SPEAKING SPIRITS: VENTRILOQUIZING THE DEAD IN RENAISSANCE ITALY

Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction. Eidolopoeia: Idol Making 3
1 Rewriting the Auctor: Revising according

to the Texts Letter or Spirit? 36
2 Divining Dante: Scandals of His Corpus and Corpse 69
3 Genius Loci: Exile, Citizenship, and the Place of Burial 108
4 Habeas Corpus, Habeas Spiritum: Some Not-So-Final Thoughts 138
Notes 165
Bibliography 225
Index 253
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Acknowledgments
This study began more than a decade ago as an examination of Italian

Renaissance ghost stories. Why did Italian storytellers relate tales of
ghosts that were not scary and seemed more pedagogical than enter-
taining? Why were Renaissance examples so different from classical and
medieval ghost story precedents? Why did the framing of Renaissance
ghost stories seek to maintain narrative distance between the ghost and
the audience in striking contrast to many modern and contemporary
tales? It took me far too much time to realize that I was less interested
in defining scary or providing a history of ghosts than I was in explor-
ing the power of the message attributed to a fictive spirit, the power of
rhetoric. Strategies for establishing auctoritas and for authorizing par-
ticular readings of a text strategies at the heart of my previous study,
Hermes Lyre: Italian Poetic Self-Commentary from Dante to Tommaso Cam-
panella (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002) return in this one. I
remain interested in the ways in which authors use their fictions as rhe-
torical tools of power and persuasion. In Hermes Lyre, I argued that the
commentaries that poets penned to explicate their own compositions
marked an acknowledgment of their inability to possess the totalizing
significance of their poems. In the present study, I argue that authors
who invent and present instances of eidolopoeia claim more rather
than less authority for their messages by feigning that such messages
come from esteemed spirits beyond the grave.
Because this book had two very different incarnations, I have a great
many colleagues, friends, and institutions to thank not only for their
assistance and encouragement, but also for their patience. It was a sin-
gular privilege and delight for me to have been able to work on Hermes
Lyre and on this project in its early stages under the wise and generous
viii Acknowledgments
editorship of the late Ron Schoeffel at the University of Toronto Press.

Without the continued guidance of Executive Editor Suzanne Rancourt
and her amazing editorial staff at the Press, this project would not be.
I offer special thanks to copyeditor Judy Williams for her meticulous
insight and warm professionalism. Two anonymous readers chosen
by the Press provided welcome divergent perspectives on my book
drafts. I appreciate their suggestions for improving the manuscript and
acknowledge that I alone am responsible for any shortcomings that
remain. The Pennsylvania State University has been very generous in
granting me two research sabbaticals during the 20067 and 201314
academic years. I am grateful to Penn States Institute for the Arts and
Humanities for a fall 2004 Resident Scholar Fellowship, which allowed
me to draft part of the fourth chapter, and for their spring 2007 Indi-
vidual Faculty Research Grant, which enabled necessary contextual
research at the Harvard and Stanford university libraries. I thank the
Bogliasco Foundation and its Centro Studi Ligure for a fall 2006 resi-
dency, providing the perfect situation in which to complete much of the
drafting of the initial manuscript. Proofreading and editing assistance
at the earliest stage was provided by Josephine M. Carubia of Meta-
phorical Ink.
My special thanks also go to the Centre for Reformation and Renais-
sance Studies at Victoria College of the University of Toronto for a
Visiting Scholar Research Fellowship, and to the William and Kather-
ine Devers fund in Dante Studies at the University of Notre Dame for
funding for travel to their libraries, where I read with great delight the
nineteenth-century stories featuring Dantes spirit. Sandra Steltz, Rare
Books Librarian at Penn State University, was a tremendous help in
acquiring some of the authorial ghost stories and eidolopoetic narra-
tives on which I have spent the most time and energy.
In addition to invited lectures at the University of Notre Dame in
2001, at the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at SUNY-
Binghamton in 2006, and at Rutgers University and Bowdoin College
in 2014, I presented research pertaining to different authorial ghosts at
six conferences: the Modern Language Association conventions in 2000
and 2011, the American Association of Italian Studies conferences in
2003, 2005, and 2013, and the Northern California Renaissance confer-
ence in 2007. Discussions following those presentations, as well as with
colleagues at Penn State and elsewhere, have helped to make this project
better. I thank Olga Zorzi Pugliese, Theodore Cachey, Jr, Lorenzo Poliz-
zotto, William Kennedy, Warren Ginzburg, Christopher Nissen, Alfred
Acknowledgments ix
Triolo, Robert R. Edwards, William R. Blue, Maria Truglio, Nichols

Fernndez-Medina, Chiara Nardone, Johanna Rossi Wagner, Stephen
Wheeler, Arielle Saiber, Fiona Stewart, Brenda Smith, and the members
of the State College Lit Club. I hope to live up to The Dantisti John
W. Moore, Jr, and the late John Buck great humanists both.
Portions of the second and third chapters were published in earlier
elaborations as two articles: Dante as Piagnone Prophet: Girolamo
Benivienis Cantico in Laude di Dante (1506) in Renaissance Quarterly
55 (2002): 4980; and Dante Ravennate and Boccaccio Ferrarese? Post-
Mortem Residency and the Attack on Florentine Literary Hegemony,
14801520, in Viator 35 (2004): 54362. I gratefully acknowledge the
journal editors permission to reprint.
To my husband, Rick Weyer, I offer my deepest appreciation for his
unwavering love and support. This marathon is done.
SPEAKING SPIRITS
Ventriloquizing the Dead in Renaissance Italy
Introduction
Eidolopoeia: Idol Making
ch n la mente m fitta, e or maccora,

la cara e buona immagine paterna
di voi quando nel mondo ad ora ad ora
minsegnavate come luom setterna.
for in my memory is fixed, and now it weighs on

my heart, the dear, kind paternal image of you when,
in the world, from time to time you used to
teach me how man makes himself eternal.
Dantes words to his teacher of rhetoric
Brunetto Latini, Inferno 15.8251
Eidolopoeia is the rhetorical figure by which the dead are made to speak.
By means of eidolopoeia, an orator or author feigns conversing with
the spirit of a historical person and quoting directly the words of the
interlocutor from beyond the grave. Authors who speak for the dead
do not limit themselves to any particular genres or modes of literary
expression, figuring speaking spirits in ghost stories, journeys to the
other world, and dream visions, as well as apologie, diaries, epistles,
lyric poems featuring voices of the dead, and more. In the present study
I contextualize various examples of two types of eidolopoetic texts in
order to understand the authorial motivations for their composition, as
well as the consequences of their use by Italian writers primarily in the
fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Since eidolopoeia, as a rhetori-
cal figure, concerns itself particularly with the power of persuasion, I
focus my selection of eidolopoetic examples on those that seek to sway
4 Speaking Spirits
opinion for two main purposes: (1) to establish authoritative versions

of texts; and (2) to prompt action in the real world, particularly in the
legal and political spheres of public life.
In the first instance, fictional personas of dead authors are figured
typically in proems or prefaces of reissued works in order to endorse
a new translation, emended edition, or updated version of the origi-
nal literary project. While they may rely on a formulaic quality of
the figure to acknowledge a literary borrowing or to pay homage to
an esteemed authorial predecessor, there are some eidolopoetic nar-
ratives that radically subvert the original work, making it seem as if
the deceased authors were offering palinodes of their poetic master-
pieces. Among the examples of the second type of eidolopoeia exam-
ined in this study are speaking spirits figured to influence diplomatic
or judicial outcomes. Sometimes eidolopoetic fictions appear surpris-
ingly efficacious in compelling those in positions of power to change
course, to reverse legal sentences (such as banishment decrees), or to
go against the legally declared final wishes of some famous and oth-
erwise influential people (including Petrarch and Giovanni Pico della
Mirandola). By means of close readings of eidolopoetic texts and their
contextualization (in terms of historical and biographical data and
reception theories), I aim to illuminate latent ethical and existential
dimensions that this very common but understudied form of literary
characterization can offer.
Classical rhetoricians, including Quintilian (c. 35c. 100), defined
eidolopoeia in relation to and typically as a subcategory of proso-
popoeia (personification). Echoing Cicero (106 BC43 BC), Quintilian in
the ninth book of his Institutio oratoria (The Orators Education) stated
of prosopopoeia:
His et adversariorum cogitationes velut secum loquentium protrahimus

(qui tamen ita demum a fide non abhorrent si ea locutos finxerimus quae
cogitasse eos non sit absurdum), et nostros cum aliis sermones et aliorum
inter se credibiliter introducimus, et suadendo, obiurgando, querendo,
laudando, miserando personas idoneas damus. Quin deducere deos in
hoc genere dicendi et inferos excitare concessum est.
These [personifications] both vary and animate a speech to a remarkable

degree. We use them (1) to display the inner thoughts of our opponents
as though they were talking to themselves (but they are credible only if
we imagine them saying what it is not absurd for them to have thought!),
Eidolopoeia: Idol Making 5
(2) to introduce conversations between ourselves and others, or of others

among themselves, in a credible manner, and (3) to provide appropriate
characters for words of advice, reproach, complaint, praise, or pity. We are
even allowed in this form of speech to bring down the gods from heaven
or raise the dead.2
Quintilians insistence on the credibility of the representation based

on its verisimilitude accords with other theorists approximation of
eidolopoeia to ethopoeia (sermocinatio, or impersonation). Priscian
in Praeexercitamina, a sixth-century Latin translation of a previous Greek
work by Hermogenes, noted two variations of the imitation of speech
accommodated to suit assigned persons and situations: (1) proso-
popoeia or personification proper, when speech is simulated contra
naturam, and (2) eidolopoeia, when words are put into the mouths of
the dead.3
Eidolopoeia has been termed ghost-making,4 although it is more
precisely idol making, from its Greek etymological root eidolon. Many
connotations of idol exist. An idol is not a true person, but rather
inherently deceives, and depends absolutely on its close resemblance
to the point of confusion to the original it seeks to represent or perhaps
even to supplant. A fraud, counterfeit, or simulacrum, the dead spirit in
literary eidolopoeia becomes a mouthpiece, a kind of puppet, through
which its author-creator ventriloquizes a message. Thus the idol speaks
without independent personal agency or will; if it acts or communi-
cates, it does because another compels it to do so.
For all of the undeniably negative connotations concerning idols,
some positive ones emerge as well. The term idol can be applied to a
special person recognized as an object of great admiration and potential
emulation, a paragon of performance, virtue, prowess, or other highly
revered quality. Authors of eidolopoeia frequently choose as their inter-
locutors the spirits of their idols their most esteemed predecessors.
While some writers may cast a famous predecessor in a less flattering
light as a spirit (and many of Dantes infernal shades come to mind
in this regard), nonetheless authors more typically speak for figures of
the dead they view with respect. Even in the positive connotations of
idol, however, the referent is entirely dependent on another. In other
words, a human being can triumph in action, author a masterpiece, or
live a most virtuous life, but that person still cannot assert or define
him/herself as an idol. Exemplary people only become idols if others
represent them as such.
6 Speaking Spirits
Rhetoricians referred to dead people as perfect, though not in

accordance with the aforementioned positive connotations of idol.
A dead individual was perfectus in the sense of being in ones final
form, thus completed or entire. The fiction that a person as a spirit
continues to speak after death subverts fundamentally this assumption
that at death a life and a persons character are perfected. If historical
people can be made to speak from the grave, potentially no limitations
impede any living person from speaking for them or determining what
the spirits can be made to say. In the process of interrogating the effects
of eidolopoetic fictions in the world of the living, I also aim to illumi-
nate dimensions of the definition and self-definition of personal agency
and identity.
Even some of the earliest writers in this study grappled with issues
of poetic licence, personal fame, truth or accuracy, the foundations
of scholarship, and/or what constitutes authorial inventiveness. For
example, Giovanni Boccaccio in his Trattatello in laude di Dante (Little
Treatise in Praise of Dante) created a ghostly persona of his schol-
arly subject (Dante) in order to offer an answer to a vexing question:
Did Dante-author complete the Divina commedia? After all, at Dantes
death, the final thirteen cantos of Paradiso were missing. In the very
same Trattatello, however, Boccaccio insisted that a key motive for his
efforts to collect and document Dantes works was to ensure that n
alcuno delle sue sintitolasse, n a lui fossero per avventura intitolate
laltrui (his works may not be attributed to someone else, and that
the works of another may not be ascribed to him).5 Along with Boc-
caccio, Antonio di Tuccio Manetti faced the seeming paradoxical uses
of spirit narratives when he created a spirit of Guido Cavalcanti that
spoke dismissively of spirit characters as reliable sources for liter-
ary research. Petrarch must also have intuited that after his death his
works might require some form of authentication as a defence against
others (including scribes, commentators, and editors) who might mis-
represent his words. He adopted the notation, Scripto ipsa manu decti
Poete (written in the hand of the aforesaid poet).6 Eidolopoetic narra-
tives highlight the disparities or potential disparities in textual repre-
sentations of the self.7
It thus comes as no surprise that a crucial aspect of this rhetorical
figure concerns the directness of the speech attributed to the dead spirit.
When an author quotes an idol, the message typically carries particu-
lar forcefulness. A brief comparison of two near-contemporary texts by
Niccol Machiavelli can serve to clarify this point. In a oft-cited letter
addressed to Francesco Vettori dated 10 December 1513, Machiavelli

described the close of his daily routine in exile:
Venuta la sera, mi ritorno in casa, ed entro nel mio scrittoio entro nelle
antique corti delli antiqui uomini, dove, da loro ricevuto amorevolmente,
mi pasco di quel cibo, che solum mio, e che io nacqui per lui; dove io non
mi vergogno parlare con loro e domandarli della ragione delle loro azioni;
e quelli per loro umanit mi rispondono.
On the coming of evening, I return to my house and enter my study I

enter the ancient courts of men, where, received by them with affection,
I feed on that food which only is mine and which I was born for, where I
am not ashamed to speak with them and to ask them the reason for their
actions; and they in their kindness answer me.8
In speaking with the great historians, philosophers, and poets of the

past, and listening to their answers, Machiavelli did not compose eido-
lopoeia, since he did not invent more words for them to utter in his
own time and cultural context. He did not embellish here the speech
of the dead, as he did in his Discorso o dialogo intorno alla lingua nostra
(Debate or Dialogue concerning Our Language, c. 1515). In the Dialogo,
Machiavelli represented a fictive spirit of Dante, which he compelled
to recant a view that the historical Dante had pointedly presented in
De vulgari eloquentia (On the Eloquent Vernacular, c. 13025). Dantes
dramatized capitulation to Machiavellis linguistic arguments Egli
il vero, e io ho il torto (That is true, and I am mistaken)9 conveyed
a directness and an emotional urgency that I will argue in chapter 2
served Machiavellis purpose: to end his own state of exile by high-
lighting similarities between his situation and Dantes and playing on
Renaissance Florentines collective desire to make amends for Dantes
banishment. In sum, the first example described Machiavellis study
and the reception of ideas from books; the second involved the poesis
(or making) of an authorial idol through which Machiavelli sought to
influence through literary rhetoric the actions of his contemporaries.
Advantages of Eidolopoetic Protagonists
What emerges in the consideration of the personas in literary texts are

the unique advantages of eidolopoetic characters. Eidolopoetic char-
acters have identities that readers already apprehend. The historical
8 Speaking Spirits
people whom authors represent lived and acquired the fame, reputa-
tion, experience, or status that accords with writerly intentions. Identity
is crucial because it imparts a ready-made context for the authors mes-
sage, but also a foundational authority on which the eidolopoetic writer
wishes to build. In the case of the Dialogo, for example, Machiavelli spe-
cifically chose Dante as his interlocutor because the greatly esteemed
fellow Florentine author was also exiled for political reasons, and the
lively linguistic debate could serve as a means for linking both mens
fates in the minds of Machiavellis readers. Almost invariably the first
thing that the reader of eidolopoeia learns about a spirit is its name or
identifying attributes. Upon catching sight of the shade of Virgil in the
first canto of Inferno, the character of the pilgrim Dante pleads, Miser-
ere di me /qual che tu sii, od ombra od omo certo! (Miserere [have
mercy] on me whatever you may be, whether shade or true man!).
The spirit immediately proceeds to acknowledge its post-mortem state
and to identify itself with the Lombard poet who under Augustus in
Rome wrote the epic poem about Aeneass flight from Troy. Dante the
pilgrim calls him Virgilio (Virgil) at Inferno 1.78, and lo mio maestro
e l mio autore (my master and my author) at Inferno 1.85, and the
spirits identity, here and in other examples of eidolopoeia, will closely
correspond to the message that the author wishes to convey.
Moreover, the historical people represented by these eidolopo-
etic characters are dead, emphatically dead, a key characteristic for
a number of reasons. First of all, the characters are figured as pos-
sessing not only the status and experiences earned during life, but
also a special knowledge, unavailable to the living, of what happens
to human beings after physical death. Moreover, the comprehensive
nature of these characters perceived experience lends to their mes-
sages an almost unquestionable quality. Second, the deceased nature
of the historical people on whom these characters are based means
that the dead cannot object if the words placed in their mouths are
not their own. If these figures represented living people, as in some
Renaissance dialogues for instance, the people being represented
might object to how they are portrayed or might dispute opinions
attributed to their fictional personas.10 The dead have no power to
critique their fictitious portrayals. Finally, the eidolopoetic characters
deadness accords the storyteller a unique role: that of the privileged
intermediary between the living readership and the dead protagonist.
Like a medium, the eidolopoetic author seizes the prerogative of inter-
preting or relating the dead spirits message. The fiction writers claim
to have communicated with a dead person suggests that the claimant

possesses a power that the reader does not have: clairvoyance or a
sixth sense. Those who assert the capacity to communicate with spirits
have an advantage over sceptics; within the economy of eidolopoeia,
the non-believer in ghosts or the speaking dead assumes a less com-
petent status.
In most examples of Renaissance Italian eidolopoeia, the author
represents himself as an eponymous character within the narrative
functioning as the intermediary. The role of percipient of the ghostly
spirit in these cases coincides with the narrator, and the author of
eidolopoeia serves as mediator between the fictive realm of the dead
and his audience of readers in the realm of the living. The construc-
tion of the narrator-character entails necessarily that the author fab-
ricates or fictitiously represents more than just the traits of the spirit.
According to arguments familiar from narratology, each authors
projection of a narrative persona called by his name is not him, but
a fictional representation of him, and the fictional representation
can be embellished to differing effects. For example, Boccaccio the
narrator in De casibus virorum illustrium (On the Fates of Illustrious
Men) will claim at the outset of the eighth book that he has grown
weary of the task of recording the stories told by the file of illustri-
ous dead souls parading through his study, and he labels himself as
lazy, a quality that does not necessarily correlate with Boccaccio the
authors many textual contributions during this period of his life and
historical circumstances. By contrast, Petrarch in his Africa fashions a
poetic persona of himself named Franciscus that is praised in such
exaggeratedly high terms by the spirits of Homer and Ennius that it
strains credibility, since the young poet Petrarch in his inability to
complete his projects could show little to substantiate these spirits
exaltations of him, at least at the time of composition of the unfin-
ished Latin epic poem.
The messages that eidolopoetic characters are made to speak can
also be especially controversial in nature. Among the Italian Renais-
sance examples in this study, eidolopoetic characters will articulate
political views of a minority faction whose members feared persecu-
tion for political reasons; they will advocate actions contrary to legal
precedent; or in some cases, they will be used to speak the unspeak-
able, that is, authors will use spirit characters to articulate some kind
of taboo. In this regard, eidolopoeia, as a rhetorical figure, sometimes
mentions what reticence ploys, ellipses, or other textual forms of
10 Speaking Spirits
passing over in silence might seek to leave unsaid. When such forth-
right speech comes from a character figured in the afterlife, instead of
directly from the living author, it would seem that some degree of its
ineffability is mitigated. Renaissance Italian eidolopoetic writers had
a great many precedents for their projects in classical and medieval
texts, as well as in the works of the Three Crowns. I turn now to con-
sider some of them.
Brief Survey of Classical/Medieval Eidolopoeia

and Critical Approaches
Classical examples of eidolopoeia, especially among Latin authors,

served as models either directly or indirectly for early modern Ital-
ian writers. The number and variety of classical spirit narratives are
notable: Lucans first book of the Pharsalia, Socrates animated corpse,
Suetoniuss account of why Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon in the
Lives of the Twelve Caesars, and Brutuss evil genius in Plutarchs Life
of Brutus are just some of the better-known instances.11 Virgils Aeneid
offered various speaking spirits, including those of Polydorus (in book
3), and of Palinurus, Dephobus, and Anchises (in book 6). In the open-
ing lines of the Annales by Ennius, words attributed to a spirit of Homer
served at least in part as an instrument of poetic self-promotion for
Ennius, a model that Petrarch will exploit.
Explicitly political uses of eidolopoeia figure more insistently in
the narratives of Roman public debates, and the ghosts conjured in
Ciceros orations leap immediately to mind. In these speeches, fic-
tional spirits plead their causes: assassinated victims seek recom-
pense and war heroes enjoin senators to honour them with fitting
monuments for the sacrifice of their lives on behalf of the state. More-
over, Ciceros examples serve as clear evidence of how eidolopoetic
authors used the figure not only to advocate for third-party causes
(i.e., on behalf of murder victims or war heroes), but also to their
own authorial advantage. Basil Dufallo in The Ghosts of the Past: Latin
Literature, the Dead, and Romes Transition to the Principate details how
Cicero harnessed the power of public rumours to cast aspersions on
his rivals from a rhetorical distance by articulating them through the
spirits of respected Roman citizens.12 Dufallo intuited limiting the
scope of his examination of spirits in Roman literature to the figure of
prosopopoeia, as I have done even more restrictively to eidolopoeia.
In doing so, he has greatly expanded scholarly understanding of the
sometimes ideological motivational scope of classical ghost stories.13

Dufallo summarized:
Why do the dead in these texts act so much like the living? we find
dead ancestors reproaching their living descendants for aberrant sexual
conduct, dead statesmen returning to take part in contemporary poli-
tics, dead wives and mistresses addressing courtroom-style speeches to
their surviving partners. We cannot ascribe such scenarios simply to the
Romans well-known obsession with ancestry and the emulation of illus-
trious Romans of the past, imitatio maiorum. Indeed, at issue here is not
only imitation of ancestors but also something we might paradoxically
term imitatio posteriorum: the deads imitation of those who come after.
This peculiarly Roman fantasy never manifests itself to the same extent
in later Latin literature and there is no precedent for it in Greek literature,
where, conversely, the activities of the dead are usually imagined in far
less elaborate terms.14
Although Dufallos study relied on modern performance theory, its

conclusions, which explained the use of fictional ghostly spirits for
political purposes during Romes transition from Republic to Princi-
pate, parallel some of mine. Nevertheless, I will argue that writers in the
Italian Renaissance did indeed resurrect in later Latin literature, as well
as in Italian vernacular literature, something of that peculiarly Roman
fantasy he mentioned.
In the intervening period of the Middle Ages, however, there did
seem to be fewer instances of that kind of political-rhetorical use of
eidolopoeia, despite the fact that there was a veritable proliferation
of literary representations of the congress between the living and the
dead, especially in ghost stories, dream visions, and journeys to the
other world. Scholarly attention to medieval ghost stories, such as those
edited by Andrew Joynes or analysed by Jean-Claude Schmitt, Patrick
Geary, and Ronald C. Finucane, typically focused on issues related to
what happens to the soul after death, oftentimes commenting explicitly
or implicitly in Christian milieux on the nature of the relatively new
concept of Purgatory.15 Medieval speaking spirits seem to have as their
primary impetus to exhort their living percipients to lead a moral life, to
believe in God, and to practise actions worthy of praise. Scholars have
also explored the authorial messages contained in visions of the other
world (see especially the study by Giorgio Fedalto and the volume
edited by Maria Pia Ciccarese). Manuele Gragnolatis Experiencing the
12 Speaking Spirits
Afterlife: Soul and Body in Dante and Medieval Culture investigated embri-
ological and eschatological aspects of defining human identity in Dante
and some of his precedents, including Giacomino da Verona and Uguc-
cione da Lodi (both active in the thirteenth century) and Bonvesin de la
Riva (d. circa 1315).16 On visions in which a dreamer claims to receive a
message from a spirit, Maria Ruvoldt has offered one of the few studies
dedicated to Italian examples, though more scholars have studied the
potentialities of prophecy and inspiration in the English dream vision
tradition, including Constance B. Hieatt, Kathryn L. Lynch, J. Stephen
Russell, and the contributors to the study edited by Peter Brown, Read-
ing Dreams: The Interpretation of Dreams from Chaucer to Shakespeare.
Because of the eidolopoetic focus on what the historical dead are
quoted as saying, it should be apparent that my study thus excludes
ghost stories that feature legendary, mythical, or otherwise non-
historical spirits17 or those that represent indeterminate malificia, such as
devils.18 However, a very logical next step in the study of eidolopoeia
would be the consideration of mystical and saintly visions. The Catholic
Church repeatedly recognized human beings who during their lifetimes
left behind narratives featuring communications with the dead, in addi-
tion to their legacies of a holy life, faith, good works, and miracles. These
blessed and saintly individuals became very powerful esteemed exam-
ples of Christian life, whom the Church encouraged the living faithful
to emulate and to seek in prayer. A plethora of late medieval and early
modern Italian saints boast otherworldly encounters of various kinds
during their lifetimes, usually in the form of visions or ecstasies, includ-
ing but certainly not limited to those of Agnese di Montepulciano
(d. 1317), Caterina da Siena (d. 1380), Francesco di Roma (d. 1440),
Caterina di Genova (d. 1510), Caterina de Ricci (d. 1590), and Maria
Maddalena de Pazzi (d. 1606).19 Though I leave aside in this study
explicitly religious visions, I will return in chapter 4 to consider the use
of saintly spirits to articulate prophecies that more closely resemble
recommendations for secular political action.20
I refer readers seeking a comparative critical-theoretical panorama
of spirit narratives to Jrgen Pieterss excellent study Speaking with the
Dead: Explorations in Literature and History. Some of the authors Pieters
examined in his book overlap with mine (including Dante, Petrarch,
and Machiavelli); however, his breadth was far greater than that of
the present study. Pieters examined among others Sir Philip Sidney
(15541586), Constantijn Huygens (15961687), John Keats (17951821),
Jules Michelet (17981874), Gustave Flaubert (18211880), and T.S. Eliot
(18881965). I greatly admire the work that Pieters has done in weaving
together and unravelling the theoretical threads of inquiry from Aristo-
tle, through scholars of mimesis in his focus on conversations with the
dead (Erich Auerbach, Ernst Robert Curtius, George Steiner), to engage
the theoretical contributions of Roland Barthes, Stephen Greenblatt,
and many others in the fundamental inquiry of New Historicism in
literature. I recognize that Pieterss contribution has freed me to refocus
on the Italian primary sources of eidolopoeia, and I will not speak with
the dead from his theoretical perspective so much as puzzle why the
dead are being made to speak.
Not surprisingly, the Three Crowns provided some of the most inter-
esting precedents for Renaissance Italian eidolopoeia. Dante, Petrarch,
and Boccaccio were the great idols of early Italian literature. Not only
did what they write cause them to be crowned with admiration, they
also were made idols in the sense that all three men were made to
speak as spirits after their deaths. What their spirits were made to say
and do (and why) will be much of the focus of subsequent chapters of
this study. Here I investigate just some of the consequences of the ways
in which all three authors experimented with ventriloquizing their own
predecessors.
The Great Eidolopoetic Experiment:

Dantes Divina Commedia
Dante created a veritable multitude of damned, repentant, and blessed

souls that were made to speak from beyond the grave in his Divina
commedia, perhaps the greatest number and variety of eidolopoeia in
all of literature.21 Many of the characters in the Commedia do not appear
particularly controversial, and their placement within Dantes other
world goes relatively unquestioned. For example, it typically does
not surprise the reader that Thomas Aquinas, saint and author of the
Summa Theologica, appears amid the theologians on the heavenly sphere
of the sun, or that Judas Iscariot is punished as a traitor to his Lord,
because their defining traits in the poem correspond to their known
earthly attributes or actions described in sacred scripture. Readers also
tend to allow plenty of poetic licence for Dante to invent characters
that represent historical people associated with him on a personal basis
(i.e., Dantes great-great-grandfather Cacciaguida, or Beatrice). But
other characters have attracted more interest and much more critical
speculation focused on how and why Dantes portrayal of once-living
14 Speaking Spirits
people differed so strikingly from historical record, literary precedent,

contemporary reputation, or some other external proof of their iden-
tities. Dantes Virgil is an oft-cited case in point.22 Dante-author pres-
ents a pagan Virgil not only capable of expounding certain Christian
beliefs, but also of writing texts that prompt the salvation of another
pagan (Statius, Purg. 22.6473). The presentation of Virgil is so
beguiling and so tempting of the wildest rewritings of his character
that some scholars have even raised the argument that Dante in the end
saves Virgil.23
Another example to receive its own share of critical attention is the
character of Brunetto Latini. In fact, Dante-author presents none of his
fictional characters quite so poignantly, quite so ambivalently, and in
the end perhaps quite so brutally, as he does his mentor and teacher of
rhetoric. Latini, along with the other shades punished for violence
against nature, rushes upon Dante-pilgrim in the third round of the
seventh circle of hell. As Dante scholars have noted, the pilgrims acts
of reverence (bowing his head and addressing Latini with the for-
mal address of voi, for instance) contrast sharply with the way Dante-
author damns Latini24 without providing the reader with a clear sense
of what has been the exact sin for which Latini deserves this particular
punishment of sprinting on burning sands.25 Dante-author perpetuates
Latinis memory among the living, not so much through the recollection
of his Trsor (mentioned at Inf. 15.119), as the spirit of Latini exhorts, but
instead through what was considered a scandalous infamy in Latinis
damnation for this particular sin.26
Cato of Utica presents another puzzle. His historical Stoicism, sui-
cide, and politics (as an enemy of Caesar with the traitors Brutus and
Cassius) led some critics (including John S. Carroll and John Ciardi)27
to argue that at the Final Judgment Cato would somehow be the only
exception to the understanding that those souls that reach the moun-
tain of Purgatory would all attain their heavenly goal.28 Cato was also
Erich Auerbachs famous example of a figura impleta, the absolute fulfil-
ment or the endpoint of a persons development in time, and Auerbach
extended this notion to all of the historical people whom Dante-author
represented in the Commedia:
The encounters [between Dante-pilgrim and the souls of the dead] do not
take place in this life, where men are always met with in a state of con-
tingency that manifests only a part of their essence, and where the very
intensity of life in the most vital moments makes self-awareness difficult
and renders a true encounter almost impossible. Nor do they take place
in a hereafter where what is most personal in the personality is effaced by
the shadows of death and nothing remains but a feeble, veiled, or indiffer-
ent recollection of life. No, the souls of Dantes other world are not dead
men, they are the truly living; though the concrete data of their lives and
the atmosphere of their personalities are drawn from their former exist-
ences on earth, they manifest here with a completeness, a concentration,
an actuality, which they seldom achieved during their term on earth and
assuredly never revealed to anyone else.29
I am struck by the enthusiasm that permeates Auerbachs praise of

