Latinitas and linguistic authority in Renaissance Latin style guides

Abstract

The aim of this work is threefold: firstly, to explore and describe an emerging genre of Latin reference text, which I call style guides, in the late-fifteenth and early-sixteenth centuries (1441-1541); secondly, to identify the sources of linguistic authority for such texts; and thirdly, to connect the presentation of linguistic authority in Latin style guides to the wider debate surrounding Ciceronianism at the turn of the sixteenth century. In particular, this thesis will examine the use of authoritative exempla in style guides and the shifts in the distribution of such exempla over the course of nearly a century. In my first chapter, I focus on the contributions of Lorenzo Valla to Renaissance Latinity. Valla was the first early modern author to attempt to replicate on a large scale the philological methodology of Priscian’s monumental Ars grammatica. In this chapter, I first discuss the structure, style, and approach of Valla’s Elegantiae, arguing that Valla both inaugurated and served as a model for a new kind of Renaissance style guide. In particular, I focus on Valla’s use of quotations as a source of linguistic authority and offer an analysis of the chronology, genre, and distribution of authors in the entire corpus of his exempla. I contend that Valla’s negative attitude towards late antique authors and grammarians, such as Priscian, Lactantius, and St Jerome and preference for Classical sources—especially Cicero and Quintilian—marked a sharp departure from medieval practice and established a new approach to linguistic authority which would be adopted in nearly all subsequent style guides: namely, basing linguistic prescriptions on the usage of a select group of Classical authors rather than on secondary sources and logical principles. My second chapter treats style guides produced in the late-fifteenth century (c.1470-1500). While none of these works replaced Valla’s Elegantiae, many condensed its material and presented it in a more easily accessible format, the most popular of which applied material from the Elegantiae specifically to letter writing and represented a development of the medieval Artes dictandi. The primary subjects of analysis in this chapter are Agostino Dati’s (c.1420-1478) Isagogicus libellus and Niccolò Perotti’s (c.1429-1480) De epistolis scribendis (which appears within his Rudimenta grammatices), whose structure, style, and format I examine as well as their authors’ various approaches to elegance and Latinity. For each of these texts, I again analyse the entire corpus of exempla, focusing in particular on the distribution of authors cited and those places in which Dati and Perotti are indebted to or differ from Valla. In my third chapter, I discuss the large-scale reference works which had begun to grow in popularity in the first decades of the sixteenth century, arguing that the nascent Ciceronian controversy shaped the approaches of many authors of dictionaries and style guides during this period. I suggest that reference works produced by Eclectics, such as Perotti’s Cornucopiae, Ambrogio Calepino’s (c.1440-1510) Dictionarium Latinum, and Robert Estienne’s (c.1503-1559) Thesaurus linguae Latinae, were more lexicographical in nature, focusing on etymology and definition while citing a wide range of authors. On the other hand, I show how early Ciceronian style guides had a more flexible structure, incorporated a wider range of linguistic material, and focused more heavily on idiomatic expression than on definition or etymology. By analysing a representative set of exempla and entries from Adriano Castellesi’s (c.1461-1521) De sermone et Modis Latine Loquendi and Bartholomeo Ricci’s (c.1490-1569) Apparatus Latinae Locutionis, I also establish that, despite the expanded scope of these early Ciceronian style guides, their authors included a narrower chronological and generic range of authoritative quotations. By considering these early Ciceronian style guides alongside material from Eclectic lexica, I offer new findings regarding the way in which the Ciceronian controversy presented itself in grammatical texts. Lastly, the fourth chapter of this thesis will explore the so-called ‘extreme’ Ciceronian style guides of the mid-sixteenth century. In particular, I analyse the development of Ciceronian reference texts in the wake of Erasmus’ notorious Ciceronianus, focusing on how ‘extreme’ Ciceronian thought was instantiated in the grammatical tradition by comparing real Ciceronian style guides with Erasmus’ caricature. By examining the structure, scope, and exempla of Mario Nizzoli’s (c.1488-1567) Obseruationes in M. T. Ciceronem, Étienne Dolet’s (c.1509-1546) Commentarii linguae Latinae, and Basilio Zanchi’s (1501-1558) Verborum Latinorum ex uariis authoribus epitome and Verborum quae in Marii Nizolii obseruationibus in Ciceronem desiderantur appendix, I argue that, contrary to their reputations as extremists, these Ciceronians offered a considered and often moderate approach to linguistic authority.