TITLE PAGE. Proposal Title: Crusading and Patronage: Flavio Biondo s Shorter Works

Transcription

1 TITLE PAGE Proposal Title: Crusading and Patronage: Flavio Biondo s Shorter Works Internal Grant Program: HUMANITIES Principal Investigator: Catherine J. Castner Rank: Professor Department: Languages, Literatures, & Cultures College: Arts & Sciences Contact Information: castnerc@mailbox.sc.edu Amount Requested: $16, Project Period: May

2 For the period May 2012-May 2014, I was awarded a Provost Humanities Grant in the amount of $16, ($16, was actually transferred to my department). The summer salary and travel for myself and a graduate student supported research for, and preparation of, a book, tentatively entitled Biondo Flavio on Crusading and Other Works, under contract with the I Tatti Renaissance Library series, published by Harvard University Press. This series aims to make available to an Anglophone audience texts written in Latin during the Renaissance, many of which have yet to see modern editions. The humanist antiquarian Biondo Flavio da Forlì ( ) was a pioneer in the development of early modern historiography, chorography (description of regions), and archaeology. However, his Latin treatises have seen delayed production in modern edition, with many still unavailable to modern readers. My volume includes orations and treatises on the Turkish menace (Biondo participated in the production of the large body of Latin writing inspired by the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453; of particular interest are several propagandistic texts exhorting rulers and states to a new Crusade); Biondo s correspondence with patrons and prospective patrons, a group which includes the most important intellectual and political figures of the 15 th century; and a treatise on warfare. Projected at 410 pages, it includes an introduction, which will set the background and environment and communicate the importance of the collected texts; Latin text; English translation; notes to the text; notes to the translation; bibliography; and index. Several of these texts concern Venetian history (broadly conceived): from Biondo s exhortation to Alfonso of Aragon, King of Naples, to undertake a new crusade for the recovery of Constantinople; to two brief histories of Venice. As crusading is the predominant motif in Biondo s narratives of Venetian history, the connection between Venice and crusading binds together many of the seemingly disparate works in the volume. Biondo writes from a deep connection to Venice and the Venetian nobility, and shares the attitude of his sources, especially their view of Venice as bulwark against the barbarians. The narrative of the Fourth Crusade in his Histories (finished no later than the early 1450s) provided the source for his later brief descriptions of this earlier Crusade, all of these texts perpetuating, to varying degrees, moral justification of the expedition and its depiction as a glorious episode in the growth of the Venetian state. Pro-Venetian divergences from Biondo s source, his Histories, appear in his later narratives. During the summer of 2012, summer support from my Provost Humanities Grant enabled me to complete 90% of the translation into English of the Latin texts to be included in my volume. I also completed a portion of the notes to the translation (similar to a commentary). The summer support also enabled me to complete important research on my book project, and specifically on the history of Venice, which lies behind several of the texts included in my volume. Thus in February 2013 I was able to leverage the research completed thanks to the Provost Humanities Grant into a successful proposal for a competitive external grant: I won the Patricia H. Labalme award from Renaissance Society of America, which provides support for a month s research at the Fondazione Cini in Venice, Italy, in the form of airfare and residency costs at the Fondazione Cini s Vittore Branca Center, a research center for the study of the history and culture of Venice. I obtained permission from the Provost s Office to convert part of my Provost Humanities Grant to pay a substitute teacher for my fall 2013 courses so that I might take advantage of the opportunity offered by the Labalme Award for a month s research in Venice. Thanks to the funds provided through the Renaissance Society of America, I did not 2