Dantes poetic powers to complete, concentrate, and manifest in fiction
what Auerbach sees as the true entelechy of historical people. Given
what so many scholars have repeated concerning the character of Bru-
netto Latini, for instance that there is no evidence to suggest he was
a sodomite what exactly did Auerbach mean when he stated that
Dante-author relied on the concrete data of the historical lives of his
characters in representing their afterlives? Perhaps Auerbach implied
that Dante knew from experience a fact about Latinis sexuality that
could not have been verified by others, or Auerbach might have been
trusting in Dante-poets assertion that he merely recorded what he has
seen of Gods judgment:
the men who appear in the Comedy are already removed from earthly time
and temporal destiny. Dante chose for his representation a very special
setting which, as we have said above, opened up wholly new possibilities
of expression to him and to him alone. Sustained by the highest authori-
ties of reason and faith, his poetic genius ventured to undertake what no
one had undertaken before him: to represent the entire earthly, historical
world of his knowledge and experience as already subjected to Gods final
judgment, so that each soul occupies the place assigned to it by the divine
order. However, the individual figures, arrived at their ultimate, escha-
tological destination, are not divested of their earthly character. Their
earthly historical character is not even attenuated, but rather held fast in
all its intensity and so identified with their ultimate fate.30
I do not dispute that what Dante-author has done is undeniably

special and unusually compelling. Dante-author succeeded in repre-
senting an entire otherworldly realm and making it seem as if it were
subjected to Gods final judgment. I emphasize the seeming quality
16 Speaking Spirits
of this statement, however, because the strength of Dantes rhetorical

use of eidolopoeia rests on the sometimes subtle difference between the
possibilities a reader is willing to allow for a divine determination of
the fates of historical people and the representation of the fates of spirit
characters of the same names within the poem by Dante-author.
Another extremely sophisticated use of eidolopoetic speech that gives
the reader an important insight into the nature of the rhetorical figure
arises in the Commedia when a fictive dead character is made to quote
a living person. For example, Dante-author presents in Inferno 27 the
shade of Guido da Montefeltro, purportedly reporting precisely what
Pope Boniface VIII promised him, that is, absolution in advance of the
commission of sin.31 Even within the diegetic economy of the poem, in
a conversation in which Dante-pilgrim and Guido da Montefeltro are
the interlocutors, quoted speech of a third party amounts to little more
than hearsay. Gossip, though it certainly can be true speech, should be
considered by the receiver to be of suspect reliability unless it comes
from an absolutely trustworthy source or until it can be tested against
another reference. Its reliability should be all the more suspect in this
case coming from the mouth of a shade damned for fraudulent counsel.
Nonetheless, Dante-author paradoxically permits Guidos placement in
hell to confirm his eidolopoetic speech, as well as the nested hearsay
(the words directly attributed by the shade to the pontiff). There may
be an important lesson of eidolopoetic language to be gleaned here. The
figure of eidolopoeia shares some affinities with hearsay. The speech
that an author attributes to an idol (a spirit character) may be as reliable
or as potentially unreliable as gossip, and there may be no effective
means of proving its content, since the message is only ventriloquized
from a mouthpiece invented by its disseminator.
There can thus be the potential to slander or defame. While the living,
including Boniface VIII, might be able to defend their reputations from
defamation in writings, the dead cannot. Dantes use of eidolopoeia,
especially in the first canticle of his Commedia, violates a fundamen-
tal taboo: Non si getta fango sui morti (one must not cast mud upon the
dead). That is to say: one must not speak ill of the dead, since they have
no means to defend themselves from slights or falsehoods attributed
to them.
Given what has been said about eidolopoeia in Dantes work, one
might anticipate an unqualified condemnation of its use, but Dante-
author does not permit any so facile conclusion. Idolo is a hapax legome-
non in Dantes Commedia.32 The term is used at a crucial juncture in the
Earthly Paradise. In Purgatorio 31, Beatrice had just coaxed the con-
fession from Dante-pilgrim that Le presenti cose/col falso lor piacer
volser miei passi/tosto che l vostro viso si nascose (Purg. 31.346,
Present things with their false pleasure turned my steps as soon as
your face was hidden). The lesson that the spirit of Beatrice will offer
the pilgrim rests on a habitus of faith: Dante must not believe what he
sees in the present life (sirens, Purg. 31.45, and novelties of short dura-
tion, Purg. 31.60), but have faith in an eternal life. In other words, Dante
must come to write about what is not (i.e., he writes fiction) in order
to express what is (a reality beyond what can be verifiably seen in this
world). When Dante gazes at Beatrice across the Lethe River and
through her veil to see her looking at the gryphon (la fiera/ch sola
una persona in due nature, Purg. 31.801: the beast that is but one
person in two natures), the pilgrim observes that she seemed to me
to surpass her former self more than she surpassed other women here,
when she was here (Purg. 31.834: vincer pariemi pi s stessa antica,
/vincer che laltre qui, quandella cera). After the pilgrim drinks from
the river and is led across it to stand directly in front of the soul of
his beloved, her eyes pur sopra l grifone stavan saldi (Purg. 31.120:
were still fixed unmoving on the gryphon). What the pilgrim finally
sees represented are the two natures of Christ. In a direct address to
the reader, Dante-poet exclaims: Pensa, lettor, sio mi maravigliava,/
quando vedea la cosa in s star queta,/e ne lidolo suo si trasmutava
(Purg. 31.1246, my emphasis: Think, reader, if I marveled when I saw
that the thing in itself remained unchanged, but in its eidolon trans-
muted itself!). It is true that the term describes a mere image here (as
in a reflection, not the thing itself), but that certainly does not charge
the idol with necessarily negative connotations. On the contrary, Dante
seems to suggest that without the eidolon he would not understand
revelation the basis of his spiritual belief in the second nature of the
fiera or the basis of his poetic expression in its first image that of his
beloved Beatrice. It is precisely the idol that assists in seeing a deeper,
richer, surprising, and potentially salvific truth.
Much more could certainly be said about Dantes use of eidolopoeia,
though it exceeds the focus of the present study. Nevertheless, Dantes
textual legacy determined in large part how subsequent generations
remembered both the historical Dante and (whether rightly or perhaps
quite wrongly) the others that he memorialized as eternally saved or
damned. In Dantes cultural context, the soul may be eternal, but a con-
tinuing presence among the living after ones death takes concerted
18 Speaking Spirits
preparatory efforts. If, as the saying goes, history is written by the vic-
tors, in eidolopoeia the spirits reputation is written by the surviving
(living) author. In various passages of this otherworldly journey, Dante-
author portrays his pilgrim self as understanding that his survivors
will in turn have the power to determine how he is remembered. His
Commedia, like Virgils writings in the hands of Statius in Purgatorio 21
and 22, or like the moralizing account of the Lancelot and Guenevere
affair in the hands of Francesca da Rimini (Inf. 5), may be misread or
misinterpreted. Dante appears to wrestle with the possibility that the
reception of his work may depend less on his authorial intention and
more on the limited intelligence, moral leanings, or other circumstances
of his readers. In this regard, it is no wonder that at the close of the fifth
canto of the Inferno the poet faints. The pilgrims swoon may express the
existential angst of the poet who knows that he cannot fully author his
post-mortem literary reception.33
Dante will not rest in peace after his death. His model of authoring
fictive post-mortem legacies will come back to haunt him. His newly
established authority on this subject, coupled with his compelling life
experiences, will be conjured in the form of his spirit speaking in an
astounding array of political, social, and literary contexts (explored in
subsequent chapters). While Auerbach insisted that in Dantes work
the unity of mans earthly personality is preserved and fixed, just
the opposite paradoxically turns out to be true. In a world in which
individuals are given post-mortem lives, they are never fixed. They do
not enjoy the perfection of death or the end of their self-definition.
Each figure just as it is reinterpreted and re-represented by Dante is
also potentially re-representable by anybody. The spirit world of fiction
is never immutable, and an ever-changing Dante will be idolized in
order to ventriloquize whatever messages subsequent authors desire.
Eidolopoeia in Africa and Secretum and Petrarchs

Fears concerning the Uses of the Dead
Petrarch also experimented with eidolopoeia in many of his works,

including his Africa, centred on the early life of Scipio Africanus the
Elder (236183 BC), the statesman of the Roman republic and victori-
ous general of the Second Punic War, who embodied Petrarchs ideal of
secular virtue, and his Secretum, which like many of his letters projected
the voice of an esteemed predecessor with whom he imagined being in
dialogue in this case, St Augustine of Hippo. For my present purposes,
I wish only to highlight briefly some of the effects that Petrarchs use
of the rhetorical figure added to the aforementioned considerations of
eidolopoeia by Dante. Petrarch also used the figure to articulate a taboo,
though one different from Dantes.
In terms of eidolopoeia in the Africa, Petrarch begins and ends the
poem with visions of the speaking dead: in books 1 and 2, Scipio
dreams he has a conversation with the spirits of his father and uncle,
and in book 9 the character of Ennius has a dream featuring the ghost
of Homer. Both the spirit of Scipios father and that of Homer mention
a future poet, named in the latter vision as Franciscus [Petrarch], who
will worthily sing the deeds of Scipio, and in doing so, earn the laurel
crown for poetry.
There is no denying that the first vision in Africa wilfully echoes
aspects of Ciceros dream of Scipio: they are both dream visions in
which Scipio Africanus at a critical juncture receives needed encourage-
ment from a deceased paternal figure. Both prophesy death to Scipio,
but exhort duty to ones country by describing a blessed afterlife for
defenders of the republic. Moreover, both engage in important ways
the res-publica. Ciceros Republic with its concluding Dream of Scipio
clearly intends to re-evoke Platos Republic with its concluding Myth
of Er (614b621d).34 In Ciceros dream vision, the ghost of Scipio Afri-
canus the Elder prophesies the events of his grandson Scipios life and
the year of his death. The spirit points out the hierarchy and harmony
of the spheres in great detail. When Scipio focuses on the paltriness of
earth far below, the spirit reminds him of the fleeting quality of worldly
fame and the need to aim continually for virtue and the consequent
rewards of eternal life, the pre-eminent virtue being service on behalf
of ones country.35
Cicero scholars emphasize the main rhetorical function of the dream
vision as an exhortation to patriotic duty. Macrobius (born c. 360)
penned a Neoplatonic commentary on Ciceros Somnium Scipionis. It is
precisely these similarities, however, that allow Petrarch to highlight
crucial divergences from his primary model.36 This res-publica is radi-
cally different as Cicero represents it in his republic and as Petrarchs
praises it to his addressee King Robert of Sicily. For Petrarch, the kings
deeds will serve to enhance the glories of the poet himself: tu nempe
iuvabis/Materia, generose, tua, calamumque labantem/Firmabis,
meritumque decus continget amanti/Altera temporibus pulcer-
rima laurea nostris (1.6770; and you, most generous King, will
help me with your deeds and lend more power to my faltering pen.
20 Speaking Spirits
Another crown of laurel, the most fair of all our times, will justly then
reward with honor one who holds your person dear).37
Petrarchs public thing became the glorification of letters above
arms. Indeed, what is noticeably absent from his Africa is the detailed,
glorifying description of actual Roman military battles.38 The spirit of
Publius Cornelius appears to his son Scipio Africanus the Elder in a
dream, tells him not to fear, and states that God has granted him only
one hour to explain future events to him and guide him through the
heavens so that Scipio might understand the worthiness of the sacrifice
he must make. The spirit gives an account of the battle in Spain against
the Carthaginians that brought about his own death, which, he explains
in terms reminiscent of Christological teachings, is not a death that rep-
resents some kind of end or finality but rather a sure (eternal) life. He
proves his point by indicating the smiling figure of his brother Scipios
uncle, Gnaeus Cornelius and other heroic Romans who had earned
their places in the other world according to their good deeds in life. The
spirit of Gnaeus Cornelius introduces the spirits of the ancient kings
of Rome who practised virtue, followed by the parade of dead Roman
heroes, which closes the first book.
The second book concludes the first of the Africas dream visions by
presenting a series of prophecies. The character Scipio learns of the tri-
umph and decline of Rome. He also hears of his own death and that he
will be buried in an unworthy tomb. But a young Etruscan poet, Lelius
alter (Africa 2.524: a second Ennius), writing of Scipios deeds will
permit him to triumph over death. The ghostly sire exhorts Scipio nev-
ertheless: Sed preclarissimus exul/Viventi illatum moriens ulciscere
verbo/Dedecus, et patrie cineres atque ossa negato,/Ingratamque
voca, memorique inscribe sepulcro. Hoc lieceat tantum (Africa 2.5478:
In splendid exile die and with a word avenge the unjust disgrace that
she imposed on you in life: deny your thankless fatherland your last
remains and leave inscribed upon your tomb the tale of cold ingrati-
tude. So much is right). Scipio is counselled to trust in the poet to come.
Both this first dream vision of the Africa and the one in book 9, even
more insistently, compare Petrarch to Ennius (239169 BC), the father
of Roman poetry, whose Annales opened with a vision of the ghost of
Homer. Ennius originally narrated the encounter with the Homeric
shade in order to claim authority for his scholarship. Petrarch reiterates
this use of eidolopoeia as an anecdote told by Ennius, companion of
Scipio and witness to heroic exploits. At Scipios behest to pass the time
during the triumphal return voyage to Rome, Ennius tells Scipio that
on the night when the outcome of Scipios war was most in doubt, he
fell asleep, and there appeared to him an aged, sightless man with wild
hair and tattered toga who greeted Ennius: Salve, care michi Latie
telluris amice/Unice! quodque diu votis animoque petisti,/Aspice qua-
lis erat quondam dum vixit Homerus (Africa 9.1735; Friend, my
only friend among the Latins, greetings! Here stands what your heart
and mind have so long yearned for, here behold Homer as he appeared
in living flesh). Walking together with the shade, Ennius learns that
Rome will triumph over Carthage, then he sees a youth resting beneath
a laurel tree. The spirit of Homer explains to Ennius that this is the
young poet called Franciscus (Francisco cui nomen erit, Africa 9.232).
He will give his poem the title Africa (Africa 9.2345: titulusque poema-
tis illi/AFRICA), and
Quin etiam ingenii fiducia quanta,

Quantus aget laudum stimulus! seroque triumpho
Hic tandem ascendet Capitolia vestra, nec ipsum
Mundus iners studiisque aliis tunc ebria turba
Terrebit quin insigni florentia lauro
Tempora descendens referat comitante Senatu. (Africa 9.236-41)
How great will be his faith in his own gifts! How strong the love of fame
that leads him on! At last in tardy triumph he will climb the Capitol. Nor
shall a heedless world nor an illiterate herd, inebriate with baser passions,
turn aside his steps when he descends, flanked by the company of Senators,
and from the rite returns with brow girt by the glorious laurel wreath.39
Just when Ennius has eagerly addressed the youth in his dreams and
sees that Franciscus is raising his head to respond, his dream abruptly
ends, and the wakened Ennius says that he saw Scipio leading his men
into battle.
The character of Scipio in book 9 refuses to seem gullible about
dreams and visions when he states, Seu sunt, seu talia fingis,/Dulcia
sunt, fateor, sensusque et pectora mulcent (Africa 9.3023: Whether
such things be true or fancy-bred, I will confess that they are sweet to
hear; they charm the imagination and the heart). But, Scipio notes,
Enniuss dream serves to confirm another the one he had in the first
two books featuring the spirits of his father and uncle and Scipio rec-
ognizes Petrarch: Promissumque michi gemino sponsore profecto/
Diligo, quisquis erit; si nullus, diligo nullum (Africa 9.3067: he is
22 Speaking Spirits
mine by warrant of this double sponsorship. Whoever he may be I cher-

ish him, and if an empty name, why then Ill cherish an empty name).
Both visions at the level of narrative are fictions. But precisely because
the author repeats himself with two different spirit characters in two
different books of his poem, he appears to feign some kind of inde-
pendent verification of what otherwise might only seem fancy-bred
notions of the imagination.
While Dante asserted himself as sesto tra cotanto senno (sixth
among that great company of classical souls in the first circle of hell,
Inf. 4.102), Petrarch much more insistently compelled the illustrious
dead to speak on his behalf.40 In fact, his use of the spirits of the poets
Homer and Ennius in his Africa is emblematic of how by means of eido-
lopoeia he could violate a different taboo. Petrarch was not so much
interested in speaking ill of the dead as he was interested in prais-
ing himself. Dante indicated that he sought to avoid praising himself
because he found it al postutto biasimevole a chi lo fae (Vita nuova
28.2: the most reprehensible thing one can do). Petrarch adopted the
rhetorical figure of eidolopoeia in order to praise himself, while making
that praise appear to come from others. Moreover, having the spirit of
Homer single out Franciscus, bedecked in a laurel crown and hailed
as alter Lelius (another Ennius), was so compelling that this example
of eidolopoeia prompted life to imitate fiction. Even before Petrarch
could complete his poem on the deeds of Scipio, he was crowned poet
laureate on the Capitoline hill of Rome. In addition to its function of self-
praise, Petrarchs use of eidolopoeia had controversial political conse-
quences that become more evident if one considers Petrarchs Letter to
Cicero in the Familiares and Pier Paolo Vergerios reply In the Voice of
Cicero, Leonardo Brunis creation of a New Cicero, and the debates
of humanist writers (Bruni, Poggio Bracciolini, Francesco Barbaro, Gua-
rino Veronese, among others) on the relative merits of Scipio Africanus
versus Julius Caesar.41
Nevertheless, Petrarch does not limit the use of eidolopoeia to artic-
ulate matters concerning public things. He also conjures a speaking
spirit to dramatize his most private thoughts and fears, as well, in
his Secretum (Secret Book, probably begun in 1347).42 In the presence
of allegorical Truth, Franciscus debates with the revered spirit of St
Augustine. The impetus of the work, as Petrarch stated in the proem,
is his meditation on the transitory quality of life and the inevitability
of his death: Attonito michi quidem et sepissime cogitanti qualiter in
hanc vitam intrassem, qualiter ve forem egressurus, contigit nuper ut
non, sicut egros animos solet, somnus opprimeret, sed anxium atque
pervigilem (22: I was lost in thought, considering as I often do the
way in which I came into this world and the way in which I must
leave it; not overcome with sleep, as sick people often are, but wide
awake with anxiety, 3).43 Truth states to Augustine that Franciscus
is already half-dead (semianimis), and she suggests that Augus-
tines life experience of the condition and enhanced perspective on it
from without the imprisonment of the body could benefit Petrarch.44
Couching it as a conversation over the course of three days with a
friend, Petrarch dramatizes his inner turmoil the conflicts between
his desire for fame and the spiritual checks on authorial hubris, his
love attachments characterized as less than virtuous, his dreams of
glory, and his admitted struggles against acedia. In the end, the brief
work concludes with a sense of unresolved conflict,45 though not
before Augustine has valorized the Africa through repeated cita-
tions of the work that eventually persuade Franciscus, whose pose
initially rests on a repudiation of the epic poem. The same narratologi-
cal distinctions so evident between Dante-author and Dante-pilgrim
thus reappear here in terms of Petrarch-author of the Secretum and
Franciscus.
Along with Petrarchs practical use of eidolopoeia in his Africa
and Secretum also came a theoretical elaboration, illuminated in his
letters, of the role of authorship or authority in bolstering fictions.
Petrarch endorsed the work of poets to recreate in literature great
exemplars of antiquity for contemporary understanding and emula-
tion, but he also cautioned Boccaccio in a letter to distinguish how
others, including a purportedly prophesying priest, used stories sim-
ply to fool others. In his Rereum senilium libri (Letters of Old Age),
Petrarch took advantage of a curious incident to caution Boccaccio
about authorship and constructions of authority to mask a fiction.
Although Seniles 1.5 is not an example of eidolopoeia, its content con-
cerns closely how Petrarch thought about who arrogates interpreting
the purported messages of the speaking dead. The letter, dated 28
May [1362], was sent from Padua in response to Boccaccios anxious
account of a colloquium. A reputed holy man named Pietro Petroni
of Siena claimed, just before he died, to have received a vision of
Christ. After Petronis death, his messenger endeavoured to travel
throughout Italy and other parts of Europe to seek out the famous
people whom the vision concerned. Among those celebrities were
Petrarch and Boccaccio. Boccaccio received the messenger first and
24 Speaking Spirits
was relaying the substance of a warning: Petroni predicted that the

end of Boccaccios life was at hand and that he must relinquish the
cultivation of poetry (presumably in favour of Scripture and a con-
cern for the state of his soul). Much of Petrarchs response entailed
consoling his friend for truly Petrarchs words were meant to be
a consolation that the news that Boccaccio was nearing the end of
his life was no great prophecy, given his advancing years. Moreover,
after a life of misery and toil, death should be happily anticipated.46
Petrarch averred that to see Christ while still living would be a great
event si vera; usitatum enim et vetustum est plerunque mendaciis
fictisque sermonibus velum religionis sanctimonieque pretendere, ut
humanam fraudem tegat divinitatis opinio (if it is true. For it is
an ancient custom to draw the veil of religion and sanctimony over
lies and invented stories in general so that belief in divinity covers
human trickery).47 And he continued, Non extenuo vaticinii pon-
dus: quicquid a Cristo dicitur verum est. Fieri nequit ut veritas men-
tiatur. At id queritur, Cristusne rei huius actor sit an alter quispiam
ad commenti fidem, quod sepe vidimus, Cristi nomen assumpserit
(I am not belittling the import of the prophecy, for whatever is said
by Christ is true. It is impossible for truth to lie. But the question is
whether Christ is the author of this or whether someone else, as we
have often seen, assumed the name of Christ to lend support to a
fiction).48 Petrarch expressed wariness here over the believability of
the messenger of a reputed holy man and indicated his awareness of
the broader implications of the ploys of authors to bolster the believ-
ability of their fiction. I shall return in chapter 4 to consider Petrarchs
Testamentum and his Epistola posteritati (Letter to Posterity) in terms of
a broader understanding of eidolopoeia.
Boccaccios Use of Eidolopoeia in Facing

the Mortality of His Two Masters
Boccaccio lived long enough to offer public lectures on Dantes

Commedia in 13734 at the behest of the Commune of Florence, as
well as to write after Petrarchs death in 1374 a letter addressed
directly to his Africa, inviting the poem to circulate in Florence. Both
of his masters were thus with him in spirit in his final years. Boc-
caccio died on 21 December 1375, after years of investigating issues
concerning eidolopoeia. Here I focus primarily on the narrative
framework of his De casibus virorum illustrium (The Fates of Illustrious
Men, c. 1370 in its first redaction and c. 1373 in its second redac-
tion dedicated to Mainardo Cavalcanti).49 Inspired by classical and
Petrarchan precedents,50 this work figures throngs of spirits parad-
ing through Boccaccios study and pleading with him to permit them
to live on in the memory of posterity by recording their deeds in his
book. Eidolopoeia is not in this case the relatively straightforward
rhetorical ploy used to present the biographies of historical figures
that it might at first seem to be. Closer examination of some of the
interactions between Boccaccio the character and the dead spirits,
as well as the parallel conversation between Boccaccio and the dop-
pelgnger of Petrarch, reveals deeper motivations for the authors
representation of eidolopoeia.
Not unlike Petrarchs De viris illustribus, Boccaccios encyclopedic
Latin work has a primary impetus that is pedagogical: by recording the
examples of famous predecessors, he hopes to educate his readers to
avoid vice and to pursue tenaciously what is just and good. Boccaccio
nonetheless admits that another motive prompts his project: his own
fame and glory, which he hopes to gain through composing the work.
The first inklings of this motivation appear on the opening page of the
dedication:
Non enim satis mecum conveniebam cui nam primo illud mictere vellem,
ut nomini suo aliquid afferret ornatui, et, eiusdem adiutus subsidiis meli-
oribus quam mei auspiciis, prodiret in medium. Cupimus enim omnes,
quadam umbratili inpulsi gloria, quibus auxiliis possumus fragiles labores
nostros nobilitare et diutiores facere; et scriptores potissime.51
Thus I was at first unable to decide to whom I should dedicate this work,
to whose name it might nicely adorn, and through whose protection it
might issue with better auspices than mine could muster. All of us, moved
by the shadowy impulses to glory, yearn for our fragile toils to become
more noble and more lasting and this [yearning] is even greater in us
writers.
Boccaccio is even more amusingly insistent in the opening chapter

of the eighth book when, talking to himself, he questions his purpose:
Quid demens sudore excruciaris in tanto? Quid veterum monimenta

revolvens tam assiduo vexaris labore cum a nemine inpellaris? Ex antiquo-
rum ruinis, ex cineribus infortunatorum, novis literulis extorquere conaris
26 Speaking Spirits
famam atque protelare dies nomenque tuum desideras. O insana cupido!

Adveniet hora, et iam est, que te a rebus mortalibus eximat, que corpuscu-
lum conterat tuum, que te convertat in fabulam.
Dolt, why do you torture yourself with so much sweaty effort? Why do
you vex yourself with such continual toil, poring over the tomes of the
ancients, when no one is forcing you? You wish to prolong your days and
your name through a reputation acquired by rescribbling on the ruin of
the ancients. What a crazy desire! The hour will come, and is already here,
which will take you away from the things of this mortal world, destroy
your little body, and turn you into a fable [or fiction].
Death, Boccaccio reasons with himself, is about to turn him into a

fabulam, a narrative whose words describe what is not real.52 Boccaccio
continues his reasoning: Quid, oro etiam si orbis totus ore pleno
nil aliud preter nomen tuum cum laude cantet, absens, honoris aut
voluptatis assummes? Cum ea quippe perierit effigies qua cognosce-
ris, profecto transitoria tibi cuncta peribunt (even if the tongues of
all the world sing the praises of no other name but yours, I pray you,
what honours and pleasure will be left to you then? When the form
by which you are known has been lost, every other transitory thing
will also truly be lost to you). His distinction between what is real
and what is fabulam hinges on what he experiences during his life as
opposed to what those who survive him might think or say about him.
Boccaccio concludes that he would do better to seize the days that
remain to him and enjoy himself rather than toil too mightily for pos-
sible recognition, which he would not be able to accept post-mortem:
Desine igitur et quod datur vite residuum, voluptatibus deditus et
pro temporis qualitate pretereas (Therefore stop, and what little is
left of your life, pass it in enjoying yourself, according to the opportu-
nities that you are offered).
Nevertheless, Boccaccio, who serves both as the author of De casibus
and as a character within the narrative who sees the spirits, listens to
their tales, and writes in order to commemorate their lives, completes
seven books before he returns to reassess his project. So many spirits
come to him that he must choose to write about some of them and to
pass over others. Among the spirits that he claims appear in his study
are those of rulers, such as Theseus of Athens and King Arthur; biblical
figures, including Samson and Saul; and other distinguished figures,
including warriors (i.e., Gaius Marius), a pope (John XII), and orators
(including Cicero). Boccaccio portrays most of the spirits as pleading

with him to give voice to their deeds. Boccaccio the character admits
to his readers of being so weary from his task that, at the outset of the
eighth book, he can hardly keep himself from succumbing to a laziness
that is quietem corporis nimiam torporis matrem et ingenii hostem
fore (8.1; p. 650: the mother of sluggishness and the enemy of genius).
Moreover, he feels as if he has almost become a corpse in his own right
(in tantum tanque profundum demersus soporem sum ut, nedum
alteri, verum michi ipsi immobilis factus mortuus fere viderer, 8.1;
p. 650: I fell into a sleep so profound that it seemed to me as much as to
others that I had almost become an unmovable dead man).
This torpor is the flip side of commemoration: while the works of
great authors leave a legacy that keeps the authors, as well as their
protagonists, alive in the hearts and minds of readers of subsequent
ages, authorial acedia can lead to sleep, a lack of work, which makes
writers resemble immobile corpses even during their physical lives
and causes their protagonists actions to be forgotten.53 Giorgio Agam-
ben elaborated this nexus in the first chapter of his study Stanze: La
parola e il fantasma nella cultura occidentale (Stanzas: Word and Phantasm in
Western Culture). In the context of the Christian spiritual life he notes:
Acedia, tristitia, taedium vitae, desidia sono i nomi che i padri della
Chiesa dnno alla morte che esso induce nellanima (Acedia [sloth)],
tristitia [sorrow], taedium vitae [weariness, loathing of life], and desidia
[idleness] are the names the church fathers gave to the death this sin
induced in the soul).54 This noonday demon presented a phenom-
enology with some important similarities to Boccaccios description of
his characters behaviour in De casibus.55
What follows in the eighth book of De casibus is a dialogue between
the characters of the two authors: Boccaccio and Petrarch. Petrarch,
whom Boccaccio represents as coming to his study in a vision, appears
just as the many spirits of the illustrious dead did in previous pages of
De casibus. However, Petrarch was still alive at this point (and is thus
technically represented as a doppelgnger, rather than as a ghost or
eidolopoetic protagonist proper). Boccaccio recognizes the figure as
that of optimum venerandumque preceptorem meum (652; my great
and esteemed teacher) wearing his virenti laurea insignitum (652;
green laurel crown). Boccaccio-character is pointedly not asleep and
not dreaming the encounter. Boccaccio, for whom Petrarchs example
and advice have always served to spur him on in his studies, blushes in
shame at the sight of this doppelgnger. The spirit character upbraids
28 Speaking Spirits
with particular severity the writers slothful attitude, praising the

fame that virtuous people seek through their just labours. It is fame,
Petrarchs spirit states:
morientium corporum animas, quasi per stratum iter, summa cum claritate
deducit in celos, in terris relictis nominibus perpetuo splendore conspicuis.
Hec brevissimum mortalis vite tempus facit amplissimum et, quasi vita
alia, defunctorum posteritati meritos testatur honores. (654)
that leads to heaven the souls of dying bodies by a bright light, as if by a

paved road, leaving behind on earth in perpetual splendour the names
of the worthy. Fame makes the all-too-brief time of mortal life very long
and, like a second life, attests to posterity the honours that the deceased
deserve.
Petrarch remembers great men from the past (including Abraham,

Moses, Homer, and Aristotle): aliosque insignes viros, quos quasi
perenni viriditate ipsa in hodiernum usque deduxit perpetuos (654;
and other famous men whose fame has kept them alive to this day
almost with perennial freshness), and continues: Quos, ea agente, nos-
cimus laudamus et colimus magnamque animi voluptatem sentimus,
dum id quod illi suscipiunt a nobis, nos labore nostro apud futuros
posse suscipere credimus (654; And we, through their fame, know
them, praise them, venerate them, and feel great pleasure in our souls,
while we believe that we can obtain from them through our efforts what
they receive from us). The spirits rebuke culminates in a moving call
to action, which for Boccaccio becomes a call to cast off his laziness
and continue writing De casibus, a task that he eagerly accepts, and
Petrarchs doppelgnger mysteriously disappears just as abruptly as it
had appeared.
In these few pages, Boccaccio-author effectively minimizes the dis-
tance or difference between the realms of the living and the dead in
various ways. First, he portrays the spirit of Petrarch as appearing in
his study in much the same way as the spirits of the illustrious dead did
throughout De casibus though Petrarch was still alive. As a consequence
of this kind of portrayal, Boccaccio implicitly exalts his avowed master
by figuring Petrarch on the same narrative plane as the rulers, soldiers,
and orators of the previous books. Boccaccio prefigures Petrarchs place
in the pantheon of the esteemed dead even before Petrarchs death.
At the same time, Boccaccio acknowledges his debt to Petrarch inter
mortales nostro evo gloriosissimus homo (660; the most glorious of all
men of our age), while placing in Petrarchs mouth the great mans
approval of the present work and his encouragement that Boccaccio
continue its composition, making the documentation of earlier heroes
fame seem almost a duty or commandment from on high, rather than
the pursuit of personal vanity that Boccaccio nonetheless admits that
it is in the passage already cited (Ex antiquorum ruinis, ex cineribus
infortunatorum, novis literulis extorquere conaris famam atque prote-
lare dies nomenque tuum desideras, 650; you wish to prolong your
days and your name through a reputation acquired by rescribbling on
the ruin of the ancients).
The illusion of the co-mingling of the realms of the living and the
dead nonetheless also works on another level: Boccaccio-author makes
it seem as if Boccaccio the writing character is also almost a part of this
world of the illustrious dead. His sleepiness causes him, as previously
cited, to become like an unmovable dead man, and he notes that the
time is very near when his little body will be taken from him in death
and he will thus be turned into a fabulam, a fiction. Although man
is born to work, Petrarchs spirit intones (ad laborem nascitur homo,
652), Boccaccio is seen as feigning death in his reclining acedia. But
just as Boccaccios torpid snoozing cannot approximate the behaviour
of the illustrious (who even in death actively parade, plead, weep,
and otherwise endeavour to leave a name for themselves), Petrarchs
spirit makes it clear that Boccaccios attitude will lead him to the shad-
ows (tenebrae) rather than to the light (luce). After these most inspiring
words of the entire work, pronounced by Petrarchs spirit, Boccaccio
suggests that his will to pursue the virtue of writing is reconfirmed. The
spirits words serve as a goad. Boccaccio describes his less-than-noble
death (his lazy sleep) in terms that are not dissimilar to those used
by Dante to describe his journey through hell in the Commedia: Boccac-
cio is made so ashamed by his guide (Petrarchs doppelgnger) that
continuo verissimis redargutionibus suis ad inferos usque demersus
(660; [he was] laid low to the very bottom of hell by [Petrarchs] just
reprimands).56 Dantes poetic realization of the experience of the other
world while yet alive, as well as Boccaccios similar, though much con-
densed, allusion to it in the context of the spirit world coming to him,
charges Boccaccios De casibus and many instances of eidolopoeia with
the gravity, aura of sacrality, authority, and urgency that I would argue
few other fictions muster with such (perhaps paradoxically surprising)
conviction.
30 Speaking Spirits
Much of the soaring speech attributed to Petrarchs spirit consists

of a defence of the pursuit of fame. Boccaccio initially viewed the
pursuit of fame as vain, and even when it was attained, fame was
short-lived, so he had convinced himself to enjoy his rest instead
(Talibus ergo plurimisque similibus suadente desidia, semivictus
imo victus in totum, caput, quod in cubitum surrecturus erexeram,
in pulvinar iterum reclinavi, 652; While laziness persuaded me with
these and many other similar words, almost convinced no, over-
come absolutely I stretched out, lowering my head, which I had
been supporting with my elbow, onto a pillow). But Petrarchs spirit
defends the labour in pursuit of fame; and unlike infamy or noto-
riety, the doppelgnger states, fame is earned only by the exercise
of virtue: Fama, quam tu paulo ante damnabas, tanquam bonum
a cunctis mortalibus exoptata est. Que cum variis perquiratur viis,
non nisi per virtutem acquiritur (654; That fame that you were just
disparaging was desired by all men as a good. It is sought by many
paths, but it cannot be attained except by means of virtue). Fame per-
mits a kind of second life of the virtuous dead among posterity. Fame
allows future generations to remember great exemplars, and this act
of remembrance is also a pleasure (volumptatem). Even saints, such
as Jerome and Augustine, also sought personal fame through their
works, a motivation that the spirit characterizes as a positive stimu-
lus to work.57
Moreover, fame produces yet another good, according to the spirit:
it renders splendid and majestic even those virtuous ones who were
hunchbacked, crippled, and otherwise deformed: Agit et in preteri-
tos istud desiderabile bonum fama, ut gibbos claudos, torvos et qua-
cunque vis deformitate deformes, decoros, splendidos augustosque
posteritati demonstret (658; Fame with respect to ancient people also
produces this positive effect: by representing to posterity the hunch-
backed, crippled, cross-eyed, and the deformed of any deformity as
beautiful, splendid, and stately). This passage presents its own dif-
ficulties. Petrarchs spirit makes it clear that even if the true image of
the dead is lost among the living, God is never fooled, and the spirit
exhorts Boccaccio to exercise the gift of writing that is conferred on
him by God. But the doppelgngers words create a snag that will
cause the fabric of eidolopoetic praise to unravel. The suggestion here
is that the chronicler has the potential to misrepresent the famous
person or to focus on a true inner quality (virtue), rather than on a
persons physical exterior appearance (such as a bodily deformity).58
The potential problem is this: physical traits are readily apparent to

all who see, and for better or for worse there can be a measure of
verification in this objectification of the person. Assessing a persons
inner qualities is a decidedly trickier business: It is more difficult to
determine if a person is thinking virtuous thoughts than if the same
person is walking with a limp, for instance. What subsequent chroni-
clers choose to emphasize will come back to haunt Petrarch, espe-
cially in Girolamo Malipieros representation examined in the next
chapter, but also Boccaccio, though somewhat less maliciously in
representations by Vincenzo Bagli (in chapter 1) and Jacopo Caviceo
(in chapter 3).
If Petrarch has a special place in Boccaccios De casibus, high-
lighted by his lone status as doppelgnger, there is one more truly
unusual apparition in Boccaccios study: that of Dante. Unlike
the other souls filing by Boccaccios desk, Dantes spirit refuses to
beg to be remembered in this work. Boccaccio lavishes praise on the
spirit of this poetam insignem (834; illustrious poet) and civi-
tatis nostre decus eximium (836; great honour of our city), whose
many works worthy of eternal memory, coupled with the tragedies
of his civic expulsion, exile, and death abroad, would be too much
for Boccaccios weak powers to narrate, he states. But Dantes spirit
stops him: Siste, fili mi tam effluenter in laudes meas effundere
verba, et te tam parcum tuarum ostendere (836; Stop, my son, and
do not squander your words in my praise, while showing such stin-
giness towards yourself). While Boccaccio makes it seem as if the
other spirits appear to him out of their own self-interest, the spirit of
Dante comes across as unusually magnanimous. He does not beg on
his own behalf, stating flatly, Novi ingenium tuum; et quid merear
novi (836; I know your genius, and know what I have earned).
Instead the spirit charges Boccaccio to write against Walter, Duke of
Athens, described as the eternal stain on the liberty of Florence, so
that Florentines might recognize such tyrants and refuse to be domi-
nated by them in the future.
In the way that Boccaccio utilizes eidolopoeia here, he deftly suc-
ceeds in making it seem as if Dante praises Boccaccio, while Boc-
caccio places in the mouth of arguably the most esteemed Florentine
of recent memory Boccaccios own scathing political condemnation
of the Duke of Athens. Of course, it is appropriate that Dantes spirit
should be the one to insist that Boccaccios words be employed to
shame the memory of another Dante, civil servant and political exile,
32 Speaking Spirits
Dante, whose literary masterpiece had as a clear outcome the record-

ing of the shame of others most notably, though not exclusively, in
the Inferno. While the historical Dante never suffered the tyranny at
the hands of the Duke of Athens that his spirit so decries, Boccaccio
uses this authoritative spirit as a mouthpiece to shame the malefactors
within Florentine political circles in his own day who supported the
dukes rise to power and the divisive factionalism that ensued.59 In De
casibus, Boccaccios character obliges the spirit of Dante to articulate
the indignation of lost Florentine liberty. The account of Walter, Duke
of Athens, serves as an important reminder that the author has the
means both to exalt and to condemn, to praise and to revile; he can
commemorate the good, but he can also wield the life story of another
as an anti-exemplum for posterity ever after. Boccaccios work comes
to a close after just a few more pages with the authors excuse that
his focus on the downturn of human fortunes should not make him
seem an enemy to eternal light. Boccaccio seizes this occasion to praise
Petrarch as philosopher and poet laureate, and his master, imploring
him to revise or edit De casibus out of charity for him, and he bids his
parve liber (870; tiny book) to endure, bringing fame to his dedica-
tee Mainardo Cavalcanti and to himself.
To summarize, Boccaccio and the other Crowns of early Italian lit-
erature launch a period of intense focus on how a culture is to remem-
ber and write about fictions and figures. The Renaissance, or rebirth,
is a literalization of a congress between the living and the dead.
Renaissance humanists conjured the greats of antiquity in order to
instruct or to inspire themselves and their contemporaries through
the remembrance of great works and deeds. Writers from Leonardo
Bruni to Lorenzo Valla, from Giannozzo Manetti to Leon Battista
Alberti, and many others provided evidence of a renewed devotion
to humanistic studies and their narration of the human condition
past and present to be archived, safeguarded, and passed down as
a cultural legacy to posterity. Even before and certainly after the flow-
ering of Renaissance humanism, writers produced, alongside many
relatively accurate classical histories and biographies and remark-
ably strong philological analyses of texts, an astonishing number and
array of wildly inventive accounts of supernatural communications
with fictional characters representing historical personages. I shall
present in the chapters that follow just some of the ways that this
powerful figure of rhetoric influenced outcomes in the literary, legal,
and political realms.
Breakdown of Chapters and Procedures
In chapter 1, Rewriting the Auctor: Revising according to the Texts

Letter or Spirit? I examine the ways in which narratives featuring the
souls of dead authors influence specifically authorial issues. In these
cases, fictive spirits are used to serve as arbiters of textual correctness
or literary quality. In some cases, Renaissance authors figure the spirits
of earlier writers in order to give a kind of imprimatur to revised ver-
sions of earlier works. For example, Vincenzo Bagli represents a spirit
of Boccaccio in order to endorse Baglis vernacular translation and
amplification of a catalogue of illustrious ladies in the 1506 edition of
De mulieribus claris (On Famous Women). In another case by Girolamo
Malipiero, the editor creates a ghostly character Petrarcha that
expounds views that are radically different from those of the histori-
cal Petrarch, views much more consonant with Malipieros own opin-
ions, prompting analysis of the consequences of reauthoring the auctor.
Finally, Antonio Manettis treatment of the spirit of Guido Cavalcanti in
the third example of the chapter calls into question the ultimate utility
of eidolopoetic narratives for humanist researchers.
Chapter 2, Divining Dante: Scandals of His Corpus and Corpse,
considers attempts to appropriate both Dantes texts and Dantes
spirit through examples of eidolopoeia featuring Dantes wandering
soul. Boccaccio claimed that Dantes ghost appeared to Jacopo Aligh-
ieri to point out where Dante had hidden the final cantos of the Divina
commedia, which had purportedly not been received by Dantes patron
before the poets death. Historical attempts by Florentines to translate
Dantes remains from his tomb in Ravenna to Santa Croce in Flor-
ence did not succeed, but I argue that Florentines sought to compen-
sate for this failure by reclaiming quite effectively the spirit of Dante
through various other eidolopoetic narratives analysed in this chap-
ter, including ones by Antonio dOrsino Benintendi, Marsilio Ficino,
and Girolamo Benivieni.
Chapter 3, Genius Loci: Exile, Citizenship, and the Place of Burial,
continues the themes of the previous chapter by presenting four more
examples of eidolopoeia that adopt the same tactic of claiming the
authority of a spirits message, but to different ends. Machiavelli and
Zacharia Ferreri call on the ghost of Dante in an effort to convince
authorities to end their states of exile. Jacopo Caviceo invokes the
spirit of Boccaccio to argue for Ferrarese literary and cultural pre-
eminence, but his attempt does not succeed in the same way that the
34 Speaking Spirits
Florentine tales featuring Dantes spirit in the previous chapter did.

