1When did humanism become humanism, strictly speaking? At first the question seems tautological, if not incongruous. Still it would seem that it must be asked, especially considering the extent to which the birth of humanism has been pushed ever further backward or forward in time and thus has been slowly deprived of its historical consistency, to the point where it sometimes seems to dissolve in a centuries-old sea of erudite traditions, remembered inheritances and social genealogies. There is unanimous agreement that humanist culture was not born ex nihilo in Italy at the end of the fourteenth century. Nor is there is any doubt that there was a chain of transmission of learned Latin materials, and a social-cultural legacy bequeathed by dictatores and masters of grammar. Both of these themes have been thoroughly developed, particularly in the English-language historiography. [1] The quest for the origins or rather for the roots of humanism has taken on new urgency since the works of Ronald Witt and Robert Black were published, and has focused increasingly on literary evolutions, from rhetoric and pedagogy to philology and more generally interest in the culture of the Greek and Roman world. [2] However, it still tends to smooth over or push into the background the processes which served as catalysts in the fusion of all these elements into a major social phenomenon—a phenomenon, which, as we know, was pregnant with a whole new vision of civilization, and endowed with widely recognized social prestige. [3] Or to put it another way, a phenomenon that witnessed the construction of an intellectual empire that expanded a cultural paradigm and its recognition and influence well beyond its most purely scholarly productions, into the field of imagined realities and shared values, which it invaded thoroughly enough to anchor itself into ordinary political language and generate the most trivial academic clichés. [4] This change in scale and scope, however, is precisely what prompted the early and sustained interest of researchers in humanism, and more specifically in its “origins.” In this respect, it seems advisable to focus on the point at which a set of practices and ideas, developed from already existing material, came to structure the identity of an elite group, and generated at the same time a remarkably invasive system of representation and distinction. This was a crucial moment of symbolic construction, which also achieved its results through the tracing of frontiers [5]—especially with respect to established academic traditions and intellectual authority figures—slowly putting together a “space of possibles” [6] out of a variety of individual contributions. The aim of this article is to adjust the focus, quite literally, of the image we have of the birth of humanism, its “takeoff” and its assertion as an alternative, imperialistic, and eventually dominant cultural model in the first half of the fifteenth century. What seems to have taken place is a precipitating effect, so to speak, which should be put squarely at the center of our inquiries concerning this “return to paradigm” which Riccardo Fubini already considered a necessity several years ago. [7]

2However, this proposed paradigm turns out to be rather nebulous when one undertakes the actual work of categorizing the literati or identifying which texts and social attitudes deserve to be called “humanist.” This relative lack of substance contrasts strikingly with the apparent obviousness of a successful collective endeavor, which is how it was expressed in the consciousness of its contemporaries, as well as in the macrohistorical dividing lines we apply today: the break between “Middle Ages” and “Renaissance” is predicated on what is supposed to have been no less than a tidal wave of humanist culture. This is all the more problematic since humanism never took shape within a specific institutional frame that could have provided a generally recognized badge of membership. To bridge this potential gap, I will structure my analysis around the concept of “movement,” frequently used by art historians and political historians, though maybe not quite valued enough by cultural history. A particular goal is to highlight the extent to which it can be fruitfully applied to the task of articulating intellectual production and historical periodization. Because of this potential, it offers a possible lens through which to read the interactions between circulating ideas, social practices, and shared, collective imaginations. These various elements thus come to form a coherent whole, while leaving space for the independent expression of the multiple realities and various scales that come into play. Only then can we hope to develop a global and dynamic analysis of the birth of humanism as a cultural event. This event is often seen as strictly literary in nature (and therefore marked out by the successive appearances of its great authors, or simply of its most active and prestigious promoters), but still crucial to the dawn of a new cycle in Western history.

3I will concentrate on Italy in the decades from 1400 to 1430. This is the heart of the well-known sequence stretching from Petrarch to Lorenzo Valla, and a crucial period of acceleration. [8] I will not be naive enough to claim that I offer a complete roadmap of this phenomenon, the scope of which is well beyond the reach of a single article. Rather, I will argue that the issue needs to be reframed, and attempt a transverse analysis based on a few representative examples. I will pay particularly close attention to the internal mechanisms that structured humanism into a movement. Starting with the emergence of a collective consciousness rooted in a reflexive relationship to history, I will reassess the interactions between social groups, learned production, and memory which the notion of movement can help capture, always bearing in mind the ideological framework underpinning the humanist spirit, namely the wish to “return to antiquity.” The analysis of the construction of a common repertory of references and practices alongside a dynamic system of sociability will help us conceptualize the emergence of a cultural sphere, embodied in a number of intermediary and secondary characters. In conclusion, I will uncover a process of determination of generic markers of identity, among them the development of distinctive models of denomination, a new claim to social preeminence, and the formulation of a narrative providing a powerful myth of origins—which, altogether, symbolize the formalization of an esprit de corps.

4It is true that the internalist approach I have chosen implies leaving aside, for a time, the historical conditions which made humanism possible and allowed for its growth—which does not mean that I ignore their importance. I will not revisit here such decisive political and historical events as the move of the Papacy back to Italy and the crisis of the Western Schism, both of which offered important springboards for humanism, particularly with respect to its homogenization and internationalization. [9] Moreover, I will offer only a few concluding remarks on humanism in its contemporary socio-institutional environment, mostly to highlight the extraordinary flexibility of the movement, which, far from being closed in upon itself, as my approach risks implying, displayed a chameleon-like ability to intersect with multiple political or learned spheres. This narrowing of focus enables a better connection between the multiple paths of inquiry that have posed questions about the causes and manifestations of the rise of humanism as a dominant model (avenues of research which French academia, having long neglected the field, has begun to consider in recent years). [10] To achieve this objective, I will first look some distance downstream, in order to establish a fundamental observation: humanism was born first and foremost from the proclamation of its birth by its own promoters.

