in S. P. Revard, F. Radie, and M. A. Di Cesare, eds., Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Guelpherbytani. Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress of Neo-Latin Studies (Binghamton, NY, 1988), 521-30, at 527.

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ay 2020

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Episodes of Anti-Quintilianism in the Italian Renaissance ... · politically as tha art of...

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