Finally, Benivieni who evokes the spirit-voice of Giovanni Pico della
Mirandola succeeds in portraying Pico as distraught and unsatis-
fied with a shabby tomb outside the walls of Florences Church of San
Marco. By means of this poetic portrayal, Benivieni managed to do for
Pico what Florentines did not for Dante: move his corporeal remains to
what was held to be a more respectable resting place. But was Benivi-
eni defying the historical Picos final wishes? The ethical implications
of Benivienis act well-intentioned as it may have been make this
example of eidolopoeia particularly haunting.
In chapter 4, Habeas Corpus, Habeas Spiritum: Some Not-So-Final
Thoughts, I extend the inquiries and implications of these forms of
ideological eidolopoeia. In addressing authorial perspective, I analyse
one frequently recurring spirit narrative the vow between friends
that whoever dies first will return to the surviving friend to provide
information about the afterlife in its representation by three different
writers. The message communicated by the dead spirit in each instance
differs according to the aim of each author. In thinking more deeply
about the motives for evoking the dead, I look at an example of the
use of the spirit of St Thomas Aquinas to articulate a surprisingly secu-
lar Florentine political prophecy in a vision by Antonio da Rieti; and I
reassess one well-studied but as yet not fully understood example of
private, non-authorial eidolopoeia. Giovanni Morelli wrote of commu-
nicating with his dead nine-year-old son in his merchant diary, Ricordi.
The explicitly restricted audience for his text (addressed to his surviv-
ing progeny), as well as the contrast in tone with another example of
eidolopoeia of a dead child (Boccaccios eclogue Olympia), help to clar-
ify Morellis undeclared purpose for writing it. I conclude this chap-
ter by examining attempts by authors to determine their post-mortem
situations while they are still alive. Through instructions in last wills
and letters, it is possible to see how authors attempted to dictate what
they wanted after their deaths. I highlight Petrarchs Epistola posteritati
(Letter to Posterity), in which he revealed his anguish in knowing that
others might very well remember him quite differently from the way
that he endeavoured so purposefully to be viewed in life. Petrarchs
letter represents his keenness to define the terms of his legacy that is,
to assert some claim of protection for his spirit akin to the legal form of
protection for the body, habeas corpus.
Throughout this study, I summarize lengthy eidolopoetic narratives
and cite in full those that are relatively brief. English translations are
mine unless otherwise noted. While the habit may become tiresome, in
this study I use quotation marks with a persons name to distinguish
this fictive spirit character from a historical person and author. Thus,
for example, Malipieros narrator speaks to Petrarch (i.e., Petrarchs
spirit) in Il Petrarcha spirituale. I refer to people using the people-specific
pronouns of he/she, who, whom, etc., but with spirits I use the non-
personal pronouns it, that, its, etc. in order to emphasize the objectifica-
tion of the fictive character.
As the critically sophisticated reader might already easily anticipate,
the study of eidolopoeia invites quick dismissal. After all, the creation
of characters is part and parcel of literature; even when a character is
based on a real person, it is a fictional representation. Moreover, differ-
ent people may very well remember any historical event or individ-
ual in different ways. Any given human being will wear a variety of
masks in representing his/her identity to others. Individuals can and
do change over the course of time. No human being can ever see him/
herself objectively, and truth is subjective.60 Even so, I prefer not to bury,
so to speak, quite so readily this subject of eidolopoeia and the conun-
drums it raises precisely because it forces us to face and to reconsider
these unsettling ethical and existential questions.
1 Rewriting the Auctor:
Revising according to the Texts
Letter or Spirit?
Lasciati i sensi veri, [alcuni spositori] fanno tali farnetichi su alcune cose di
[Petrarca], che paiono spiritati, che dicano le maraviglie, ai quali non pi si
terrebbe obbligato il Petrarca se gli vedesse questi loro sogni, che si terrebbe a
chi lha fatto spirituale vestendolo da frate Minore; & poi cingendolo di corda
gli a messo gli zoccoli in piedi.
Having departed from the true meanings, [certain commentators] rave so delir-
iously about some of Petrarchs things that they appear to be possessed, such
that they say fantastic things, to which Petrarch would no more be obliged if
he had seen these dreams of theirs than he would be to anyone who made him
spiritual by dressing him up as a Friar Minor, cinching him with a cord, and
putting sandals on his feet.
Giovanni Battista Giraldi Cintio
In the Introduction, I began to examine some of the literary strategies

for living after death and the potential consequences of those lega-
cies, particularly in some of the works of Italys Three Crowns. This
chapter focuses on the authorial aims of being remembered after death,
and in this way remaining vital in the minds of future generations.
Most basically, writings can perpetuate the memory of their subjects,
as well as that of the authors themselves, even after the authors physi-
cal deaths. It was not uncommon for Italian Renaissance authors to
take the task of the author a step farther, by portraying the spirit of a
literary predecessor as encouraging the writing process in some way:
advocating a revised edition, promoting a new translation of a work,
or offering a stamp of approval of a new version of the predecessors
Rewriting the Auctor 37
text, for instance. In this chapter I examine three distinct examples of

these kinds of authorial eidolopoetic narratives. While all narratives
featuring the characters of dead spirits by their very nature deal with
certain existential questions (life and death, life after death, spirituality,
perhaps punishment/reward in the other world, or ethical behaviour
in this world with a view to the next one, etc.), authorial eidolopoeia
also problematize some particular links between writing and existential
values, not least of which is the issue of commemoration.
In the first example, Vincenzo Bagli summons the spirit of Boccaccio in
order to rededicate a 1506 vernacular translation of Boccaccios De muli-
eribus claris (On Famous Women, 1374). Bagli presents Boccaccios spirit
in such a way that the ghost seems to approve not only the vernacular
translation, but also a prolongation of Boccaccios biographical project to
include commemoration of Baglis dedicatee, the Perugine noblewoman
Lucrezia Baglioni. In other words, Baglis example of eidolopoeia serves
to have Boccaccio praise a lady who lived more than a century after
the historical Boccaccio passed away. I shall examine a variety of pos-
sible rationales for Baglis proemial story, not least of which are to pay
homage to Boccaccio, to claim credit for a vernacular translation that
was not his own, and to seek to garner favour with a powerful man who
would have appreciated commemoration of his relative, Lucrezia.
Eidolopoeia prefacing a translation or re-edition of a work can also be
very far removed from merely perpetuating or continuing to bring up
to date the task of the original text. One example, which represents the
spirit of the famous predecessor as radically changed with respect to his
historical personal character or identity, is Girolamo Malipieros repre-
sentation of Petrarch in Il Petrarcha spirituale (The Spiritual Petrarch,
1536). In this example, the pious friar Malipiero pens a comparatively
heavy-handed revision of Petrarchs Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (Frag-
ments of Things in the Vernacular, 1342 in its first form, 1374 in its ninth
and final reordering by Petrarch).1 Malipiero expunged all of Petrarchs
references to the beloved Laura and substituted what he considered to
be more morally edifying verses in praise of Jesus or divine love. Malip-
iero framed his rewritten lyrics with a series of writings (a prose tale,
plus two of his own sonnets) featuring the spirit of a radically repen-
tant Petrarch, portrayed as begging for, then approving of, the friars
revisions. The drastic change that Malipieros project imposes on both
Petrarchs poetry and Petrarchs character (as it is understood from
Petrarchs own letters and autobiographical writings, to say nothing
of testimonies by his living contemporaries) raises an issue that merits
38 Speaking Spirits
consideration: who has the authority to determine the identity of the

historical dead person?
The final example of eidolopoeia examined in this chapter presents a
somewhat more cautionary but no less bewildering message about
the uses of the rhetorical figure. Florentine humanist Antonio di Tuccio
Manetti (14231497) confronts the scholars dilemma of not having suf-
ficient (or not sufficiently reliable) biographical information about the
object of his study, poet Guido Cavalcanti (1250s1300). Manetti figures
a spirit of Cavalcanti that exhorts Manetti to disregard ghost fictions
and to base his scholarship on other sources held to be more reliable or
rigorous, such as the poets own texts or the research of approved schol-
ars of secondary sources. Manettis text implies a puzzling paradox: in
it, a ghost advises its addressee not to take into account information that
might be articulated by means of a ghost.
Vincenzo Baglis Boccaccio: Still without

(Eternal) Rest in Praising Ladies
The humanists dream to continue to live after death through written

works and to create a lasting memorial of their subjects reappears in
various forms in subsequent narratives featuring authorial spirits. One
instance is the 1506 edition of Boccaccios De mulieribus claris, edited by
Vincenzo Bagli.2 Unlike in his work De casibus, Boccaccio in De muli-
eribus does not imagine conversations between a living author and
the parading spirits of the illustrious dead. In fact, there are no imag-
ined dialogues with spirits in Boccaccios original catalogue of famous
women. Eidolopoeia does not emerge in De mulieribus until Baglis early
sixteenth-century version of the work, when Bagli figures a conversa-
tion with the spirit of the original author in the proem to the revised
edition.
Boccaccios original work (the Latin collection of apparently cele-
bratory biographies)3 was written as one book containing 106 chap-
ters, plus a dedication, preface, and conclusion, all in Latin prose.4 His
relatively self-contained biographies of ladies vary in length from two
sentences (i.e., X: De Lybia regina Lybie Libya, Queen of Libya on
pages 501 in Virginia Browns edition and English translation) to thirty-
two sentences (CV: De Cammiola Senensi Vidua Camiola a Sienese
Widow, 45467). Boccaccio dedicated to Andrea Acciaiuoli this pio-
neering work devoted exclusively to the biographies of women. Bagli
presents Boccaccios work in an unattributed vernacular translation,
appending to it a series of paratexts:5 an unattributed woodcut illustra-

tion of the triumph of Fame, plus two sonnets and a prose dedication to
Lucrezia Baglioni of his own composition. Since it is in the prose dedi-
cation that Bagli figures his conversation with the spirit of Boccaccio, I
shall begin there.
Bagli opens his edition by recalling the words of Roman historian
Sallust Omnia orta ocidunt & aucta senescunt (2r; All things are
born to die, and those that grow, get old) but he also understands
that written accounts of mortals lives permit them to continue to live
in the minds of subsequent generations. He grieves that Lucrezia, who
had tanti probi e sanctissimi costumi, e tante varie e inumerabile
virtu (2r; so many prudent and very wise habits and many varied and
innumerable virtues), would not live on in memory as long as such per-
sonages as Priamo, Nestore o Titone (2r; Priam, Nestor, or Tithonus).
This thought causes his wearied mind much anguish and pain, which
sleep eventually overcomes.
Bagli reports that he then saw in a vision a figure that spoke to
him, taking him to task: O quanto Vincentio mio sei in grandissimo
errore credendo questa tua anzi nostra illustre e diva madonna possa
dopo el fatal corso de la sua longa vita senza nome e fama preterire
(2v; O, my Vincenzo, how great is your error, thinking that your, no,
our illustrious and bright lady can perish without name or fame after
the fateful course of her long life). Bagli thus makes it appear that
Baglioni is remembered not merely by turn-of-the-sixteenth-century
writers, but by the likes of the immortal Boccaccio as well. The
spirit continues, stating that if Helen and Europa, the Roman Lucre-
tia, as well as Virginia, Artemisia, Antonia, Hortensia, and Proba,
were all remembered for single virtues, surely Lucrezia Baglioni, in
whom all the virtues are present, would outshine them all. The dedi-
cation bursts with fulsome praise of the lady of Perugia, whose fame
seems in the end to have largely met the fate that poor Bagli feared:
oblivion.
Boccaccios spirit laments, Quanto me doglio io non esser nato a
questa felice & aurea eta de haverla possuta cognoscerla. O almancho
dapo de lei, aci chio havesse possuto le sole egregie virtu e orna-
mente intendere e dapoi descriverle (3r; How sorry I am not having
been born in this happy golden age so that I could have known her
at least to have lived after her so that I could have understood
and described her great virtues and beauty). Boccaccio, who identi-
fies himself only through his authorship of De mulieribus claris, orders
40 Speaking Spirits
the character of Vincenzo to dedicate the new edition of the work to

Lucrezia:
Voglio che quella opera Da claris mulieribus da me composta e intitulata a

madona Giovanna la quale longo tempo e stata incognita & occulta, non
confidadose a palesare temendo le censura de i maligni e de i detract-
evoli homini a lei [Lucrezia] per te [Vincenzo] sia intitulata, acio che sotto
lombra del suo optimo iudicio da ogni invido e laceratore sia diffesa e
sicura. (3r)
I want you, Vincenzo, to dedicate to Lucrezia that work De mulieribus

claris, written by me and once dedicated to Lady Giovanna, which has for
so long been hidden and unknown. Do not hesitate out of fear of the cen-
sures of malignant and envious men to make it known, since in the shade
of her highest judgment it will be defended and secure from every envious
and destructive remark.
After uttering the words of dedication, the spirit of Boccaccio imme-

diately disappears, and Bagli awakens from his sleep. Bagli states that
he subsequently realized that he had just seen the spirit of Boccaccio in
his vision. He then proceeds to locate a copy of De mulieribus claris and
to do as that authors spirit had commanded him.
So, one might wonder, what is Baglis purpose for invoking the spirit
of Boccaccio? Of course, it is a clever narrative ploy demonstrating that
Bagli was familiar with Boccaccios own use of eidolopoeia in his works.
In this respect, Baglis instance of eidolopoeia pays homage to Boccaccio:
the emulation of an authorial model serves to maintain the predeces-
sors work as just that (a model worthy of emulation). Bagli is also able
to leverage the authority of a canonical author to speak on behalf of a
new edition and rededication of the earlier work, changes that neverthe-
less do something a little different from merely paying homage. Bagli
may also view the authority of the spirit (Boccaccio) as potentially help-
ful in mitigating the envy or mordacit e censura (biting criticism and
censure) that he believes his new edition may attract. Certainly there
are always critics of anothers work then, as today and, given that
Bagli does not identify a particular basis for this criticism, perhaps his
expressed trepidation is simply generic or formulaic. Nonetheless, there
are at least two potential reasons that I believe might warrant critique.
The first possibility is in the selection and justification of his dedica-
tee, since there is considerable discrepancy between Baglis praise of
Lucrezia Baglioni (as the possessor of all of the virtues of the famous
classical ladies he lists) and her relative historical obscurity.6 She is

identified as figliola del magnifico Signore Ridolpho dei Baglioni
(the daughter of the magnificent lord Rodolfo Baglioni). According to
the Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Rodolfo Baglioni had ten children,
including Lucrezia, who became the wife of Camillo Vitello. Rhiannon
Daniels also notes in her study:
The Baglioni were a noble family, which by the end of the fifteenth century
ruled Perugia in all but name, until 1540 when Pope Paul II finally dis-
mantled their houses. Lucrezias husband, Camillo Vitelli, also belonged
to an important Umbrian family, and Camillos father, Niccol, spent the
second half of the fifteenth century attempting to establish himself as the
unofficial signore of Citt di Castello. This led to Camillos capture by
papal troops in 1484, and Niccols subsequent decision to go into exile.
However, after Niccols death in 1486, his sons returned to prominent
positions in the city. (Boccaccio and the Book, 159)
Baglis personal connection to the Baglioni family remains uncertain,

though Daniels hypothesizes that Bagli may have served in Niccols
retinue (155). Perhaps in Baglis anxiety concerning the reception of his
work may be the fear that the discrepancy between his praise of Lucre-
zia and her relative obscurity might invite from his readers dismissal,
if not ridicule.
The second cause for criticism that Bagli may foresee is the recogni-
tion by readers that the prose dedication and two sonnets are seemingly
Baglis only contributions to the re-edition of Boccaccios encyclopedic
work. The vernacular translation is not Baglis.7 The Florentine versione
is the product of a merchant named Niccol Sassetti, who was working
from a 1370 vernacular translation made by Antonio Da SantElpidio
(also referred to as Fra Antonio di S. Lupidio).8 Moreover, Bagli also
misrepresents Boccaccios original dedication. In the original Latin De
mulieribus claris, Boccaccio had deliberately, even emphatically, dedi-
cated his text to Andrea Acciaiuoli, in a way that Virginia Brown has
described as curious, betraying what might seem to todays sensibili-
ties a certain tactlessness on Boccaccios part: Boccaccio first praised
Joanna Queen of Naples as too lofty to be associated with his work
and opted instead to dedicate it to Acciaiuoli.9 When Bagli re-edited the
work, however, he represented the spirit of Boccaccio as having dedi-
cated his work a madona giovanna (to Lady Joanna). Stephen Kol-
sky can hardly be blamed for the misattribution of Giovanna: I desire
that the work Famous Women, composed by me, be dedicated to Madam
42 Speaking Spirits
Giovanna [Baglioni].10 Indeed, Bagli pulls a mighty subtle sleight of

pen here, and it might be worth pausing to consider why he altered
this point. It would be a stretch to assume that Bagli somehow forgot
the identity of the original dedicatee. After all, he included Boccaccios
original dedication in the 1506 edition. Moreover, both Boccaccio and
Bagli deliberately called attention to their dedicatees names, almost
as if they assumed a need for a mnemonic ploy so as not to forget the
relatively obscure ladies identities. Boccaccio analysed the etymology
of Andrea: cum andres Greci quod latine dicimus homines nuncupent
(andres being in Greek the equivalent of the Latin word for men,
45), while Bagli in his second sonnet compared Lucrezia Baglioni to
the virtuous classical suicide who shared her first name. The only differ-
ence between the two Lucretias, he opined, e questa/Voi Perusina sete
e lei Romana (3v; is this:/You are Perugine, and she is Roman). In the
end, neither writer was very effective in his declared intent: immortal-
izing the identity of his dedicatee. By Baglis time, Boccaccio is repre-
sented incorrectly as having dedicated the original work to the Queen
of Naples; while in Baglis case so little is known today of Lucrezia
Baglioni that Bagli could be considered derelict in this regard.
One hypothesis, and I fear it must remain such, is that in both cases
the male writers were concerned more with their male patrons than
with their female dedicatees. In Boccaccios work, there may be latent
traces of this overriding interest in his remark ac amicorum solatium,
potius quam in manum rei publice commodum, libellum scripsi (I
wrote a slim volume more for my friends pleasure than for the ben-
efit of the broader public, 23); the glories of the Countess of Altavilla
remain in the background, for instance. Bagli, while he praises Lucrezia
Baglionis many virtues, does not neglect to emphasize whence they
came, presumably from the men closest to her: that is, from her alta
e generosa stirpe (high and generous ancestry), reiterated and ampli-
fied in the words of Boccaccios spirit: costei de generosa stirpe e alta
sobole procreata de Troilo, reverendissimo episcopo, e de quello mag-
nianimo, invicto, e glorioso Capitano, Zuan Paulo Baglione, sorella, e
donna de quello extrenuo et excellentissimo Capitano, Camillo Vitello
(she of generous ancestry and lofty offspring of Troilus, most reverend
bishop, and sister of that magnanimous, peerless, and glorious cap-
tain, Gianpaolo Baglioni, and wife of that tireless and most excellent
captain, Camillo Vitello). Baglis captatio benevolentiae is likely aimed at
Rodolfo Baglioni, Lucrezias father, who is mentioned in the title of
the dedication. In fact, many Renaissance proemial narratives featuring

the spirit of a famous author seem to have a primary function of capta-
tio benevolentiae, that ploy to garner favour, for instance, by completing
a project dedicated to a patron or praising the patron (or somebody
close to him/her). In eidolopoeia, the captatio benevolentiae can be artic-
ulated by the esteemed spirit character and can thus appear to carry
greater weight of authority than it would had such praise come from
the mouth of a relatively unknown author, such as Bagli. Bagli shows
that he approves and follows the work of his predecessor, Boccaccio, by
extending the original project: commemorating another famous lady by
recording her virtues.
On a fundamental level, Baglis work is in the same spirit, that is,
it continues in the same tone or with the same overarching intent as the
original project. Boccaccios pre-eminent concern in his encyclopedic
works was recording the deeds of famous figures from antiquity and
in some cases from among his contemporaries to serve as instructional
examples of virtue or vice for his readers, and in the recording of those
deeds to secure his own legacy for posterity. Bagli perpetuates this
concern for the fame of predecessors and a contemporary lady likely
related to his patron, as well as his own ploy for remembrance, through
his role in this edition. Bagli emphasizes, as Daniels also indicates in
her study, the concern for fame in all the works paratexts the emblem
of Fames triumphal chariot, the initial sonnet, and the dedication in
prose and poetry (the final sonnet idem Vincentio Bagli ad Dominam
Lucretiam, 3v; The same Vincenzo Bagli to His Lady Lucrezia). Bagli
wishes to take advantage of the fame of Boccaccio and his works in
order to extend them to himself and his lady. Figuring Boccaccios spirit
as endorsing this project communicates a lively literary inventiveness.
Its captatio benevolentiae flatters his likely patron Rodolfo Baglioni in a
way that is one step removed from slavishness, yet readily comprehen-
sible. Within its context, it likely had its appeal. It is far from being the
only example of eidolopoeia in which authorial spirits are represented
as bestowing a kind of imprimatur on editions or translations of their
original texts.
By feigning the appearance of a ghost of the works original author,
Bagli lends greater weight to his project as well as to the object of his
dedication. Presenting praise of Lucrezia Baglioni in the context of a
dream vision further heightens this aspect, since the dream vision mode
is often used to convey other-worldly truths (Daniels, Boccaccio and
44 Speaking Spirits
the Book, 161). If subsequent continuations of Boccaccios project are

any indication, Baglis procedure of adding contemporary examples
of ladies worthy of praise is also a successful one. Giuseppe Betussi
effectively seconded Baglis project by adding a number of contempo-
rary women to the edition printed in 1545, which were retained in the
editions of 1547 and 1558. Likewise, Filippo Giunti printed Betussis
translation in Florence in 1596, keeping Betussis account of contem-
porary women, and including yet another new account of both ancient
and modern women by Francesco Serdonati (Daniels, Boccaccio and
the Book, 1612). Nevertheless, some examples of eidolopoeia do not
merely endeavour to endorse or extend the original project, and they do
not figure the authorial ghost with the verisimilitude that was consid-
ered a necessary feature of eidolopoeia, according to rhetorical treatise
writers. One of the more extreme examples of this different approach to
eidolopoeia is the following case of Girolamo Malipieros representa-
tion of the spirit of Petrarch.
Girolamo Malipieros Petrarch: The Author

Is Edited together with His Poetry
Girolamo Malipiero (also known as Hieronimo Maripetro or Maripi-

etro) was a Venetian patrician and Franciscan priest, who died in 1547.
He wrote Il Petrarcha spirituale (The Spiritual Petrarch), which was
first published by Marcolino da Forl in Venice in 1536. The book must
have been popular, since it saw various reprintings in Venice, includ-
ing the 1538 edition published again by Marcolino da Forl under the
auspices of the Chiesa de la Trinit, the 1567 and 1575 editions by
Domenico Farri, the 1581 editions by Domenico Cavalcalupo and by
Andrea Raveoldo, and the 1587 printing by the heirs of Alessandro
Griffo (or Griffio).11
The work is not easily defined, though it might perhaps most approx-
imate an adaptation of Petrarchs Rerum vulgarium fragmenta.12 On the
one hand, given the number of revisions and the radical change in
tone and intent of Malipieros text, it can certainly not be considered
an edition of Petrarchs work. On the other hand, Malipiero co-opted
so much of Petrarchs poetry that Il Petrarcha spirituale could hardly be
called an original work either. It was primarily a moralizing correction
of Petrarchs collection of lyric poetry in which Malipiero rewrote all
the poems so that they would praise Jesus or divine love, directed
to the Virgin Mary, rather than earthly love for Petrarchs beloved Laura.13
The corrections themselves, which aim to purge the cose vane & ridi-
cole & favolose, & amori sconvenevoli, & cose anchor sozze,
inique, & scelerate (6r; the vain, ridiculous, and fictional things, and
the unfitting loves, and those things that are also dirty, wicked,
and wretched), correspond precisely to every expectation of the self-
appointed reformer in priestly habit.
In order to give the reader an understanding of the revisionary
procedure that Malipiero imposed on Petrarchs lyric poetry, I cite
as an example Petrarchs lovely opening sonnet, Voi, chascoltate in
rime sparse il suono (You who hear in scattered rhymes the sound).
Petrarchs version, here from the excellent bilingual edition by Robert
M. Durling, reads:
Voi, chascoltate in rime sparse il suono

di quei sospiri ondio nudriva l core
in sul mio primo giovenile errore,
quandera in parte altruom da quel chi sono:
del vario stile in chio piango et ragiono
fra le vane speranze e l van dolore,
ove sia chi per prova intenda amore
spero trovar piet, non che perdono.
Ma ben veggio or s come al popol tutto
favola fui gran tempo, onde sovente
di me medesmo meco mi vergogno;
et del mio vaneggiar vergogna l frutto,
e l pentersi, e l conoscer chiaramente
che quanto piace al mondo breve sogno.
You who hear in scattered rhymes the sound of those sighs with which
I nourished my heart during my first youthful error, when I was in part
another man from what I am now:
for the varied style in which I weep and speak between vain hopes and
vain sorrow, where there is anyone who understands love through experi-
ence, I hope to find pity, not only pardon.
But now I see well how for a long time I was the talk of the crowd, for
which often I am ashamed of myself within;
and of my raving, shame is the fruit, and repentance, and the clear
knowledge that whatever pleases in the world is a brief dream.14
46 Speaking Spirits
Petrarchs love (amore, line 7), which the historical poet set out to
describe in all of its complexity, including but not limited to what
it shares with core (heart), errore (error), and dolore (sorrow),
becomes in Malipieros version a much simplified target: vain desire
and fleeting love. In this way Malipiero claims to correct the sonnet, so
that it now reads (9r, followed by my English translation):
Voi, chascoltate in rime sparse il suono

De miei novi sospir; chescon dal core
Per la memoria di quel cieco errore;
Che mi fe in parte altrhuom da quel, chi sono;
Poi che del vario stil pi non ragiono,
Ma piango il fallo mio pien di dolore,
Il van desir, e l fuggitivo amore,
Piet, prego vi mova a mio perdono.
Conosco ben, s come al popol tutto
Materia fui derror: onde sovente
Di me medesmo meco mi vergogno.
Hora, drizzato al ciel, spero far frutto
Di vero ben; chio veggio chiaramente,
Che quanto piace al Mondo breve sogno.
You who listen in scattered rhymes to the sound

