Francesco Robortello (1516-1567)

Architectural Genius of the Humanities

Marco Sgarbi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780367224875
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000693188
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

This book explores the intellectual world of Francesco Robortello, one of the most prominent scholars of the Italian Renaissance. From poetics to rhetoric, philology to history, topics to ethics, Robortello revolutionised the field of humanities through innovative interpretations of ancient texts and with a genius that was architectural in scope. He was highly esteemed by his contemporaries for his acute wit, but also envied and disparaged for his many qualities. In comparison with other humanists of his time such as Carlo Sigonio and Pier Vettori, Robortello had a deeply philosophical vein, one that made him unique not only to Italy, but to Europe more generally. Robortello's role in reforming the humanities makes him a constituent part of the long-fifteenth century. Robortello's thought, however, unlike that of other fifteenth-century humanists, sprung from and was thoroughly imbued with a systematic, Aristotelian spirit without which his philosophy would never have emerged from the tumultuous years of the mid-Cinquecento. Francesco Robortello created a system for the humanities which was unique for his century: a perfect union of humanism and philosophy. This book represents the first fully fledged monograph on this adventurous intellectual life.

1
Introduction

In La fine dell’Umanesimo, Giuseppe Toffanin chooses to remember Francesco Robortello from Udine as the “last genuine humanist.”¹ No doubt Robortello may properly be considered a fully rounded “humanist,” if we accept Paul Oskar Kristeller’s famous characterisation of Humanism. According to this eminent German-born, American-naturalised historian, Humanism “was not as such a philosophical tendency or system, but rather a cultural and educational program which emphasized and developed an important but limited area of studies.”² This area had as its nucleus “a group of subjects that was concerned essentially neither with classics nor with philosophy,” and was thus properly called studia humanitatis. The studia humanitatis embraced “a clearly defined cycle of scholarly disciplines, namely grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry, and moral philosophy.”³ The humanists “were active either as teachers of the humanities in secondary schools and universities, or as secretaries to princes or cities.”⁴

As we shall see amply evidenced in the biographical section, as well as being a professor of “humanity,” or humaniora, in numerous Italian schools and universities, throughout his career Robortello also authored important studies on the very disciplines that constituted this field of study. For instance, in the realm of grammar he published Annotationes tam in Graecis, quam Latinis authoribus (1543); in rhetoric, the De rhetorica facultate (1548) and the De artificio dicendi (1560); in poetics, In librum Aristotelis de arte poetica explicationes (1548); in history, the De historica facultate (1548), and in moral philosophy, the In libros politicos Aristotelis disputatio (1552).

In reading Kristeller’s definition, one may note the somewhat surprising absence of any interest in Classical culture: the study of Greek and Latin does not appear explicitly in the list of disciplines that make up the studia humanitatis. In truth, however, the study of each discipline contained within the humanistic program “was understood to include the reading and interpretation of its standard ancient writers in Latin and, to a lesser extent, in Greek.”⁵ This was at the core of the study of grammar. In Robortello, too, there is a marked interest in ancient history and literature. This is evidenced in his Explanationes in primum Aeneid. Vergil. librum collectæ (1548), his edition of the pseudo-Longinus’s De sublime (1554), the Scholia in Aeschyli tragoedias (1552), and his many studies of Roman history, including the De nominibus Romanorum (1548) and the De vita et victu populi romani (1559).

The study of Latin and Greek works led, according to Eugenio Garin, to an attitude, or a historical consciousness, that “clearly defines the essence of Humanism,” as well as a new philosophy.⁶ Robortello was therefore a humanist not only in Kristeller’s sense, but also in the sense suggested by Garin. If a historical consciousness was one of the characterising features of the humanist, Robortello was without doubt the humanist par excellence who in his De arte sive ratione corrigendi veteres authores disputatio (1557) spelt out a critical methodology for understanding ancient authors that went beyond any form of admiration still persisting among the intellectuals of the Quattrocento.

Robortello may thus be considered the “ideal humanist” from the standpoint of both Kristeller and Garin. He was also the philosopher of a new “humanity,” not so much because he was a professor of philosophy, but because, unlike the other humanists, whose philosophical insights may justifiably be questioned for their lack of theoretical depth,⁷ for Robortello philosophy was above all the spirit of system – namely the attempt to establish a common matrix for all human knowledge, so as to define a new and more complete humanitas.