3 need to use the Provost Humanities Grant for airfare or residency; I did, however, need to use it for per diem and hotel and travel expenses within and outside of Venice. Italian history is fundamentally local. At the Branca Center, I made much progress: research on Venetian history which informs my introduction and notes to the translation, and consultation of manuscripts for preparation of the Latin text. I found rich resources in the Fondazione Cini library, and its Istituto per la Storia della Società e dello Stato Veneziano, whose professors aided me immeasurably in understanding the environment of Biondo s production of histories of Venice In the Fondazione Cini s Nuova Manica Lunga Library, I was able to find in one place many works on Venetian history, in particular the journal Studi Veneziani which is published from the Istituto; texts of Biondo s sources for his account of the crusades in his Histories (such as Lorenzo de Monacis); and fundamental work by Italian scholars on the historiography of Venice which enlightened me on the roles of earlier chronicles in shaping this narrative. European journals and books on Venice s relations with the Turks provided important background to my book, a number of whose texts participate in the ideologies of the myth of Venice and conflict of East vs. West. The help of personnel at the Cini library and the Istituto connected me with librarians, archivists, and scholars at neighboring institutions: through these connections, I was able to access archival materials and archivists in the Venetian State archives. Here I consulted documents surrounding the events of the Fourth Crusade which Biondo claims to have personally inspected. In addition to the valuable general knowledge I was able to acquire, my investigations in Venice have enabled me to contribute to the ongoing scholarly discussion of two specific topics concerning Biondo s additions to, and divergences from, his sources. Biondo represents himself, and has been characterized by modern scholars, as objective and exacting in his investigation of sources: his pioneering reputation in this regard has rested, in part, on his inclusion of documentary sources in his historical works. In his narratives of Venetian history, the humanist asserts several times that he personally inspected, in the Venetian public records, documents he used as sources. For example, in consulting doge Andrea Dandolo s (14 th c.) Liber Albus, the collection of most ancient Venetian documents, far more complete than today s archives, along with similar early diplomatic and private acts, I completed the picture of documents that Biondo verifiably claims to have inspected; this context throws into relief, and may provide additional rationale for, the conspicuous absence in the archives of one reported source. A larger question concerns my preparation of the first modern edition of De Origine ac Gestis Venetorum (On the Origin and Deeds of the Venetians), for which I needed to investigate a manuscript -ms. C. 66 in the Biblioteca Capitolare, Padua- that has been listed in inventories under various titles, and has thus been confusing in references. From Venice, I traveled easily to Padua, where I examined this humanist manuscript of On the Origin. For my preparation of the Latin text, I consulted this underappreciated version in comparison with more commonly cited editions of this text. Although time would not permit an entire collation, I compared versions of the most important section on the Fourth Crusade, which yielded at least one significant manuscript variation from the account of the episode in Decades. This manuscript deserves further consideration. At the Biblioteca Marciana, I was able to consult other texts of De Origine/ On the Origin and assess their relative value in the preparation of my edition, texts disparaged as seriously flawed by at least one previous editor of Biondo s lesser-known works. In summary, my work in Venice provided important enrichment of my introduction and notes to the translation, as well as basic preparation of a text of one work in my collection which 3

4 has never been published in modern edition; and has immeasurably enhanced my understanding of Venetian humanism: the cultural environment and network of persons and patrons in and against which Biondo conceived and created his texts on Venetian history. Another set of Latin texts the series did not provide are two letters from Biondo Flavio, product of Biondo s early displomatic career in service of the papal Curia. My graduate student traveled to Lambeth Palace Library, London, UK, and inspected, reported on, and brought back digital copies of, these letters. On September 24, I gave a talk summarizing my research in Venice to residents and staff of the Vittore Branca Center at the Fondazione Cini, entitled Biondo Flavio on Venice and Crusading, for which have pasted below the announcement from the Foundation. As a result of my internationally recognized scholarship on Biondo Flavio, I was invited to present on this author on a panel at the annual conference of Renaissance Society of America, the largest learned society for the study of the period ; this conference will take place in New York City in March, 2014 and the papers of our panel will be published in a volume from Bonn University Press. Summary of Expenditures: Summer support for PI, Catherine Castner, 2012 $8, Fringe for PI $ Travel of Emily Rendek, Ph.D. candidate, USC English Department, to Lambeth Palace Library, London, UK: $ Payment for substitute teaching for one month by adjunct faculty: $ Fringe for substitute instructor $ Per diem for one month s residency in Venice for PI $ Total: $16, (This is $89.94 over because we were not expecting to pay fringe benefits to the substitute instructor who covered my two courses for one month while I was in Venice conducting research thanks to an external grant.) Questa settimana siete tutti invitati a partecipare alle due Presentazioni dei progetti di ricerca di Catherine Castner, borsista della Renaissance Society of America, e Antonella Chiodo, borsista del Centro Vittore Branca, che illustreranno il lavoro svolto presso la Fondazione. Ciascun intervento si svolgerà alle ore 16.30, nella Cella 1 della Manica Lunga,e durerà mezz'ora circa. Martedì 24 settembre, Catherine Castner: Biondo Flavio on Venice and crusading Giovedì 26 settembre, Antonella Chiodo: Indagini sul fondo Sandberg Vavalà This week you are all invited to attend two project presentations held by Catherine Castner and Antonella Chiodo. Each presentation will take place at 4.30 pm, in the Cella 1 of Manica Lunga Library, and will last about 30 minutes. 4

5 September, Tuesday 24, Catherine Castner: Biondo Flavio on Venice and crusading September, Thursday 26, Antonella Chiodo: Indagini sul fondo Sandberg Vavalà 5