Of my new sighs that come from the heart
Due to the memory of that blind error
That made me in part another man from that one that I am;
Since in the varying style I no longer reason,
But weep, full of pain, for my fault,
The vain desire and the fleeting love,
Let pity, I pray, move you to pardon me.
I know well, like everyone else,
I was the subject of my error: whence often
I am ashamed of myself.
Now, directed toward heaven, I hope to provide fruit
Of the true good; since I can see clearly
That what pleases the World is a brief dream.
Memory no longer refers to the sweet experience of youth or a

love prior to Lauras passing. In Malipieros recasting of it, memory
becomes a part of the fictional dead spirits reflection on its histori-

cal life. The memory becomes, in other words, an implicit indict-
ment of Petrarchs actual life and poetic legacy. Malipiero levels
this criticism while maintaining the same rhyme scheme adopted
by his predecessor indeed he retains the final word of each verse
in this and in all of the poems that Petrarch composed. At the same
time, the zealous friar distorts Petrarchs meaning and flattens the
compelling psycho-spiritual tension that Petrarch had established
throughout his Canzoniere. This sonnet marks from the outset the
key intent of Malipieros project: to make an example out of the
much-admired Petrarch. In an age of Petrarchism, and especially
the reigning vogue of imitating Petrarchan style, symbolism, or
poetic tropes, Malipiero signals his purpose of using a repentant
Petrarch to harvest fruit/of the true good, that is, to become
an exemplum of the love poet whose emulators in verse, Malipiero
implicitly hopes, will persist in imitating also the spirits conversion
to a more pious and religious life.15
Il Petrarcha spirituale is particularly relevant to an examination of
eidolopoeia because Malipiero prefaced his pious censorings with
a prose dialogue between two characters: an eponymous character
Malipiero and the spirit of Petrarch. The dialogue (which spans folios
2r8r) is set in a wooded area near Petrarchs tomb in Arqu16 and
seems primarily intent on establishing Malipieros qualifications and
authority for his undertaking, but it also contains sharp critiques of
the direction of literary studies in Malipieros era, as well as a not-so-
veiled disparaging of the moral compasses of Cinquecento literary
patrons.
In the proem Malipiero offers thanks to God after he is finally able to
visit Petrarchs tomb and see the study where Petrarch completed his
final works. Suddenly he sees something he knows not what com-
ing very quickly towards him. This persona seems by its appearance
to be pi, che humana, et di honore & veneratione degna (2r; more
than human and worthy of honour and veneration). The spirit greets
him using the familiar tu form (which Malipiero will echo) by saying
Dio ti salvi o Maripetro (2r; God save you, o Malipiero). Malipiero
returns the greeting and inquires how the stranger knows his name.
He also wants to know if what he sees is a spirito fantastico, o pur
huomo vero (2r; a fantastic spirit or rather an actual [living] man). The
spirit replies, Huomo vero gia fui, per natione Thosco, christiano per
48 Speaking Spirits
religione, poeta per professione di lettere, in Campidoglio di lauro coro-

nato; et quivi in Arqu, dopo molti studii, spogliato della vita mortale
(2rv; A living man I was once, Tuscan by nation, Christian by religion,
poet by profession of letters, crowned with the laurel on Campidoglio,
and here in Arqu, after many studies, stripped of my mortal life).17
Though the spirit does not name himself, Malipiero recognizes the
spirit of Petrarch and asks him what he is doing in this place. Malipiero
learns that divine justice demands that Petrarchs spirit remain there
until his collection of love sonnets and songs in the vernacular is prop-
erly revised.
Malipieros character feigns not understanding the objection to
Petrarchs poetry, since he believes that sotto velame di non so che
madonna Laura (2v; under the allegorical veil of some Lady Laura),
Petrarch figured Wisdom, a worthy object of mans love, so the verses
and songs of love must have allegorical and spiritual significances.
Petrarchs spirit expresses wonder at this contention, given his own
confessions while alive of his youthful errors, and in his Epistola posteri-
tati his admissions that out of vanity and blindness he laboured after
acerrimo amore (a most bitter love).
The character Malipiero then takes on a confessors role, strongly
rebuking Petrarch for permitting his poetry to be published if he
knew that such a book would bring only scandolo et cattivo essem-
pio (3r; scandal and a bad example). Indulgently, Malipiero excuses
Petrarch, saying that the poet could not have foreseen that his poetry,
which he refers to as le tue vanit (your vanities), would become even
more frequently read, commented, and studied than Christs Gospel
(pi lette, commentate, et studiate, che l Vangielo di Christo, 3v).
Malipiero inquires why, since Petrarchs burial precisely 151 years and
eleven days ago, Petrarch has not made the corrections himself, thereby
putting his affairs in order.
Petrarch cuts short Malipieros ceremonious finger-wagging with
the simple question: Non puoi considerare, che tale potenza non sia
in me? (3v; Can you not consider that such a power is not in me?).
Malipiero learns that Petrarchs soul does not have the power to seek
its own well-being: as a spirit without a body, it lacks the bodily instru-
ments (stromenti corporei, 3v) to make the necessary corrections.
When Malipiero argues that the spirit seems to have a body just as real
as his own, Petrarch counters that, though it may seem so, it is merely
an airy body (corpo aereo, 3r4v), and all that God permits it to do is
to be seen and heard. The spirit of Petrarch claims to be unable to see
colours, or to hear any sound except speech, because the ghosts only
perception comes from the intellect, not the potentie sensitive (4r;
sensorial powers), from veri organi corporei (4r; true body organs),
which the spirit lacks. Furthermore, given that the spirit is outside time,
it cannot itself produce any worthy act, as this one would be reform-
ing the inappropriate material of his verse: non essendo io pi viatore,
ma fuori di spatio temporale, non posso produrre, atto alcuno merite-
vole, come sarebbe questo, di ritrattare la sconvenevole materia de gli
predetti miei versi (4r; given that I am no longer a traveller [along the
way of life], but rather am outside temporal space, I cannot produce
any worthy act, as this one would be, of reworking the inappropriate
material of my aforementioned lyrics).
Malipiero objects that requiring a spirit to do something quite impos-
sible for it would mean that Gods divine sentence would be unjust, a
conclusion that both characters find inconceivable. Instead, he comes
to learn that God displays His mercy and wisdom by permitting a liv-
ing person to pay the spirits debt by rewriting the offending poetry.
Malipiero marvels that no living poet before him has already made the
necessary changes. Petrarch hopes Malipiero will finally do so and
thus make him Petrarcha theologo & spirituale (4v; a theological and
spiritual Petrarch), in this way satisfying the obligations of the spirits
long penance in Purgatory.
Malipiero then cites various practical reasons that a spiritualized
canzoniere would not be a successful publication: (1) Nobody would
read it, since the works that are published and sold in Malipieros
day are those that satisfy human beings natural concupiscence
and animal appetites (5v); and (2) they would never find a wor-
thy patron and dedicatee for a spiritualized canzoniere. Petrarchs
spirit expresses astonishment at the notion that the Tuscan Muses in
Malipieros day are held in such contempt because too many lust-
ful men have dressed them up in prostitutes clothes: Hor sappi,
che da lascivi huomini esse [Muse Thoscane] son travestite, anzi
mascherate come di habito meretricio, di modo, che altro non can-
tano, che cose vane and dishoneste (5v). Since readers appetites in
Malipieros day call for cose vane & ridicole & favolose, & di amori
sconvenevoli, & di cose anchor sozze, inique, & scelerate (6r; vain,
ridiculous, and fanciful things, and inappropriate love stories, and
other things that are filthy, evil, and wicked), nobody would read a
spiritual and theological version of Petrarchs poems, according to
Malipiero. Petrarchs spirit recommends that they not consider that
50 Speaking Spirits
massive schiera de gli sciocchi (throng of fools): Non ragioniam

di lor, ma guarda & passa (Let us not speak of them, but look and
pass on).18 Finally, the two interlocutors agree to dedicate the revised
work to Jesus Christ, since God, who alone matters in this case, must
be satisfied. God will release Petrarch from his ghostly exile and
reward Malipiero for his charitable sacrifice. The two figures con-
clude by commending each other to God, and the proemial dialogue
comes to a close.
The spirit of Petrarch in Malipieros work has a crucial role. Per-
haps most obviously and importantly, Petrarch must be the one to
request and approve the corrections to the original love poetry. Amedeo
Quondam rightly points out that Malipieros procedure mimicked the
donec corrigatur method of the Inquisitional censor, even though in 1534
lindice dei libri proibiti non ancora pronto (Il naso di Laura, 206;
the Index of prohibited books is not yet ready). Quondam specifies,
La sequenza argomentativa di Malipiero tuttaltro che capziosa: si
fonda, invece, sulle procedure collaudate da secoli nelle pratiche cen-
sorie dellemendazione, e deve, pertanto, avere il consenso dellautore
del testo da emendare (209; The progression of Malipieros argument
is not at all capricious; it is based instead on procedures followed for
centuries in the censorial practices of textual emendation, which must
have the consensus of the author of the text to be emended).19
As part of the emendation process, Malipiero determines to erase the
geographical and autobiographical specificity contained in the poems.
Quondam rightly calls Malipieros objective consapevole e premedi-
tato (205; knowing and premeditated), aiming for:
lannullamento radicale della presenza del soggetto dellenunciato, ricon-

oscibile e riconosciuto in quanto Francesco (e quindi del destinatario
assoluto della sua comunicazione amorosa, Laura), e la sua trascrizione
rigorosa nei termini di un nuovo soggetto, generico e collettivo al tempo
stesso, in quanto riferibile alluniverso non individuato (innominato)
dellinsieme dei cristiani, dei fedeli. (205)
the radical negation of the presence of the speaking subject, recognizable

and recognized as Francis (and hence the absolute addressee of his love
communication, Laura), and his rigorous transcription of the terms of the
new subject, generic and collective at the same time, in as much as it can
refer to the unindividuated (unnamed) universe of all Christians, of all
the faithful.
Quondam argues (224ff) that Malipiero adopted a form of Petrar-

chism in his rewriting of Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, while essentially
trying to destroy it from within by erasing its historicity and individual
self-expression and substituting an a-geographical, atemporal updated
handbook of prayer, on the model of Fior di virt (Flower of Virtue) or
Meditazioni sulla vita di Cristo (Meditations on the Life of Christ).
In order to do so, Malipiero compels his spirit of Petrarch to denounce
allegorical readings of Rerum vulgarium fragmenta.20 Part and parcel of
the erasure of allegorical interpretations is the radical restructuring of
the canzoniere. Malipiero makes a significant structural change to the
collection of lyric poetry as well: he separates Petrarchs sonnets from
the canzoni and lyrics in other metres. The opening Petrarchan son-
net discussed above follows a dedicatory poem to Jesus. After Voi che
ascoltate, Malipiero lists the other 316 sonnets of the collection, sepa-
rating out the canzoni, which he introduces with an ammonitione di
F. Herionymo Maripetro minoritano (A Warning by the Friar Minor
Girolamo Malipiero) at folio 89r, which reads as something of a sermon
against interpreting poetry in a lustful manner. At folio 97v Malipiero
includes a sonnet titled Il Petrarcha agli animi gentili (Petrarch to
the Noble Souls), which he ventriloquizes in the voice of Petrarch,
followed by Petrarchs rewritten canzoni. Of course, Malipiero likely
separates these poems by form and includes a special warning before
the canzoni because he believes canzoni to be associated with lascivi-
ous subject matter.21 Nonetheless, in separating the sonnets and can-
zoni, Malipiero takes away a strong original impetus to the divine that
Petrarch suggested through his numerological symbolism. Petrarch the
poet mixed together 365 sonnets and canzoni one for each day of the
year plus one poem in praise of the Virgin Mary, traditionally inter-
preted as the final transcendence of temporality or mortality.22 Malip-
ieros arrangement consists of 317 sonnets, then 48 canzoni, then an
Epilogo alle laudi della Beata Vergine (154r; Epilogue in Praise of the
Blessed Virgin). In other words, Malipiero seems paradoxically to have
undermined perhaps the most obvious formal indication of Petrarchs
original impetus towards the divine in Rerum vulgarium fragmenta.
At the end of the table of contents on folio 161r, Malipiero includes
a second dialogue, this time between some anonymous critics and
Petrarchs spirit and written as a sonnet, Collocutori critico et Petrar-
cha, in which unnamed critics inquire of Petrarch why he has
become so happy. The spirit replies: Merc del dotto & saggio Mari-
petro;/Che damor vano, & grave error mha sciolto (Thanks to the
52 Speaking Spirits
learned and wise Maripetro;/Who from my vain love and grave error
freed me). Here Malipiero the author pays himself a compliment by
feigning acknowledgment and praise from the authoritative spirit. One
might say that his wishful thinking persists also in the representation
of his critics as so easily won over by the spirits happy assertions that
Malipiero has freed him to sing of divine love, rather than his previous
earthly delirium. In the end, Malipieros use of Petrarchs spirit appears
even more strained than many other ultimately unconvincing eidolo-
poetic narratives.
Nevertheless, Malipieros use of eidolopoeia can serve as an illustra-
tive example of how the words of an authoritative spirit can serve a writ-
ers or editors advantage, much more so than having a text without an
interlocutor or positing the figure of another living interlocutor (as, for
instance, in many Renaissance dialogues). If Malipiero, religious zealot
for the censorship of lascivious lyric poetry, were simply to publish
his own rewritten spiritualized version of Petrarchs Rerum vulgarium
fragmenta (sans the spirit of Petrarch), he likely would be considered a
presumptuous nobody who understands nothing of lyric poetry. After
all, the most successful imitations of Petrarchan verse (especially Pietro
Bembos) embraced the potentials of the mode to express the sentiments
and physiological effects of earthly love. Moreover, the effect would also
not be the same if, instead of Petrarchs spirit, a living confrre prefaced
Malipieros spiritualized version with the recommendation that this
new publication be preferred to the poems of lust, pride, and other sins
contained in Petrarchs original. Nor would the effect be as powerful if a
living scholar of poetry prefaced Malipieros edition with compliments
on the rewriters talent for transforming Petrarchs meaning.23 Malip-
ieros proemial dialogue thus presents an example of ecclesiastical cen-
sorship in which an imprimatur of sorts must be provided in the voice
of the dead author. Using the idol as a mouthpiece, Malipiero presents
more authoritatively his (perhaps very questionable) credentials as edi-
tor of Petrarchs collection of poetry, while feigning that praise for his
work is not personally boastful.
Malipieros project certainly gives the impression that he was very
earnest in his desire to dictate proper comportment, to provide edi-
fying reading material, and otherwise to draw his contemporaries
closer to God. Nevertheless, various venomous writings published in
the wake of Malipieros work suggest that the feigned compliments
of Petrarchs spirit were, perhaps not surprisingly, ineffective as a
protective amulet against the arrows shot by critics. Historians and
biographers, including Giovanni degli Agostini, noted that Malipiero

menava vita religiosissima (Malipiero lived a very religious life).24
Degli Agostini continued: La pretesa dunque di questo religioso
Autore, altra non fu, senza dubbio, che di ridurre il Canzoniero del
Petrarca allo spirituale, tramutando quelle cose soltanto, che ragion-
ano di vano amore, servando sempre tutte le desinenze usate, e interi
eziandio salvando tutti que versi, che opposti non erano al divoto
suo intento (444; Thus the aim of this religious author was no doubt
none other than to make Petrarchs Canzoniere spiritual, transmuting
only those things that treat of vain love, while using all of the typical
modes and salvaging intact all those verses that are not opposed to
his devotional intent). Among Malipieros primary detractors were
Giovanmario Crescimbeni, Giraldi Cintio, and Niccol Franco. An
excerpt of Giraldi Cintios acidic comment from the Discorso intorno
al comporre dei Romanzi; delle Commedie e della Tragedie, e di altre maniere
di Poesie (Discourse concerning the Composition of Romances, Com-
edies, and Tragedies, and the Styles of Poetry, on page 444 of Notizie
istorico-critiche) serves as the epigraph of the present chapter, and his
acerbity elicited from degli Agostini this pious retort: Noi non sapre-
mmo qual fosse il vero motivo di un tal dileggio, avendo F. Girolamo,
come uomo di Chiesa, posto interamente il suo studio, onde togliere
tuttoci, che dinciampo alla piet incontrar si potesse nel Canzoniere,
e rimettere altres tuttoci, che a spirituale vantaggio conosceva esser
duopo (4445; We have no idea what the real motive of such a rant
was, since Father Girolamo, as a man of the Church, posited as his
sole purpose to take away all that might be found to be an obstacle to
piety in the Canzoniere, and to put back all that he believed necessary
to spiritual advantage).
Francos attack on Malipiero was just as sharp. Niccol Franco (1515
1570) was a poet whose works included Tempio di Amore (Temple of
Love, 1536) and who served as secretary for Pietro Aretino during the
crucial years of the preparation of Aretinos first book of letters between
1538 and 1540.25 According to Charles Davis, when Franco prepared to
publish his own book of letters, Aretino blocked its publication with his
publisher, Francesco Marcolini: The enmity engendered by this conflict
ended in a bitter feud between Franco and Aretino, and in mid-1539, led
to Francos departure from Venice and the pursuit of the publication
his own book of letters with Antonio Gardane.26 Most of Francos let-
ters are addressed to his contemporaries, from people of the highest
socio-political status to prostitutes. But he does address one letter to the
54 Speaking Spirits
long-deceased Petrarch, comparing his procedure to Petrarchs own

letter to Cicero:
La grandissima affettione, che voi portaste a M. Tullio, vi spinse a scrivergli

una pistola, in quel mondo dovera. Onde dal vostro essempio, laffettion,
chio vi porto, mhave indutto a scriverne unaltra a Voi, ovunque vi sti-
ate. Benche se voi non pareste scrivere a morto, scrivendo a quel Cicerone,
che sempre vive, io anche no paio mandar la mia carta ad huomo sepolto,
mandandola a quel Petrarca, che piu vivo che mai. (238v)
The very great affection that you bore Tullio prompted you to write him a
letter in that world where he was. Whence from your example, the affec-
tion that I bear you has caused me to write another to you, wherever you
are. Just as you did not seem to write to a dead man, writing to that Cicero,
who lives on, I too will not seem to send my page to a buried man, sending
it to that Petrarch who lives on more than ever.
Franco distinguishes and takes issue with a particular type of Petrar-

chista, represented by coloro, che non sapendo faraltra mostra di loro
istessi, gli van togliendo le parolette da i sonetti, e da le canzoni, e facen-
done i Paternostri, gli van vendendo per robba loro (238v; those who
do not know otherwise how to show something for themselves except
by taking some little words from [Petrarchs] sonnets and canzoni and
making Our Fathers out of them and selling them as their own). These
types, he continues, not knowing how to be useful in any other way,
take up commenting Petrarchs works, inventing things in order to
appear smart and to attract attention, in order to show themselves as
wise (239r). Dico che credendosi parer voi, non solamente si servono
del vostro dire, ma dei mezzi versi, de le sentenze, de le inventioni,
de gli spirti, e di ci che havete di buono, e di meglio (239v; I say
that believing themselves like you, not only have they taken over your
words, but half-verses, sentences, some inventions, some ghosts, and
all that you have that is good). Clearly referring to Malipiero and his
work, Franco continues: Il male , che ci sono stati di quegli, che vhan
voluto far Christiano duecento anni dopo la morte, e di prete vhan
fatto frate, ponendovi e cordone, e zoccoli, e scappolare, chiamandovi
il Petrarca Sprituale (240r; The rub is that there are those who have
insisted on making you Christian two hundred years after your death,
and from priest they have made you a friar, putting the cord, sandals,
and scapular on you and calling you the Spiritual Petrarch). Francos
accusation against Malipiero is blunt: Malipiero, being incapable of lit-

erary achievement in his own right, attempts to seize the poetic lime-
light for himself by tinkering with the poetry of Petrarch, a dead poet
no longer in a position to defend himself and his works.
At this point, a comparison between Malipieros procedure and that
of a Florentine forerunner might be helpful. I believe that the Petrar-
cha spirituale wanted to mimic other Renaissance poetic rewritings in
praise of divine love, such as Girolamo Benivienis Commento sopra a
pi sue canzone et sonetti dello Amore et della Belleza Divina (Commen-
tary on His Various Songs and Sonnets on Love and Divine Beauty,
1500), which aimed to correct what Benivieni came to believe were
the shameful verses in his own 1489 lyric collection, titled Canzone e
Sonetti di Girolamo Benivieni fiorentino: Come, dove, quando e di cui prima
se inamor, et quale fructo ne seguitasse (Songs and Sonnets by Girolamo
Benivieni the Florentine: How, When, Where, and with Whom He First
Fell in Love and the Outcome of It).27 In the wake of a profoundly per-
sonal conversion prompted by Girolamo Savonarolas strident calls
for repentance in 1490s Florence, Benivieni wished to recall and to
burn in a bonfire of the vanities all of the copies of his youthful poetry
in praise of earthly love. Eventually recognizing the impossibility
of such an undertaking, he opted instead to issue a new and (mor-
ally) improved version of the work, now corrected to praise divine
love and beauty: Se o revocare o altrimenti che con la expositione e
publica copia delle altre cose nostre havessimo in alcuno modo potuto
supprimere, non mi era hora necessario affaticare unaltra volta la
inepta e ad questa mia nuova impresa per s poco sufficiente penna
(If we had been able to revoke or to suppress our things in some other
way than with their exposition and public circulation, it would not be
necessary for my inept and insufficient pen to undertake again now
this new endeavour).28 Benivieni understood this work as a penance,
and he saw that there needed to be a correspondence between the
public nature of his earlier sin in circulating poems encouraging con-
cupiscence and a public acknowledgment now of his sin in the form
of a revised edition: Della emendatione del quale errore conoscendo
io essere e a Dio e a qualunche altre debitore, n altrimenti satisfare
potendo publicamente hora in me la sua copa reconosco, e per questo
a la infinita bonit e clementia di Dio supplice recorrendo (3r; For
the emendation of such an error [not only gathering together in a col-
lection his poems of earthly love, but disseminating them in public
copies], I recognize that I am in debt to God and to others, and I could
56 Speaking Spirits
not in any other way satisfy this penance than by publicly begging for
the infinite goodness and clemency of God now). He also hoped that
the revision would not merely revise, but rather entirely supplant the
original in the minds of his readers.
Malipieros revisions, much like Benivienis self-commentative emen-
dations in the Commento, drain the poems of their original complex-
ity and raw human sensibilities, making those of Il Petrarcha spirituale
(even more than Benivieni made his own) mostly contrived, eviscer-
ated, and sterile rhyming exercises in Christian piety. However, there
is an obvious but crucial difference between Benivienis procedure and
Malipieros: in Benivienis case, he was determined to revise his own
poems, while Malipiero was appropriating somebody elses work. Self-
correction is a fundamentally different matter from imposing ones
ecclesiastical power on the libero arbitrio of another, in this case a dead
poet with profoundly different sensibilities.
While Malipiero might have been genuinely dismayed by the spiri-
tual degradation of his day, what is one to make of an earnest friar
who nevertheless presented to his readers a deliberately distorted
account of Petrarch? In inventing the narrative about Petrarchs
spirit, perhaps Malipiero believed that his ends justified the means.29
It might seem unfair to level the literature-is-lying charge against this
storyteller when Malipiero was doing what many other authors also
did adopting the trope of eidolopoeia. But is there perhaps more
at stake for a project in which the author emphasizes his status as a
hyper-religious friar and dedicates his labour directly to Jesus Christ
as the only worthy dedicatee for his invention? Trust in Malipieros
currency seems to depend on maintaining the faith of his audience,
and surely the readers recognition of eidolopoeia as an invention
would cast some shadow of doubt on the basis for the friars ethical
authority.30
Not only is Petrarchs status as great poet important, but so is his
status as dead man, since he is made to seem immortal, still speak-
ing from beyond the grave. This point should provoke the question:
Who can speak for the dead? One of the key requirements in the tra-
ditional definitions of eidolopoeia is that the writer must figure with
verisimilitude the spirit of the dead. The spirit must speak in a man-
ner consistent with the way it did as a living person. In Malipieros
rendering of Petrarch, the issue is further complicated, however, by
the fiction of spiritual conversion. Conversion is a radical act for the
self, since it is a renouncing and recanting of the way it was, what it
stood for or signified, contrasted sharply with what it is now. An idol

of Petrarch that claims to be repentant will be by definition altrhuom
da quel [chera] (a different man from the one he once was). Certainly
St Augustine of the Confessions serves as the quintessential exemplar of
the changed man. The man he was is dead, and he is reborn in Christ.
It may not be incidental that death language occurs in accounts of con-
version and the scripts of baptismal and pentitential rites. But con-
version, when it is understood as a move from the unknown or the
occulted to awareness or a wholeness of revelation, is in some way
an extreme act of what happens to human beings all the time: learn-
ing. With each new skill, with each step of growth in understanding,
with the ongoing development of ideas, an individual matures, and in
doing so must shift not only his/her conception of the world, but even
more importantly, his/her own self-perception. People tend to see this
process as positive, incremental, even accumulating or increasing over
a lifetime.
All of this helps to make Malipieros positing of Petrarchs post-
mortem conversion potentially verisimilar. In the full(er)ness of time,
Petrarch finally came to recognize his error (from Malipieros per-
spective) and sought to correct it. From this perspective, it does not
matter how different this attitude might be from what readers might
think they know of Petrarchs beliefs during his life. Conversion
is a radical change in ones fundamental beliefs, after all. Moreover,
Malipiero compels Petrarch to express the desire for revisions
to the Canzoniere after conversion. In reality, of course, Malipiero
the author projects his own ideal Petrarch (a different character
from the historical man) onto his spirit character. The narrative by
means of eidolopoeia only feigns that the conversion is self-initiated
by Petrarch. Along somewhat the same lines, Teodolinda Barolini
points out that Petrarch continued to petition aid from the Virgin
Mary in the final poem of his collection, however:
[as] Augustine notes, The reason, then, why the command is not obeyed
is that it is not given with a full will. For if the will were full, it would not
command itself to be full, since it would be so already. It is therefore no strange
phenomenon partly to will to do something and partly to will not to do
it. The logic of conversion is temporal, since conversion is an experi-
ence that involves a movement along the arrow of time from a self that is
fragmented, changing, and unstable to a self that is whole, unchanging,
and still; while the process of achieving conversion may involve much
58 Speaking Spirits
backsliding, as Augustine dramatizes in the Confessions, true conver-

sion, once achieved, is by definition a condition from which there is no
relapsing.31
In other words, once a spirit is dead and outside of time, it can no more
experience conversion, or desire to have its poetry spiritualized, as
Malipiero suggests, than it could make the changes of its own accord.
In Baglis proem to his edition of Boccaccios De mulieribus claris,
the author seems to maintain a higher degree of verisimilitude in
the representation of Boccaccios spirit. Perhaps not incidentally,
Bagli did not change the meaning or intent of Boccaccios original
text, either, but rather built upon it by extending the work to include
more contemporary exempla. Malipieros project is a bit different.
While the historical Petrarch wrote one poem to the Virgin Mary, the
remainder of the 365 lyrics of Rerum vulgarium fragmenta show that
his concerns were predominantly not focused on Malipieros notion
of divine love. That the Venetian priest insists otherwise seems cer-
tainly to test the readers willingness to allow for reasonable verisi-
militude in this instance. The final case study of this chapter presents
a spirit whose function defies readerly expectations in a still differ-
ent way.
Antonio Manettis Paradox?: Determining

the Message of Cavalcantis Spirit
Already before Bagli and Malipiero invent their visions of spirits

to endorse new versions of works, there is at least one instance of
eidolopoeia implicitly suggesting caution where imagined com-
munication with spirits is concerned. Antonio di Tuccio Manetti
(14231497) provided just such an example in a roughly ten-page
text titled Notizia di Guido Cavalcanti (Information Concerning Guido
Cavalcanti, c. 14689).32 This Notizia originally served as a preface
to the collection of Guido Cavalcantis poems, commentaries on his
canzone Donna me prega (A Lady Entreats Me), and observations
concerning the poet and his works, by authors ranging from Dante
to Giannozzo Manetti (13961459). The Notizia is just one scholarly
work by Antonio Manetti, a veritable Florentine Renaissance Man
whose contributions as mathematician, philosopher, architect, and
Dante commentator include the texts Uomini singolari in Firenze
(Lives of Illustrious Florentine Men); Sito, forma et misura dell Nferno
et statura de giganti et di Lucifero (Site, Form, and Dimensions of

[Dantes] Inferno and the Height of the Giants and Lucifer); and the
delightful tale known as the Novella del Grasso Legnaiuolo (Story of
the Fat Woodworker).
Republished in 1887,33 the Notizia seems little more than standard
epideictic fare, typical of Renaissance dedications. In this case, Manetti
praises Guido Cavalcanti in dedicating his edition of stilnovistic poems
to Guidos descendant Giovanni di Niccol Cavalcanti (14441509).
Manetti does not spare lavish complimentary comparisons of Giovanni
with his famous ancestor in terms of liveliness, eloquence, humanity,
manners, and nobility, among other traits (della vivacit, dello elo-
quio, ma della umanit, della maniera e della gentilezza e di qualunche
altra parte, 175). But this prefatory note deserves a second look, since
its message is far from clear and might even present a kind of paradoxi-
cal conundrum.
The Notizia opens with the authors explanation in the first person
of his motivations for putting together the this edition of and about
Cavalcantis poems:
Essendo istato alcuna volta richiesto da te, nobile e generoso Giovanni,

che io mi dovessi affaticare in darti particular notizia di Guido Cavalcanti,
famoso tuo consorto, e contemporaneo e familiare del nostro eccellentis-
simo poeta Dante, diliberai, ben che io mi conoscessi insufficiente a tanto
peso, e in tutto mi dispuosi, iusta mio potere, [di ritrovare] la verit della
vita sua, s per compiacerti nella prima domanda s eziandio per sat-
isfare alla esortazione del nostro dottissimo platonico, Marsilio Fecino; a
quali per molti intellettuali beneficii, io sono grandemente debitore;
e parte ancora per rispetto della eccellenzia e della dignit di colui, del
quale mera data tale commissione. (1712)
Having been asked a few times by you, noble and generous Giovanni,
to exert myself in providing you with detailed information about Guido
Cavalcanti, your famous relative, and contemporary and companion of
our most excellent poet Dante, I determined, though I knew myself to be
insufficient such a task, and set out, according to my power, [to find out]
the truth about his life, both in order to please you in the first instance
and also to respond to the encouragements of our very wise Platonist,
Marsilio Ficino, to whom I am greatly indebted for many intellectual
benefits; but also in part out of respect for the excellence and dignity of
him [Guido Cavalcanti], the subject of my commission.
60 Speaking Spirits
This is to say that Manetti declares three reasons for carrying out
his project. The first is straightforward: he wishes to please his dedica-
tee, who has requested it of him. Second, Marsilio Ficino (14331499)
encourages him in this regard, and he feels that he owes Ficino for
intellectual benefits he has received from him. These benefits must
certainly have been his friendship, intellectual discussions, and inclu-
sion in some activities of Ficinos intellectual circles, but they likely also
include Ficinos dedication to Manetti and Bernardo del Nero (1422
1497) of the vernacular translation of Dantes De monarchia (On the
Monarchy) in 1468.34 The third impetus of Manettis project is his own
interest in its subject: Guido Cavalcanti.
Beginning his research, Manetti quickly recognizes that information
on Cavalcanti has long since been obscured or almost entirely lost (le
cose gi per lunghi tempi oscurate e quasi in tutto perdute, 172), and
he wonders if this task far exceeds his powers to satisfy it. Falling asleep
one night, he experiences a dream vision, which comes to him circa
laurora (172; around dawn), when such dreams were believed to be
true or prophetic. A figure appears:
poco appresso, per quanto mi rappresent dipoi la memoria, mi pareva,

non so in che modo, essere intra laere, intra una nuvoletta astratto e
sospeso e lontano da me per lunghissimo spazio, e da non si potere com-
prendere; perch quando intra le stelle e quando di sopra di quelle, mi
pareva vedere il tuo Guido con lietissima faccia e risplendente; come doro
brunito e terso; n per vederlo di lunge, mi pareva scorgerlo meno bene
che se da presso gli fussi stato. (172)
not so close, in as much as my memory represented it to me, it [the fig-

ure] seemed I do not know how to be in the air in a little cloud out
there, floating, and far away from me in a very great space that one could
not comprehend it; because whether among the stars or beyond them, I
seemed to see your Guido with a very happy and resplendent face, like
burnished and pure gold; nor did it seem to me that seeing him so far away
was I able to recognize him less well that if he had been right next to me.
Marvelling greatly at the sight, Manetti strains to see better the figure
of the vision, but it advises him thus:
Nulla ti giover lefficacia del tuo guardare, n laguzzare delle ciglia

per volermi conoscere, conci sia cosa che tu non possa aver alcuna
notizia di me, se non per mie scritture, o per memoria che di quelle o
di me da alcuni sia stata fatta, o ultimamente per risplendere della mia
effigie per avventura in alcuno che ne tuoi medesimi d e insieme con
teco vive. (1723)
You will not enjoy greater efficacy in your desire to learn more about me
through sight or by squinting your brow at me, since you can only get in-
formation about me through my writings, or by the testimonies of them or
of me left by others, or lastly through the shining of my features by chance
in someone of your day who lives together with you.
The spirit is very specific about these three reliable ways to find
information about him: (1) from the writings he left while he was
alive, (2) from certain commentaries on his life and works, which
the spirit will subsequently list, and (3) through resemblance in his
descendants.
Recovering from his surprise and awe, Manetti poses a series
of four questions to the spirit: Who are you? Are you alive? What
did you write, and who contributed to knowledge of you and your
works? And what is the basis of your fame in our world? Leaving
explicit confirmation of his identity for last, the spirit otherwise
responds to Manettis questions point by point. The spirit lives, it
states, ma non di quella vita, come disse il nostro incomparabile
poeta, che al termine vola, ma di quella che in eterno e sanza fine
felicemente si fruisce e gode (1734, italics in the original; but not
in that life, as our peerless poet said, that flies towards its terminus,
but rather in the one that is eternal and rejoices happily and without
end). In this way, Manetti associates the living eternal spirit of Cav-
alcanti with Dante, essentially neutralizing any competing critical
perspective that Dantes act as Prior in 1300 to exile his primo amico to
Sarzana, where Cavalcanti contracted malaria, might somehow have
sundered the two forevermore. On the contrary, here Manetti has
the spirit of Cavalcanti praise Dante as our peerless poet. Manetti,
who during his lifetime participated in two of the weightiest literary
initiatives of Medicean Florentine patriotism the Raccolta aragonese
and the 1481 edition of Dantes Divina commedia was intent here,
too, to present a harmonious canonical perspective of Florentine
poets, compelling even Cavalcanti to accept subsequent critical
determinations of Dantes superiority that were much contested in
Cavalcantis own day.35
62 Speaking Spirits
The spirits next answer also serves Manettis purposes. Addres-

sing the question about his writings, the spirit states that they were
written in
versi materni; e bench oggi rispetto alla alleganzia della lingua latina e
allornato del parlare comune, non sieno, fuori che per gravit, molto da
ricercare; nientedimeno, per la loro fermezza e verit, sicondo loppenione
di quelli che voi chiamate dotti e eruditi, non sono inferiori a di quelle di
pi ornato e di pi lustro. (174)
verses in the mother-tongue; and though today with respect to the ele-
gance of the Latin language and to the ornate quality of common speech,
they are nothing to seek out for any reason other than their gravitas; none-
theless for their solidity and truth, according to the opinion of those whom
you call wise and erudite, they are not inferior to those in languages that
are more ornate or illustrious.
Manetti, who did not read Latin but had a reputation for being peri-
tissimo nella lingua toscana36 (expert in the Tuscan language), has the
authoritative spirit exalt the vernacular tongue, which among Floren-
tine humanists of Manettis day was considered inferior to Latin. The
spirit also provides a specific list of the writers who provided commen-
taries on his canzone Donna me prega (A Lady Entreats Me): Egidio
Romano, Dino del Garbo, and Ugo dal Corno. He also lists authors who
had other pertinent information about him: Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio,
Domenico dArezzo, Filippo Villani, Leonardo dArezzo, Giannozzo
Manetti, Riccardano Malispini, and Giovanni Villani, among others (e
degli altri, 175).
While his poetic production is the basis of Guido Cavalcantis fame in
Manettis day, his image, as well as his liveliness, eloquence, and other
qualities, are also reflected in his descendant Giovanni Cavalcanti,
Manettis dedicatee, and Manetti is able to confirm in the end that the
spirit he is addressing is indeed that of Guido Cavalcanti. At this point,
the spirit moves as if to depart, but Manetti detains him with two more
inquiries. The first eventually concludes with Manetti requesting the
spirit to confirm the details pertaining to the Cavalcanti family tree,
which he proceeds to present in a few very dense pages on the first
known Cavalcanti ancestors, speculation about branches of the family
in Cologna, Florence, Valdipesa, Pescia, Siena, and elsewhere. It is as
if Manetti the author is presenting at this point his genealogical and
political research on the Cavalcanti family, and Manetti the character

in the Notizia finally asks the spirit to confirm that all he has written
is true. Manetti adds that because the spirit looks continuously on the
face of God, in which one sees every truth, he does not believe that
any knowledge is hidden from the spirit, or that the spirit should be
disturbed in any way if living people are to have ferma e certa notizia
(solid and certain knowledge) of Guido and the Cavalcanti family.
Immediately, before the spirit can speak, Manetti makes a much briefer
second query: se alla tua passata di questa vita, la donna tua arse tua
Trattati e Opere per te composte di filosofia e naturale e morale, come
suona ancora alcuna fama (179; if at your passing from this life, your
wife burned the treatises and works you composed on natural and
moral philosophy, as one still hears said sometimes)?
The spirit of Guido Cavalcanti looks at him attentively while
Manetti speaks, but as Manettis words end, so too does his vision.
Though Manetti lingers in bed, he soon loses every hope of seeing the
spirit of Guido Cavalcanti ever again and thus of learning with cer-
tainty about his final two requests for information. Manetti therefore
sets himself to remembering what the spirit told him and to seeking
the sources the spirit cited. He appends these commentaries and tes-
timonies to Cavalcantis poems that he has collected, and he ends his
Notizia addressed to Giovanni by asking him to bear his work with
patience and without admiration, remembering from whom it comes
(sopporterlo con pazienza e senza ammirazione, ricordandoti tu da
chi elle vengono, 180).
It is clear from the very beginning of this narrative featuring an autho-
rial spirit that Manettis interest, while it might seem rather convention-
ally aimed at captatio benevolentiae towards his dedicatee, is actually first
and foremost a humanistically epistemological one. Manettis prose
betrays an almost obsessiveness with learning the truth and how truth
can be revealed. He mentions the desire to discover the truth of [Caval-
cantis] life ([ritrovare] la verit della vita sua, 171) as the reason for
undertaking the task of compiling Guido Cavalcantis works in the first
place. Truth is of recurring interest in the narrative. The spirit praises
commentators who display fermezza e verit (174; decisiveness and
truth). Among the commentators, Domenico dArezzo is singled out
as not having a true knowledge of Guidos father (bench non avessi
vera notizia del padre mio, 175). Manetti wonders at the relationship
between popular opinion and truth (peroch si dice et opinione di
alcuno e forse la verit che 176), and concludes his petition to the
64 Speaking Spirits
spirit by reiterating that he asks in order to learn from Guido the truth
(e per desidero dintendere da te se questo il vero, 178). According
to an understanding of omniscence present also in Dantes Commedia,
Manetti suggests that, after the spirits physical death, it gazes continu-
ally into the face of God; that is to say, it sees every truth, so nothing must
be unknown or hidden from the spirit (niente credo che ti sia incognito
o nascosto, 178). Manetti notes that it must therefore be annoying to
the spirit that there remains no reliable or certain knowledge about him
and his family in Manettis time: n ti debbe esser molesto che di te e
de tuoi antichi intra noi sabbia ferma e certa notizia (178).
Earlier in the dialogue, Guidos spirit told Manetti that his searching
and straining to see truth in the figure of his ghostly appearance would
come to naught, since the only ways of gaining information about him
was through his writings, through those who had left writings about
him, or ultimately through his descendants. Manetti struggled through-
out his own life to gain knowledge, especially since he did not know
Latin and depended on others, including Ficino, to help him understand
works written in Latin or other languages besides Florentine Italian. He
may also have wrestled with the tension between the truth that is gained
through reason and careful study and that which is divinely or mysteri-
ously revealed. Later in his life, Manetti would shift from his interest
here in a search for verifiable truth to join the throngs of Florentines who
put their faith in Girolamo Savonarolas fiery sermons.
It is significant that in Manettis Notizia, however, the author claims
to permit no mysterious revelation, but nevertheless finds a ruse for
including pages of information that appears to have no other chance at
confirmation than the word (never actually granted) by a fictive spirit.37
The pages concerning Cavalcantis ancestors in the Notizia are by far the
most detailed and may represent the bulk of Manettis own research
contributions to the new information concerning Cavalcanti. What
were Manettis sources for this information? He does not divulge them,
but who more than Giovanni Cavalcanti (or another Cavalcanti relative
Manetti may have known personally) might have been versed in this
family lore and eager to relate it to a researcher on this famous ances-
tor? Moreover, is there a more subtle way for Manetti both to satisfy
Giovanni Cavalcantis request to include all of the truth about his
family and famous ancestor and to acknowledge from a scholarly per-
spective that there may be absolutely no factual foundation for any of
these claims than by allowing his vision to dissolve before the spirit
can render his judgment on them?
Likewise, Manetti leaves open-ended the thorny issue of whether

