Bruni, Leonardo

Presentazione di James Hankins

The writings of Leonardo Bruni fall into two distinct groups. The first group includes his official writings as papal secretary to four popes of the Italian and Pisan obediences (1405-1414) and as chancellor of Florence (1411, 1427-1444). The second contains his literary writings, which extend over the full length of his career, from as early as 1400 down to 1443, the year before his death (Viti 1992; Hankins 2007-2008). The vast majority of Bruni’s works in both categories were written in Latin, but he did not entirely neglect the vernacular, and some of his vernacular literary works circulated as widely as his Latin works (Hankins 2006). A considerable body of Bruni’s chancery writings, especially the Latin missive he wrote as chancellor of Florence, circulated in miscellaneous literary manuscripts, and a small number of what might be called “semi-official writings” – short speeches and letters written in propria persona but reflecting his role as a public official – also found an audience in vernacular and Latin miscellanies (Hankins 1998).

Many of Bruni’s writings were among the most popular works in the last age of the manuscript book, and a recent census of literary manuscripts containing his works reaches nearly 3200 items, a number greater than that of any other humanist, including Petrarch (Hankins 1997). Incunabula containing works by Bruni number at least 165 separate imprints. Many of Bruni’s original Latin works and translations into Latin were also rendered into European vernaculars: 16 into Italian (273 mss., 25 printed editions); 15 into Spanish (31 mss., 4 printed editions); 9 into French (35 mss., 10 printed editions); 8 into German (3 mss., 8 printed editions); and 1 into English (1 ms., 1 printed edition). Bruni was chiefly famous as an orator and historian as well as a translator of Greek philosophy, oratory, biography and history, and the circulation of his works reflects his reputation in these fields.

Yet despite the enormous popularity and success of Bruni’s works, it has been extraordinarily difficult to identify indisputable examples of his Latin and Greek hands. As Albinia de la Mare put it in 1978: « With Bruni the problem is to find any certain material at all » (Binnebeke 2012: 51 n. 1, who cites de la Mare’s letter of 1978 from the archive of her papers at the Bodleian Library). That this remains true today is even more remarkable, given that in the last two decades two major research projects have examined in situ and via reproductions more than 500 and 1200 manuscripts respectively (Censimento1993-2004; Hankins 1997), more than half the surviving total, and even the extensive soundings in the Florentine State Archive and Archivio Segreto Vaticano undertaken by Paolo Viti and others have also produced sparse results. The codicological studies undertaken by various modern editors of works by Bruni, including his translations of Demosthenes (Leonardo Bruni traduttore di Demostene: la ‘Pro Ctesiphonte’, edited by Maria Accame Lanzillotta, Genova, Ist. di Filologia Classica e Medievale, 1986), Plato (Il Critone latino di Leonardi Bruni e di Rinuccio Aretino, edited by Ernesto Berti, Firenze, Olschki, 1983 and Platonis Gorgias Leonardo Aretino interprete, edited by Matteo Venier, Firenze, Sismel-Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2011), and Homer (Die Orationes Homeri des Leonardo Bruni Aretino, edited by Peter Thiermann, Leiden, Brill, 1993); the Dialogi ad Petrum Histrum and Laudatio Florentine urbis (edited by Stefano Baldassarri, Firenze, Olschki, 1993 e Firenze, Sismel-Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2000), and the Oratio infunere Nanni Strozze (edited by Susanne Daub, Stuttgart, Teubner, 1996) have also produced surprisingly little data of relevance to establishing Bruni’s hand. The longest piece of autograph writing attributed to Bruni remains the missive of 1411 written in a chancery hand, discovered and published in Viti 1989 (→ 1). We still do not possess any incontrovertible examples of Bruni’s bookhand (textualis) or other substantial pieces of prose written di propria mano. Most of the items reliably attributed to Bruni consist of corrections, annotations or glosses found in manuscripts written by professional scribes.

The examples of Bruni’s hand that have been found occur mostly in archival documents, dedication and presentation copies, and codices formerly owned or utilized by the famous chancellor. There have been no detailed studies of Bruni’s personal library, but it is known that he acquired a number of items from Salutati’s large collection after the latter’s death, and that some of Bruni’s own books ended up in the hands of Giannozzo Manetti, Antonio Beccadelli (Panormita) and his son Donato, who inherited his estate. Two former Salutati codices owned by Bruni contain notes in his hand: Paris, BnF, Par. Lat. 6798 and Firenze, BML, Plut. 49 18 (→ P 13 and 6); further study of books from Salutati’s and Manetti’s libraries may well disclose more Bruni notes.