Sublimating the Present, and Launching a Collective Venture

5The history of humanism is a history written by its winners, and one has to admit these winners were anything but bashful in their triumph. Very early on, the “rebirth of letters” in Italy, particularly that of a Latin eloquence that had been corrupted by Barbarians, was publicized, the stages of its progress commemorated, and its heroes celebrated, in an amazingly self-reflexive move which was launched as the first generation had barely disappeared. Thus a common history began to be written and frozen in clichés, and its champions, whether powerful courtiers or obscure penpushers, could all claim to be its heirs and upholders, glorifying the dawn of a new era under powerful patrons enlightened by the genius of bonae litterae. [11] By the mid-fifteenth century, Flavio Biondo had provided the outline of such a narrative in a famous passage of his Italia illustrata, drawing one of the first and most significant portraits of the genesis of humanism according to its own epigones. [12] His account culminated in a blossoming that he claimed to have witnessed himself, focusing particularly on the turn of the Quattrocento, which he identified as the crucial milestone in this self-proclaimed “awakening” of Greek and Latin culture. First there was Petrarch, a lone precursor whose style was not yet perfect, then a few masters who succeeded in passing on the love of imitatio Ciceronis, [13] and then the generation who achieved the true rebirth of eloquence: Leonardo Bruni, Poggio Bracciolini, Pier Paolo Vergerio, Gasparino Barzizza, Guarino Veronese, Vittorino da Feltre, etc. To this timeline were attached a series of events held to be foundational. Besides the lectures given by the two Giovannis of Ravenna in the 1390s and 1400s, there was the arrival of Manuel Chrysoloras in Florence and his peripatetic teachings in central and southern Italy (1397-1415); Poggio’s “discoveries” of texts, particularly those by Cicero and Quintilian, during the Council of Constance (1416-1417); and finally Barzizza’s teaching of rhetoric in Venetia (1407-1421). Biondo thus constructed a veritable myth of origins, peopled with founding fathers and celebrating their many feats, with the triumph of the studia humanitatis as its main thrust. In conclusion, the author listed—and associated himself with—the many fruits of this triumph, made possible by the learned members of his own generation: schools of rhetoric, in which disciples outdid their masters, were springing up all over Italy; the children of the European elite were flocking to the most famous pedagogues; Valla had just finished composing his De Elegantiis Latinae Linguae, which achieved record levels of diffusion.

6Already, the main narrative framework was in place, as well as what might be called the family portrait, with its bias, its ideals, and also the power acquired through naming, and its coming into existence. In Biondo, as in later works of Enea Silvio Piccolomini, Bartolomeo Facio, and Paolo Cortesi, [14] to cite only the best-known names, recent history was transmuted into memory and reframed as a narrative about great men. This translation manifested and validated a belief in a collective endeavor which had succeeded, and was meant to spread out and forge on; [15] a belief that the students of Petrarch’s students, as well as their disciples, imitators and supporters, had taken part, and still took part, in one large, farreaching movement which, by renovating language, was truly renovating civilization itself; a belief that they were witnesses and actors of a glorious era, ushered in by already famous pioneers and by a series of acquisitions (Cicero’s Latin, classical Greek, a wealth of forgotten manuscripts), and leading to the imminent consecration of what we, now, call humanism.

7A critical problem immediately arises, implicit in this last formulation. We should always keep in mind that our analysis has as its starting point and constant reference a self-generated representational model conveying the idea of providential progress, in which the main actors and events have already been preselected. Once again the same old battle over names, which pervades the history of humanism, erupts: studia humanitatis, humanist, humanism, and its derivatives, prehumanism, early humanism, protohumanism, etc. These terms were born at various times, and were recycled by modern critics with meanings more or less removed from the original use, just like “classicism” and “renaissance.” [16] Here we face what we might call a “double-bottomed” history, where the paradigm typically employed by historians is firmly ensconced in this memorial structure: a perfect example is Lucia Gualdo Rosa’s choice a decade ago to quote Biondo’s pages as an illustration of the transition from prehumanism to humanism. [17] However, the goal here is not to condemn this as an artificial and partisan reconstruction of the past. Rather, it would be more fruitful to reinsert this measure of self-invention into our conceptualization of humanism as an historical object. [18] In this respect, it is necessary to underline this double historicity, the “hem” that was almost immediately sewn by humanism looking at itself and giving itself its own meaning, folding over itself in order to identify a common and crucial historical sequence.

8These subtle tectonics of time, in which the past turns into a history of the present, or better yet, into a discussion of current issues, [19] govern the articulation between the shaping of a consensual historical consciousness and the bundling together of processes, some of them entirely circumstantial (individual histories, political changes, social-institutional structures, ideological traditions, among others), from which this same consciousness arose and made sense all at once. Three general remarks can be derived from Biondo’s act of narrative creation. First, one should note its objectifying effect, or, to put it another way, its representation of humanism as a finite and dated phenomenon, circumscribed by a human reality that is chronologically and geographically contingent. This is an event that took place, not merely a label used ex post to describe, categorize, and link a set of thinkers. Second, a generational effect is clearly stressed, related to a decisive change in scale. After Petrarch and his immediate circle of followers came a group of several major figures, learned individuals all born ca. 1370-1380, not one of whom could alone stand for the entire movement to which they belonged. This was a tipping point, raising the issue of the dilution among many contemporary actors of a common “cultural background,” which would be both the sum of their individual contributions and a basic element through which these same contributions were understood. [20] Finally, there was a sequential, even a driving effect, characteristic of an advance that took place in many forms at once. New knowledge was accumulated, a common way of communicating (Ciceronian eloquence) was formulated, which was equivalent to a common way of thinking, and new areas were conquered in terms of territories, numbers, and social groups. These were all elements in the representation of a rupture in the process of revealing its full depth, and which took on its true meaning only after the fact of its emergence, in a retrospective examination. Above all, this rupture found its coherence in one absolutely fundamental concept: the rebirth of an idealized latinitas, a kind of civilizational genius embodied in language, which past centuries had debased. This mirroring relationship to ancient history, on which Eugenio Garin in particular wrote many beautiful passages, [21] was used by Biondo as his interpretive thread, and enabled him to link within one movement, on the one hand well-situated and precisely quoted writers, pedagogues, erudite circles and manuscripts, and, on the other hand, much less definite entities such as the many schools of thought to which he alluded.