some of Cavalcantis works on natural and moral philosophy are miss-
ing because his wife burned them presumably to prevent investigators
from finding proof of heterodox beliefs in them and thereby rendering
her life more difficult.38 Manetti the author of the Notizia effectively con-
veys that there may have been other writings, as some people allege, or
this view may come from envious people inventing baseless fictions.
His procedure seems to suggest critical wariness with regard to other
fictions, as well. The message of Manettis Cavalcanti when he lists
the commentaries and other sources for knowledge about his poetry
seems to be: Forget about waiting for ghosts to appear as if by magic
in your dreams; reliable knowledge comes from rigorous study of texts
and sources, and biographical information can come from descendants.
The problem is, of course, that Manetti chooses to articulate this message
precisely by means of a spirit appearing in a dream vision. Cavalcanti
in the Notizia is akin to Epimenides, the Cretan philosopher from circa
600 BC to whom is attributed the statement All Cretans are liars.39
Aware of the power of a spirit in a dream vision, Manetti turns its use
on itself, adopting a spirit narrative to articulate his message: one that
conveys humanistic scepticism concerning otherworldly visions.
Manetti makes no explicit reference in his Notizia to Boccaccios
Decameron 6.9, the tale featuring Guido Cavalcantis witty remark that
silences a group of simpleminded, unlettered men. Nevertheless, the
ultimate elusiveness of both Boccaccios narrative and the dream nar-
rative of the Notizia makes it difficult not to imagine a loose parallel
between the two. In the Decameron story, the narrator Elissa begins by
suggesting that the example of a witty retort that she is about to offer
concludes with un s fatto motto, che forse non ci se n alcuno di tanto
sentimento contato (such a quip that for sheer acumen probably beats
any of those hitherto recounted).40 She recounts a tale in which Guido
Cavalcanti one day walking through a cemetery along the Corso degli
Adimari is accosted by a group of unlettered men led by Betto Brunelles-
chi, who want to poke fun at what they perceive to be an antisocial phi-
losopher who has snubbed their company. So they challenge Cavalcanti
by saying, quando tu avrai trovato che Idio non sia, che avrai fatto?
(When youve found out that God does not exist, what will that have
got you?). Cavalcanti deflects their insult by answering, Signori, voi
mi potete dire a casa vostra ci che vi piace (Seeing that here you
are at home, my lords, you can say to me what you please). The quip
makes clear that the ignorant (for all of their self-declared belief in God)
66 Speaking Spirits
are at home among the tombs of the dead (and thus understand little of
eternal life). Vaulting over a tombstone, Cavalcanti leaves that home
and Betto to explain the philosophers meaning to his gape-mouthed
companions.
Elissas prefatory remark suggests that the reader would be wise not
to accept this explanation of a simple unlettered man, but the greater
sentimento (which, according to Vittore Branca, refers to tanta sapi-
enza or tanto senno, 753n) remains unclarified. The Notizia, with
all of its emphasis on learning every truth about Guido Cavalcanti,
remains equally reticent. After the spirit provides a tidy bibliography
of his life and works, and confirms his identity and resemblance to his
descendant Giovanni Cavalcanti, Manettis vision disappears before
the spirit can respond to Manettis ulterior requests for knowledge.
A case might be made for consideration of Antonio Manettis Notizia
di Guido Cavalcanti as a touchstone for later authorial eidolopoeia, such
as Ficinos and Benivienis in the next chapter. Manettis close personal
friendship and intellectual exchange with both Ficino and Benivieni are
well documented, and it is unthinkable that Ficino or Benivieni would
not have been aware of Manettis Notizia. In fact, the authorial visions
of both Ficino and Benivieni share Manettis primary concerns with the
revelation of truth and, to a greater degree in subsequent texts, with
the consequences of migration and political exile. (Manetti alludes to
the relocations of Cavalcanti family members in the long section about the
familys ancestry, but he does not politicize it in the way that Ficino and
Benivieni will. Instead, Manetti seems deliberately to downplay politi-
cal differences, emphasizing, for instance, Cavalcantis expressed
admiration for Dante and their share in the legacy of Florentine poetry.)
But unlike Manetti, Ficino relies entirely on divine revelation in the form
of a vision he creates of Dantes coronation. Benivieni also claims to
learn much more from confirmation by the spirit of Dante than Manetti
learns from the spirit of Cavalcanti, since Benivieni will not wake from
his sleep, as I shall discuss in the next chapter, until after the spirit of
Dante upbraids turn-of-the-sixteenth-century Florentines and utters
his prophecy for the citys future. It should be remembered, too, that
Manetti was personally involved in the Florentine attempts to repatri-
ate Dantes bones, penning the 1476 letter addressed to Lorenzo de
Medici reminding him to insist on Dantes translation from Ravenna.
In short, while subsequent writers may have been aware of Manettis
Notizia, they do not share his pessimism in the rhetorical potential for
this form of eidolopoeia or perhaps, rather than pessimism, I should
say his insistence on the distinction between knowledge that can be had
from reliable textual sources and the words that can be projected into
the mouth of a fictive spirit.
Summarizing the Concerns of Authorial Eidolopoeia
All three of these examples of eidolopoeia focus deliberately on at least

some of the tasks of the writer (including understanding the duties
and responsibilities of recording the stories of others; researching, edit-
ing, or translating texts written by others; and securing the permission
or authority to publish ones work). Bagli, Malipiero, and Manetti, in
their inclusion of a narrative featuring a fictive spirit of their original
texts historical author, also fundamentally engage the spirit of the
original work; that is, Bagli, Malipiero, and Manetti must come to terms
and they do so in differing ways with the intent or aims of the works
they revise. At the same time, these editors end up changing more than
the letter of the text; they also change the spirit so to speak of
their original authors; and of the three authors, Malipiero most radi-
cally revises not just the text of Rerum vulgarium fragmenta but also
Petrarch, as represented by the spirit, effectively editing the historical
poets personal characteristics and other aspects of his identity. Works
featuring the spirits of deceased literary luminaries can influence the
course of subsequent writings. But Renaissance writers, who emulate,
cite, and otherwise pay tribute to their predecessors, also prove that
they can rewrite those authors when their masters do not quite embody
the desired critical or ideological positions within their fifteenth- and
sixteenth-century cultural debates or literary tastes. Crafting sophisti-
cated mimesis, layering textuality, and representing canonicity are just
some of the ways that these early modern writers attempt to establish
writerly authority.41 Storytellers who figure authorial spirits in the form
of eidolopoeia add some unique considerations to their establishment
of authority. In particular, the spirit, the figure of the storyteller vis--
vis the spirit, and the content of the message reportedly communicated
between the two figures influence in a special way the strategies of
authority within the example of eidolopoeia.
The mode of communicating the message by means of a spirit
invented by the storyteller frames its reception. The effect of the spir-
its message would certainly be different if the message were articu-
lated by a living rival poet, an allegorical figure, or a fictional character.
At first glance, it might seem as if articulation of an important message
68 Speaking Spirits
by means of a spirit would undermine the messages authority because

a ghostly figure makes the message less verifiable (a third party can-
not ask the spirit to clarify or elaborate the argument), and therefore
less credible. Just the opposite, however, actually seems to be the case:
the spirit appears to have more authority, perhaps in part because this
speaker, though fictional, is perceived as having more experience: The
character of the dead spirit has seen both life and death, while living
readers know only their experiences of life. Moreover, the storyteller,
by claiming an intermediary role, becomes the privileged percipient of
the ghost, as well as the interpreter of its message. As such, the narrator
assumes an unusual power, since most people do not claim to com-
municate with ghosts. The storyteller, in a role similar to a medium,
becomes the only one who can report the spirits message (which is,
of course, the message of the storyteller), and, consequently, others are
at a comparable disadvantage to challenge the validity of that message.
For this very reason, the messages that spirits are created to articulate
are frequently controversial or highly subjective. Their judgments or
assessments may have no other way of being proven or verified inde-
pendently. In the face of no other evidence, for instance, ghosts declare
that one version of a text is definitive, or they declare that a dead author
has approved post-mortem changes to his text. Antonio Manetti, for
one, found a way to caution against taking this rhetorical ploy too far,
but this form of eidolopoeia was already firmly established and begin-
ning to develop in even more complicated ways.
2 Divining Dante: Scandals
of His Corpus and Corpse
INGRATA PATRIA NE OSSA QUIDEM HABEBIS
O ungrateful country, you will not have my bones.

From the epitaph that Publius Cornelius Scipio
Africanus was said to have dictated for his tomb
Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio hardly manage to rest in peace after

their deaths in 1321, 1374, and 1375 respectively, at least not accord-
ing to various fifteenth- and sixteenth-century narratives featuring
their ghostly spirits. Instead of basking in Gods one Eternal City,
authorial ghosts express concerns about exile and where they have
been buried or where their spirits claim currently to reside. At least
at some point during their lifetimes the Three Crowns declared
themselves to be Florentine, despite the fact that only Dante was
born in Florence and could boast of having spent much of his life
there. None of the three authors received burial in the city. To this
day Ravenna stalwartly guards Dantes remains, while Boccaccio
rests in the Church of Saints Jacopo and Filippo in Certaldo, and
Petrarch has his tomb in Arqu, so moving to visitors over the cen-
turies, including Girolamo Malipiero, as witnessed in the previous
chapter.
In chapter 1, I examined some authorial eidolopoeia that encouraged
living writers to do their jobs, that is, to write, edit, or translate texts. In
many of those cases, such as the ones presented by Bagli and Malipiero,
the spirits of poets past serve to voice the opinions of Bagli and Malip-
iero, not opinions that might even be considered remotely verisimilar to
70 Speaking Spirits
those held by Boccaccio or Petrarch during their lifetimes. In this chap-

ter, I focus more specifically on the example of Dante. Dantes spirit is
by far the most frequent interlocutor in Italian authorial eidolopoeia of
the Renaissance, and his spirit already appears very shortly after his
death.
The integrity of Dantes written corpus was in doubt when, accord-
ing to a legend first forwarded by Boccaccio, nobody could account
for the final thirteen cantos of Dantes Commedia at his death.1 The first
tale featuring a speaking spirit of Dante examined in this chapter seeks
to explain the completion of Dantes Paradiso. The central sections of
this chapter investigate Florentine attempts to recover Dantes corpse
from his tomb in Ravenna, including narratives by Antonio dOrsino
Benintendi, Marsilio Ficino, and Girolamo Benivieni, who portray the
spirit of Dante complaining about his continued exile from his Floren-
tine homeland. These examples serve to illustrate how Dantes spirit
came to be used in attempts to influence political decisions concerning
exile and the reintegration of the body politic.
Jacopo Alighieri Claims to Speak with

His Deceased Fathers Spirit
According to Boccaccios account in his Trattatello in laude di Dante (Lit-

tle Treatise in Praise of Dante, also sometimes referred to simply as The
Life of Dante, composed in three drafts between 1351 and before 1372)2
and the scholarly tradition that followed, it was not clear where the
final thirteen cantos of the Paradiso were when Dante died:3
Egli era suo costume, quale ora sei o otto o pi o meno canti fatti navea,
quegli, prima che alcuno altro gli vedesse, donde che egli fosse, mandare
a messer Cane della Scala, il quale egli oltre ad ogni altro uomo avea in
reverenza; e, poi che da lui eran veduti, ne facea copia a chi la ne volea.
E in cos fatta maniera avendogliele tutti, fuori che gli ultimi tredici canti,
mandati, e quegli avendo fatti, n ancora mandatigli, avvenne che egli,
senza avere alcuna memoria di lasciargli, si mor.4
It was [Dantes] custom, when he had finished six or eight cantos, more
or less, to send them, from wherever he might be, before any other person
saw them, to Messer Cane della Scala, whom he held in reverence beyond
all other men. After [Cangrande della Scala, Lord of Verona] had seen
them, Dante would make a copy of the cantos for whoever wished them.
Divining Dante 71
In such wise he had sent Messer Cane all save the last thirteen cantos
and these he had written when he died without making any provision
therefor.
Dantes surviving family members and his close associates searched

carefully through all of his papers and effects for eight months, but
failed to find any sign of the Commedias finale, the exquisite cantos
describing Dantes ascent with Beatrice through the spheres of Saturn,
the fixed stars, and the Primum Mobile, to the ineffable vision of Gods
Empyrean. Boccaccio affirmed that Dantes sons Jacopo and Piero,
encouraged by disconsolate friends, attempted to pen an ending to
the masterpiece, but they met with no success. One night a mirabile
visione (485; remarkable [or wondrous] vision, 65) came to Jacopo,
who was considered the better poet of the two brothers, and it caused
them to abandon, in Boccaccios words, their stolta presunzione (485;
foolish presumption, 65) to finish their fathers work. That same
vision also indicated to Jacopo where he could find Dantes missing
pages of the manuscript.
Jacopo purportedly sees Dante in a dream vision one night near
dawn when, traditionally, prophetic or trustworthy visions are believed
to come. Dantes spirit is vestito di candissimi vestimenti e duna luce
non usata risplendente nel viso (485; clad in the whitest raiment, and
his face shone with unwonted light, 66). Jacopo asks the figure in the
vision if it is still alive, and he learns that his father no longer endures
the first (mortal) life. Jacopo continues to question the spirit, asking
if Dante has finished writing his masterpiece before passing from this
world and, if so, where it is, since no one has been able to find it (se
egli avea compiuta la sua opera anzi il suo passare alla vera vita, e, se
compiuta lavea, dove fosse quello che vi mancava, da loro giammai
non potuto trovare, 485):
A questo gli parea la seconda volta udire per risposta: S, io la compie;

e quinci gli parea che l prendesse per mano e menasselo in quella camera
dove era uso di dormire quando in questa vita vivea; e, toccando una parte
di quella dicea: Egli qui quello che voi tanto avete cercato. (485)
And again he seemed to hear in answer, Yes, I finished it. And then it
seemed to him that his father took him by the hand and led him to the
room where [Dante] was wont to sleep when alive, and touching a spot
there, said, Here is that for which thou hast so long sought. (66)
72 Speaking Spirits
Jacopo then awakens from his dream and determines to test the truth-
fulness of the spirits message straight away. So he goes to the house
of Piero Giardino, a long-time disciple of Dante, and relates to him
his entire vision, entreating Giardino to accompany him to the place
indicated by Dantes spirit to vedere se vero spirito o falsa delusione
questo gli avesse disegnato (485; learn whether it was a true spirit or
a false delusion that had revealed this to him, 66). The two men set off
together, still before daybreak, according to Boccaccio, to examine the
place that Dantes spirit had indicated:
quivi trovarono una stuoia al muro confitta, la quale leggiermente leva-

tane, videro nel muro una finestretta da niuno di loro mai pi veduta, n
saputo che ella vi fosse, e in quella trovarono alquante scritte, tutte per
lumidit del muro muffate e vicine al corrompersi, se guari pi state vi
fossero: e quelle pianamente dalla muffa purgate, leggendole, videro con-
tenere li tredici canti tanto da loro cercati. (4856)
They found a matting fastened to the wall. Gently lifting this, they dis-
covered a little opening which neither of them had ever seen or known of
before. Therein they found some writings, all mildewed by the dampness
of the wall, and on the point of rotting had they remained there a little
longer. Carefully cleaning them of the mold, they read them, and found
that they were the long sought thirteen cantos. (66)
Jacopo and Giardino have copies made of the pages and, following
Dantes custom, send them first to Cangrande della Scala.
According to nineteenth-century scholar Pier Desiderio Pasolini:
Quando, un otto mesi dopo la morte di Dante, come risulta da un son-
etto e da un capitolo di Jacopo, la Commedia apparve intiera, i figliuoli
ed i discepoli ebbero il senso che Dante fosse risorto!5 (When some
eight months after Dantes death, as indicated by a sonnet and capitolo
by Jacopo, the Comedy appeared whole, his sons and disciples had the
sense that Dante was risen from the dead!). Vincenzo Zin Bollettino, an
English translator of Boccaccios Trattatello, rightly noted, the whole
episode of the dream of Dantes son Iacopo is given a fantastic, non-
realistic treatment.6 According to Giuseppe Billanovich, Boccaccios
anecdote concerning the rediscovery of Dantes final cantos is the inven-
tion of a storyteller influenced not only by classical biographies, but
also by the legends of the saints.7 Debates concerning exactly how much
material from the Trattatello sprang from the pure fantasy of Boccaccio
Divining Dante 73
closely parallel the notoriously vexata quaestio surrounding the authen-

ticity of the letter to Ilaro in Boccaccios Zibaldone Laurenziano, an ongo-
ing critical exchange that exceeds the purview of the present study.8
While the critical bibliography on Boccaccio Dantista is vast both in
quantity and quality in terms of this question of the Paradisos final
cantos, the foundation for scholarly facts seems shaky at best. Never-
theless, Giorgio Padoans characterization strikes a reasonable balance:
Non crederemo, ovviamente, al raccontino agiografico, che discende da

tradizione retorica e che pieno di particolari topici (a cominciare dal
mese del ritrovamento: nono dalla morte di Dante). Ma esso, come tutte le
storielle, nasconder pure un fondo di verit: quando Boccaccio scriveva
il Trattatello, Pietro Alighieri era ancora vivo e vegeto. Crederemo non
al sogno, ma al fatto: lultima parte del Paradiso, i canti XXIXXXIII, era
rimasta inedita presso i figli del poeta, che ne attendevano la pubblicazi-
one da colui cui lintera cantica era stata dedicata. Forse dopo nuove inu-
tili sollecitazioni, rotti gli indugi, attribuendone la volont al loro stesso
genitore apparso in sogno, furono i figli a prendere liniziativa e a pub-
blicare con gli ultimi tredici canti, il Paradiso nella sua compiutezza, indip-
endentemente da Cangrande. Probabilmente in quelloccasione Jacopo
invi a Guido da Polenta, con la copia dellopera paterna, la sua Divisione
ossia il capitolo riassuntivo dellintero poema, a mo di accompagnamento
esegetico, il 1 aprile 1322.9
Obviously, we shall not believe [Boccaccios] little hagiographic tale, which

springs from a rhetorical tradition and is full of topical details (including
the month in which the work was found: the ninth after Dantes death).
But like all of Boccaccios little stories, this one also hides a grain of truth.
When Boccaccio wrote the Trattatello, Pietro Alighieri was still alive and
well. We should believe not the dream but this fact: the last part of
the Paradiso, cantos 2133, remained unpublished and in the possession
of the poets sons who expected its publication by the man to whom the
entire canticle had been dedicated. Maybe after more useless requests to
Cangrande, fed up with his delays, attributing the desire to publish the
work to their own father who appeared in a dream, the sons themselves
took the initiative to publish those final thirteen cantos together with the
rest of the Paradiso independently of Cangrande. On the first of April 1322,
Jacopo probably sent to Guido da Polenta his fathers work, along with his
own Divisione, that is his work summarizing the whole poem as a kind of
accompanying exegesis.
74 Speaking Spirits
Padoans hypothesis suggests that Dantes cantos were never missing

in the first place. Delays on the part of Cangrande della Scala in the pub-
lication process led Dantes sons to seek an alternate patron in Guido da
Polenta, to whom Jacopo sent his exegetical work. Padoan also appears
to be discounting Boccaccios timeline, since the dates given indicate
that just over six months (not eight or nine) would have passed since
the poets death in September 1321.
But is the impetus for Boccaccios eidolopoeia so clear? Since at least
1436, when Leonardo Bruni wrote in a prefatory note to his Vita di Dante
(Life of Dante) that Boccaccio had composed the Trattatello as if he were
composing one of his romances, tutta damore et di sospiri et di cocenti
lagrime (all full of love and sighs and burning tears),10 critics have
cast doubt on the historical truth of Boccaccios account. Not surpris-
ingly, Bruni did not include any explicit mention of the ghostly vision of
Dante in his biography of the poet. In fact, most of the early biographers
of Dante left out any mention of the missing cantos of Dantes Paradiso.
One exception was Giannozzo Manetti (13961459).11 Greatly indebted
to both Boccaccios Trattatello and Brunis Vita di Dante, Manettis Vita
Dantis (Life of Dante, 1440) revives all the fanciful accounts that in the
course of the Trecento had created a legendary aura around the Flo-
rentine poet, starting with the dream of Dantes pregnant mother,12
while it follows Brunis example in emphasizing the patriotic and civi-
cally engaged aspects of Dantes life. In referring to the dream featuring
Dantes spirit, however, Manetti stated very explicitly his motivation
for repeating it. He is citing proof for his timeline establishing the
length of time Dante laboured on his poem from the point when he
circulated the first seven cantos of the Inferno, which is the subject that
immediately precedes Manettis mention of the missing cantos of the
Paradiso:
Non multis deinde ante mortem suam diebus ultimas manus divino
poemati imposuit absolvitque. Id ex eo constat, quod post obitum suum
mirabilia quaedam contigisse dicitur, quae hoc ipsum apertissime decla-
rarunt. Nam cum scripta quaedam, in quibus aliquot ultimi Paradisi can-
tus continebantur, nondum integro volumini apposuisset sed in quodam
occulto aedium loco abscondisset, ut forte opportunum componendi tem-
pus praestolaretur, ac per hunc modum opus imperfectum appareret, ecce
umbra defuncti poetae Jacopo, cuidam ex filiis suis maiori natu et impri-
mis de imperfectione operis sollicito atque ansio, in somniis apparuisse
fertur; qua quidem visione filium admonitum fuisse dicunt ubi illa ultima
Divining Dante 75
Comoediae scripta abstrusa laterent, ac per hunc modum ab eo postea

summo mane quaesita, ut in somniis fuerat admonitus, tandem adinventa
fuisse. Se quorsum haec tam multa de huiusmodi somniis dicet quispiam?
Ut luce clarius appareat id quod paulo ante expressimus: vigintiquinque
circiter annos illud divinum poema fuisse absolutum atque emendatum.
It was only a few days before his death that he put the final touches on
the divine poem and completed it. The clearest possible evidence of this is
offered by the miraculous episodes that are said to have taken place after
his death. In fact, he had hidden in a cranny of his house some sheets con-
taining the last cantos of Paradise, waiting for the right time to add them
to the rest of the poem which for this reason seemed still incomplete.
The story is told that one night the shade of the dead poet appeared in a
dream to Jacopo, his eldest son, who was the person most concerned and
anxious to see the poem finished. They say that in the vision the son was
told where those last cantos of the Comedy were hidden. Early the follow-
ing morning he started looking for them and finally found them, exactly
as he had been told in the dream. Some may wonder why I speak so much
of dreams like this. I do so in order to give the clearest proof of my earlier
claim, namely, that it took him about twenty-five years to finish and polish
that divine poem. (569)13
Manettis words seem to suggest that Dantes delay in sending the last
cantos to Cangrande might be a prudent publication strategy (wait-
ing for the right time to add them to the rest of the poem). Moreover,
Manetti must not have felt it necessary to include a witness (Giardino)
in his account of the relocation of the cantos, as Boccaccio did. But Boc-
caccios motivation for initiating the narrative featuring Dantes spirit
remains less clear.
Ultimately, Boccaccios invention of this vision of a spirit may raise
more questions than it is likely capable of answering. But I wonder if
in 1322 there may have been some doubt concerning the authentic-
ity of those thirteen cantos. Boccaccios account suggests, in fact, that
Dantes sons had been encouraged to complete Dantes masterpiece. It
is not inconceivable to imagine that in a significant period of six to nine
months the sons, or perhaps other disciples or admirers of Dantes work,
were beginning to sharpen their quills. Although there is no evidence
that competing drafts of the end of the Paradiso ever existed, it may be
that Boccaccio felt the need to discredit or to dispel any mere potential
misgivings that the mysteriously delayed or reappeared cantos might
76 Speaking Spirits
not be from Dantes own hand. A narrative in which the spirit of Dante
himself is represented as offering the definitive version of the poem
would likely be, from Boccaccios perspective, the strongest evidence
for what may very well have been a tricky philological explanation for
the long-missing cantos.
By rising from their secret burial in the chink in a wall in Ravenna,
the cantos of the Commedia received new life in public circulation. One
might assume that if ever Dantes spirit had reason to roam among
the living, this act of locating and publishing the conclusion of his
masterpiece would permit him at last to find rest. Much more about
Dantes passing remained unresolved, however, at least according to
the famed poets surviving countrymen. Dantes death in exile contin-
ued to prompt in the hearts and minds of Florentine patriots a desire
to make amends. Their primary objective became to honour Dante by
translating his remains from Ravenna to a tomb inside the walls of the
city. It was an objective suggested by Boccaccio in another section of his
Trattatello.
Boccaccio on Civic Ingratitude
Boccaccios writings also hold a crucial key to understanding the

honour due to deceased poets and the ideological use of their spirits.
Boccaccios biography of Dante acknowledges a profound interest in
establishing the importance of honouring poets. Citing Solon, Boccaccio
asserts that all republics stand on two feet, one of which is the punish-
ment of crimes and the other, the rewards for virtuous deeds. Without
both, the republic hobbles, if it manages to stand at all. In his Trattatello,
Boccaccio upbraids Florentines for not properly remunerating Dantes
achievements, instead banishing him and leaving his bones buried in
foreign soil:
Oh scellerato pensiero, oh disonesta opera In luogo di quegli, ingi-

usta e furiosa dannazione, perpetuo sbandimento, alienazione de
paterni beni, e, se fare si fosse potuto, maculazione della gloriosissima
fama, con false colpe gli fur donate. Delle quali cose le recenti orme
della sua fuga e lossa nelle altrui terre sepulte alquante ancora ne
fanno chiare. (438)
O iniquitous design! O shameless deed! Instead of these rewards

there was meted to him an unjust and bitter condemnation, perpetual
Divining Dante 77
banishment with alienation of his paternal goods, and, could it have been
effected, the profanation of his glorious renown by false charges. The
recent traces of his flight, his bones buried in an alien land still in part
bear witness to these things. (10)
By writing the Trattatello, Boccaccio, who claimed to be a part,

though a small one, of that same city (11; conoscendo io me essere
di quella medesima citt, avvegna che picciola parte, della quale,
439), aimed to correct the injustice by offering praise to Dante, and in
the Florentine language, concluding that he did so in order to keep
foreigners from accusing Florentines of ingratitude: Di queste [let-
tere povere] ho, e di queste dar, acci che igualmente, e in tutto e in
parte, non si possa dire, fra le nazioni strane, verso cotanto poeta la
sua patria essere stata ingrata (439; Of these [poor words] I have,
and of these will I give, that other nations may not say that his native
land, both as a whole and in part, has been equally ungrateful to so
great a poet, 11).14
It particularly pained Boccaccio that Dantes bones remained in
Ravenna, and the wound of burial outside ones homeland was
reopened when Petrarch died in 1374. In a letter to Petrarchs son-in-
law, Francescuolo da Brossano, Boccaccio wrote from Certaldo of Flo-
rentine ingratitude toward her poets, first Dante and now Petrarch.
Boccaccio insists repeatedly on his Florentine citizenship in the letter:
Verum iam decimus elapsus est mensis postquam in patria publice
legentem Comediam Dantis (it is now ten months since, while I was in
my city giving public readings of Dantes Comedy).15 In fact, Boccaccio
specifies, Florence is his native city, while Certaldo is the country of his
ancestors: avitum Certaldi (5.1.724).
The news that Petrarch wished to be buried in Arqu causes Boccac-
cio to lament: Invideo Florentinus Arquati, videns illi aliena humilitate
magis quam suo merito tam claram felicitatem fuisse servatam, ut sibi
commissa custodia sit corporis eius, cuius egregium pectus acceptis-
simum Musarum et totius Helyconis habitaculum fuit (5.1.7268; I,
a Florentine, envy Arqu, seeing that through the baseness of others
rather than any merit of its own, it has been granted the rare felicity of
having committed to its custody the body of him whose noble breast
was the most acceptable shelter of the Muses and of all Helicon, 280).
Now, Boccaccio continues, people from all over the world will hon-
our Arqu, hardly known even by the inhabitants of the nearby city of
Padua, as the resting place of Petrarch, just as the hills of Posilippo
78 Speaking Spirits
are honoured by the bones of Virgil, and Smyrna, by those of Homer.

Boccaccio continues:
Heu! Infelix patria, cui nati tam illustris servare cineres minime datum
est, cui tam preclara negata Gloria! Equidem tanti fulgoris indigna est.
Neglexisti, dum viveret, illum trahere et pro meritis in sinu collocare
tuo; vocasses, si scelerum artifex, si proditionum faber, si avaritie invi-
die ingratitudinisque sagax fuisset offensor! Mallem tamen, qualiscunque
sis, tibi hic quam Arquati contigisset honor. Sic factum est, ut vetus veri-
tatis servaretur sententia: Nemo susceptus est propheta in patria sua.
(5.1.728)
O luckless fatherland, to whom it was not granted to preserve the ashes of

such an illustrious son, to whom such rare glory was denied! To be sure,
thou art unworthy of such splendor inasmuch as while he lived thou didst
take no care to draw him to thee and give him a merited shelter in thy
bosom. Thou wouldst have called him to thee had he been an architect
of crimes, a forger of treacheries, a guileful champion of avarice, envy, or
ingratitude. Yet, even so, I would that this honor had gone to thee rather
than to Arqu. But it has so fallen out in order that the truth of the old say-
ing might be confirmed: No man is a prophet in his own country. (2801)
Not only does Boccaccio here compare Petrarch to a prophet, but in

his lofty praises in the passage that follows he asserts that, like Christ
who chose as mother a lowly virgin girl, Petrarch chooses modest Arqu
over queenly Florence.
In the same letter, there is also a curious passage in which Boccaccio
states that tombs are more important for the lowly, unlettered social
classes than for learned people:
Satis tamen credibile est quoniam in conspectu eruditorum parvi momenti

erit, cum sepulti virtutes, non ornamenta cadaverum prospectentur a tali-
bus, quibus ipse se sole clariorem hactenus multis in voluminibus fecit;
verum ignaris erit monimentum. Horum enim libri sculpture sunt atque
picture, et insuper causa percunctandi quisnam tam grandis in eo iaceat
homo. (5.1.730)
Yet possibly it may be of small importance in the eyes of scholars, for the
virtues of the one buried rather than the ornaments of his cadaver are
held in regard by those among whom he made himself through his many
Divining Dante 79
volumes more luminous than the sun. However, it will be a memorial to

the ignorant whose books are paintings and sculptures, and it will be fur-
ther stimulus to inquire what kind of man lies therein. (281)
In fact, one might say that the tombs and monuments that Florentines
wanted to erect in the citys most important churches were seen as pub-
lic relations acts that might galvanize the populaces patriotic spirit as
much as they were a recognition for the dead exemplar. According to
Andrew Butterfield:
Monuments, of course, are not intended primarily to stimulate private or

personal memories; rather, they are typically directed toward the public,
corporate, and social commemoration of excellence and virtue. Funerary
monuments are constructed to confer fame on exemplary individuals. But
all honor is social. In celebrating individuals, monuments commemorate
them as members of groups, albeit as special and distinguished members.16
At least some of these civic monuments to Dante would not be in

marble.
Before proceeding to the examination of other stories featuring
speaking spirits, I need to open a parenthesis concerning the very literal
translation of Dantes corpse and the public translation, or explica-
tion, of his poetic corpus upon the cattedra in the Florentine Cathedral.
This next section presents two examples a letter and a lecture from
1430s Florence which serve as prototypes for subsequent authors use
of Dante for their own political or ideological purposes. Leonardo Bruni
(c. 13701444), renowned historian and humanist scholar who would
rise to the office of chancellor of Florence more than once, petitioned
Ravennate authorities to return Dantes body to its fatherland by using
language very reminiscent of Boccaccios. Meanwhile, the Tolentine
scholar of Greek and Dante, Francesco Filelfo (13981481), was an out-
sider who turned these same words against pro-Florentine patriots in
his lectures on Dante for the Florentine Studio.17
Brunis Petition for the Return of Dantes

Body and the Attempt on Filelfos Life
In addition to his above-mentioned Vita di Dante of 1436, his Histo-

riarum Florentiarum (History of the Florentine People), and some other
works in which Dante figured, Bruni wrote a letter of petition dated
80 Speaking Spirits
1 February 1430 to the Lord of Ravenna, Nastasio da Polenta, requesting

the return of Dantes remains to Florence. Brunis letter was in response
to a city ordinance, on the books at that point for more than thirty years,
calling for the repatriation of the bodies of a few illustrious Florentines,
including the Three Crowns.18
Si nos universusque populus noster singulari ac precipua affectione dilec-

tioneque existit erga inclitam indeficibilemque memoriam Dantis Alagh-
erii, poete optimi atque famosissimi, nec vos necque alium quequem decet
admirari. Gloria quippe huius viri talis est ut etiam civitati nostre splen-
dorem et laudem procul dubio afferat et illustret patriam illius ingenii
lumen Cum itaque illorum cineres atque ossa in patriam reportanda et
monumentis eisdem condenda decreto patriae existant, sintque in civitate
Vestra ravennati cineres atque ossa Dantis ipsius, Magnificentiam Vestram
affectuosissime rogamus ut non difficilem sese velit exhibere circa illorum
reductionem.
Neither you nor anyone else should be astounded if we and all our people
have a singular and overwhelming affection and love for the glorious and
unfailing memory of Dante Alagherii, the excellent and most renowned
poet. This mans glory is such that he undoubtedly adds to the splendour
and renown of our city and the light of his intellect illuminates the home-
land Since therefore there exists a decree for their ashes and remains
to be brought back to the homeland and for monuments to bury them,
and given that in your city of Ravenna there are the ashes and remains
of Dante, we ask your excellency most affectionately not to oppose their
return.19
Brunis petition met with no success. In his language, it is clear that he

assumed or took for granted a point that others had not been and would
not be so quick to concede. He trumpeted universal agreement among
the Florentine people, and concerning an issue that had already been
hotly contested even among very pro-Florentine writers, including Boc-
caccio: that Florentines had an overwhelming love for the memory of
Dante, compelling enough to honour him properly in his homeland. In
actuality, Florentines treatment of Dante after his death brought upon
them many searing rebukes. The point that Dantes glory added renown
to Florence might be more doubtful than Bruni had hoped, since the
bitter exiles own language in the Commedia did not always put Flor-
ence in the most positive light. While Simon A. Gilson, whose English
Divining Dante 81
translation of Brunis passage I cite here, had a different focus for his
study on the use of Latin and the rise of the critical appreciation of the
Italian vernacular, he is absolutely correct when he notes that Dante
continued to be appropriated in order to promote a certain vision of
Florence as a pre-eminent capital of culture and learning, one which
encompasses both the contemporary revival of classicism and the ear-
lier legacy of Trecento vernacular poetry (11314). In fact, at the same
time that Bruni confidently made these claims to Ravennate officials, a
highly charged situation was brewing precisely on the cattedra of Dante
lectures in the cathedral of Florence: the Filelfo affair.
Filelfo was born near Macerata, but over the course of his tumultu-
ous lifetime was naturalized as a citizen of various states, including
Venice and Milan. He lived in Florence during discontinuous periods
of his life, most notably during the period between 1429 and 1434 when
he held a cattedra to lecture on eloquence, rhetoric, and commentaries
on Dante (in 14312). Filelfos personality he was vain, impetuous,
quick-tempered, and vengeful clearly comes across to the reader of
his Satyrae (Satires), and is confirmed by numerous testimonies of his
contemporaries, which may help to explain why his tenure in Florence
was so complicated. He came to the city with the support of Cosimo
de Medici and Medicean intellectuals, including Bruni, and on the one
hand, Filelfos lectures were praised and very well attended.20 On the
other hand, the discontinuity of his stay was due to a falling-out with
those original supporters, as Paolo Viti summarizes: Il constrasto fra il
F[ilelfo] e i suoi avversari, centrato senza dubbio su questioni culturali,
riguardava, per, anche altri aspetti, di carattere squisitamente polit-
ico (The contrast between Filelfo and his adversaries, centred without
a doubt on cultural issues, concerned also other aspects, however, that
were exquisitely political in nature).21 Filelfo was first removed from
the cattedra in October 1431 and replaced by Medici partisan Carlo Mar-
suppini (13991453) until December of the same year. Subsequently,
Filelfo became even more closely linked to the anti-Medici faction and
endured ever-escalating pressures, including expulsion from the city,
imprisonment for debt, and assault with a deadly weapon (only the
first two acts were averted; the stab wound to his face at the hands of
the Medici-supported rector of the Studio, Girolamo Broccardi, left him
permanently disfigured). When the Medici were exiled in 1433, Filelfo
penned scathing satires that made him even more a persona non grata
when they returned just thirteen months later. He joined other exiles
who were part of the anti-Medicean oligarchy, including Rinaldo degli
82 Speaking Spirits
Albizzi (13701442) and Palla di Onofrio Strozzi (13721462), in Siena.

