Exceptional Sammelband of the Scriptores rei rusticae owned and fully annotated by the Viterbo humanist Latino Latini (1513-1593)

CATO, Marcus Porcius (234-149 BC)-VARRO, Marcus Terentius (116-27 BC)-VETTORI, Pietro, ed. (1499-1585). Marci Catonis ac M. Teren. Varronis De re rustica libri, per Petrum Victorium, ad veterum exemplarium fidem, suae integritati restituti. Lyon, Sébastien Gryphius, 1549. 8vo. 226, [14] pp. Collation: a-p⁸. Leaf p8 is a blank. Printer’s device on the title page. Roman, Greek and italic types. Woodcut initials. Italian Union Catalogue, IT\ICCU\BVEE\008966; USTC, 150241.

(bound with:)

COLUMELLA, Lucius Iunius Moderatus (4-70 AD). L. Iunii Moderati Columellae De re rustica libri XII. Eiusdem de arboribus liber, separatus ab alijs. Lyon, Sébastien Gryphius, 1548. 8vo. 491, [21] pp. Collation: a-z⁸ A-I⁸. Leaf I7 is a blank. Printer’s device on the title page and at the end. With several woodcut diagrams in text. Woodcut initials. Italian Union Catalogue, IT\ICCU\BVEE\002063; USTC, 149983.

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PALLADIUS, Rutilius Taurus Aemilianus (fl. 4^th-5^th cent.). Palladii Rutilii Tauri Aemiliani, viri illustris, De re rustica libri XIII. Lyon, Sébastien Gryphius, 1549. 8vo. 184, [8] pp. Collation: Aa-Mm⁸. Printer’s device on the title page and on l. Mm8v. Roman, Greek and italic types. Woodcut initials. Italian Union Catalogue, IT\ICCU\BVEE\003149; USTC, 150242.

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MERULA, Giorgio (Georgius Alexandrinus, 1430-1494)-BEROALDO, Filippo (1453-1505)-MANUZIO, Aldo (ca. 1452?-1515). Enarrationes vocum priscarum in libris De re rustica, per Georgium Alexandrinum. Philippi Beroaldi In libros XIII. Columellae Annotationes. Aldus de Dierum generibus, simulque de Umbris, & Horis, quae apud Palladium. Lyon, Sébastien Gryphius, 1549. 8vo. [84] pp. Collation: aa-kk⁸ ll⁴. Printer’s device on the title page. Roman, Greek and italic types. Woodcut initials. Italian Union Catalogue, IT\ICCU\BVEE\005544; USTC, 150263.

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VETTORI, Pietro (1499-1585). Petri Victorii Explicationes suarum in Catonem, Varronem, Columellam castigationum. Lyon, Sébastien Gryphius, 1542. 8vo. 144 pp. Collation: a-i⁸. Printer’s device on the title page. Roman, Greek and italic types. Woodcut initials. Italian Union Catalogue, IT\ICCU\BVEE\008164; USTC, 140430.

Five works in one volume (170x110 mm). Bound in 18^th-century stiff vellum, title lettered in gilt on spine, inked date “1549” on spine and inked note on the front panel “Postillati da Latino Latini”, blue edges (slightly soiled and stained). On the front pastedown are the Libreria Loescher Roma bookplate and a pasted leaflet containing notes from a later owner. On the title page ownership entry “Latini Latinij Viterbiens. 1551”, other inked-out note “Coll. Rom. Soc. Iesu ex Leg.^o Con. Pallavicini”, and the initials “R.C.”. Annotated throughout by a contemporary hand, with minor additions by one or possibly two other hands. Slightly uniformly browned, two small ink stains with hole on l. y7 of the Columella, all in all a well-preserved, genuine copy.

The present volume collecting five editions of the so-called scriptores rei rusticae and their commentators published in Lyon by S. Gryphe, comes from the library of the great philologist Latino Latini and bears extensive annotations (in Latin and occasionally in Greek) in his minuscule yet neat and precise handwriting. Some notes are signed at the end with the letter “L”.

Latini devoted much of his life to emending and critically analyzing manuscripts of the Church Fathers, the Sacred Scriptures, and the classics. Though his meticulous work was always carried out with a philological rigor that earned him the unconditional esteem of his contemporaries, it was rarely published in print. In the 17^th century, Domenico Magri, the curator of the Capitular Archive of Viterbo where Latini’s library and unpublished manuscripts are housed since his death, recognized the value of the countless critical notes Latini had left in the margins of his library’s books, and published some of these notes in the volume Latini Latinii Viterbiensis Bibliotheca sacra, et profana, sive Observationes, correctiones, coniecturae, et variae lectiones in sacros, et profanos scriptores e marginalibus notis codicum eiusdem (Rome, 1677), in which he recorded the emendations made by Latini to 45 sacred authors and 42 secular writers.