9Here I return to the notion of movement, which seems to me particularly well suited to grasping such complex connections between collective imaginations, learned networks, and cultural models. For this notion offers an interesting analogy with the physics of mechanics, which tends to link a transformational force to its initial impulse (here the reframing of a set of authors as the avant-garde of a new socio-cultural establishment), and, more fundamentally, to suggest an intellectualizing act of synthesis and abstraction rooted in a self-reflexive relationship to time. The notion of movement therefore makes it possible, first and foremost, to underline the irreducible distance between the scientific eye recomposing a finite and perfect gesture (the birth of humanism), the multitude and the variability of actors involved (the humanists), the general intent which served as its impetus (resurrecting antiquity through the studia humanitatis), and, finally, as the crucial cohesive factor, the production of meaning regarding history in the process of happening (the representation of the triumphant march unfolding from Petrarch to Valla). Underpinning this idea of a burgeoning “cultural movement” we can discern the emerging collective consciousness of a coherence and unity of time which made it possible to consider intellectual contents, social relationships, and a hierarchy of values simultaneously, and which represented an actual constraint on the writing of history. This was a highly meaningful analytical framework, produced by its own contemporaries. But it was also distorting and inadequate in some respects, leaving indeterminate spaces, and was ultimately flexible enough to accommodate multiple forms and possibilities beyond the dozen or so “founding fathers” that took on the role of undisputed authorities. Though it did so out of a rather malleable ideological platform.

10The notion of movement through the image of a mass that is propelled also entails a phenomenon of aggregation (or affiliation) and of growing participation of individuals in a nascent cultural model. The range of such a phenomenon may vary from a “trend” to a “revolution”; the degree to which appropriation takes place may vary as well. The idea of movement also accounts for all the dynamic relationships which may appear between learned thinking and the society which echoes it, fleshes it out, gives it weight, eventually passes it on and puts it to work, without necessarily upholding the paradigm of formalized party or institutional developments. [22] Two scales of impregnation can be identified here, though actually both are correlated. First, the process of formation of a specific and coherent socio-cultural milieu, united around the articulation of learned production and collectively shared practices and values constitutive of a mutually acknowledged identity: [23] the capacity to form a community, based on systems of exchange and recognition which would generate sodalitas, as well as the ability to assimilate new participants. Second, it is possible to envisage a highly diffuse propagation of these same values and practices, relatively trite in its contents, which would account for their becoming socially commonplace—for their “popularity” so to speak. To put it another way, humanism could eventually be expressed in clichés, in superficial and widespread mannerisms, as it became a fashion among the elites. The birth of a paradigm that was a cultural movement, rather than just a literary shift, can be perceived precisely through the way this process of appropriation played itself out on various scales.

11In a remarkable essay first published in 1993, Francesco Rico pointed out how intellectually challenging it would be to attempt to grasp the whole process of the emergence of humanism, embrace its scope and describe its substance beyond the narrative blueprint provided by its consecrated authors, while still keeping in touch with its “spirit.” [24] This challenge can be answered at least in part through the notion of movement, especially because it allows us to begin formulating an answer to the rather tricky question: what was a humanist—or rather, what might a humanist be?

Defining, Expanding, and Polarizing a “Space of Possibles”

12Let us dare to state the obvious: one quote from Cicero did not a humanist make, nor an allusion to ancient history, nor a sophisticated grasp of Latin. What counted, first and foremost, was the existence of a common sphere of qualification and recognition. This sphere generated parameters governing the way many voices could take part in the learned conversation. It also governed how this conversation would be inserted into a dynamic relational network with specific practices of exchange, familiarity and mutual support. [25] Only through such a description can we bring to light the full range of nuances between individual situations, from recognized writers to competent amateurs to weak imitators, while at the same time sharply delimiting a unified “repertoire.” Most importantly, it is only through this path of inquiry that we can account for the way in which mechanisms of attraction and deployment on various scales could operate out of a relatively homogeneous and normalized cultural practice. This is why we should be particularly careful to trace the constitution of a field of both social and literary activities, claiming to be universal in its scope. Indeed, from this point of view, the first decades of the Quattrocento seem to represent a key moment in the formulation of these structuring and defining criteria. It was then that emblematic models of learned social interactions and activities were developed, together with the constitution of a shared stock of canonical references, most notably under the influence of a few closely linked centers of production and promotion in Florence, Venice, Padua, Milan and Rome.

13First among these signs of identification were a number of modes of expression which characterized studia humanitatis, generating a distance from the dominant tradition, and serving as signposts for a common field of competence and interest linked to the ideological goal of reviving the legacy of antiquity. These were principally Ciceronian oratio, familiar correspondence, invectives, dialogues, and political eclogues. [26] We should add a set of equally distinctive learned practices such as dedicated Greek-Latin translation, the search for manuscripts by ancient authors, the study of vestiges and inscriptions, particularly in Rome, or writing in littera antiqua. Lastly, there were philological or historiographical methods, such as the critical collation of manuscripts to establish a documentary testimony, or the reasoned use of primary sources. [27] Of course I do not mean that these were actual inventions, since most of these practices had their roots in centuries-old applications of Latin erudition, which the prehumanists from Padua, and above all Petrarch and his main followers, had started to reclaim in the second half of the Trecento, with the “return to antiquity” as the horizon of their collective memory. [28] But at the beginning of the following century, it became clear that a series of converging phenomena were defining and particularizing these practices as typical forms of humanist erudition.

14Let us begin with the phenomenon of documentary accumulation, clearly apparent, for instance, in the case of invectives. While Petrarch had made them one of his favorite polemical weapons, these texts truly proliferated from the years 1400-1430 on. Their rhythm of production did not slacken for the rest of the fifteenth century, and indeed they became one of the tools most frequently used to publicly dramatize learned rivalries. [29] For other kinds of texts, the chronology was slightly different; most notably it has been shown that the first impulse for dialogues was provided by Bruni’s famous Dialogi ad Petrum Paulum Histrum (ca. 1402-1406), followed by a sharp increase in popularity at the end of the 1420s, with another acceleration around 1440. [30]

15The growth of textual production went hand in hand with a significant standardization of writing practices, thanks to the formulation and diffusion of reference models. This process was particularly obvious in the rhetoric of familiar correspondence and of the oratio. [31] Beyond a few big standard authorial collections, specifically compiled as “imitation textbooks,” such as Barzizza’s Epistolae ad exercitationem accommodatae, written ca. 1420, [32] we must also take into account, from the 1400s on, the production and widespread distribution of anthologies generally called “humanist miscellanies.” [33] These collections of texts sometimes looked like templates for the use of rhetoric, and they facilitated the construction of a common and canonical repertory that normalized practice through practice, with much leeway left to circumstantial variations. [34] Revealingly, in the highly emblematic case of funeral orations, only a very limited number—less than a dozen—of the hundreds of Quattrocento discourses inventoried by John McManamon found a significant audience in the following years, and acted as a sort of template for the whole genre; all had been composed between the 1400s and the 1430s, in Florentine, Venetian-Paduan, or Curial contexts. [35]