From there he hired an Athenian assassin to murder Broccardi, Marsup-
pini, and Cosimo de Medici, an unsuccessful plot that earned Filelfo
the famous sentence in absentia to have his tongue cut out if he ever
again set foot in Florentine territories. Late in life, Filelfo was recalled to
Florence by Lorenzo de Medici, but died of dysentery before he could
be of service to him. Nonetheless, the bulk of Filelfos Florentine ora-
tions, including those referring to Dante in the 1430s, present a decid-
edly anti-Medicean stance.
In lectures that Filelfo wrote and which occasionally one of his dis-
ciples would deliver, as in the following example on 29 June 1432 in
Florences cathedral, Filelfo departed from a commentary on Dantes
poem to praise Dantes character and speak of his defence of his city:
O divino pi tosto che umano! o ardentissimo della patria difensore! o lib-

eratore della amplissima tua republica, che la vera corona per li tanti ben-
eficii che alla tua patria desti, pi che altro uomo mortale meriti! Tu solo
infinite persecuzioni duomeni per difensione della patria incorresti; tu
nelle crudeli invidie di molti scelerati per difensione de la patria intrasti;
tu tra gli apuntati coltelli e tra le taglienti spade pi volte ti trovasti, per
difensione della patria; tu finalmente in esilio fosti mandato per difen-
sione della patria. E pi ancora dir io degno di gran memoria, che nello
esilio Dante ritrovandosi, sempre la patria lodava, sempre la magnificava,
sempre la difendeva.22
Oh divine more than human! Oh most ardent defender of the homeland!

Oh liberator of your most ample republic, who, more than any man,
deserves the true crown for the countless benefits you brought to the
homeland! You alone were subject to infinite persecutions in defence of
the homeland. In defence of the homeland you became embroiled in the
cruel acts of envy many evil men commit. In defence of the homeland, you
often faced drawn daggers and razor-sharp swords; and finally in defence
of the homeland you were sent into exile. And I will add yet something
else which is worthy of being long remembered: for, Dante always praised
the homeland, always applauded it, always defended it.
The political import of Filelfos words was made even clearer when
the orator added, ora il tempo, civi pregiati, ora il tempo che per
difensione della patria non solamente le vostre ricchezze conjuniate, ma
in sino alla morte, se bisogna, vi mettiate (Now is the time, worthy
Divining Dante 83
citizens, now is the time for us, in defending the homeland, to join
together not only our wealth but our very selves, until death if needs
be, Gilson, 103). As Gilson rightly notes:
The enemy, of course, is within and Filelfos attack is directed at the family
whom the ruling oligarchy views as threatening to assume power to the
detriment of the citys freedom and its best political traditions. Dante has,
in short, become a Republican rallying-cry in a manipulation of his name
which is, on Filelfos part, an especially cynical one. An outsider, profes-
sional rhetorician, and astringent controversialist, who is clientelistically
linked to the anti-Medici faction, he seizes on the opportunity to make use
of Dante as a politically charged symbol at a time of tumultuous factional
rivalry. (103)
While some Dante commentators and politicians were beginning to

adopt the memory of Dante for their own ideological statements, until
the 1430s nobody more than Filelfo politicized the deceased author of
the Commedia. This politicization of Dantes memory would necessarily
colour the tone and intent of narratives featuring his ghostly spirit in
the decades that followed.
The 1481 Florentine Edition of Dantes Divina Commedia
The 1481 edition of Dantes Commedia is a highly ambitious and care-

fully orchestrated act of civic promotion.23 The first Florentine printed
edition of Dantes masterpiece is the fruit of unparalleled collabora-
tion among some of the most prestigious cultural figures of Medicean
Florence. One is Cristoforo Landino (14241498), professor of gram-
mar and rhetoric at the Florentine Studio, who wrote the editions
complex commentary, which was indebted to humanistic, allegorical,
philosophical, linguistic, and astrological modes of inquiry. Another
is Ficino, foremost Neoplatonic philosopher of the time, who contrib-
uted a brief preface in Latin. A third is Sandro Botticelli (14451510),
the master artist who designed the works woodcut illustrations, mak-
ing even hell seem a place of remarkable lyric beauty.24 The works
intent is to be, as its modern editor Roberto Cardini puts it, la pi
compiuta e matura esposizione della dottrina linguistica, letteraria
ed estetica dellumanista, e volle essere soprattutto una rivendicazi-
one gelosa e integrale di Dante a Firenze che costituisse al contempo
unaccesa laudatio della citt25 (the most complete and mature exposition
84 Speaking Spirits
of the linguistic, literary, and aesthetic doctrine of the humanist,

and aimed to be above all a jealous and integral revindication of
Dante by Florence, that constituted at the same time a fervid laudatio of
the city). In addition to introducing the Commedia and providing a bio-
graphical account of Dante, Landino penned a lengthy proem which
spans sixty-five pages in Cardinis edition. In it, Landino presents an
Apologia nella quale si difende Dante e Florenzia da falsi calumnia-
tori (Apology in which Dante and Florence are defended from false
slanderers).26 Landino brought his familiarity with classical eloquence
to bear on a vernacular version of Florences historical and cultural apo-
gees and a crowded catalogue of her most excellent men in religious
doctrine, eloquence, music, the visual arts, law, and commerce. Even
his life of Dante becomes an exaltation of Florences Three Crowns and
the prime opportunity to promote her language:
Ma tornando alla lingua, affermo che come ne vetusti secoli prima la lin-
gua greca, dipoi la latina per gran copia di scrittori, e quali di tempo in
tempo la ripulirono, di roza e povera divenne elimata, cos la nostra e gi
da ora per la virt degli scrittori da me nominati divenuta abondante ed
elegante, e ogni giorno, se non mancheranno gli studi, pi diventer.
But going back to the language, I affirm that as in ancient ages first the
Greek language, then Latin through its great many writers who improved
it from time to time, such that from coarse and poor it was honed so our
own [language] by virtue of the writers I mentioned, has already become
rich and elegant and will become ever more so every day if studies are not
lacking.27
One could almost say that Florentines were overdue in honouring

their compatriot, because foreigners mostly non-Florentine Italians
were by their actions beginning to embarrass the Florentines for their
lack of attention to Dante. Some Florentines had been trying since
Dantes death to reclaim him from Ravenna and thus properly hon-
our their most illustrious citizen, but negotiations become even more
insistent during the half century between the 1470s and 1520s. In
1476, prominent Florentine citizen and Dante scholar Antonio Manetti
wrote a letter to Lorenzo de Medici reminding him of the promise he
made after Matteo Palmieris funeral in 1475 to demand from Bernardo
Bembo, then Venetian ambassador to Florence, that Dantes remains
be repatriated.28 In the proem to his 1481 Florentine edition of Dantes
Divining Dante 85
Commedia, Landino expressly states, addressing himself to his fellow

Florentine citizens, pe prieghi del popolo fiorentino, el quale som-
mamente lo desidera, e per vostra patria < farete > sia iure postliminii
da essilio revocato e renduto alla sua citt e collocato in quel tempio el
quale sommo e catedrale e constituitogli propria e onorata sedia, acci
che tandem si posi dove innanzi al suo essilio lungo tempo saffann per
la quiete della vostra libert29 (through the prayers of the Florentine
people who desire it most highly, and on behalf of your country you
bring him back from exile iure postliminii and render him to his city,
placing him in that temple that is the greatest cathedral constituting for
him the proper and honourable place, so that tandem he can rest where
before his exile he had long worked so that you might know peace and
liberty). When these Florentines would not manage to translate Dantes
remains, they would instead find a means of recalling him, if only in
spirit.
Meanwhile, some Dante admirers outside of Florence, including
Venetian Bernardo Bembo, were wasting no time in demonstrating
through deeds their desire to honour Dantes memory. Bembo, who
would subsequently serve as Podest and military captain on the
Ravenna campaign, completed in 1483 an impressive restoration of
Dantes tomb, which had lain in squalor for some time.30 Landino wrote
a letter to Bembo later that same year remarking on the success of the
first printing of Florences edition of Dantes Commedia and, one could
say, making certain that the Venetian was aware that Florentines were
now mobilizing to reclaim Dante, or at least his spirit, which among
the Neoplatonic Florentine milieu might be said to be the higher part
of him.31 Landinos edition with its commentary was also the partisan
civic response to the popular 1477 Venetian and 1478 Milanese editions
of the Commedia.32
The presentation copy of the 1481 edition included a dedication to the
Signoria of Florence. By implication, this projects grand mobilization
of the Medici cultural circle also sought to bolster Lorenzo de Medicis
political standing in the aftermath of two important events: the 1478
Pazzi conspiracy and Lorenzo de Medicis dramatic ambassadorial
mission to the King of Naples in 147980. The first event resulted in the
death of Lorenzos brother Giuliano and Lorenzos own narrow escape
from death with a stab wound. Lorenzos trip to Naples saved Flor-
ence from invasion, but hardly consolidated his power during a time
of great fiscal and domestic social upheaval.33 Lorenzo likely looked to
his grandfather Cosimos successful public self-imaging in light of the
86 Speaking Spirits
founding of Florences Platonic Academy and library, which helped to

earn him the honorary appellation Pater Patriae, for a cultural blueprint
to solidify his own prestige.
However, it was Ficinos contribution to the 1481 edition of the
Commedia that truly exemplified the citys attempt to repossess Dante
in spirit: Florentia iam diu maesta, sed tandem laeta, Danthi suo
Aligherio, post duo ferme saecula iam redivivo et in patriam resti-
tuto ac denique coronato, congratulatur (153; Florence, long sad
but joyful at last, warmly congratulates its poet Dante, who has come
back to life and to his homeland for a glorious crowning after an
absence of two centuries).34 In his preface, Ficino praises Landino as
the vessel containing the reborn spirit of Dante. Ficino speaks in the
guise of Florence herself, who has sadly mourned Dantes long exile.
Dantes prophecy in Paradiso 25.19 that he would one day receive
the laurel crown in the Baptistery has been fulfilled now, he states.
Dantes father Apollo, moved to pity by the poets long exile and
Florences weeping, sends Mercury to the piae Christophori Landini
divini vatis menti (153; devout mind of the divine poet Cristoforo
Landino, 180). Mercury metamorphoses into the image of Landino
and through a miraculous virga gives Dante life and the wings to
return to his city to receive Apollos crown. Florence exclaims, O
quam pulcriorem quamve beatiorem nunc te, dulcis nate, recipio,
quam amiserim! (153; O dear son, how much more distinguished
and blessed you are now than when I lost you! 180). Dante once left
Florence in his human aspect, but he returns in a truly divine one. At
his coronation, Dante is taken up to heaven, a nullis amplius visae,
hodie nobis manifeste corruscant (154; The flames of the empyrean
have never been more visible than they are today, shining brightly
for us, 180), to the tune of the harmony of the nine spheres and the
angelic hierarchy.
Not incidentally, Ficino emphasizes Dantes Florentine citizenship or
Florences repossession of the poet at least six times, culminating in a
personified Florence welcoming Dante home and inviting her citizens
to rejoice with all of heaven in Dantes return from exile.35 Such asser-
tions suggest an almost hyperbolic apophasis: Ficino openly denies
the truth by repeatedly exaggerating the contrary. Florence truly has
not managed to recall Dante physically to his homeland, so now can
only do so rhetorically and symbolically. Moreover, historical attempts
to translate Dantes body, prompting and being prompted by literary,
symbolic representations of that act, indicate that the intellectual value
Divining Dante 87
of Dante remains linked to the public value of his body for the body
politic.
Girolamo Benivienis 1506 Edition

of Dantes Divina Commedia
When the next Florentine edition of the entire Commedia was published
in 1506, the political and cultural climate of the city was radically dif-
ferent.36 Editor Girolamo Benivieni (14531542) lived through those
transitions from Medicean Florence to a Savonarolan-inspired govern-
ment, then to a phase of arrabbiati reprisals following the execution of
Girolamo Savonarola in 1498. These events had a profound impact on
Benivieni and his poem published with the 1506 edition of the Commedia,
the Cantico in laude di Dante. Like its 1481 predecessor with its tour de
force of patriotic and allegorical interpretation by Landino, the 1506 edi-
tion promotes an agenda of civic pride. Nevertheless, the 1506 versions
frame implicitly exalts not a Medicean and mythologized Florence, as
Landinos edition did, but one favourably influenced after the 1490s by
Savonarolas zealous call to spiritual repentance. What is particularly
striking about the 1506 version is how the works editor articulated this
new civic vision in the editions proem: as a prophecy received directly
from the spirit of Dante. This proem, a 199-line poem in terza rima in evi-
dent imitation of a Dantean canto, is the next focus of analysis, offering
opportunities to consider the literary, ethical, and political dimensions
of Benivienis use of eidolopoeia.37
Benivienis development as an author parallels closely that of Bot-
ticelli in art: both men flourished in Lorenzo de Medicis intellec-
tual circle, subsequently repudiating aspects of this period of their lives
when they embraced the moral reforms of the Dominican friar. Benivi-
eni came to cultural prominence as a teenager, delighting the Medicean
cultural milieu with his astonishing ability to recite poems, composed
spontaneously. He also played the viol, earning for himself the nick-
name of the Other Orpheus.38 A life-threatening illness in 1470 pro-
hibited him from continuing a regular course of study. Nonetheless,
he developed in the company of leading humanists and members of
the Florentine Platonic Academy, including Ficino, Angelo Poliziano
(14541494), and Pandolfo Collenuccio (14441504). Benivieni sur-
passed many of his peers, especially in the study of Hebrew.39 He wrote
a collection of Petrarchan-style love lyrics and well-received pastoral
poems, and he cast a Boccaccian novella in verse.
88 Speaking Spirits
At Lorenzo de Medicis death in 1492, Florence was left without a

leader embodying his cultural, political, and ambassadorial acumen.
When King Charles VIII descended on the Italian peninsula with a for-
midable army to assert his rights to the Kingdom of Naples, Piero de
Medici (14721503) ignominously offered him Florentine castles and
territories. Piero was then driven into exile by a majority of Florentines
who came to rally behind Savonarola, a Ferrarese preacher who man-
aged to mitigate the devastating effects of quartering French forces in
the city of Florence by urging the king to continue his quest. The friar
backed his arguments with prophecies he claimed came directly from
God threatening grim consequences should the king not hasten to con-
tinue his march to the south. Under Savonarolas influence, Florentines
created a new government, whose centrepiece was the Great Council,
as well as transformative social programs most notably the Monte
della Piet while the fiery friar fulminated from the pulpits of San
Marco and the cathedral, demanding ever more morally rigid changes
in personal behaviour. The culmination of these moral reforms took the
form of public bonfires, known as the Burning of the Vanities, on which
citizens were encouraged to cast vices (such as gambling dice or playing
cards), luxury items (such as cosmetics, jewels, and fine clothing), and
distractions from Christian thoughts (such as classical literature or art
work inspired by pagan myths, or images of nude figures).
Benivieni experienced a profound spiritual conversion, joining Savon-
arolas followers, known as piagnoni, and shifted his literary interests to
more spiritual subjects. He translated a number of Savonarolas works
and composed some of the lauds that the Florentine populace sang in
religious processions. During the period in the 1490s when piagnone
partisans dominated Florentine government, authorities tried to recall
Dantes descendants from Verona in a gesture of spiritual repentance,
political reconciliation, and homage toward the poet.40 Their attempts,
however, were unsuccessful.
Support for the friar within Florence soon waned, as antagonistic pres-
sures from Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia, 14311503) increased
and piagnone hopes of an allied French return to Italy faded. The pope
issued an interdict against the city of Florence in 1498 and ordered
Florentines doing business in Rome arrested and their goods confis-
cated, measures that precipitated violent division within Florence. On
23 May 1498 Savonarola was hanged and burned at the stake with two
of his associates in Piazza della Signoria. The friar had disobeyed the
Roman curias calls to go to Rome to submit and answer to questions
Divining Dante 89
concerning his prophecies and other writings; he also celebrated Mass

while under the decree of excommunication.
Reprisals against Savonarolan sympathizers by the next government,
sustained principally by the compagnacci or arrabbiati faction, were swift
and severe. Simone de Filipepi (14431512) was among the piagnoni
who noted the debilitating repercussions for like-minded citizens in his
Cronaca (Chronicle):
In quello che fra Girolamo fu preso, molti huomini da bene hebbero a fug-
gire da Fiorenza, ritirandosi a qualche villa del contado, et ancora Bologna
et Siena et altrove, per non esser perseguitati da chi allhora reggeva, che
quasi tutti erano nimici della dottrina di detto Padre. Et io Simone di Mari-
ano de Philipepi menandai allhora a Bologna, dove trovai molti altri de
nostri che quivi serono rifuggiti. Degli altri che erono rimasi se ne pigli-
ava ogni di, et erono tormentati et ammoniti.41
In that [time] when fra Girolamo was taken, many good men had to flee
Florence, seeking shelter in some country houses or in Bologna or Siena or
elsewhere, so as not to be persecuted by those in power, who were almost
all enemies of the said fathers doctrine. I, Simone di Mariano de Filipepi,
went then to Bologna, where I found many others of our party who had
fled there. Of the others who remained [in Florence], some were seized
each day and were tortured and excluded [from holding public office].
But strong feelings and vindictive actions came from the other side,
as well, especially if one considers the treatment of Savonarolas execu-
tioner, Doffo Spini, who in 1503 was stoned to death and his corpse
desecrated by being kicked through the streets and dumped into the
Arno River.
It was in this dangerously high-strung environment that Benivieni
edited Dantes masterpiece and composed his Cantico. At the time,
he could confidently claim the distinction of maggior poeta in volgare,
che a Firenze fosse rimasto (the greatest poet in the vernacular who
remained to Florence).42 Unlike Landino, however, who established
a firm reputation as a Dante scholar by lecturing on Dante before he
took up editing the 1481 edition of the Commedia, Benivieni possessed
few obvious qualifications as an editor of Dantes masterpiece. Benivi-
enis reputation as a scholar of Dante probably rested primarily on the
genre and structure (perhaps more than the content) of his Commento di
Hieronymo Benivieni a pi sue canzone et sonetti dello Amore et della Belleza
90 Speaking Spirits
Divina (Commentary on Some of His Own Songs and Sonnets on Love

and Divine Beauty, 1500).43
In the Cantico Benivieni chooses language and subject matter
that clearly call to the readers mind specific and vivid situations
from the Commedia. Benivieni opens his Cantico by emulating
Dantes tendency in the Commedia to record the temporal setting of
his narrative by means of a mythological periphrasis. By speaking of
Aurora presenting herself on the balcony of the East, Benivieni recalls
the incipit of Purgatorio 9, which furnishes a model for Benivienis set-
ting of the dream narrative at sunrise, since, according to a tradition
that Dante perpetuates, early morning dreams have prophetic quali-
ties.44 By commencing in this way, Benivieni likely wishes to bolster
belief in the truth quality of the prophecy that Dantes spirit will sub-
sequently speak.
The Cantico dreams physical setting closely resembles that of
Dantes Earthly Paradise at the summit of Purgatory.45 Benivieni states
that the locus amoenus of his dream seemed to him that which Eve had
lost (quel che perdett Eva, line 18). Instead of the lone Matelda fig-
ure, however, to Benivieni appears a choir of nine ladies. Benivieni goes
on to identify Dantes spirit in the Cantico with Virgils in the Com-
media when these muses announce the presence of Dantes apparition
with the exclamation, Honorate laltissimo Poeta (line 57). These are
precisely the same words the spirit of Homer uses to greet Virgil in
Dantes Limbo: Onorate laltissimo poeta:/lombra sua torna, chera
dipartita (Inf. 4.801; Honor the highest poet: his shade returns, that
had departed).46 If in the Commedia Dante claimed for himself the sta-
tus of being sesto tra cotanto senno, the sixth among the great poets
Homer, Lucan, Ovid, Horace, and Virgil (Inf. 4.102), Benivieni not so
subtly also claims special poetic distinction for himself by receiving the
laurel crown in the dream narrative.
The physical setting of the Cantico in the Earthly Paradise also
emphasizes the issue of poetic genealogy. For Benivieni, Dante
appears in the Cantico in the same place where Virgil in the Com-
media left Dante-pilgrim. Dantes spirit affirms in the Cantico: Qui
l mio Duca lasciommi e qui si tacque (line 100; Here [in the Earthly
Paradise] my Guide left me and here he fell silent). The consequences
in terms of the civic discourse are also apparent: Dantes poem on the
literary founding of Gods Eternal City succeeds Virgils account of
Romes founding. In his turn, Benivieni presents Florence as the New
Jerusalem, the new Earthly Paradise.
Divining Dante 91
After the muses epideictic exclamation in the Cantico, Benivieni

identifies Dante as the poet honoured above all others, the one who not
only took the glory of the Italian language from Guido Guinizzelli and
Guido Cavalcanti, but also chased all other contenders from the nest.47
In this way Benivieni adopts the speech that Oderisi da Gubbio made
to Dante-pilgrim in the Commedia (Purg. 11.979), but drops entirely the
doubt that perhaps another poet is born who will outshine the two Gui-
dos.48 It is also not inconceivable that in Benivienis re-evocation of a
string of poets who brought glory to the Florentine tongue, he obliquely
discounts foreign prestige in literary questions.
This implied critique of Pietro Bembos authority becomes more
apparent in the second part of the Cantico, in which Benivieni relates
the dialogue he has with Dantes spirit. Whereas Dante was once the
living poet making his trip through the other world, now it is Benivieni,
as living poet, who records his encounter with Dantes spirit. Dante
speaks first, and his words are quite familiar: Amore,/acceso di virt,
sempre altro accese,/pur che la fiamma sua paresse fore (lines 768;
Love, sparked by virtue, always ignites another, if its flame appears
outwardly). They are the same words that Dante-author placed in the
mouth of his character Virgil, addressing them to Statius in Purga-
torio 22.1012. By referring to this particular incident in the Comme-
dia, Benivieni brings to mind an instance in which poetry became a
vehicle for prophecy, since the spirit of Statius credited Virgils words
with prompting his Christian conversion. In the Commedia, Virgil
explained how when word of Statiuss work indebted as it was to Vir-
gils own came to him in Limbo, he was sparked with great affection
for the Silver Age poet.
Dante responds similarly to Benivieni in the Cantico. It is Love
that impels Dantes spirit to descend from paradise to speak to the
Renaissance poet. In lines 1068, Dante summarizes the purpose
of his otherworldly journey and the composition of the Commedia,
stating that he wrote the poem Acci che scorta luna e laltra via/
Del ciel e dellabysso e vostri petti/Tirar potessi al ben chogn huom
disia (So that having seen both ways to heaven and to the abyss, your
hearts might be turned to the Good that everyone desires). Benivieni
shifts the Landinian reading of Dantes Commedia as the Platonic edu-
cation of the soul to an individual moral imperative. Dante was a true
poet-philosopher, whose verses contain heavenly concepts infused
by Love: Quinci e celesti miei nuovi concetti/Amor in tanti e tanti
versi effuse/Quanti sai tu che gl hai pi volti letti (lines 10911; In
92 Speaking Spirits
this way Love poured out my new heavenly concepts in lots and lots
of verses, as you know who have read them many times).49 In these
same lines Dantes spirit recognizes that Benivieni knows his Comme-
dia extremely well.50
It is at this point in the Cantico that the spirit of Dante reveals the
motivation for its appearance. The spirit requests that Benivieni edit the
Commedia. Benivieni responds with another direct citation from a still
different context in the Commedia: the encounter between Virgil and
Sordello in Purgatorio 7.1617. Benivienis words, O gloria, dissi,
de Poeti, in cui/Monstr quanto potea la lingua nostra (1245; O
glory, I said, of the Poets in whom was shown how much our lan-
guage is capable), echo precisely:
O gloria di Latin, disse, per cui

mostr ci che potea la lingua nostra,
o pregio etterno del loco ond io fui,
qual merito o qual grazia mi ti mostra?
Sio son dudir le tue parole degno,
dimmi se vien dinferno, e di qual chiostra
Oh glory of the Italians, he said, through

whom our tongue showed its power, O eternal
honor of the place I was from,
what merit or what grace shows you to me? If I
am worthy to hear your words, tell me if you come
from Hell, and from what cloister.
Benivieni effectively transfers the esteem for the Latin language in

the Sordello-Virgil encounter to praise Florentine poets, including him-
self, in this example and the next, in which Benivieni indicates Dantes
status as the first of a poetic school (l prim honour di questa scola,
Cantico, line 130). The allusion this time is to the dialogue between
Dante-pilgrim and Bonagiunta da Lucca in Purgatorio 24, where
Dante succeeded in asserting the superiority of his own poetic project
based on its direct adherence to Loves dictates.
Dantes spirit in the Cantico explains to Benivieni that the favour
granted to him to see Dantes glory comes from that Love alone. Love
reveals the divine hand that Benivieni claims as the guiding force behind
his encounter with Dantes spirit. But Dante is eager for Benivieni
to answer a doubt of his concerning the use of past tense to indicate
Divining Dante 93
provenance. The spirit of Dante wonders if Benivieni is denying his

native Florence because of political difficulties: Ma dimmi perch
dinanzi io fui dicesti/Et non pi presto del loc ondio sono?/Sarien
gi a te come gi fur molesti/A me gli fratri tuoi s che tu voglia/Per
lor sottrarti al loc ove nascesti? (lines 1348; But tell me why before
did you say, I was and not instead from the place of which I am?
Could it be that your brothers are as injurious to you as they were to me
such that you wish to abandon your birthplace on their account?). The
question cannot help but bring to mind Cavalcante de Cavalcantis
inquiry in Inferno 10. Similar to the question posed by the spirit of Guido
Cavalcantis father to Dante-pilgrim in the Commedia, this one focuses
on a misunderstanding sparked by the use of a verb in the remote past
tense. In the Commedia, Cavalcanti mistakenly believed his son to
be dead from Dantes reference to Guido with the term ebbe. In the
Cantico, the character Dante errs in thinking that Benivieni wishes to
deny Florence, the place of his birth, when Benivieni says, io fui and
not del loc ondio sono (my emphasis). Benivieni explains that he
uses the past absolute tense because he assumes he is dead, but realizes
now that this is not the case:
Et io, Perch da quest invida spoglia

Del mortal corp esser disciolto alhora
Mi parve chio fu ratto a questa soglia.
Per disse ondio fui, ma ben veggi hora

che pur di lei mi vesto anchora.
And I, Because it seemed to me that from this lowly hide

of the mortal body I was dissolved
and had been snatched to this shore,
so did I say, whence I was, but now I see clearly

that I still wear this flesh.51
However, the fact remains that Benivieni alludes in his poem to pos-
sible persecution by fellow Florentines, an issue that would give him
an incentive for penning a proem that also has a motivation of self-
defence. The literary comparison with a context in the Commedia that
deals specifically with heresy may not be accidental either. Heresy was
a charge commonly associated with Savonarola. By suggesting that
94 Speaking Spirits
Savonarolas ideas live on in him and in Florence and emphasizing the

divine sanction of his poetic mission, Benivieni may be implicitly but
pointedly contrasting Savonarolas living vision with the eternal death
of Cavalcantis heresy.
Nevertheless, there is hardly a glimpse of this suggestion of Benivi-
enis political persecution. In line 145 of the Cantico Benivieni con-
trasts his close relationship to Florence as motherland with her cruel
treatment of Dante as stepmother (La patria cha me madre, a te
noverca, Cantico, line 145). Benivienis words echo two separate
passages of Dantes Paradiso (16.5861 and 17.4651), both of which
were lines spoken by Cacciaguida and both of which contextualized
or prophesied Dantes exile.52 Despite the fact that Benivieni points out
the divergences in Florences treatment of her two poets, the compari-
son paradoxically seems to link Benivienis situation more closely, not
less closely, to his illustrious predecessors.
Benivieni notes that the way Florentines remember Dante now at the
turn of the sixteenth century is much different from the way they treated
him at the turn of the fourteenth century. In language that once again
recasts entire tercets from Dantes poem, Benivieni asserts that Dantes
once unfulfilled dream of being recognized by and welcomed back to his
native city is now a reality. At one time Florence, the metaphorical lion,
behaved in a fierce, cruel, and bitter (fero crudo e acro, lines 1489)
way toward Dante, but now she has become humble as a lamb (hor come
agnel s fatto humile, line 150). Like an Orpheus figure, Dante succeeded
in taming the civic beast by his divine song, winning over Florences cru-
elty. Benivieni says to Dantes spirit in the Cantico (lines 1516):
Che l dolce suon del tuo poema sacro