The reason for the almost complete absence of entire manuscripts or texts written in Bruni’s textual hand can only be guessed, but like other chancellors – often called dettatori or dettatori delle lettere to distinguish them from mere notai e scrivani – it is probable that Bruni was in the habit of dictating chancery documents; and it is possible, even likely, that much of his literary work was also dictated to amanuenses as well. We know from his correspondence with Niccoli that Bruni employed a private secretary-copyist; and the fact that common errors in the transmission of at least two of Bruni’s works go back to idiographs rather than autographs, and that some of these errors were later authoritatively corrected, likewise suggests dictation (Venier in Bruni 2011: 172). The parallel case of Poggio Bracciolini, who is known to have dictated some of his familiar letters, is instructive (Harth 1984: xx-xxi). Bruni’s correspondence also reveals that he liked his writings to be copied by competent scribes before being circulated, and he clearly shared the Niccoli circle’s appreciation for fine bookhands vetusto more. Niccolò Niccoli himself occasionally acted as Bruni’s scribe and literary agent (Hankins 2003- 2004: i 65, 69). Unlike Poggio and Niccoli, Bruni may well have felt his own skills as a scribe to be unequal to the demands of fine penmanship. In a playful letter to Niccolò Niccoli, datable to 1405- 1406, Bruni speaks of himself as a man suffering from arthritis, hominem articulari morbo laborantem, whom Niccoli, valentissimo digitis, can easily defeat in a writing contest (Bruni 2007: 175; Luiso 1980: 24). Some examples of Bruni’s notularis are rather crabbed and spidery, consistent in character with a man suffering from arthritis. Examples would be the notes in Firenze, BML, Plut. 49 18 and Paris, BnF, Par. Lat. 6798 (→ P 6 and 13), specimens of both early and late periods of his scribal activity. Even the more careful samples of his note-hand found in the Monreale (→ P 11) and Oxford (→ P 12) codices tend to be inelegant and irregular in character. No scripts reliably attributed to Bruni have the character of a professional bookhand.

A further difficulty in identifying examples of Bruni’s hand has been the mass of conflicting, misleading and incorrect information to be found in manuscript catalogues and early scholarship, and a lack of good facsimiles. Previous scholarship regarding Bruni autographs was first collected by Paolo Viti (1992) and subjected to searching criticism. Despite certain flaws, Viti’s 1992 article remains fundamental: it passed in review most of the literary manuscripts containing scripts that had been attributed to Bruni at one time or another, going back to the fifteenth century. Viti also identified in the Florentine State Archive several examples of Bruni’s documentary and chancery hands (Viti 1989, 1991, 1992). Analyzing the ductus of these scripts, he reasoned, improbably, that Bruni’s hand in literary manuscripts would display the same general characteristics. On this basis, Viti rejected a large number of earlier attributions and accepted as genuine, in literary manuscripts, only a few annotations found in six literary codices – Firenze, BML, Plut. 49 18, Plut. 52 5, Plut. 79 19, Strozzi 44; Paris, BnF, Par. Lat. 6798 (→ P 6-9, P 13) and Rome, Casanatense 599 (→ P 14).

Viti’s study cleared away a great deal of confusion, but detailed study of the various trustworthy examples of Bruni’s hand reveals a more complex picture. These specimens vary considerably in style and degree of formality. The variations are enough perhaps to distinguish three related but distinct hands: (a) a rapid documentary hand, (b) a more formal semigothic chancery hand with humanist elements, and (c) a more humanistic note-hand in the annotations (see Nota sulla scrittura). The recent tentative suggestion of Teresa De Robertis that Firenze, BRic, 514 was allestito by Bruni for the dedicatee Salutati (De Robertis, forthcoming) – if allestito is intended to mean that the text hand was written in Bruni’s own hand – seems unlikely; there is no exogenous evidence that Bruni wrote the manuscript, and the script – an early humanist textualis – does not resemble other known examples of Bruni’s writing. It remains possible that this and other manuscripts may have been written by Bruni’s personal secretary-copyist.

The identification of Bruni’s Greek hand has proven even more problematic. Controversy has raged for the last two decades over a pair of manuscripts containing works of Plato (BAV, Urb. Gr. 32 and 33: → Dubbi 1-2), unreliably attributed to Bruni in the catalogue of the Urbinates Graeci by Cosimo Stornajolo (1895: 38-39; discussed in Viti 1992, Berti 1995; Gentile 2002: 415-22). A third manuscript, Cologny-Genève, Biblioteca Bodmer, 136 (→ Dubbi 4), was attributed to Bruni by Ruth Barbour based on a comparison with the Urbino codices (Berti 1978: 127, who states that Barbour’s attribuition is contained in a letter to E. Lobel inserted among the documentation relative to the Bodmer manuscript). Subsequent studies have shown that all three manuscripts were written early in the fifteenth century by an Italian scribe writing in the style of Chrysoloras, and Ernesto Berti has shown that Bodmer 136 was almost certainly used by Bruni for his translations of Plato’s Phaedo and Crito. But even Berti, who had previously defended Barbour’s attribution of the Greek bookhand to Bruni, came to regard her attribution, as well as that of the Urbino manuscripts, as uncertain. In fact, the text hand in all three manuscripts displays a regularity and calligraphic quality unlikely to come from Bruni. To my knowledge, the only specimens of writing in Greek plausibly attributable to Bruni are a few annotations in Firenze, BML, Plut. 49 18 (→ P 6). These display the same crabbed irregularity characteristic of the Latin annotations securely attributed to Bruni in the same volume, and they are written in the same light brown ink.