16Next, we must turn to a set of technical innovations and bookish contributions that constituted significant steps in the process of accumulating available knowledge. The collection of epigraphs compiled by Poggio upon his arrival in Rome in 1403 laid the foundations of a humanist proto-archaeology, centered on the methodical description of Roman ruins (Coluccio Salutati enthusiastically noted, “I see now that fairly soon you will give us the whole Urbs, thanks to these ancient inscriptions”). [36] This program gave rise to several major works on the topic in the 1430s and 1440s, and, more widely, fed and legitimized the literature of lamento which developed around these vestiges. [37] Moreover, the formalization of the main characteristics of the “littera antiqua” script, during the first decade of the Quattrocento, is certainly also related to Poggio’s epigraphic collection. [38] One should also take note of Chrysoloras’s stays in the West between 1397 and 1415, which turned out to be a genuine “great leap forward for Hellenism.” [39] Through his teachings, the manuscripts he had brought from Constantinople, and the publication of his Greek grammar, the Erotomata, the Byzantine scholar created a flourishing Italian school of Greek studies, and sparked a wave of translating activity. The first twenty years of the fifteenth century were particularly remarkable, with the completion of a major series of translations of Plutarch’s biographies, which constituted a particularly fruitful contribution both as a documentary source and as a model of historiographical writing. [40]

17Lastly, the same crucial period saw the emergence of a diverse effort of theorization and normalization of all these practices. It was then that the first steps of a reflection on the criteria of scientificity and acceptability in the arts of imitation, of translation, of writing in Latin, or of teaching were taken. The development of this “discourse on method” can be observed clearly, for instance, in the imitation of ancient prose, particularly Cicero’s. Thus the Inquisitio super undecim orationes Ciceronis, composed by Antonio Loschi at the very end of the 1390s, was followed in quick succession by Sicco Polentone’s 1413 Argumenta super aliquot orationibus et invectivis Ciceronis and by Barzizza’s De compositione, written between 1417 and 1421. [41] These three works provided the theoretical foundation for the practice of Ciceronian oratory, and more largely indicated that the principles of stylistic composition were becoming increasingly rigid. [42] Here we can observe an echo of the debates that erupted around the evolution of the Latin language, the very place where humanist thought crystallized when it came to the doctrine of history. [43] I will only add here, again in the same vein, that Vergerio’s De ingenuis moribus, written ca. 1402, is held to be the first modern treaty of pedagogy, and that Bruni, at the start of the 1420s, put forward the first theoretical treatment of translation with his De interpretatione recta. [44]

18This brief survey should make clear how a set of documentary evolutions (increasing resources, standardization, technical innovation, theorization) acted as a sort of critical threshold that individualized and structured humanism as an alternative culture, while at the same time defining a large, commonly shared catalogue, recognizable as well as reproducible. This last observation is important, because it implies that, ultimately, what had been developed was a “toolbox,” allowing for both masterful and mediocre appropriation; a kind of averaged-out habitus of the learned, which could then expand through mimicry. [45] Next to the most brilliant or innovative productions, stereotyped practices could also develop and help circulate a phraseology (the opposition between darkness and light, or the evocation of the reawakening of a glorious era), lexical mannerisms (the interjection mehercule, the apostrophe patres conscripti, for instance), or symbolic games (such as adopting a pseudonym from antiquity), all of which became cultural clichés.

19Thus, next to writers fully engaged in inventing humanism, the few “pure” humanists so to speak (approximately a dozen authors for the years from 1390 to 1440), there was a large array of mediocre or occasional producers. For some of them, indeed, humanism was simply one more aspect of their scholarly activity, a new string to their bow. For instance, in 1410 the scholastic philosopher Paolo Veneto, who taught at the university of Padua, composed an academic discourse that complied with every code of the Ciceronian oratio, which was in the process of being standardized. This expert logician had acquired the ability to write like a humanist. [46] In this way humanism did not merely generate learned controversies over philosophical or grammatical issues in which the heart of its ideological stance was at stake, it also brought about trite and superficial practices, reflecting a sort of snobbism, such as naming children after authors from antiquity. Humanism was becoming a banal cultural product, an intellectual patina diluted in society at large. When, in 1486, Lorenzo Manili, a spice merchant in Rome, ordered a remarkable inscription in the “ancient style” as an ornament for the frontage of his house (opening with the formula Urbe Roma in formam pristinam renascente, and including a date ab urbe condita), he did not turn thereby into a major figure of humanism. Rather, his choice meant that, in the space of a few decades, humanist culture had become a public good. [47]

20Moreover, this creation of a “repertoire” should be understood within the larger framework of the development of a specific space devoted to a kind of cultural socializing which was both the crucible and the yardstick of humanism. To start with, this space was related to the multiple forms of interaction, promotion, and transmission linked to textual production proper. This included exchanging, reading, copying, collecting, commenting upon, and sponsoring works, and more broadly every form of support for a work, particularly economic and political, or mere interest in it, from the basic fact of trying to have access to it upwards. There is a wealth of examples of the humble labors of foot soldiers who traded and hoarded works which could then be summoned forth, starting with the large personal library that Sozomeno da Pistoia built up in the years from 1410 to 1430. This scribal Stakhanovite managed to copy no less than 110 manuscripts, including classical Greek and Latin volumes, annotated and indexed to make their consultation easier, as well as major contemporary works such as Loschi’s Inquisitio or Chrysoloras’s Erotemata. [48] There were also many enlightened enthusiasts who did not become writers, but did offer direct support to humanist activities, including, for some of them, what they could draw from their own personal wealth or positions of power. For instance, Bartolomeo Capra, a diplomat and prelate from Lombardy who became archbishop of Milan in 1414, was a seasoned bibliophile, and scoured his archdiocese for classical manuscripts; he also gave a boost to the career of promising men of letters such as Antonio Becadelli, who, with Capra’s help, obtained a position as official poet of the ducal court in 1429. [49] The circulation of texts, the fortunes (or misfortunes) of their authors, the connections and reappropriations they underwent, were thus as many echoes of the decisive impulse through which a group of intermediaries relaying them, and protective patrons— “sympathizers” and “sponsors,” so to speak—achieved a shared perception of a body of references (works, major authors, learned and cultural practices) and its shaping into an ethos in the collective imagination. [50] This is primarily how humanism’s development into a “movement” must be understood, in the light of the interdependent dynamics which characterized an expanding social-cultural galaxy. [51] Not only, that is, as the fruit of the activity of circles of learned individuals at the cutting edge of intellectual creation, but also as the sign of a productive and reflexive process of dissemination, rooted in a rationalizing multiplicity of social acts.