Al qual ha posto man e ciel e terra
Et che moltanni gi ti fece macro,
Vinta ha la crudelt che alhor ti serra
Fuor dellovile, ove dormivi agnello
Nimico a lupi che gli facien guerra.
The sweet sound of your sacred poem

to which both heaven and earth have plied their hands
and that for many years made you lean,
Has overcome the cruelty that once locked you
outside the sheepfold where you slept as a lamb,
enemy to the wolves that waged war on it.
Divining Dante 95
By wording his speech to the spirit of Dante in this way, Benivieni

hardly changes the vision in Paradiso 25.19 that Dante-poet had wished
for himself:
Se mai continga che l poema sacro,

al quale ha posto mano e Cielo e terra,
s che mha fatto per pi anni macro,
vinca la crudelt che fuor mi serra
del bello ovile ovio dormi agnello,
nimico ai lupi che li danno guerra,
con altra voce omai, con altro vello
ritorner poeta, e in sul fronte
del mio battesmo prender l cappello
If it ever happen that the sacred poem,

to which both Heaven and earth have set their hand,
so that for many years it has made me lean,
vanquish the cruelty that locks me out of the
lovely sheepfold where I slept as a lamb,
an enemy of the wolves that make war on it,
with other voice by then, with other fleece
I shall return a poet, and at the font
of my baptism I shall accept the wreath
Benivieni emphasizes the public monumentalization of Dante within

the city of Florence when he states that le porte li muri e pavimenti/
De limmagine tua shan fatto fregio (lines 1612; the gates, the walls,
and the walkways/are decorated with your image). But tombs, like
other kinds of monuments, are not for the dead, as much as they are
for the living. Benivieni may hail Dante now a ghostly spirit as a
prophet of the citys imminent conversion, but Dante nevertheless con-
tinues to be associated with the past: indeed Dante is literally petrified
throughout the city of Florence.
Benivienis text is an exemplification of a relationship of mutual
dependence between the living and the dead: the dead need to have
their worth and fame diffused among younger generations of the living
to maintain their memory and authoritative status, in this case, that of
altissimo poeta. But the living also need the dead. The greatness of
Florence in Benivienis time depended to a large extent on its culturally
gifted predecessors. By imitating Dante, Benivieni also contributes to
96 Speaking Spirits
his own poetic prestige. Moreover, the rhetorical strategy that Benivieni
uses is important: he effectively authorizes himself as the true editor of
the Commedia because he penned this poem in which Dante directly
confers on him that status. Nevertheless, the mutual dependence
between the living and the dead is fraught with tensions. At the same
time that Benivieni conjures the voice of Dantes spirit, he underscores
the fact that his speaker is dead merely a ghost.
It is clear that Benivieni shows much pride in the moral reforms
and artistic contributions of his city and the way she honours the
poet who brings her such great glory.53 These words are said to cause
Dantes eyes to flame like glowing coals, a direct quotation from
the Paradiso, once again from the episode between Dante-pilgrim
and Cacciaguida.54 Dantes spirit then utters his difficult prophecy:
Florences political situation is about to change, and she will be freed
from the evil ties that presently bind her. The Lion the Marzocco
representing Florence will be well punished for its sins and her
citizens will suffer, but their pains, according to Dantes spirit, are
intended as a corrective measure, so that Florence might eventually
achieve greater glory.
Benivieni deliberately chooses coded language to articulate the
prophecy, however. Lines 17880 of the Cantico are highly Dantean,
repeating word for word Beatrices exegesis of the symbolic spec-
tacle in the Comedys Earthly Paradise: Sappi che l vaso che l serpente
ruppe,/fu e non ; ma chi nha colpa, creda/che vendetta di Dio non
teme suppe (Purg. 33.346; Know that the vessel the serpent broke was
and/is no more; but let him who is to blame believe/that Gods ven-
geance fears no sop). The context of the Commedia is potentially quite
important, since Beatrice introduced these words with the injunction
that Dante-pilgrim cast off fear and shame and speak no more like
one who dreams (che non parli pi com om che sogna, Purg. 33.33).
Benivieni, who deliberately casts his entire Cantico in the form of a
dream narrative, would seem to be signalling here that what follows in
the Cantico, like what follows in Beatrices explanation, is meant
to be understood as having greater weight of truth and authority than
mere dreaming.
But particularly ambiguous, and significantly so, are the spirits final
words to Benivieni in the Cantico. Dante states: e chi lascolta non
lintenda (line 192; and may he who hears not understand). A state-
ment of this kind can lend an aura of mystery to the enunciation. It can
refer, on the one hand, to a context of Renaissance hermeticism only
Divining Dante 97
the adepts of a Neoplatonic ascension of wisdom can perceive the hid-

den significances of the prophecy. On the other hand, the statement
resonates strongly with Savonarolan prophecies and biblical overtones.
In particular, the language is reminiscent of Jesus speaking in parables.
In his words of envoi, Dantes spirit says that his soul must return to its
nest, whence with Love he came to speak. The dream ends.
In sum, the most temporally proximate Florentine edition of Dantes
complete work is a crucial point of reference for Benivienis edition.
Landino dedicates a large part of his proem to trumpeting Florences
best qualities and extolling her most notable citizens. His treatment of
the divine furor of the true poeta-vates is a veritable manifesto of Pla-
tonic Academy poetics, promoting not so incidentally its magnificent
patron, Lorenzo de Medici. In uncovering the supposed hidden signifi-
cances of Dantes poetry, Landinos interpretation actually makes Dante
a hero for the ideals of Medicean Florence.55 In fact, one of Landinos
primary concerns, as evidenced by his dedicatory oration, is in assert-
ing the superiority of Florentine culture and language, Questo solo
affermo, avere liberato el vostro cittadino dalla barbarie di molti esterni
idiomi ne quali da comentatori era stato corrotto (This alone I affirm:
my task has been to liberate your citizen [Dante] from the barbarisms
of many foreign phrases, by which his work had been corrupted by
commentators).56 Landino marshals proof for his assertion of Florences
linguistic pre-eminence by pointing out that all Italian writers worthy
to be called such have forced themselves to use Tuscan. He spurns
subtlety in conjoining linguistic and patriotic or political interests: N
solamente giudicai essere officio di buono cittadino investigare con dili-
genzia nella prefazione del libro le laude di tanto poeta, ma con quelle
ancora congiugnere le onorifiche virt della nostra republica (Nor did
I judge it my sole task in the preface of this book to investigate with dili-
gence the praises of such a poet, as any good citizen would. I also join
with those praises the honourable virtues of our Republic).57 In the way
he edits the Commedia and promotes the Florentine vernacular, Landino
is responding directly to editorial decisions made by non-Florentine
editors of the Commedia in the 1470s, especially by Martino Paolo Nido-
beato in the 1478 Milanese edition.
Twenty-five years after Landinos effort, Benivieni faces the same
task. In the Cantico, Dantes spirit asks Benivieni to restore his lyre,
that is, to re-edit the Commedia after foreign editors with ears deaf to
the Florentine language have attempted to revise the poem and judge
it on linguistic grounds. In other words, Benivieni must restore Dantes
98 Speaking Spirits
Commedia after its mistreatment by foreign editors. Although there is

no mention of Pietro Bembo by name, his 1502 Venetian edition would
seem to be the clear target, and it would prove to be a formidable adver-
sary. The similar page layout and almost identical italic typefaces accen-
tuate the way in which the 1506 edition emulates the 1502 one.58 Bembo,
with his revolutionary return to Boccaccios manuscript (Vat. Lat. 3199,
which Bembos father held in his personal library), helps to establish
a new way of reading the Commedia as a classic text and as an arte-
fact worthy of philological scrutiny. But Benivieni is ultimately more
concerned with arguing the primacy of the Commedias ethical value
over its purely linguistic one. The civic concerns at stake in Landinos
poetic project return in Benivienis Cantico, but in the service of a
much different Florence.59 In the Cantico, Benivieni creates a spirit of
Dante that serves to critique other editors mistreatment of the Comme-
dia, as well as to proclaim an uncharacteristic, Savonarolan-style proph-
ecy. The result is an authoritative judgment and command seemingly
from beyond the grave, but articulated by a living partisan in a way
most likely to deflect political dangers during a particularly vulnerable
period of time.
The Cantico thus does much more than merely introduce the text
of the Commedia or praise Dante, as its title suggests. It embodies with
great subtlety and in ways that are distinct from the 1481 Medicean
appropriation of Dantes spirit larger questions concerning the political
implications of poetic interpretation at the time.60 In particular, the 1506
Commedias editor negotiates in his Cantico a poetic-critical position
in the face of pro-Medicean cultural ties and the fiercely Republican
moral reforms of Savonarolas legacy. By putting his vision of future
Florentine civic development in the mouth of Dantes spirit, Benivi-
eni appropriates Dantes authority to promote what was in the first
years of the sixteenth century an implicitly risky ideological position.
This praise of Dante also serves not incidentally to praise Benivieni:
Dantes spirit explicitly rejoices in Benivienis reception of the poets
laurel crown.
The allusions that Benivieni in his Cantico makes to situations in
the Commedia refer back to passages in all three canticles and in effect
recast the interlocutors, Dante and Benivieni, in various Commedia guises
and revisions. The spirit of Dante in the Cantico, for instance, speaks
sometimes in Virgils words, other times in Beatrices words, still
others in Cacciaguidas. But a thread that ties all of the cited episodes
together is a particular concern with authority and prophecy. Dantes
Divining Dante 99
poem and person become the auctoritates through which Benivieni can
dare to present his Savonarolan vision for Florences future. While he
was alive, the author of the Commedia and De Monarchia represented the
position that a Virgilian empire, tempered by the spiritual sun in the
form of papal power, together held the potential for the political forma-
tion of an Earthly Paradise. However, Benivieni, influenced by Savon-
arolan denunciations of the Curia, appropriated the idol of Dante as the
mouthpiece that would herald the truth of Florences new foundation
as the Earthly Paradise that papal Rome, in its present corruption, could
no longer promise.61
It is true that with the 1506 Florentine edition of the Commedia Benivi-
eni does not respond to Bembos grand linguistic challenges. For Benivi-
eni there is much more at stake: what he sees as the moral and civic
essence of poetry. For the Florentine heirs of Brunian humanism, poetry
breaks the confines of any linguistic, self-enclosed boundaries imposed
on it to engage a wider network of moral, philosophical, and political
concerns and debates. Moreover, Benivieni wrote in a time when he
believed Florentines had repented of their ill treatment of Dante during
the final years of his life in exile and wanted to honour him in death by
translating his remains back to Florence. Benivieni, whose own situa-
tion in the politically divided city risked becoming a sad repetition of
Dantes economic ruin and exile, or worse (Benivienis ideological asso-
ciate Savonarola was burned at the stake in 1498), aimed to link himself
in every possible way in the minds of his fellow citizens with Dante. In
a striking reversal, it is Dantes spirit in the Cantico in laude di Dante
that appears to praise Benivieni and the Florence of Benivienis time.
Dantes spirit explicitly rejoices in Benivienis future reception of the
poets crown. Thus, by placing his message in the culturally authorita-
tive mouth of Dantes spirit, Benivieni managed to support indirectly
the piagnone program. Piagnoni like Benivieni could thus take refuge
behind a safe cultural icon, while making Dante the mouthpiece for
Savonarolan fulminations and prophecies that, besides being anachro-
nistic, were decidedly uncharacteristic for the author of the Commedia.
Florentine Attempts to Repatriate Dantes Bones
Soon after the publication of Benivienis 1506 edition of Dantes Comme-

dia, however, various events appeared to signal a change in Florences
fortunes and specifically the prospects of translating Dantes remains
from Ravenna to Florence. During the war of the League of Cambrai,
100 Speaking Spirits
Ravenna passed to pontifical territory in 1509. With the assistance of Fer-

dinand II of Aragon, the Medici returned from exile to Florence in 1512,
and in 1513 Lorenzos second son, Giovanni, ascended to the papacy,
taking the name of Pope Leo X. Perhaps the palleschi (or Medicean fac-
tion) in Florence would have better fortunes than the piagnoni. Repre-
sentatives of the recently revived Sacra Accademia, with permission from
the pope, seized the opportunity in 1515 to write an appeal to the papal
secretary Pietro Bembo, Bernardos son. Florentines, the letter stated, no
longer wished to honour Dantes memory merely with efficaci parole
(bold words), but also with gloriosi facti, et opere degne (glorious
actions and worthy works), and they insisted that the cardinal do all
he could to ensure the return of Dantes remains to his homeland.62 It
was an order that Bembo could not deny, but he evidently managed to
postpone taking action on the matter. Members of the Accademia fol-
lowed up twelve days later with a letter addressed directly to Pope Leo
X outlining their intentions.
The following year, in October 1516, after no progress had been made
in the case, Florentines could no longer contain their impatience. The
Accademia sent another missive to the pope. This one was written in an
urgent, almost alarmist tone and it reported that the Academys presi-
dent, Antonio dOrsino Benintendi, claimed to hear the disembodied
voice of Dante:
in diverse hore e tempi, sempre presso a lAurora havere sentito uscire

della Sacra Academia, dove lui dimora, una gran voce dicendo: Adesso,
adesso, adesso il tempo, che io uscir della odiosa tomba di Ravenna,
perch la pieta supera la malignit, come gi predissi.
at different hours and moments, but always around dawn, [Benintendi]

had heard a great voice coming from the Sacred Academy where he lived
saying: Now, now, now is the time for me to leave the odious tomb in
Ravenna, since piety now vanquishes evil, as I foretold.
As if the narrative featuring Dantes spirit were not already clear in

its intent, the letter writers followed it with their own gloss addressed
directly to the pope:
O padre sanctissimo, il divino poeta invoca il nome della Beatitudine

Vostra, della quale, et non daltri, ha gi tanto tempo profetato quella
gloria, nella quale si trova, rivo et esuberante fonte di piet, di gratia et
Divining Dante 101
misericordia, da una tanto celeste virt invocato, et al suo proprio instinto

tirato, che ogni malignit amorza con la sua piet, come in decti versi per
lui si canta. O beatissimo signore, oda la Sanctit Vostra et inclini la sua
volont alli devotissimi preghi del divino poeta, manda alla Beatitudine
Vostra, per godere in morte quel fructo che lui predisse, et che la Sanctit
Vostra in vita al presente gloriosamente si gode delle sue lunghe fatiche
et vigilie. (4.475)
O most holy father, the divine poet invokes the name of Your Holiness
from whom, and not from others, he had already long ago prophesied
that glory in which one finds the shore and exuberant font of piety,
grace, and mercy called upon by such a heavenly virtue and drawn
by his instinct that every malignity crush with its pity, as he sings in
his verses. O most blessed lord, may Your Holiness hear and incline
your will to the very devoted prayers of the divine poet, sent to Your
Blessedness in order to enjoy in death the fruits that he foretold and
that Your Holiness in life can now rejoice in through his long toils and
vigils.
Here again Florentines seem to be adopting a fictive voice of the spirit

of Dante in order to lend to their cause a more urgent, impassioned, and
authoritative air. The words rhetorically placed in the mouth of Dantes
spirit express all the anti-Ravennate partisan scorn that Florentine Acca-
demia members held in the same breath that they re-evoke lines from
Dantes poem (Par. 25.19).
When this letter still did not provoke the desired effect, the Florentines
sent Pope Leo X another more formal reminder to repatriate Dantes
bones.63 Among the signatures of the letter dated 20 October 1519 were
those of Benivieni and Michelangelo Buonarroti, who famously prom-
ised to sculpt a monument worthy of the divine poet in Florence. Pier
Desiderio Pasolini detailed the questionable circumstances in which the
popes formal authorization was carried out:
In suo nome il Presidente di Romagna aveva aggravato la citt con una

nuova tassa di cinquanta scudi doro al mese, per pagare (cos almeno
diceva) la sua guardia svizzera. Il popolo tumultua: il Magistrato dei Savi
si rifiuta al pagamento, e il Presidente relega a Cesena tutti i cittadini che
ne fanno parte. Nel triste momento in cui Ravenna privata del suo magis-
trato cittadino, rimaneva paurosa ed indifesa, noi vediamo il Presidente di
Romagna con due deputati dellAccademia Fiorentina e con fidati maestri
muratori recarsi di notte al mausoleo di Dante, e l cheti cheti, quasi come

ladri (per quanto avessero il permesso del Papa) faticosamente sollevare il
coperchio dellarca lapidea. Ma il sepolcro era vuoto!64
In his name the president of Romagna had burdened the city with a
new tax of fifty gold scudi per month to pay for his Swiss guard (or
at least this is what he said). The people rioted: the Magistrato dei Savi
refused payment and the president relegated to Cesena all the citizens
who had taken part. In that sad time when Ravenna was deprived of its
citizen magistrates and remained fearful and undefended, we see the
president of Romagna with two deputies of the Florentine Academy
and trusted expert masons go by night to Dantes tomb and there, ever
so quietly almost like thieves (though they had the popes permission),
lift with great effort the stone lid of the sarcophagus. But the tomb was
empty!
Dantes Remains Disappear until the

Nineteenth Century
Scholars have pieced together the available evidence, concluding

that some priests at the confraternity of the Church of St Francis in
Ravenna must have moved Dantes remains to a more secure hiding
place; then over the course of many generations the location of the
remains was forgotten. Incidentally, the nineteenth century became
another period of frequent claims by people to have seen or heard the
spirit of Dante. According to records by various scholars, including
Corrado Ricci and Catherine Mary Phillimore, which I piece together
here, in May 1865, the then Sacristan of the Franciscan Church where
Dante had been buried in Ravenna, Angelo Grillo, frequently slept
in the ancient chapel of Bracciaforte. While he was asleep there, he
purportedly experienced a recurring dream. He told many people
about it, only to receive repeated indications of pitying disbelief or
ridicule. Grillo maintained that he saw in his dream a shade issue
forth from a corner of the chapel where a doorway had been struc-
turally closed. Grillo attested that the ghost, wearing red, passed
through the chapel and into the adjoining cemetery. When the ghost
approached him, Grillo asked it to identify itself, and its reply was,
I am Dante. The sacristan died that month in May 1865. Only a
Divining Dante 103
few days afterwards, during renovations to the confraternity build-

ings, on 27 May, in that very angle of the chapel where the doorway
had been blocked, were found the bones of Dante65 in a humble box
marked with Dantes name. This box is now preserved in the Biblio-
teca Nazionale.
Florentines had not given up trying to repatriate Dantes bones
in the 1860s, however. They petitioned the city of Ravenna to allow
repatriation of the poets remains, but were still unsuccessful. The
outcome was the same, but the reasoning behind the refusal had
shifted notably. The response of city officials now rested on nation-
alistic grounds: il deposito delle sacre ossa di Dante Alighieri in
Ravenna non pu pei destini felicemente mutati dItalia, consider-
arsi come perpetuazione desilio, una essendo la legge che racco-
glie con duraturo vincolo tutte le citt italiane66 (the deposit of the
sacred bones of Dante Alighieri in Ravenna can no longer be consid-
ered a perpetuation of his exile, given the happily changed destinies
of Italy, the single law that binds together in a lasting bond all the
Italian cities). The poet whose post-mortem voice had once served
to articulate a very different political position now served to herald
a unified nation.67
At the solemn deposition of the relocated bones of Dante in their
original sepulchre in Ravenna on 26 June 1865, Giambattista Giuliani,
scholar of the Divina commedia at Florences Istituto degli Studi Superi-
ori, recited one of the more patriotic nationalistic uses of Dantes spirit
for this age:
Ed a voi, o benemeriti Ravennati, confidava le morte sue ossa, che poi

nella tristizia de tempi parve sinvolassero agli sguardi profani, ed or si
rivelarono quasi a miracolo per giustificare il Vaticinio della sospirata
unit e fortuna dItalia. Siavi dunque raccomandato il Tesoro unico che
la Nazione rafferm come suo, quando nel nome di Dante raccolse e
riconobbe se stessa, e promise di risollevarsi nel consorzio delle genti
civili.68
And to you, oh worthy people of Ravenna, Dante entrusted his dead

bones that once in the sadness of the times had seemed to have fled from
the sight of the profane. Now they reveal themselves almost as if by a
miracle to justify the Prophecy of the wished for unity and fortune of Italy.
May this sole Treasure continue to be entrusted to you which the Nation
claimed as its own when in the name of Dante it gathered itself together
and recognized itself, and promised to raise itself again in the consortium
of civilized people.
But Giuliani did not stop there. He went on to report that the voice of
Dante resounded in his own ear and seconded his exaltation of the new
Italy as the greatest society in the world:
Or quale voce mi suona dentro nellanima a rapirmi fuor di me stesso?

Possio aver merito e grazia a manifestarla? E chi mi vi astringe? una
voce, che arcanamente mi grida profetizza tu di queste Ossa? Oh eccelso
spirito di Dante, oh padre mio, mio benefattore! Che mi dicono queste
Ossa? Queste ossa mi dicono, che nel dolore si rigenerano gli uomini divi-
namente grandi, e le Nazioni, che per essi grandeggiano ad universale
beneficio: queste ossa mi dicono, che il diritto de popoli sar vendicato,
cesser insieme col servaggio lignominia dellumana famiglia, e la fede
regner nei cuori per risplendere nellopere: queste Ossa mi dicono, che
il Trionfo di Dante preparazione ed augurio del pieno Trionfo dItalia, e
dellottima Civilt del mondo.69
Now what voice sounds inside my soul and snatches me out of myself? Can I
have the merit or grace to reveal it? And who holds me fast? It is a voice that
shouts arcanely at me: Do you prophesy of these bones? Oh great spirit
of Dante, oh father of mine, my benefactor! What do these bones say to me?
These bones tell me that by means of pain, men are regenerated divinely
great, and the nations that through them become greater, do so for the benefit
of all. These bones tell me that the right of the people will be vindicated, that
along with servitude will cease the ignominy of the human family, and faith
will reign in our hearts in order to shine forth in our works. This is what the
bones tell me, that the triumph of Dante is a preparation and a sign of the full
triumph of Italy, and the greatest society of the world.
In this same year, Giuseppe Riminesi of Ferrara saw his own

visione in print titled Dante Alighieri e Ravenna Carme con note illus-
trative anche sul rinvenimento delle sacre ceneri. In this poetic vision,
Riminesi praised the people of Ravenna and the newly unified nation
of Italy. In exultantly patriotic language, he summarized the tri-
umphs and tribulations of Italys path to nationhood. He highlighted
the sacrifice of Anita Garibaldi, also buried in Ravenna, and the great
deeds for Italian Unification that General Giuseppe Garibaldi went
Divining Dante 105
on to accomplish. In the midst of his vision, Riminesi stated that sud-

denly a sound came from the pine forest near Ravenna and a cloud
descended:
e dentro quella
Lo sdegnoso sembiante mi sofferse
DellAllighier
Lo ingegno non ridice
Qualio rimasi: tanto accende lalma
Inusato stupore e maraviglia:70
and inside that [cloud]

faced me the haughty countenance
of Alighieri
My mind cannot say
how I remained my soul was so fired up
by unusual stupor and wonder.
Riminesi affirmed that the spirit of Dante said to him:
Fratello
A che mia vista ti conturba? Amica
larva io son, ch di patria lamor santo
Eterno vive oltre lavello. Io primo
Dal suo letargo ridestai lItalia:
La dissi nido di dolor. Sbattuta
Nave senza nocchiero in gran tempesta
Non donna di provincie E chi mintese?
Oh! cessr lore del divin decreto,
Che per mille anni a servit dannava
Del Tetono il latin sangue gentile:
Libertade ritorna, ed io rivivo.
Brother,
why does my appearance disturb you? I am a
friendly spirit because the holy love of ones country
lives eternally beyond the grave. Before all others, I
awakened Italy from her lethargy.
I called her the nest of pain, rocked
ship without a helmsman in a terrible storm,
not a provincial lady do you understand me?

Oh! the hours of the divine decree are up
that for a thousand years the genteel
Latin blood was condemned to servitude
under the barbarians:
Liberty returns, and I am reborn.
Dantes spirit proceeds to emphasize the brotherhood of a unified

Italy, and Riminesis composition begins to take the form of an extended
praise of Italians (not terribly unlike Landinos in 1481). Riminesi joins
illustrious names of the past, including those of Marco Polo, Galileo,
Michelangelo, Machiavelli, Petrarch, Raphael, Ludovico Ariosto, and
Torquato Tasso, with closer contemporaries, including Ugo Foscolo,
Giuseppe Parini, Giuseppe Verdi, Ennio Quirino Visconti, and many
more. In short, Dantes spirit heralds for Riminesi the unification of Ital-
ian culture, as well as her political nationalization.71
The Renaissance Consequences of Dantes

Failed Translation to Florence
Many Renaissance Florentines nevertheless felt keenly the fallout of the

failed attempts to repatriate Dantes bones. One of many examples is a
1522 sonnet:72
El tuo fratel Leon sommo pastore

Richiese dolcemente e Ravennesi,
Credendo che del lor fussin chortesi,
Non che dellossa del nostro oratore.
Ma que l tolson via e portar fore:

Fiorenza a te ricorda et recha a mente
Dante, lume et splendor della tua patria.73
Your brother Leo, greatest shepherd

Sweetly asked those Ravennati,
Believing that they were courteous,
Nothing more than the bones of our orator.
But they took them and hid them away:

Florence, remember and call to mind
Dante, light and splendour of your homeland.
Divining Dante 107
In the diplomatic sphere, Florentines ultimately failed in their quest

to have Dantes remains translated to the city of his birth. The cenotaph
that was eventually installed in Florences Church of Santa Croce in
1830 is to this day empty. But these were certainly not the only exam-
ples of their ideological and propagandistic use of Dantes spirit.74
While Ravenna retained possession of Dantes body, Florence claimed
ever more possessively the great poets spirit. The Florentines victory
in this battle of public perception in literary matters is attributable to
many factors, not least of which is an emerging Florentine hegemony
in the questione della lingua. But Dantes spirit, in particular, as the Flo-
rentines represented it, lent its own authorial weight to what were
otherwise rather arbitrary determinations of civic cultural superiority
(witness, for instance, the myriad irresolvable debates concerning
which of the Italian vernaculars is more beautiful or has greater poten-
tial for literary expression). What is more, key Renaissance Florentine
authors, including Benivieni and Machiavelli, also came to rely on the
authority of Dantes spirit in their works in attempts to avoid Dantes
political fate of death in exile in their own politically threatened situa-
tions in the 1500s in narratives that will introduce the concerns of the
next chapter.
3 Genius Loci: Exile, Citizenship, and
the Place of Burial
But where repose the all Etruscan three

Dante, and Petrarch, and, scarce less than they,
The Bard of Prose, creative spirit! he
Of the Hundred Tales of love where did they lay
Their bones, distinguishd from our common clay
In death as life? Are they resolvd to dust,
And have their countrys marbles nought to say?
Could not her quarries furnish forth one bust?
Did they not to her breast their filial earth entrust?
Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar,
Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore;
Thy factions, in their worse than civil war,
Proscribed the bard whose name for evermore
Their childrens children would in vain adore
With the remorse of ages; and the crown
Which Petrarchs laureate brow supremely wore,
Upon a far and foreign soil had grown,
His life, his fame, his grave, though rifled not thine own.

Happier Ravenna! on thy hoary shore,
Fortress of falling empire! honoured sleeps
The immortal exile; Arqua, too, her store
Of tuneful relics proudly claims and keeps,
While Florence vainly begs her banishd dead and weeps.
Lord Byron, Childe Harolds Pilgrimage 4.496531
In chapter 2 I examined a variety of ways in which Renaissance Italians

sought to honour Dante. Some laboured to unite elements of Dantes
Genius Loci 109
textual corpus; others wrote epideictic works concerning his life and
legacy; and still others sought to relocate his burial place. Dantes spirit
was figured as aiding these efforts from beyond the grave. This chapter
foregrounds four more examples of Italian Renaissance eidolopoeia that
present different twists on the issues concerning Dantes corpus and
corpse, all of them with a particular focus on place. The first two cases
concern questions of exile, official or self-imposed banishment from a
beloved place. Florentine Niccol Machiavelli (14691527) invokes the
spirit of Dante in his Discorso o dialogo intorno alla lingua nostra (Debate
or Dialogue on Our Language, c. 1515) for various reasons, though I
shall argue that a not inconsequential one is in order to make a stronger
case for his own return from exile by associating himself with Dante
and playing upon the Florentine guilt stemming from Dantes sentence
of exile more than two hundred years earlier. While Machiavelli was
unsuccessful in his bid, Zaccaria Ferreri (14791524) had just two years
earlier adopted a very similar but this time apparently effective nar-
rative ploy in his Somnium Lugdunense de divi Leonis X (Dream in Lyon
of the Heavenly Leo X, 1513), which permitted the cleric to return to his
beloved Rome.1
The third example presents a kind of foil to Girolamo Benivienis
invocation of the spirit of Dante to associate him more closely with
his birth city. Two years after the Cantico was published, non-Flo-
rentine Jacopo Caviceo (14431511) conjured the spirit of Boccaccio.
The proem of Caviceos Peregrino (Parma, 1508) figured a spirit with
unusual post-mortem citizenship concerns. Finally, the fourth exam-
ple returns to Florence with specific burial concerns. Reminiscent of
the Platonic Academys representation of the Dante spirit that was
unhappy with his tomb in Ravenna, Benivienis poetic representa-
tion of the spirit of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (14631494) also
decried a shabby burial place. The ghostly voice of Pico claimed to
want to move from outside Florences Church of San Marco to a more
lavish tomb inside the church. The reasons why Benivieni resorted to
eidolopoeia in this case are complicated and, I aim to show, perhaps
also a bit chilling.
Machiavellis Dialogo with Dantes Spirit and

the Question of Exile
Machiavelli wrote his Discorso o dialogo intorno alla lingua nostra (also
sometimes referred to simply as the Dialogo intorno alla lingua nostra,
Dialogue concerning Our Language) from exile following the Medici
restoration in 1512, which abruptly ended Machiavellis fourteen years

of service in the Florentine republican government. Machiavellis sym-
pathies during the previous piagnone government were with the arra-
bbiati/bigi faction of aristocratic, non-Medicean opposition,2 and the
events of his life are well known. Girolamo Savonarolas execution in
May 1498 led to the change in government that propelled Machiavelli
at the age of twenty-nine to the office of secretary of the Second Chan-
cellery the following month and to that of secretary of the Dieci (the
Ten of War) in July. Machiavelli was an eyewitness to key historical
events of the period 14981512, including the Florentine war against
Pisa, tense negotiations with Cesare Borgia the Duke of Valentinois, the
reaction in Rome to the conclave in which Giuliano della Rovere was
made Pope Julius II, and multiple delicate embassies including those to
Lyon, Mantua, Siena, and Rome. Machiavelli also proposed the creation
of a Florentine militia, under the Nine of Militia, of which he became
the secretary in 1507. This militia helped to conquer Pisa in 1509, but
could not withstand the greater and more experienced military forces
mobilizing against the republic.
The government under gonfaloniere Piero Soderini fell apart soon
after the disastrous Florentine loss during the Battle of Prato in August
1512. Cardinal Giovanni de Medici with Spanish military forces
marched on Tuscany, prompting Soderini to flee Florence. In Novem-
ber 1512, Machiavelli was stripped of his official duties, dismissed from
the chancery, and prohibited from entering the palace of government
for a year, during which he was also not to leave Florentine territories.
Early in 1513, however, he was arrested on suspicion of participation
in the republican conspiracy led by Pietro Paolo Boscoli and Agostino
Capponi. He suffered torture by the rope six times likely resulting in
pulled or dislocated arms and was released from prison twenty-two
days after his arrest when a general amnesty was declared, commemo-
rating the ascension of Giovanni de Medici as Pope Leo X. Machiavelli
then sought refuge on a small family farm just south of Florence, where
he would pen a number of his works, including the Dialogo, which is the
present focus of attention.
Not unlike Boccaccios Trattatello in laude di Dante, Machiavellis Dia-
logo opens with an extended meditation on honouring ones country. In
fact, Machiavelli states, luomo non ha maggiore obbligo nella vita sua
che con quella (Man has no greater obligation in his life than that [that
is, than to honour ones homeland]).3 It follows then, he continues, that
the writer who by his character or works makes himself an enemy of
Genius Loci 111
the state meritamente si pu chiamare parricida (212; can rightly be

called a parricide). These are strong words. Machiavellis motivations
for writing them may have contained a self-serving element: he prob-
ably hoped that a fervent appeal to civic patriotism would set him apart
from the other openly embittered Florentine exiles and rouse sympathy
for his return among influential residents within the city or with the
Medicean Papal See.
Machiavelli moves from broad patriotic declamations in the open-
ing paragraphs to the Dialogos central question: whether the language
in which the greatest Florentine poets and orators wrote was Floren-
tine, Tuscan, or Italian. The debate certainly has important literary, lin-
guistic, and cultural ramifications, as have been detailed by scholars.4
Nonetheless, the questione is not without its potential political con-
sequences, as well. Machiavelli is eager to show that, in spite of his
arrest, torture, and sentence of exile by Florentines in power, he is not
a parricide and is not going to defame his city. In fact, he argues the
view that Florentine authors wrote specifically in Florentine, and that
certain Lombards5 were simply envious or overly presumptuous in
claiming that the Three Crowns in particular wrote in their tongue
that is, northern Italian:
Il Boccaccio afferma nel Centonovelle di scrivere in vulgar fiorentino; il

Petrarca non so che ne parli cosa alcuna; Dante in un suo libro chei fa De
vulgari eloquio, dove egli danna tutta la lingua particolar dItalia, afferma
non avere scritto in fiorentino ma in una lingua curiale. (21516)
Boccaccio affirms in his Centonovelle [the Decameron] that he writes in the

Florentine vernacular; I do not know that Petrarch says anything at all on
the topic; Dante in his book, De vulgari eloquentia, where he condemns all
the separate languages of Italy, affirms not to have written in Florentine,
but in a broader, courtly Italian.
Machiavelli hastens to add, however, that Dante speaks in this way

because he continues to feel insulted by Florentines for the ignominy
of exile: tanto loffese lingiuria dellesilio! tanta vendetta ne desid-
erava! e per ne fece tanta quanta egli pot (216; so great did the
insult of exile offend him! so great was his desire for revenge! for
that reason he did all that he possibly could). But Fortune, either to
make a liar out of him (per farlo mendace, 216) or to re-cover in
glory the city slandered by him (per ricoprire con la gloria sua la
calunnia falsa di quello, 216), made the city so prosperous that its
fame extended to all regions of the world. If only Dante could see his
error in predicting evil for his city, Machiavelli claims, he would wish
to be resuscitated from the dead in order to repent, only to want to die
again of the embarrassment brought about by his envy: se Dante la
vedessi [Firenze allepoca di Machiavelli], o egli accuserebbe se stesso
o, ripercosso dai colpi di quella sua innata invidia, vorrebbe, essendo
risuscitato, di nuovo morire (216; if Dante were to see her [Florence
in Machiavellis time], either he would accuse himself, or, buffeted
by the blows of that innate envy of his, he would like, having been
resuscitated, to die again).6
While Machiavelli does not literally resuscitate Dante, he does do
so literarily. He figures the spirit of Dante, calling on it to affirm the
argument that he sets forth in the first pages of the Dialogo, that is, to
confirm that Dante wrote the Commedia in the Florentine language.
From this point, the dialogue more closely resembles the transcript
of a courtroom interrogation in which Machiavelli plays the role of
sapient prosecutor and Dante the rather badgered defendant. When
the summoned spirit asserts that he wrote the Commedia in curiale,
Machiavelli insists that Dantes spirit explain what that means. Vuol
dire una lingua parlata dagli uomini di corte del papa, del duca, i quali
per essere uomini litterati parlono meglio che non si parla nelle terre
particulari dItalia (219; It means the language spoken by the men of
the papal or ducal courts who, because they are educated men, speak
better than would one from any particular area of Italy). Machiavelli
forwards various citations from Dantes poem as evidence that dis-
proves the spirits words. The spirit eventually admits, Egli il vero, e
io ho il torto (222; That is true, and I am wrong). This climactic admis-
sion from Dantes spirit serves to affirm what has been already argued,
but it also propels forward Machiavellis subsequent soliloquy, which
culminates in a scathing critique of outsiders (mostly non-Florentine
Italians) who attempt to imitate Dantes Florentine language in writing
their own works:
Concludesi pertanto che non c lingua che si possa chiamare o comune

dItalia o curiale, perch tutte quelle che si potessino chiamare cos hanno
il fondamento loro dagli scrittori fiorentini e dalla lingua fiorentina: alla
quale in ogni defetto, come a vero fonte e fondamento loro, necessario
che ricorrino; e non volendo essere veri pertinaci, hanno a confessar la
fiorentina esser questo fondamento e fonte. (228)
Genius Loci 113
Let us conclude, then, that there is no language that can be considered

common to Italy, or a language of the court, for those languages that might
be called such have their source in the language and writers of Florence, to
whom they must resort, even in its defects, as their true source and foun-
dation. And if they are not really stubborn, they must confess that their
foundation and source is indeed Florentine.
The author then represents Dantes spirit as capitulating and agree-

ing with him: le confess vere [le cose che ebbe udito] et si part (228;
he confessed [that the things he heard were] true and left). In doing
so, Machiavelli effectively coerces a palinodic confession from Dante
from the other world, since he figures the spirit as admitting that an
opinion Dante held during his lifetime was wrong. Machiavelli adds,
Non so gi sio mi sganner coloro che sono s poco conoscitori de ben-
efici chegli hanno auti dalla nostra patria, che e vogliono accumunare
con essa lei nella lingua Milano, Vinegia, Romagna, e tutte le bestemmie
di Lombardia (228; I do not know whether I will release from their
[self-] deception those who are so unrecognizant of the benefits they
have received from our city that with the Florentine language they want
to lump together those others of Milan, Venice, and the Romagna, as
well as all those vulgarities of Lombardy).
At this point, however, it may almost be less important for Machiavelli
to draw the stubborn ingrates to his theoretical side on the questione della
lingua than it is for him to succeed in associating himself with Dantes
textual and political legacy. It is important to recall the way in which
Machiavelli framed his discourse from the outset: he loves Florence,
has served for many years on behalf of Florentine citizens, and intends
to dispel any notion that he might be a parricide. He firmly wishes to
return, and to do so he needs to secure the lifting of his sentence.
What is Machiavelli to gain, however, in associating himself with the
spirit of a man whom he accuses in various passages of the Dialogo
of lying (mendace, 216; Tu dirai le bugie [220; You must be tell-
ing lies]), and madness (pazzo, 217)? How is his aim strengthened
by approximating his situation to a predecessors whose language
is described as goffo (awkward), porco (filthy), and osceno
(obscene, all mentioned on page 222)? In this work Machiavelli is cer-
tainly not attempting, as did the other Florentine praisers of Dante
examined in the previous chapter, to so exalt the words and actions of
Dante that they come close to making Dantes life resemble hagiogra-
phy. Instead, Machiavellis Dante admits to being wrong; the spirit
acknowledges a mistaken belief while in an agitated state of mind dur-

ing the period of exile, a mistake which it wishes now to correct. Per-
haps Machiavelli believed that this figuration was a way of humanizing
Dante by emphasizing Dantes need to be sgannato (released from his
[self-] deception), so that others might be more likely to pardon also in
Machiavelli those acts or words attributed to him in service of his city,
but during the governmental rule of a hostile political party. According
to this line of thought, if Machiavelli were to succeed in making a close
association between Dante and himself, then his exile might be seen
as an unfortunate repetition in Florentine minds of Dantes regrettable
exile in the first decades of the fourteenth century. Moreover, by setting
the dialogue with Dante not in the gardens of a Florentine villa or in
an otherworldly realm (the Elysian Fields), for example, but rather in
a setting more reminiscent of a courtroom or an interrogation room,
Machiavelli might have wanted to suggest the potential real-world con-
sequences (for his sentence of exile) in a work that might otherwise be
underrated as a mere academic or theoretical discourse on language.
Furthermore, by fictively conjuring a dead man who speaks, Machia-
velli may be implying that those currently in power do not have the
final word, either.
The Spirit of Dante Is Invoked to Help Bring

about the End of Another Exile
Like Machiavelli, Zaccaria Ferreri wrote his Somnium Lugdunense de divi