His approach is immediately evident in the fundamental connection he establishes between the various disciplines of the studia humanitatis, which in his view revolve around the sermo (discourse or language or oration) and may therefore be defined without hesitation as language arts. In In librum Aristotelis de arte poetica explicationes (1548), Robortello states that there are five language arts:

1. apodictic logic, that is demonstration, which deals with what is true;
2. dialectics, which deals with the probable;
3. rhetoric, which deals with the persuasive;
4. sophistry, which focuses on the verisimilar;
5. poetics, which is concerned with the fictitious or the fabulous.⁸

Robortello excludes grammar from the language arts because it deals with “minor things which say nothing about the soul.”⁹ At most it may be considered propaedeutic to the various language arts that are concerned with oratio. History and philosophy would appear to be missing also, though included in the studia humanitatis program, but this is not the case. As we will see at greater length in the following chapters, Robortello considered the study of history to be part of rhetoric, whereas moral education is the goal towards which the teachings and precepts of politics and rhetoric – and therefore indirectly also history – steer.

Robortello’s classification of language arts had an immediate reception and echo in Benedetto Varchi, one of the most prominent Italian sixteenth-century intellectuals especially active in the Accademia degli Infiammati and in the Accademia fiorentina. In his lecture on the Della poetica in generale, given in 1553, he claims that there are five ways of speaking, corresponding to five rational faculties of the mind: 1. demonstrative, which pertains to the apodictic logic; 2. probable, which pertains to dialectic; 3. verisimilar, which pertains to sophistry; 4. persuasive, which concerns rhetoric; 5. fictitious or fabulous which are related to poetry.¹⁰

What distinguishes Robortello from Varchi and sets him apart also from all the other humanists that preceded him is his grafting of Aristotelianism onto the main stem of the language arts. Robortello is aware of the innovative and revolutionary bent of his thinking, as he himself reveals in the dedicatory letter to Cosimo I in In librum Aristotelis de arte poetica explicationes. He compares himself in no uncertain terms to Aristotle who, after occupying himself most profitably with the natural sciences, went on to devote himself to the language arts. Aristotle’s great merit was to have brought a coherent order and robust systemisation to all those arts that had previously been dealt with in a haphazard and manifestly confused way.¹¹ Robortello points in particular to Aristotle’s methodological approach in ordering the language arts, which he will seek to transplant into the context of humanism.

Robortello views the condition of the language arts in his own times as not dissimilar to their situation in Aristotle’s. Philosophers had neglected Aristotelian texts on the language arts, especially as regards rhetoric and poetics, not because they were too complex (far more complex texts were commonly explained and commented upon), but because they were considered trivial, de jure et de facto, and so unable to provide fundamental knowledge of things and good only for decorating discourse in a theatrical or political manner.¹² By contrast, Robortello seeks to rehabilitate the language arts after Aristotle’s example. In particular, he wishes to revive the “extremely close connection” (arctissima connexione) that exists between the language arts and makes them worthy of being studied and no longer subservient or instrumental to the other sciences.¹³ As we shall see, Robortello will ground the language arts in a methodology that makes it possible to discuss anything, and which represents a notable development in humanistic Topics, that particular art of finding argument for any discussion, stemming from Aristotle’s natural logic, that is the inborn faculties of the mind. It is precisely in his attempt to find a common basis for all the language arts that Robortello displays his own distinctively philosophical and systematic spirit, absent in many other humanists of his time.

By no means was Robortello a philosopher if by philosophy we refer exclusively to the scholastic conception of metaphysical or natural enquiry.¹⁴ He replaces the great cathedrals of scholastic ideas with concrete and targeted investigations into the language arts that aim to “humanly educate,” as Garin terms it, offering a moral and civic education that must be viewed alongside traditional philosophy as a definite new way of doing philosophy. The tabulation at the end of the manuscript Donà dalle Rose 447.29, probably devised during his time in Venice, offers an insight into his idea of philosophy, an idea that differs significantly from that of his contemporaries.¹⁵

Human knowledge is limited, the light of the reason that shows the truth of things being feeble. This is a typical Aristotelian position after Pietro Pomponazzi’s publication of the Tractatus de immortalitate animae in 1513, which drastically diminished the speculative power of the mind. Only a few persons can ever attain knowledge of all the primary principles of things and of God; in fact, this is rather to be couched as a state of enlightenment, a variety of intuition or divine inspiration. Human beings know things scientifically and teach methodologically what is closer to and more graspable by the mind; these are divided into two main groups, one concerning words (verba), the other concerning things (res).

In the first group we find the language arts. Here Robortello provides a more detailed classification than the one mentioned earlier which, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Life and Works
• 3 Topics
• 4 Rhetoric
• 5 Poetics
• 6 History
• 7 Moral Philosophy
• 8 Conclusion
• Index