21By “rationalizing,” I mean that the very modes that were developed in this socializing activity generated an order of recognition and merit granted or denied to each participant. Some were consecrated, others were forgotten, but whatever the case, a horizon of sought-after success was created, which meant being fully included in the latest debates and exchanges, seeing one’s works commentated and imitated, and receiving high praise from the best orators. [52] In April 1409, Lorenzo Falier of Venice wrote to his friend in Padua, Ognibene Scola, asking for his help in buying letters from Bruni (Scola knew the young Aretino personally, having met him a few years before in Florence). The addressee, who as it happens could not oblige, promised instead “translations from Greek texts, a dialogue, and a discourse” from the same author, which he happened to own. This interchange was simultaneously an immediate activation of “second-hand” channels of diffusion, the setting up of a friendly cooperation between two patricians on the basis of their cultural complicity, and, more broadly, the formulation of a system of distinction which benefitted both Bruni as an intellectual and stylistic authority and Scola as a privileged connoisseur. [53]

22Indeed, the practice of familiar correspondence was the backbone of such a system, and even more so after the model of the “canonical” authorial compilation had developed from the 1410s to the 1440s. [54] Exchanging letters, conversing, and compiling these exchanges both created networks and dramatized them in public. Through this activity, people were coopted, and participation was assessed. [55] The epistolary conversation constituted the tangible manifestation of friendship, as the humanists themselves frequently observed. It became established as a social-literary ceremony, with stylistic procedures that were gradually codified, and could serve as a common mode of expression between peers. [56] Letter writers contacted each other, mentioned the letters they had received, commented on their style when necessary, and even referred to letters from other learned individuals to which they had had access and which illustrated a high level of competence on the part of their authors. Thus a thick web of correspondents came into being, which constituted a fundamental space for communication and representation. It is not a coincidence that the expression Respublica litteraria appeared for the first time under the pen of a young Venetian, Francesco Barbaro, in 1417. [57] A host of references to works in progress, learned controversies, “discoveries” of manuscripts, and criticisms of ancient and contemporary writings, provide us with an amazing mise en abyme of the rise of a collective work, thought up and debated collectively. Lastly, and importantly, the familiar exchange of letters was the place where names were named: salutes were given, regards were sent to third parties, erudite conversations with a common friend were referred to, and reference was made to writers to be admired and powerful figures whose patronage was sought.

23Meanwhile, a hierarchy was being built. It focused attention on a handful of authors, most notably Leonardo Bruni, Poggio Bracciolini, Gasparino Barzizza, Pier Paolo Vergerio, Guarino Veronese, and Antonio Loschi, and included set portraits of the main supporters and most prominent sponsors, for instance Bartolomeo Capra, Niccolò Niccoli, Francesco Pizolpasso, or Branda Castiglione. To receive a letter from these new mandarins, to be able to mention one of them as a personal acquaintance, even to be cited by one of them, became a marker of one’s enhanced socio-cultural status. Thus, when the very same Barbaro compiled his correspondence, he included two other letters from 1417, both sent from Constance—one from Poggio to Guarino, the other from Vergerio to Niccolò Leonardi. Barbaro was neither the author nor the addressee, but was mentioned in both pieces, which contained laudatory comments on his opuscule De re uxoria, newly completed and made public. [58] Poggio praised the young man’s summa eloquentia, and added that Cencio dei Rustici and Biagio Guasconi had also enjoyed reading it. Vergerio for his part expressed admiration for a work “full of the best and most fruitful examples gathered throughout Greek and Latin history,” and reminisced that Zaccaria Trevisan had once shown him a letter from the Venetian revealing his precocious talent. The reputation of Barbaro as a young prodigy was therefore already established through illustrious recommendations, which the beneficiary made sure to preserve and insert in his epistolary self-portrait. [59]

24Over and above this matrix of epistolary relationships, other models for the representation of humanist socializing developed, supplementing and reinforcing it. In particular, dedicated prefaces and addresses opening poetic odes implicitly built up representations of the ideal patron, [60] and dialogues were privileged sites for staging sodalitas and its internal debates. As Christopher Celenza and Bridget Pupillo observe in relation to dialogues presented as taking place in Florence (as most of them were), these works “drew an exclusive map of the people whose opinion was held to deserve consideration” and, echoing each other, rehearsed a hierarchy of preeminence centered on a few learned figures and their main supporters, within which the authors tried to find their place. [61] Indeed one of the most significant consequences of establishing such a scale of recognition was the credence lent more widely thereafter to the culture of studia humanitatis as a tool for self-promotion on the public stage. This in turn attracted yet more enthusiasts and supporters beyond its more famous figures, new converts who, convinced by the growing assertiveness of this cultural cursus honorum, wanted to be in.

25It seems to me that at this point there was a crucial transformation of humanism into a socially rewarded activity, a transformation through which it gained the potential for expansion and dispersal necessary to turn it into a movement. Once identified as an elite prerogative, humanism could become fashionable. In particular, this meant that it would draw into its orbit a whole class of lower-status literati, “second fiddles” who were not among its main protagonists, but could not be said to be at the margins either. [62] Some of these men of letters were able to lead a decent career, receiving offices in chancelleries or universities; they were glad if they could claim a few famous names as their personal acquaintances; they mimicked zealously, and with varying degrees of success, the writing practices of their role models; and sometimes they knew the frustration of having to make way for others who were younger and more appreciated. [63] It is very probable that most of these copycat authors always ready to profess their admiration for their more fashionable colleagues remain unknown to us, but we should not underestimate their driving power. If humanism was able to disseminate into scholarly circles and academic or political institutions, it is in part thanks to these junior suitors. Those among them who took up every code and practice were indeed able to mingle with the very best, but experienced only indifference in return for their effort. This was the case for Benedetto da Piglio, a man of letters born in a small town in Latium, trained in Bologna and hired as apostolic scriptor at the end of the Western Schism. He penned sophisticated political-bucolic carmina, a letter in which he dramatized his own literary controversy with one Bartolomeo, a prelectio on Lucan’s Pharsale (replete with classical quotes and calls for imitation of the great men of Rome), and he took up every turn of phrase, every cliché, with the overthe-top zeal of the recent convert—but met with virtually no response. [64] In a complex collection entitled Libellus penarum, which can be considered “prison literature” since it was written during his imprisonment in a Neuchâtel jail in 1415, he listed his acquaintances, notably Bruni, whom he lavishly praised but who never even mentioned him in return. [65]