During his career Latini also served as a proofreader for the printing house of Paolo Manuzio (1512-1574), who was summoned to Rome in 1561 by Pius IV to establish a printing press for the Curia. Even though the 19^th-century note written on the leaflet pasted on the front pastedown states that the inscription “Latini Latinij Viterbiensis 1551” written at the top of the title page is in Manuzio’s handwriting, it is actually Latini’s typical signature on all his books. Considering the connection between the two, however, it is quite plausible that Latini gave Manuzio the volume for a possible publication, which never occurred.

Most of the notes are textual amendments, but some are more extensive and contain more detailed comments or personal references. Here are a few examples:

-p. 14 Cato: “Lege quae ad calcem operis mea manu adscripsi”;

-p. 83 Cato: “Hos catonis de agricoltura libros, cum manuscripto vetusto exemplari meo Romae 1551 contuli…”. He then explains the abbreviations he used to refer to the different manuscripts or “impressos veteres” that he consulted;

-p. 106 Varro: “Petrus chaconius locum ita restituendum putat: …”;

-p. 464 Columella: “Emendavi Columel: elegantiss. opus, et absolui anno dni 1514. 15 calen. Februarii hora xxiii Geneazani (inquit .i.) hoc ipso loco quare constat ub. non fuisse; […] Marianum e Franciscanorum sodalitiio, Genaciano castro oriundum virum non indoctum fuisse comperi ex iis qui hominis consuetudine usi fuerunt […] Ego vero Romae anno 1551 mense Decembri .L.”;

-p. 184 Palladius: “… idest hoc ipso loco scriptum est ita: Absolutus Palladii liber hic et castigatus ann. Dni 1514 die xxviii mensis Januarii […] At postea Franciscani ordinis hominem fuisse accepi, Geneazzano oriundum, neq.; indoctum suo saeculo .L.” (these two notes refer to Mariano da Genazzano (1412-1498), a preacher of the Augustinian Hermits who carried out his ministry primarily in Florence, where he was closely associated with the humanist circles and the Medici family; for this reason, he was a bitter adversary of Savonarola);

-l. ee4v Beroaldo: “Defrutare vinum, non est id, quod defrutum facere …”;

-p. 5 Vettori: “Codex meus manuscriptus semper posuerunt, et posui, habet, diligenter accurateque ut videtur ex bono descriptus exemplari”.

On pp. 56 and 312-315 of Columella there are a few notes possibly in different handwritings.

Latino Latini was born in Viterbo in 1513 to Bernardino and Francesca Closia, both from impoverished noble families. From a young age, he suffered from poor health, which influenced some of his future decisions. Around 1533, he moved to Siena with the intention of studying law and remained there for eleven years; his fragile health forced him to abandon the legal studies to devote himself more and more intensely to his beloved Latin classics (especially Cicero) and the Church Fathers. He spent about two years in Viterbo, and between 1544 and 1546 he moved to Rome to seek employment with a member of the clergy. Under Julius III, he was ordained, and around 1552 he was hired as a secretary by Cardinal Jacopo Dal Pozzo. While in his service, Latini began to form friendships with the humanists with whom he corresponded as part of his official duties, and he became associated with the circle of Carlo Borromeo, Cesare Baronio, Guglielmo Sirleto, Fulvio Orsini, Gabriele Faerno, and the future popes Gregory XIII, Pius V, and Sixtus V.

On February 14, 1561, Cardinal Dal Pozzo was elected by Pius IV as president of the Council of Trent. While the cardinal and Latini were preparing to travel to Trent, in June 1562 they both fell ill. Dal Pozzo never recovered and died on April 26, 1563. Latini was immediately hired by Cardinal Rodolfo Pio da Carpi, for whom he served as secretary and librarian until the cardinal’s death on May 2, 1564. During that period, Latini devoted himself intensely to publishing sacred authors, undertaking the arduous task of emending the manuscripts, to the point that he fell ill again and returned to Viterbo to recover, primarily through the sulfur-rich waters of the Viterbo thermal baths. Once he had recovered, he returned to Rome in 1565, where he received numerous job offers; he ultimately accepted the offer from Cardinal Ranuccio Farnese, who appointed him as his secretary and took him to Bologna, where Latini established new contacts, particularly with the brothers Gabriele and Camillo Paleotti, with Carlo Sigonio, and with Ulisse Aldrovandi, who submitted his Theatrum naturae to Latini’s judgment, receiving precise corrections in return.