Bibliografia
Berti 1978 = Ernesto B., La traduzione di Leonardo Bruni del ‘Fedone’ di Platone ed un codice greco della Biblioteca Bodmer, in «Museum Helveticum», xxxv, pp. 125-48.
Berti 1995 = Id., A proposito di alcuni codici greci in relazione con Manuele Crisolora e con Leonardo Bruni, in «Studi classici e orientali», xlv, pp. 281-96.
Binnebeke 2012 = Xavier van B., Six Contributions to Florentine Humanism from Salutati to Poliziano, Tesi di dottorato di ricerca, Messina, Relatore Prof. Vincenzo Fera, a.a. 2009-2012.
Bruni 2007 = Leonardo B., Epistularum libri viii, recensente Laurentio Mehus (1741), ed. by James Hankins, Roma, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2 voll.
Bruni 2011 = Id., Platonis Gorgias Leonardo Aretino interprete, a cura di Matteo Venier, Firenze, Sismel-Edizioni del Galluzzo.
Censimento 1993-2004 = Censimento dei codici dell’Epistolario di Leonardo Bruni, a cura di Lucia Gualdo Rosa, Roma, Ist. Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 2 voll.
De Robertis forthcoming = Teresa De R., I primi anni della scrittura umanistica. Materiali per un aggiornamento, forthcoming in Paleography, Humanism and Manuscript Illumination in Renaissance Italy. Essays in Memory of A. C. de la Mare, ed. by Robert Black, Jill Kraye and Laura Nuvoloni, London, Warburg Institute.
Gentile 2002 = Sebastiano G., Marginalia umanistici e tradizione platonica, in Talking to the Text: Marginalia from Papyri to Print. Proceedings of a Conference held at Erice, 26 september-3 october 1998, ed. by Vincenzo Fera, Giacomo Ferraú and Silvia Rizzo, Messina, Centro interdipartimentale di studi umanistici, vol. i pp. 407-32.
Hankins 1997 = James H., Repertorium Brunianum: A Critical Guide to the Writings of Leonardo Bruni, vol. i. Handlist of Manuscripts, Roma, Ist. Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo.
Hankins 1998 = Id., Unknown and Little Known Texts of Leonardo Bruni, in «Rinascimento», s. ii, xxxviii, pp. 125-61 (re-printed with additions in Hankins 2003-2004: i 19-62).
Hankins 2003-2004 = Id., Humanism and Platonism in the Italian Renaissance, Roma, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2 voll.
Hankins 2006 = Id., Humanism in the Vernacular: The Case of Leonardo Bruni, in Humanism and Creativity in the Renaissance. Essays in Honor of Ronald G. Witt, ed. by Christopher S. Celenza and Kenneth Gouwens, Leiden, Brill, pp. 11-29.
Hankins 2007-2008 = Id., The Dates of Leonardo Bruni’s Later Works (1437-1443), in «Studi medievali e umanistici», v-vi, pp. 1-40.
Harth 1984 = Helene H., Introduzione in Poggio Bracciolini, Lettere, vol. i. Lettere a Niccolò Niccoli, a cura di H.H., Firenze, Olschki.
Luiso 1980 = Francesco Paolo L., Studi su l’epistolario di Leonardo Bruni, a cura di Lucia Gualdo Rosa, Roma, Ist. Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo.
Viti 1989 = Paolo V., Inediti e autografi di Leonardo Bruni: le lettere pubbliche del primo cancellierato (1411), in «Archivio storico italiano», cxlvii, pp. 3-29.
Viti 1991 = Id., Epistolario e grafia di Leonardo Bruni: indagine preliminare, in Per il censimento dei codici dell’Epistolario di Leonardo Bruni. [Atti del] Seminario internazionale di studi, Firenze, 30 ottobre 1987, a cura di Lucia Gualdo Rosa e Paolo Viti, Roma, Ist. Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, pp. 169-78.
Viti 1992 = Id., Leonardo Bruni e Firenze: studi sulle lettere pubbliche e private, Roma, Bulzoni.