26Others were content enough with some comfortable local office that would provide them with a stable professional situation and a small notoriety. Such was the case of Bartolomeo Bayguera from Brescia, a notary born into a well-to-do merchant family. His main accomplishment was having served as a secretary to the Roman cardinal Pietro Stefaneschi from 1405 to 1410. [66] A nephew of Stefaneschi was elected bishop of Brescia in 1419, whereupon Bayguera was hired as his chancellor, and remained in this position at least until 1458. Of his works, today only two poems remain, written in hexameters: a short eulogy dating back to 1416, and, more importantly, the Itinerarium, a narrative of over three thousand verses dated 1425, in which he related his trip to Rome. [67] This latter work dealt at length with Francesco da Fiano, a disciple of Petrarch who died in 1421, whom the author insisted on presenting as his own personal master in the art of poetry, and the man who showed him around the marvels antiquity had left behind in Rome. [68] The two poems were composed in a Brescian setting; the first was addressed to the podestà of the city, the second to the new bishop. Thus Bayguera used his skills as a Latinist and his prestige as a former member of the Curia, trained in Rome by a disciple of Petrarch, in order to develop a local clientele, and buttressed his case with a letter of presentation of his work composed by a much more famous humanist from Lombardy, Antonio da Rho. [69] Moreover, Michele Zambelli remarks that the chancellor was probably a relatively well-known figure in his home town since one of his grandsons mentioned in 1491 that he was “poet laureate,” and his grave was decorated with frescoes and inscribed with a metrical epitaph to his memory. [70] Admittedly he was not a pioneer of humanism, and as far as we know he did not maintain any lasting friendship among the humanists of the Curia, but he was a refined poet who embodied in his own way the “humble path” of humanism, rooted locally, and framed by notarial cultural tradition. Ultimately, humanism succeeded in becoming a movement because, on the basis of a repertory of expressions that was both malleable and codified, and of a polarized system of representation and discrimination, it succeeded in generating a yearning for membership and emulation.

A Name, a Role, a Myth: The Birth of an Esprit de Corps

27Within the transformation that I have tried to outline broadly here, the formulation of a generic identity, creating an illusio (as defined by Bourdieu), was certainly a crucial phenomenon. [71] One of its most striking symptoms was the characterization of an all-encompassing “we,” which arose from a common form of self-denomination, itself made of two correlated parts. On the one hand this form was related to a specific field of scholarly inquiry, the study of antiquity. Authors referred to antiquitas, to the ancients, or to the world of the Muses. There were also less direct ways to allude to it, based on expressions connoting superiority, such as bonae or optimae artes. The expression studia humanitatis started to make headway within this context; its first occurrences are attested in Salutati’s correspondence from the last third of the fourteenth century on. [72] Benjamin Kohl has drawn up a list of its uses, which, while not entirely comprehensive, still clearly traces its propagation, particularly after humanists from the Venice region, including most notably Barzizza, began promoting it from the 1410s on. [73] I do not want to enter into an analysis of the technical contents of studia humanitatis, but the adoption of this particular formula must also be understood as the progressive determination of an emblem. Humanists purposely recycled a lexical association borrowed from Cicero’s Pro Archia, which had been rediscovered by Petrarch in 1341. Taken out of its original context, the locution became a fixed phrase, its meaning appropriated to this new function of self-representation. [74] On the other hand, the designation also included a reference to the fervor of the individual mentioned in connection with it, who was not merely studying the studia humanitatis, but was also filled with the desire to discover them. Authors often used the vocabulary of love to describe their studying, and commonly used superlatives when referring to the zeal of the learned (who was at the very least studiosissimus). Thus the humanist was not pictured as an expert but rather as an enthusiast, and the differentiation of a community of peers was born first and foremost from a shared passion.

28Antiquitatis amator: this is how Bruni labeled Niccoli, then his most active supporter, in a letter written ca. 1405-1406. [75] And on October 8, 1407, referring to Capra, he wrote the following eloquent lines to the same Niccoli:

29

As I told you in other letters, Bartolomeo of Cremona has devoted himself admirably to studia humanitatis; and since he studied so fervently in an earlier time, before his bishopric, now that he is a bishop he cannot but show affectionate love to those Muses he cultivated heretofore, and bear their “holy emblems, under the spell of a mighty love,” as our Virgil puts it. [76]

30Also in 1407, Bruni wrote a preface to his Latin translation of Demosthenes’s On the Crown, which he began with this remarkable introductory sentence: “Since you are to the highest degree versed in the study of eloquence, and read most carefully, and explore with passion the writings of our orators ….” [77] The surviving copies of this dedication contain identical addresses to two members of the Curia, Capra once again, and Pizolpasso, which goes to show that beyond the repetition of formulas, a generic model of designation had come to be codified. [78] Barzizza also used similar locutions to introduce his pupils. For instance, in the summer of 1411, he sent praises for Valerio Marcello to Cardinal Francesco Zabarella, explaining that Marcello was a man who “feels the highest affection for the fine arts [optimarum artium], as well as for your dignity.” [79] Funeral orations provided an opportunity to come up with multiple variations on the same theme. Pietro Donato thus reminded his audience that Zabarella, who had died on September 26, 1417, “was so seduced by studia humanitatis that he would always make sure to have at home with him somebody who was conversant with the subject.” [80] At the same time, the use of “we” became loaded with meaning: during a poetic dialogue which took place in Rome at the end of the summer of 1406, Loschi mentioned the joint presence of Bruni and Vergerio, with the following very typical additional remark: “Both cultivate the best and most beautiful studies / and also the illustrious arts which we contribute to them.” [81]

31To summarize, a collective consciousness was formulated and objectivized. Moreover, this self-characterization went hand in hand with the shaping of a program that could be called “Ciceronianism,” and was generally related to the role humanism took upon itself in the public sphere. [82] A social specialization was thus added to the name, asserting the reality of an exclusive field of competence, while at the same time endorsing a universalist ambition. The best-known element of this program was the imitation of Cicero’s prose writings as an absolute requirement; it also became its most criticized feature from the end of the Quattrocento on. But while this stylistic orientation was one of the most clearly militant expressions of Ciceronianism, it cannot be understood outside the ideological program that gave it meaning. [83] What was at stake was the reactivation of a paradigmatic framework, which was centered not only on an esthetic model, but more generally on a utopian ethic of which Cicero was both an imagined incarnation and a theorist. [84]