Cardinal Farnese also died in 1565, and Latini withdrew from court life for several years, as the repeated deaths that occurred shortly after his appointment had led to him being labeled a jinx. Latini complains about this, for example, in a letter to the Spanish bishop Antonio Agustín. In April 1568, the dying Onofrio Panvinio appointed Latini as his executor (along with the Augustinian friar Giuseppe Panfilo da Verona, Fulvio Orsini, and Girolamo Mercuriale), entrusting him with the task of revising his manuscript works and publishing the complete collection. In the summer of 1568, Latini - along with Vincenzo Pinelli, Mercuriale, and Lorenzo Gambara - was part of the circle of humanists led by Orsini that met in Caprarola, where Orsini was staying in the entourage of Cardinal Farnese. In 1571, Cardinal Marcantonio Colonna took him under his wing and provided him with comfortable lodgings in his own palace, leaving him free to devote himself to literary studies and, above all, to the editions of the Church Fathers. Some time later, perhaps in October 1572, he accompanied the cardinal to Salerno, where he formed a close friendship and began a correspondence with the Jesuit Alfonso Salmerón.

After March 1573, Latini returned to Rome and was commissioned by Gregory XIII to revise and restore the text of the Decretum Gratiani, to which so many canons and decretals had been added over time that it had become an extremely tangled web of often contradictory rules. He devoted himself to this work for thirteen years, together with the other members of the commission appointed for that purpose: Cardinals M. Colonna, Alessandro Sforza di S. Fiora, G. Sirleto, Francesco Alciati, G. Paleotti, C. Borromeo, F. Peretti, and others. For this work, Gregory XIII granted him an annual pension of 150 ducats; he also included him in the commission of ten specialists tasked with correcting the Martyrology, among whom was C. Baronio, with whom Latini deepened his friendship. The secretary of the commission was Giovanni Battista Bandini of Florence, who in 1588-89 became one of Latini’s most frequent correspondents.

Meanwhile, in 1584, F. Zanetti published in Rome the Loci ex coniectura Latini Latinii Viterbiensis vel restituti, vel aliter lecti in Tertulliano post editionem Iacobi Pamelii Brugen. ann. 1583, based on the edition by Jacques de Joigny de Pamèle. Upon the death of Gregory XIII in April 1585, Latini was commissioned, along with Orsini and Flaminio De’ Nobili, to draft the epitaph for the late pope. In 1587, in a move unusual for him - given his reluctance to publish his works - he published in Rome, in a small pamphlet printed by B. Bonfadini, one of the many opinions and views he was frequently asked to provide: Opinio de ea historiae Socratis Sozomenique parte, qua Nectarii episcopi factum de abrogato paenitentiario presbytero continetur. That same year, he was appointed to the consultors of the Holy Office. Between 1589 and 1590, he sent Michele Mercati some critical remarks on Mercati’s own work De gli obelischi di Roma (1589), to which Mercati replied in 1590 with Consideratio sopra gli avvertimenti del sig. Latino Latini intorno ad alcune cose scritte nel libro de gli obelischi di Roma. Latini continued to work for an entire year on editing the works of Tertullian and St. Cyprian, finding the task increasingly arduous due to his declining physical health, yet enjoying the esteem and respect of his contemporary scholars. His emendations on Tertullian were included in the editions of Tertullian’s Opera, published with extensive scholarly commentary in Paris in 1608 and 1616, and in Cologne in 1617. Latini died in Rome on January 21, 1593. He was buried in the Church of Santa Maria in Via Lata.

As mentioned above, most of Latini’s unpublished manuscripts are housed in the Capitular Archive of Viterbo (now part of the Capitular Library). In the mid-17^th century, the archivist Domenico Magri was struck by the erudition of the letters - which Latini himself had arranged for publication - and published them between 1659 and 1667, prefacing them with a brief biography of Latini. From the latter’s correspondence - written in Latin and Italian in a very legible hand - emerges a figure who had forged an elite and extensive network of friendships and correspondents, was well-integrated into scholarly society, was listened to with respect - contemporary scholars routinely turned to Latini for advice - and was at times politely challenged. The letters written by Latini during his service to Cardinal Dal Pozzo are addressed primarily to recipients in Poland and Prussia. Of particular interest is the long and uninterrupted correspondence with the Belgian orientalist Andrea Maes, which spanned from 1554 until Maes’s death in 1573. Through Maes, Latini came into contact in 1572 with Benito Arias Montano, an orientalist and librarian at El Escorial. Latini bequeathed his beautiful and extensive library to the Capitular Archives of Viterbo. Some of his books likely came from the library of Cardinal Rodolfo Pio da Carpi. Agustín turned to Latini for assistance in publishing his numismatic works. Together with F. Orsini, O. Pantagato, G. Faerno, A. Chacón, and M.-A. Muret, Latini participated in the lengthy philological work that resulted in a general miscellaneous commentary on Latin historians, which Orsini added to the Fragmenta historicorum published by Agustín in Antwerp in 1595 (cf. M. Ceresa, Latini, Latino, “Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani”, vol. 64, Rome, 2005, s.v.).