Original scientific paper
The Repertoire of Authorities and Sources in the Commentaries on the First Book of Aristotle’s Art of Rhetoric by Dubrovnik Philosopher Nikola Vitov Gučetić (1549-1610)
Gorana Stepanić
orcid.org/0000-0001-9642-1181
; Sveučilište Jurja Dobrile u Puli
Abstract
In the 16th century, Dubrovnik squirarch, philosopher and statesman Nikola Vitov Gučetić (Nicolò Vito di Gozze, 1549-1610) wrote and published a number of Latin and Italian commentaries on the works of Aristotle (Politica, Oeconomica, De caelo) as well as on works by Pseudo-Aristotle and also on other commentaries on Aristotle’s writings (Commentaria in sermonem Auerrois Cordubensis De substantia orbis et in Praepositiones de causis; Quaestio de immortalitate intellectus posibilis, contra Alexandrum Aphrodisaeum). His Latin Commentary on the First Book of Aristotle’s Art of Rhetoric (In primum librum Artis rhetoricorum commentaria, post-1607?) was not published until this century (ed. W. Potthoff, Universitätsverlag Winter, Heidelberg, 2006). In the foreword of this first edition there is no proper description of the only manuscript of this work, which was the foundation for the publication (Bibliotheca Vaticana, Urb. Lat. 1219 ), a shortcoming this article endeavours to make remedy.
The Commentaries in Urb. Lat. 1219 comprise 272 numbered folios, both sides of which are covered with a fair copy of the Latin text (a total of 544 pages of text). The whole codex was written in the same hand with a rhythm of 25 lines a page, and except for some ten pages on which the ink leaked came through to the other side of the page it is in principle a very legible manuscript. Although the editor of the first edition thinks it is an autograph, most of the errors in the text are of a copying nature, and we think that this is a transcript. The text is divided into 49 chapters of unequal length, the longest of which (Chapter 28) covers more than 30 pages, while the shortest is less than a page long; in some cases two or three chapters are located in one (chapters 19-21, 22-23). All the chapters bear titles indicating their contents. Chapters are segmented into 646 numbered paragraphs, determined in the marginal notes as Textus, the numbering of which is not continuous. Then, the manuscript contains a total of 1732 marginal notes on the left margin of the page alongside the lines to which they relate. They have three functions: they serve as numbering for the paragraph, as a signal that this is an important paragraph (bearing the remark Nota bene), and as a note about the author and/or the work from which the quotation, paraphrase or allusion in the text derives. It is the last type of note that it is the most numerous, for there are in all 1303 of them.
Working from the information in the marginal notes and in the text itself we compiled a list of 164 authors (see the Table in the appendix) whom Gučetić specifically mentioned as source for his knowledge, and quotes, either directly or indirectly. We endeavoured to register the authors who were erroneously cited as source as well as some sources not mentioned in the text. Half of the authors mentioned as source are also quoted in the text, and the quoted authors are not always mentioned in the marginal notes. The most numerous places quoted are from Aristotle, Cicero, Plato and Alexander of Aphrodisias, and they, together with the other ancient classical authors (Virgil, Homer, Ovid, Propertius, Horace, Plautus, Terence, Sophocles, Euripides, Livy, Valerius Maximus, Sallust, Appian, Thucydides, Herodotus, Josephus Flavius, Quintilian, Aulus Gellius and others) make up the most numerous group of quoted authorities. A large part of Gučetić’s reading consists of philosophers and commentators on Aristotle and Plato from the late antiquity – Alexander of Aphrodisias, Boethius, Speusippus, John Philoponus, Plotinus, Simplicius, Themistius, Philo of Alexandria, Macrobius, Chalcidius, Ammonius, Maximus of Tyre, Iamblichus and also from Patristic literature: Aurelius Augustinus, John of Damascus, Basil the Great, Ambrose, John Chrysostom, Gregory of Nyssa and Cyril of Alexandria.
As for medieval thinkers, commentators on philosophy and theology, from the West and from Byzantium, Gučetić most often cites Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus, Eustratius of Nicaea, Leo the Hebrew, Duns Scotus, Psellus, Bonaventura, Jean Buridan, Michael of Ephesus, Alexander of Hales. The Renaissance humanists Gučetić most often consults are Paolo and Aldo Manuzio, Carlo Sigonio, Flavio Biondo, Daniele Barbaro and Marcantonio Maioraggio.
Apart from the ancient classics, the most numerous group of authors are lawyers, commentators on the Codex Justinianus, and writers of treatises on civil,penal and canon law. On Gučetić’s list there are all told 66 writers on law, mainly lawyers of the later Middle Ages and of the early modern period, such as Andrea Alciati, Baldo degli Ubaldi, Diego de Covarrubias, Guillaume Budé, André Tiraqueau, Rolando della Valle and Speculator. This is the first time a systematic list of the legal sources of Nikola Vitov Gučetić has been provided. Since he himself was a lawyer, in his career in the service of the state of the Dubrovnik Republic, the offices he mostly held were those of judge or counsel.
We have also identified two more recent sources that Gučetić was particularly assiduous in consulting. The first is a translation of Aristotle’s Rhetoric by the Venetian Ermolao Barbaro (1454-1493), as published and commented on by his nephew Daniele Barbaro (1514-1570). Gučetić refers explicitly to this translation – particularly the commentaries – some ten times, sometimes with a direct quotation. The influence exerted on Gučetić by the translation and commentaries of the Barbaros can be seen above all in the division of Aristotle’s text into chapters, which is very similar in Gučetić and Barbaro. The main textual model for Gučetić, however, is the Latin translation with commentaries from the pen of Milanese rhetoric teacher Marcantonio Maioraggio (Antonio Maria de’ Conti, 1514-1555). Not only is the text that Gučetić is commenting on the Maioraggio translation of the Rhetoric from the Greek, but he also takes over the Barbaro segmentation of the text into smaller units, the paragraphs called Textus.
We take the identification of the explicitly stated authors/sources in Gučetić’s Commentaries to be just a beginning of a wider Quellenforschung in which the reading of the Dubrovnik philosopher will be expanded, as well as a basis for the investigation of the repertoire of his library.
Keywords
Nikola Vitov Gučetić (Nicolò Vito di Gozze); Aristotle’s Rhetoric; late Renaissance Latin commentaries on Aristotle; quotation of authorities; Dubrovnik Renaissance philosophy; Marcantonio Maioraggio; Daniele Barbaro
Hrčak ID:
102528
URI
Publication date:
22.4.2013.
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