32We are speaking, as the reader will have gathered, of the figure of the orator presented as the result of a moral, intellectual and political achievement, the ideal archetype of the statesman serving the res publica. [85] Loschi’s Inquisitio thus included a preface adressed to one of his colleagues in the chancellery of the Visconti, in which the author presented the first developed reiteration of this notion. In it, Loschi defined the orator as the vir bonus cum ratione dicendi, and praised Cicero’s philosophical knowledge. [86] This theoretical elaboration was driven by the ongoing search for manuscripts containing the doctrinal writings of ancient rhetoric, that is, works less concerned with its technical aspects than with its social and political roles. Notable examples of this quest include the celebrated discoveries of a whole volume of Quintilian’s Institutes of Oratory in Constance in 1416, and of complete versions of On the Orator and of Orator, along with Brutus, in Lodi in 1421. [87] Another impulse was provided by the idealized reinterpretation of the life of Arpino’s most famous son, particularly of his political engagement. This reinterpretation began with Vergerio’s response to Petrarch in 1394, [88] followed by Bruni’s Cicero novus (1415), a monument to the glory of a “man truly born to be useful to humanity in politics as much as in doctrinal thought.” [89]

33Thus it is quite clear that at the core of the apologia of the orator as personified by Cicero, we find a defense of the engagement of learned men in vita activa, whereby their philosophical and rhetorical expertise would be placed at the service of public institutions; a “civic humanism,” to take up again Hans Baron’s famous and hotly disputed notion. [90] The immediate social issues around which this utopia was articulated should be a particular focus of attention here. When humanists expressed their belief in the unrivalled public function of the orator, they were formulating the representation of an “aristocracy of eloquence” that was related both to their own professional status as intellectuals and to their relationship with the elites. [91] The Ciceronian leitmotif was the basis on which their claim to dominance was built, as followers of studia humanitatis, as indispensable auxiliaries to power, and as makers of great men. Indeed this is how the offices of secretaries and chancellors became invested in the collective imagination with the figure of the wise and virtuous rhetorician. [92] This phenomenon is clearly observable in a passage of the funeral oration that Barzizza composed for Marziano Rampini da Tortona, a secretary to Filippo Maria Visconti, who died between 1423 and 1425:

34

I will commemorate how, as we all know, his extraordinary caution when a decision had to be taken, and the wisdom of his speeches to the Senate, were put by him to the service of the latter for its high honor and grace, as much as his health allowed. Full of admiration, some of the Conscript Fathers called him the new Cato, and others the new Caius Lelius. This is why, when it comes to being appraised by our prince, I will say in truth that as the said prince, every time he was somewhat discharged from the heavy burden of the State, listened carefully to his very learned dissertations and freely debated with him the major questions which troubled his mind, he also wanted him to be informed of all his secrets. He was at the same time highly learned in all the artes and particularly gifted in poetry and peerless eloquence. These studia humanitatis made him, rightly, so much more pleasant by the side of a great prince, and so much worthier of admiration. [93]

35Thus, in the idealized professional practice of the humanist in office, Ciceronianism was applied concretely through three activities, namely advising the prince, becoming his confidant, and exercising on his account exceptional oratorical talent. The imitation of Cicero entailed not merely reproducing his prose, it meant actually becoming another Cicero. We should also remember that such a promotion of the orator-philosopher was closely linked to the development of an educational model based on studia humanitatis. It has often been observed that the theorization of a pedagogy of the vir bonus dicendique peritus laid the groundwork for a training program which gave pride of place to the practice of eloquence and claimed to offer the perfect propaedeutics for a future ruler. [94] In doing so, the humanists asserted their unique usefulness and, from an ideological point of view, carved out their very own, exclusive social sphere for themselves. While I will not explore its concrete practices or philosophical implications in detail here, it is nevertheless clear that this was a programmatic turn through which the humanist esprit de corps was consolidated, and the break with a culturally dominant hierarchy was proclaimed under the guise of a self-referential redefining of the ethical figure of the learned individual. [95] For, by implication, it was a forcible entrance into a scholarly world that was already highly institutionalized and competitive, which left rivals with only two choices: fighting the new dispensation, or submitting to it, a point remarkably well illustrated by Patrick Gilli’s work on the conflicts which broke out in fifteenth-century Italy around the issue of the preeminence of jurists. [96]

36Lastly, the transformation of an ongoing triumph into a narrative also entered into this dynamic and polemical process of identity building. Let us return in conclusion to the perspective from which this discussion began, namely the sublimation of the history of the present into a collective enterprise driven by a generation of heroic pioneers, foreshadowing the imminent deployment of a “renaissance” of the ancient golden age. Indeed, some of the organizing features of the long-term vindicating narrative of the birth of humanism were chosen by its own actors, as protagonists of a “myth of origins” in the very process of being conceived and consolidated. Among the frameworks for collective memory formulated during the first decades of the Quattrocento, pride of place must be given to the representation of Poggio’s “discoveries” during the Council of Constance. These were almost immediately turned into a founding event, and the Florentine into a fearless liberator of the long-buried treasures of antiquity. The fruits of his labor—the manuscripts he had copied—became as many victories of humanism over savagery. [97] And indeed, to this day, the event has influenced reconstructions of the beginning of the movement to a truly remarkable extent.

37A brief reminder is in order here. Between the summer of 1416 and the summer of 1417, Poggio took advantage of his inactivity during the debates of the Council of Constance, and made at least four trips to monastic libraries, notably Saint Gall, Fulda, Langres and Cologne (leaving aside the unsolved question of how he had had access to the Vetus Cluniacensis in 1415). [98] He brought back several works from antiquity, by Cicero, Vitruvius, Livy, and Lucretius, among others, as well as a complete version of Quintilian’s Institutes of Oratory. This find was reported in a letter that the humanist sent to Guarino on December 16, 1417, a few months after his first explorations in Saint Gall. [99] The letter was first and foremost a rhetorical piece in which Poggio, far from downplaying his pleasure and pride, laced his narrative with deliberate grandstanding and bold dramatization. [100] After maintaining the suspense at length and engaging in grandiloquent praise of Quintilian as the theorizer of perfect eloquence, he developed a long lamentation over the “shredding” of most of his works, quoting the Aeneid’s verses on Deiphobus, “whose body was all torn, his face cruelly torn—his face and either hand— wrenched from despoiled brows, and his nostrils lopped by a shameful wound.” [101] The apex of this moving flight of lyricism was provided by a prosopopoeia in which Quintilian himself begged for help. [102] News of the manuscripts’ discovery was given only after all this, at the tail end of the letter, at which point the writer heavily emphasized the disgraceful conditions under which the work was kept. This was, he explained, no less than a scandalous imprisonment, “in a thoroughly horrible and dark jail, that is, in the depths of a tower to which no inmate, even one sentenced to death, should be consigned.” [103]

38Among all this self-dramatization, one should note that, on the one hand, the humanist described the monastery as a grave for knowledge, celebrating his own work in contrast with the monks’ disdain for this heritage. On the other hand, however, at the end of his account he used a plural pronoun, a “we” that he never explained. A letter from Bruni, addressed to Poggio a few months earlier, on September 16, 1416, in answer to the news he had received from Niccoli, followed exactly the same pattern. [104] Bruni lavishly praised the accomplishments of his friend, going as far as comparing him to a new Camille. [105] He also vehemently condemned the disgraceful fate of the rescued work, used the same quote from the Aeneid, and framed the episode as a rescue, writing that that the manuscript was “freed from this jail run by merciless and pitiless barbarians.” [106] Lastly, in urging his correspondent to carry on his efforts, he mentions in passing that the addressee was accompanied by others—“illos qui tecum erant”—even though the rest of the letter implied that the merit was Poggio’s alone.

39The documents I have just described were composed by two of the most influential figures on the Italian cultural scene in the following decades. They were inserted in their respective “canonical” epistolary anthologies, and were widely used by humanist historiographers. [107] They provided the basis for an interpretation with pronounced symbolic features, wholly devoted to praising the glory of studia humanitatis in general and Poggio in particular, as the valiant discoverer of a treasure which changed the course of history. In this respect, one should add Barbaro’s letter dated July 6, 1417, in which the Venetian went to the most excessive lengths in celebrating the tenacity of his fellow man of letters. “You who neither the rigors of winter, nor the snow, nor the length of the expedition, nor the hardships of the roads could stop on your way to wrench from darkness into light the monuments of literature,” he enthused, and opposed Poggio’s feat to the German “indignity.” [108]

40Two remarks should be made on this version of the story. First, even though the humanists cast their search as a veritable treasure hunt into what they called “jails,” they did, ultimately, find these books in libraries. This is not to advocate a contrarian stance singing the praises of monastic culture as the great protector of classical heritage in the West, nor to belittle the effect these finds had on the development of the humanist program. Manuscript hunters did “discover,” from their point of view, works that they did not know and that provided crucial help in the formulation of their project and their ideas. Still, at the heart of this enterprise of amassing texts, those who carried it out generated a symbolic representation of their own activity in which the find came to be seen as an exploit that foreshadowed future triumphs, and materialized, in the eyes of its promoters, the dawn of a golden era, opposed in a Manichean way to “medieval” darkness. The “liberation” of the classics, understood as a commonly shared myth, was part and parcel of the formulation of a powerful self-representation in their collective imagination.

41Second, this version of the narrative was clearly focused on Poggio, a leader praised to high heaven, even when passing reference was made to his two fellow travellers, Bartolomeo Aragazzi and Cencio dei Rustici—as in Barbaro’s letter. Indeed dei Rustici, a young humanist from Rome, gave an account of the discoveries at Saint Gall which met with far less success (there is only one known manuscript copy). While he did draw an apocalyptic picture similar to the ones cited above, he gave no particular preeminence to his Florentine colleague, and in truth seems to imply that he had been the instigator of the whole expedition. [109] The focus on Poggio, still current in today’s historiography, is a sign of the very early dominance achieved by Tuscan authors over the collective memory of humanism. The self-centered vision they imposed on it eventually helped turn Florence into the uncontested birthplace of the Renaissance.

42There is no need to expand on the strength of this conquest of the collective memory, which the Medici rulers brilliantly developed and consolidated to their own benefit. Rather, I would like to insist here on the importance of the instant production of a meaning, of a “symbolic truth,” a sort of identity-building romance of modernity endowed with a power of collective enthrallment, of which critical analysis must take the full measure. [110]

43Thus humanism took bodily shape, and turned into a narrative. At the close of this analysis, after what was necessarily an overly schematic survey, I hope to have rendered the decisive impulse that allowed humanism to turn itself into a movement at the turn of the fifteenth century more intelligible. Taking advantage of a combination of complex scholarly practices, a hierarchized space of communication, and most importantly the shared imaginary representation of a collective venture at the cutting edge of current events, cultural history was cast by its own actors and became meaningful in a very specific way. The structured identity that emerged from this symbolic act of projection publicly determined the singularity of the paradigm that had been built around the studia humanitatis, asserting its difference, its social indispensability, and its superiority, while integrating the whole range of its possible incarnations and reappropriations. From trendsetters to occasional practitioners, from the thinkers who invented humanism to the rulers who saw in it one more way to buttress their prestige, men (and a few women) gave rise to a triple dynamic of circulation, expansion, and interpretation of a single unified repertoire from which distinction was asserted. In the process they gave a thousand and one faces to the humanist, in turn philosopher, courtier, patron, prince, schoolmaster, diplomat, and so on. The phenomenon I have described here was remarkable for its extreme social-institutional flexibility. Numerous works have analyzed the “infiltration and acclimatization” of humanism within the ecclesiastical, academic or political spheres in Europe during the fifteenth century. This process was rooted in the discourses, the rites, the ideologies and the practices of government. The art of preaching could be humanist, [111] the issue of church reform could become humanist, [112] likewise the role of the jurist or the medical doctor, [113] or the propaganda of a republic or of an overlord. [114] Embracing structures of clienteles and social hierarchies, humanism was born at the heart of already existing networks of power and culture, especially in the chancelleries, the courts and the universities of central and northern Italy, and at times speeded up the pace of their transformations. [115] It also spread through the major rites of public life, notably weddings and funerals. More than anything else, humanism was a ruling culture and a culture for rulers, allowing its practitioners to insert themselves into a glorious narrative even as it was being told. Such a phenomenon, which could not fail to meet opposition and bring about competition, is open to multiple angles of inquiry, and in the end raises the crucial question of the performativity of its cultural model. A question that reminds us never to lose sight of the truly essential scansion through which the birth of humanism gained its coherence and its historicity.