Leonis X from exile and in his fiction interacted with a spirit of Dante.
Nevertheless, the two examples are very different in almost every way:
the form of Ferreris work is a 1,030-line poem rather than a prose dia-
logue; its language is Latin, as opposed to the Florentine vernacular;
and the author is a zealous Benedictine church reformer not aiming
to return to Florence. In this 1513 Somnium, Ferreri fashions a pardon
received directly from the spirit of Dante in the hopes of convincing the
Medici pope to whom his work is dedicated to permit him to be reinte-
grated in the Church and to return to Rome from France.
Vicentine by birth, Ferreri studied in Padua and entered the Benedic-
tine monastery of St Justina of Padua at fifteen years of age. In 1504 he
went to Rome, where, after just two years, he was conferred degrees in
theology and civil and canon law.7 Although he returned to his monas-
tic cell in Padua and likely would have preferred a quiet life of study,
circumstances, including clashes with his superior, led him in 1510 to a
Genius Loci 115
more public role, and he joined the retinue of Gian Giacomo Trivulzio,
Milanese condottiero at the service of the French. Ferreris own politi-
cal sympathies leaned toward the French and against the Venetians,
as is evident from his poem De Gallico in Venetos triumpho (On the
French Triumph over Venice), composed during this period. Pope Julius
IIs change of alliances during the War of the League of Cambrai (from
an alliance with the French to one with Venice) put Ferreri in an awk-
ward position. He joined a cadre of influential members of the Catholic
hierarchy calling in 1511 for reform of the Church, and he became the
author of the acts of the Council of Costanza and the acts of a number
of subsequent councils (including the Decreta et acta Concilii Basiliensis
and the Apologia sacri Pisani Concilii moderni). Pope Julius II responded
to the reformers zeal to dismiss him by stripping Ferreri and many of
the other reformers of their religious offices in October 1511 and then
excommunicating them in January 1512. Further councils were moved
to Asti and Lyon, but rapidly disintegrated.
When Pope Julius II died in February 1513, some of the other
reformers quickly found favour and reintegration in the Church
under Pope Leo X, but Ferreri was not immediately among them.
It was in this context that Ferreri penned his Somnium. In this work,
he presents a vision of the heavenly spheres, influenced in some
ways by Dantes Paradiso. In fact, the narrator encounters the spirit
of Dante in the sphere of Mars, and this spirit will then serve as a
kind of guide for Ferreri through some other heavenly spheres in his
dream vision.8 Dantes spirit, the dive senex (line 257; blessed old
man) crowned with laurel, explains to the narrator the presence on
Mars of five allegorical ladies representing Italy, Germany, Spain,
France, and Asia in terms of current events (including the 1511
Council of Pisa and the War of the League of Cambrai) and why
Italy is destined to be the happiest of all. Italy, the spirit of Dante
indicates, has the most to gain and the greatest hope in the ascendant
Medici Pope Leo X. In this representation of the spirit of Dante, Fer-
reri emphasizes Dantes strength and ability to endure and overcome
the challenges he faced during life, especially that of exile, which is
foregrounded in the way the spirit identifies itself in lines 2746 of
the poem:
Esilium tolerare domoque exire coactus

Pluribus erravi terris peregrinus, et hospes.
Ille ego sum Dantes
forced to leave home and endure exile

I have wandered over many lands as a foreigner and guest.
I am that Dante
As Machiavelli also does in his eidolopoeia of Dante, Ferreri pres-

ents a spirit of Dante not without its shortcomings. In particular, Fer-
reri makes the spirit of Dante retract the views he had expressed in the
De monarchia (On the Monarchy), which contained opinions discordant
with Ferreris own:
Ipse monarchaeam dicens fore Caesaris unam, et

Terrenum imperium nil dependere Latino
A patre, qui toto Christi vice praesidet orbe,
Erravi (tamen absque dolo) multisque diebus
Ante mihi quam se facerent empyrea tecta
Cognita (lines 2916)
Before the hidden Empyrean made itself known to me

I erred for many days (albeit without deliberate deceit)
In saying that there would be one monarchy of Caesar, and
and that earthly sovereignty did not depend on the Latin father
Who presides over all the world in the manner of Christ.
The dialogue between the narrator and Dantes spirit continues in the
sphere of Jupiter, nicely summarized by Charles L. Stinger:
the two poets glimpse in the distance a lofty palace surrounded by high
walls that Dante identifies as the Mons Vaticanus. Climbing for a better
vantage-point they then see set before them the walls of the Borgo Leonino,
the Tiber and Hadrians tomb, the Capitoline, Aventine, Coelian and other
hills, the marvelous Pantheon, and the obelisks, columns, and other dis-
tinctive monuments of Rome. At length they enter the gates of the Vati-
can to join the throngs joyously acclaiming the new pontiff. For Ferreri, it
seems, no better way offered itself to ingratiate himself with Leo X than to
present the wondrous splendors of the papal capital, appropriately trans-
ported from earth to the heavenly sphere of Jupiter, from which the pontiff,
Jove-like in his just command of heaven and earth, rules the world.9
The celebration is not merely for Giovanni de Medicis ascension to

the papacy, however, since Ferreri aims to do more than praise or flatter
Genius Loci 117
the new and powerful vicar of Christ. The work is also a public confes-
sion, and in the way that Ferreri writes the work, he has the spirit of
Dante already blessed in heaven command him to atone for the part
he played in the Council of Pisa:
(Obsecro) quamprimum fuge de squallentibus umbris

Conciliablaeae gentis. Iam ad corda reversus
Errores agnosce graves, gemituque patenti
Dilue tot maculas; clemens tibi namque sacerdos
Indulgebit (lines 85862)10
(I beseech you) flee as soon as possible from the squalid shades

of the people of the Council. Acknowledge
your serious mistakes, and with manifest groaning
wash away those many sins;
for the merciful priest will be kind to you.
In Ferreris case, he hoped to end not only his residence in France

in the aftermath of the Council of Pisa, but also his exile from full
priestly citizenship. In the end, his poem seems to have served its pur-
pose: Pope Leo X welcomed him to Rome, lifted the excommunication,
reinstated his priestly duties, and made him a domestic prelate. Ferreri
thus joined the company of Pietro Bembo and Gian Francesco Poggio
Bracciolini in the papal court. In 1518 the pope made Ferreri archbishop
of Sebaste (Sivas in modern-day Turkey) and bishop of Guardialfiera
(Campobasso).11 The positions permitted Ferreri to undertake subse-
quent diplomatic missions on behalf of the Holy See, which he would
perform to significant acclaim especially in Poland and Lithuania. He
died in 1524.
It is interesting that soon after Ferreri dedicated an example of Dan-
tean eidolopoeia to Pope Leo X, his exile was lifted, while Machiavellis
Dialogo did not bring about the same result. Not for this reason should
one assume that Ferreris work is superior to Machiavellis both texts
in my opinion fall far short of the distinction of literary masterpiece.
Nor should one deduce that Machiavellis skills of persuasion were not
as keen. To what degree Ferreris narrative was itself instrumental in the
popes decision is also debatable. In fact, I believe that Pope Leo X was
perhaps more inclined to pardon and reinstate a penitent reformer
whose critique had focused on the political decisions of his papal prede-
cessor than he was to forgive lightly a Florentine ex-chancellery secretary
accused of conspiring directly against Medici interests, regardless of

how crafty or flattering any eidolopoetic argument he might receive
could be. Nonetheless, the fact that Italians during this period resort to
eidolopoeia so frequently suggests that at least in general terms (if not
specific cases) they believed the rhetorical strategy to have a reasonable
potential for persuasive success.
In the previous chapter, I underscored how Florentines sought to
seize the spirit of Dante, when they failed to have his body, by asso-
ciating the exiled Dante as closely as possible with his homeland.
In fact, one of the most boldly stated expressions of the Florentine
position came as early as 1467 from Ficino in his proem to the De
Monarchia (On Monarchy) translation. Dante, Ficino wrote, illus-
tr tanto la citt fiorentina, che cos bene Firenze di Dante come
Dante di Firenze si pu dire (made the Florentine city so famous
that one could just as well say the Florence of Dante as Dante of
Florence). Moreover, according to Ficino, citizens like Dante who
currently find themselves outside the city walls are better called pil-
grims or wanderers, since their exile is not permanent.12 In this way
Ficino attempted to soften what turned out to be for the historical
Dante a condemnation to perpetual exile. Ficino was suggesting that
the Florentines of his day would appreciate Dante and treat him bet-
ter than Dantes contemporaries did, a view that other Florentines
would repeatedly rearticulate. Subsequent writers, including Machi-
avelli and Ferreri, both of whom suffered in exile for different ideo-
logical reasons, tried to harness the rhetorical potential of Florentine
guilt over Dantes treatment during his life by evoking his spirit.
While individual storytellers who figured the spirit of Dante in their
writing met with varying degrees of success in leveraging the power
of the authorial idol for their purposes, in general Florentines suc-
ceeded in associating Dante with their city, and to some extent this
was true of the other two Crowns. As the next section shows, though,
Boccaccios spirit was nevertheless contested by a well-known non-
Florentine Italian.
Jacopo Caviceo Claims to See the Ghost of Boccaccio
Jacopo Caviceos Peregrino enjoyed great success, as evidenced by twenty-

one Italian editions, nine French translations, and three Spanish transla-
tions during its first fifty-one years in printed circulation.13 The bestselling
sentimental prose romanzo relates a proto-Romeo-and-Juliet story of
Genius Loci 119
the star-crossed lovers Peregrino and Genevera. Caviceo tells their tale
with brio in a delightful array of narrative modes, including amatory
epistles, philosophical digressions that anticipate later Renaissance
dialogues in love treatises, autobiographical references, seemingly
realistic courtroom dramas, and outlandish adventure tales. After
Peregrino endures many trials, including abduction by pirates, dan-
gerous trips to the Orient and to Hell, almost insurmountable obsta-
cles erected by Geneveras family, and wild intrigues of all kinds, the
bumbling protagonist finally unites in marriage with his beloved. But
their marital bliss endures only a short time: Genevera dies soon after-
ward in childbirth, and Peregrino quickly follows her to the tomb,
succumbing to broken-hearted grief. The work appears part Boccac-
cian romance, but also part prose Orlando furioso and part Benvenuto
Cellini Vita, avant la lettre.14 In this section, I analyse the works brief
proem in full, as well as key excerpts from the romanzo, which help
to illustrate attitudes toward death, commemoration, citizenship, and
civic culture in Caviceos day.
The two-page proem of the Peregrino opens with Caviceo describ-
ing how he fell asleep and dreamed that he found himself wander-
ing through the Elysian Fields: oppresso da un dolce sopore, me
parve vedere una umbra, a la quale il campo helvsio faceva honore
(34; weighed down by a sweet sleepiness, it seemed to me I saw a
shade honoured by the Elysian Fields). Similar to other spirit narra-
tives already examined, this one features an author and character with
the same name; Caviceo the author describes his dream vision, while
Caviceo the character witnesses a ghost within a dream. Seeing the
spirit, Caviceos character wants to scream, but cannot because he is
tutto spaventato a guisa de Huomo che per freda febre langue
(completely scared like a man who suffers from a cold fever). Cavi-
ceos character begs the spirit, which he assumes is blessed (o beata
umbra), to identify itself before he himself gives up the ghost:
dimi per cortesia qual sei, aci che, di paura oppresso, non sia con-
strecto a lassare il spirito (tell me please what you are so that I, seized
by fear, am not forced to give up my spirit). The spirit satisfies his
request: Vivendo informai il corpo di Zanbochaccio da Certaldo.
Hora son facta cittadina et incola de la docta cit di Ferrara, per con-
templare una non pi vista belleza (Living I informed the body of
Giovanni Boccaccio of Certaldo. Now I am a citizen and resident of
the wise city of Ferrara, where I can contemplate an extraordinary
beauty). Thus the character of Caviceo meets the spirit of Boccaccio,
whose very first words specify that he was born in Certaldo and that
now (hora) he is a citizen and resident of Ferrara, because there he
can better admire the lovely surroundings, perhaps most especially
the renowned beauty of the Duchess of Ferrera, Lucretia Borgia, to
whom he dedicates the work.
The proem proceeds with lavish praise of Ferrara and its ducal fam-
ily, which regularly produces pontefici maximi romani, duci, baroni
e semidei, e gente militare che a Marte in militia non cederebeno, n
a Cesare de fortuna, n a Pompeio de gloria (Roman pontiffs, dukes,
barons, and demigods, and soldiers who would not yield to Mars in
battle, nor to Caesar in fortune, nor to Pompey in glory). With a flour-
ish of encomiastic rhetoric, Caviceo praises Boccaccios and his own
new city of residence, Ferrara, patria gloriosa, nutrita tra le felicit
letteraria e de boni costume (a glorious state, nourished on literary
greatness and good customs).
This dream with its Ferrarese associations prompts the memory of an
earlier dream that Caviceo claims to have had on the very first night he
moved to Ferrara to serve as vicar general:
dicato fu per Flasio Rovorella, amplissimo primato ravennate, a la cura

de le cose suae spirituale [a la] inclita cit de Ferrara. Ne la qualle come
gionto vi fu, la prima nocte, in quella hora che Mercurio suolle bindare il
capo a lhuomo de rossata lethea, aud cridare: Merc per dio, che morto
e vivo sempre sto morto. O dio exaltato, soccorre a la gran pena, quale
extinguere non pu n l cello, n il libro arbitrio, n lhumana virt. O
mondo troppo ciecho, o caduca nostra forma, ove conducto me havete,
che pi respirare non posso? Ombra mia, sento la dilecta de Titon tochare
il primo orizonta de lo occeano. Perh attende: il tutto da me intenderai.
I was called by F[i]lasio Rovorella [archbishop of Ravenna], most gener-

ous pre-eminent man of Ravenna, to undertake spiritual matters in the
noble city of Ferrara. On the day that I arrived there, the first night, in
that hour when Mercury usually circles mans head with rosy oblivion, I
heard the cry [from the protagonist Peregrino], Mercy, by God, that dead
or alive Im still dead! O exalted God, come to my aid in so great pain,
which cannot be relieved nor escaped by free will or human virtue. O, too
blind world, o fleeting fame of ours, where have you brought me that I can
no longer breathe? Shade of mine, I feel Tithonus delight touch the first
horizon of the ocean. So pay attention, you will hear from me the whole
account.
Genius Loci 121
In this intricate dream-within-a-dream, the fictitious character Per-

egrino (who will turn out to be recounting his adventures from beyond
the grave) is said to appear and to recount his circuitous story to the
character Caviceo, whose historical biography did indeed include a
stint as vicar general of Ferrera. The dream narrative takes place over
the course of three nights comprising what will become the three parts
of the Peregrino. It is no wonder that in his own narrative frame Caviceo
calls upon none other than Boccaccio, master of the complicated cornice.
Paralleling Caviceos dual role of storyteller and character, Peregrino
also has two distinct voices. Besides that of protagonist, he serves as
narrator, since he tells Caviceo his story in a dream over the course of
three nights. Of course Boccaccio also has two roles: esteemed author
in his own right and the eidolopoetic Ferrara-promoting spirit in the
Peregrinos proem.
The proem alludes, as I just noted, to autobiographical aspects of
Caviceos experience, including his service in Ferrara at the request of
Rovorella, so a more detailed understanding of Caviceos life should
help to clarify the underlying premise of this proem and other passages
of the Peregrino as a whole.15 Born in Parma in 1443, Caviceo began the
study of law in Bologna, but was such a general troublemaker that he
had to leave the university before finishing his degree in order to avoid
official expulsion. Soon afterwards, probably in the early 1460s, he
undertook an ecclesiastical career, despite the fact that evidence of a true
vocation appears entirely lacking. The supreme tact of his biographer,
Lorenza Simona, comes to the fore with her understated description
of a long period in Caviceos life as questa parentesi cos poca lusin-
ghiera16 (this parenthesis that is not so very flattering). Caviceo pur-
portedly seduced nuns under his protection. He also gravely wounded
a man in an altercation, likely precipitated by his uncontrollable tem-
per. Arrested, Caviceo faced charges, but settled for voluntary exile,
which actually seems closer to going on the lam, running from the law
first to Verona, then to Venice, then to Byzantium. After his three-year
trip, which ended around 1469, Caviceo was back in Parma, seemingly
doing his best to disturb the peace. Simona tracks a series of conflicts,
disturbances, and political intrigues in delineating Caviceos character
profile.17 Most notably, a disagreement with Bishop Giacomo Antonio
Della Torre landed Caviceo behind bars. Caviceos friends, who might
more aptly be described as thugs, ended up assaulting the bishop in an
attempt to liberate Caviceo from jail. Not even Caviceos direct appeal
to Pope Paul II could prevent his transfer to a prison in Alexandria,
Egypt, from which he was soon released thanks to the intercession of a

certain unnamed influential friend.
After this episode, from roughly 1472 until his period of service
as vicar general of Ravenna, ending around 1500, his ecclesiastical
career advanced at a generally steady rate, marred only by a few
setbacks the fallout after his patrons (of the Rossi family, rulers of
Parma) were sent into exile in 1482, and Caviceos expulsion from
Conegliano after he unsuccessfully sought a position with the Vene-
tian doge Marco Barbarigo. Barbarigos brother, Antonio, took over
Caviceos duties in 1491 and compared him to the plague: pessi-
mam naturam et modos malignos Iacobi Cavicaci istic comoran-
tis, et quod dum istic permanebit nonnisi ab eo potest provenire
nisi pestilens morbus ([He has] the lowest nature and evil ways
That Jacopo Caviceo should be remembered, and he should be
made to remain elsewhere, since his return would be like that of
a deadly plague).18 Caviceo nonetheless acquired various benefices
and moved from the position of vicar general in Rimini (14924) to
Ravenna (but residing in Ferrara, 14941500) and then to vicar gen-
eral of Archbishop Rinaldo Orsini in Florence, but only briefly. By
the end of 1501, Caviceo had already been demoted to Siena and
Montecchio, between which he performed his last services, dying in
Montecchio in 1511.19
The works namesake, Peregrino (Pilgrim), hints at an allegori-
cal level of the text, underscoring that this romanzo might also be an
account of Everybodys journey through life with an eye on the after-
life.20 The name of the beloved, Genevera, which significantly is not
Ginevra, also undergoes deliberate etymological scrutiny and interpre-
tation in the text: Genevera, che al iudicio mio altro significare non
vuole, se non che de ogni humana cosa creata egli vera genetrice (8;
Genevera, which in my estimation cannot signify other than that she is
the true genetrix of every human created thing). Nonetheless, if Cavi-
ceo intended his work as an allegory, it remains a wilfully obscure one,
since little more than these names aid in accessing that narrative level.
The work could not more emphatically differ from the typical medi-
eval moralizing allegory either, despite the authors high clerical posi-
tion. While the romanzo, which spans 364 pages in Luigi Vignalis edition,
claims to instruct its readers on how to avoid the snares of love, its mes-
sage is highly ambivalent and far from preachy. In fact, overall, the story
might more readily impart lessons on how to revel in the less than noble
pursuits of carnal love. The true progenetrix is not the Virgin Mary, but
Genius Loci 123
Genevera, object of lust, who dies giving birth to the fruit of an emphati-
cally sexual union.21
The romanzo itself begins with the protagonist Peregrino meditating
on the difficulty of remembering past joys: E come il rememorare le cose
piacevole et ioconde presta a lanima consolata letitia, cos il repetere le
triste et odiose afflige e consuma il spirito. E ben che io creda per la
intense memoria recidivare in doglia, ogni extreme delibero patire per
te gratificare (5; Just as remembering pleasant and joyous things grants
consoling happiness to the soul, so repeating sad and odious things
afflicts and consumes the spirit. And though I believe I shall relapse into
grief at the intense memories, I am resolved to suffer every extreme to
please you). His opening words obliquely recall another lover who was
anything but chaste Dantes Francesca da Rimini, whose words also
emphasize the fact that retelling her story will cause her pain, though
she wishes to please her listener:
Nessun maggior dolore

che ricordarsi del tempo felice
ne la miseria; e ci sa l tuo dottore.
Ma sa conoscer la prima radice
del nostro amor tu hai cotanto affetto,
dir come colui che piange e dice. (Inf. 5.1216)
There is no greater pain than to remember the happy time in wretched-

ness; and this your teacher knows. But if you have so much desire to know
the first root of our love, I will do as one who weeps and speaks.22
Moreover, the sharp irony of the works characterization as a chaste

love story also soon becomes obvious as the reader faces various
accounts of the protagonists almost unrestrained lust, which include
an unabashedly erotic description of Peregrinos escapade one night
not to Geneveras bedroom, as he had planned, but by mistake to the
house of Leonora, his beloveds neighbour, who until Peregrinos visit
was a virgin.23
The frames setting is also significantly not the Christian afterworld,
but the pagan Elysian Fields. The whole story of the wanderer protago-
nist issues from the narrative fantasy of a man sleeping inside his very
modest home. This domestic image contrasts with the civic concerns
and the erring and exile that pervade the entire work. Moreover, the
protagonists journey does not end back at home; it ends, instead, in a
kind of limbo to which I will return in which souls, like Boccaccios,

focus on establishing residency elsewhere.
Death is almost a character in itself in this work, evoked in ways that
effectively take away its sting not because it heralds an eternal bless-
edness, but because it seems hardly to differ from life. In the proem,
both the spirit of Boccaccio and Peregrino the narrator tell their stories
from beyond the grave and both also make a point of highlighting this
fact. Boccaccio emphatically contrasts verbal tenses: vivendo infor-
mai Hora son facta cittadina (3; Living I possessed the body of Boccac-
cio Now I am a citizen),24 and Peregrinos first words are a cry whose
tone hints at both the melodramatic and the slapstick: Merc per Dio,
che morto e vivo sempre sto morto (4, Mercy, by God, that living or
dead, Im still dead).
Moreover, the works dedicatee, Lucretia Borgia, is twice referred
to in the proem as the Phoenix, the mythological bird that repeatedly
rises from its ashes (4; O che adiuto darebbe questa unica Phenice a
la tua cadente musa, O what aid this unique Phoenix would lend to
your fallen muse, and serai una perpetua Phenice, you will be a per-
petual Phoenix). Like the ghosts, resuscitated versions of Boccaccio the
author and Peregrino the protagonist, the Phoenix is a figure that trans-
gresses the natural order of life and death. Caviceo may intend much
more than a gallant literary compliment to his patroness, the Duch-
ess of Ferrara, in associating her with the Phoenix and its implications
of perpetual rejuvenation and immortality. By 1508, Pope Alexander
VIs illegitimate daughter had already seen herself rise from the ashes
of two husbands before she married Duke Alfonso dEste (Giovanni
Sforza and Alfonso dAragona), the first a scandalous divorce and the
second a gruesome murder, most likely ordered, if not committed, by
her brother Cesare Borgia. The same year proved to be a particularly
emotional one for Lucretia for at least two important reasons. Hap-
pily, she bore her first Estense son after two crushing miscarriages. But
second, one of her favourite admirers, the Latin poet Ercole Strozzi,
was found murdered only thirteen days after his marriage to Barbara
Torelli. Malicious but presumably ill-founded voices implicated Lucre-
tia Borgias jealousy in this event. Caviceo maintains a high degree of
ambiguity in his actual references to literary emblems like the Phoe-
nix. The entire work seems charged with an almost electric tension, a
pull between wildly fantastic elements and, potentially, an utterly raw
commentary on contemporary situations that deserves more attention
from literary scholars.
Genius Loci 125
Immediately following the proem is the authors envoi to his book:

Libro mio, se aspernato o reiecto fusti, dire poterai: Lectore, non
lexterminio de Troia, non le fortune di Roma, non li errori de Ulyxe,
ma de uno pudico amore la historia porto e narro (3; My book, if you
are scorned or rejected, you could say: Reader, not the destruction of
Troy, nor the fortunes of Rome, nor the aimless wandering of Ulysses,
do I tell, but the account of a chaste love). It is probably not an acci-
dent that Caviceos words echo closely Landinos concerning Dante in
his proem to the 1481 edition of the Commedia: Ma con tale eloquenzia
non glerrori dUlisse, non le battaglie troiane scrisse, non la venuta
dEnea in Italia nelle quali cose veggiamo Omero e Virgilio essersi
tanto affaticati (But with such eloquence he did not write the errings
of Ulysses, nor the battles of Troy, nor the arrival of Aeneas in Italy
in such things we see Homer and Virgil so exert themselves).25 In these
first words, Caviceo-author speaks directly to his book and dictates
how the book may defend itself as it circulates in public. The author
emphasizes both his role as recitatore or actor, and his role as scribe, one
who writes simply what he hears (come intese, scriptse). In short,
the author puts on the mask of a faithful scribe, and thus declares from
the outset his unreliability as a narrator. The book overtly refuses com-
parison with the great epics of Homer and Virgil, opting for the comic
mode of a love story between humble characters. That the work ends
not with Peregrino and Geneveras marriage, but with their deaths and
reunion in the afterworld, provides an unusual spin on the notion of a
comedy and on the commonplace of living happily ever after.
The hook of the Peregrino and what must have helped to propel
its popularity in the Cinquecento is its playful juxtaposition of real
and imaginary elements. The frame blurs the boundaries between
historical people and events from Caviceos own life, such as his
move to Ferrara to take up an ecclesiastical position at the request of
Rovorella, and the realm of the unreal, marked here by the ghostly
speeches. The same breakdown of boundaries pervades the entire
Peregrino. By the closing chapter of the work, the two fictitious pro-
tagonists, Peregrino and Genevera, now deceased, arrive at the Ely-
sian Fields and meet a number of notable historical figures there,
including the murdered Ercole Strozzi and Filippo Beroaldo the Elder
(Bologna, 14531505), the renowned classicist and professor of rheto-
ric and poetry in Bologna,26 as well as Pico and Ficino. Through the
juxtaposition of real and imaginary, Caviceo fashions other juxtapo-
sitions, particularly between the relatively obscure and significantly
non-Florentine figures (like Strozzi and Beroaldo) and the major voices
associated with the Florentine Accademia (Pico and Ficino). By placing
these four writers on the same narrative plane with the spirit of Boc-
caccio and his own embedded life story, Caviceo may be attempting to
write himself into a literary genealogy with them. Caviceo even empha-
sizes the potentially more authoritative status of his work as dead lit-
erature by feigning its telling through a departed shade.
The afterlife, according to Caviceos description of the Elysian Fields
in the proem and in the final chapter of the Peregrino, is a kind of literary
limbo, akin to the one described in Inferno 4, but with more modernized
interlocutors. The souls of the literati remain in a highly mobile state of
exile, never achieving a state of eternal rest. The name of the protago-
nist, Peregrino, calls to mind one journeying out of piety and penance,
and more broadly conjures an image of worldly homelessness, a wan-
dering quality not unlike Caviceos own highly migratory existence.
The geographical non-fixity of literary giants, such as Boccaccio, Pico,
and Ficino, has particularly significant consequences for Caviceos pur-
poses. He can signal what he perceives to be a new direction of literary
development outside of Florence by making some of its most notable
literary representatives wander through the Elysian Fields or praise
Ferrarese pre-eminence.
Caviceo tellingly glosses over Boccaccios identification with Flo-
rentine culture. He deliberately states that Boccaccio was originally
from Certaldo and now, after death, is a resident of Ferrara. Likewise,
Peregrino hails from Mantua but now resides in Ferrara, and Caviceo
from Parma also now resides in Ferrara. The proem, a frame intend-
ing to package the Peregrino as a way of influencing reader reception,
announces from the outset that what may have been seen as a Floren-
tine literary hegemony has shifted, signalled by the civic renunciation
of one of Florences Three Crowns. Caviceos adoption of Boccaccios
spirit, I argue, may serve to claim linguistic freedom from the strongly
Florentine trend. In this way, the move of Boccaccios spirit to Ferrara
may signal the shift from a literary language based on the highly devel-
oped Florentine vernacular to the northern Italian Latinate language
Caviceo prefers, and which receives the brunt of Pietro Bembos linguis-
tic criticism in proximate years.
Focal interests of Caviceos proem find rearticulation and develop-
ment in the body of the romanzo itself, especially on the subject of how
to interpret dreams. In one example, Peregrino must defend himself at
a trial for breaking and entering the house of Geneveras neighbour,
Genius Loci 127
Leonora, and violating her. Peregrino, even in the face of physical evi-
dence that places him at the scene of the crime the clothing he aban-
dons in his hurry to escape maintains that Leonora dreamed the entire
incident. With a nod to dream theorists from Artemidorus to Macrobius,
Peregrino maintains that our dreams articulate what we fear and desire.
Dreams, states Peregrino in chapter 54 of the first book, are thoughts
and reasonings, and in that guise they appear as simulacra of those
things that one wants to see.27 Many people, he says, have been fasci-
nated and tricked by shades that only appear to have substance, but in
reality do not: Questa arte mercuriale per tal modo prestigia gli occhi
nostri, che non permette lassarne vedere n discernere il vero dal falso
(128; This mercurial art deceives our eyes in such a way that it does
not permit us to discern true from false.). Ultimately in the novel Per-
egrinos legal defence succeeds; the monarch dismisses the case against
him. By extension, this episode implicitly adds another layer of unreli-
ability to both the dreams and the ghostly apparitions that make up the
entire framing narrative of the work.
This example is certainly not the only passage from the Peregrino that
addresses the purpose and significance of dreams. In book 2, chapter 39,
Peregrinos beloved Genevera has three brief visions in a dream that all
foretell sad events for her. She asserts that magiore verit non sotto
il cielo di quella che per insogno pronunciata, s come di Ioseph la
scriptura testificha (222; there is no greater truth under the heavens
than that which is revealed through dreams, as the Scriptures testify
of Joseph). Peregrino manages to convince her that dreams may be the
cause of baseless fears and may not be reliable. The entire following
chapter consists of Peregrinos detailed discussion of the circumstances
that determine whether dreams are trustworthy or not. He argues out
of self-interest that they are not.
Another example comes in chapter 45 of book 2. Peregrino invokes
aid after reading a disturbing letter from Genevera. The shade of Scipio
comes to him, that same Scipio whose dream closes the final book of
Ciceros Republic.28 Scipio in Caviceos text identifies himself in a
way that associates him with other famous exiles: Io son quel Scipione
che a la patria mia, doppo le innumere fatiche e raportati triumphi,
per sua ingratitudine lossa negai (232; I am that Scipio whose bones,
after numerous trials and recognized triumphs, I denied to my country
because of its ingratitude). The emphasis falls on the ungratefulness
of fellow citizens for the successful campaigns on behalf of the city by
one of its own defenders. The episode turns out to be an odd digression
on civic ingratitude when, in fact, the premise was merely the ingrati-
tude or unfaithful service of one of Geneveras servants in the amorous
designs of the couple. Even stranger, perhaps, is the way in which this
indictment of civic ingratitude ends with the observation that Aeneas
was a fine example illustrating that it is not always a greater virtue to
remain in a place than to flee it when the circumstances dictate. On an
autobiographical level, moreover, this argument may also serve as a
kind of apology for Caviceos own frequent flights from various Italian
courts.
Finally, chapter 33 of book 3 opens with Peregrino wandering the city
of Ravenna in search of his beloved, who at this point secretly resides in
a convent. Walking through the streets sighing and weeping, Peregrino
encounters quello amplissimo veneto, che le cenere del poeta fioren-
tino, gi gran tempo senza honore sepulchrale iacente, de pyramide
marmorea exculta honor Bernardo Bembo (285; that most gener-
ous Venetian who honoured the ashes of the Florentine poet, who had
lain for a long time without sepulchral honours, Bernardo Bembo). In
the end Peregrino does not speak to Bembo, and the encounter seems
little more than illustrious name-dropping within the narration. None-
theless, it is one more instance in the Peregrino in which Caviceo draws
attention to a famous exile not properly honoured in his homeland. This
is, however, not a matter of just any exile, but of Dante Alighieri, whose
remains, as I traced in chapter 2, were a particularly sore point of con-
tention between Ravenna and Florence during this period.29
Given Bernardo Bembos personal alliances of friendship with Flo-
rentines Lorenzo de Medici, Ficino, Landino, and others, and his sin-
cere desire to honour the memory of Dante, he may very well have tried
his best to induce the governments of Venice and Ravenna to repatriate
Dantes remains. As Nella Giannetto said, Proprio Bernardo nel 1476 si
adopera presso il governo della Serenissima perch induca i Ravennati
a consegnare ai Fiorentini le ossa di Dante, ma i suoi sforzi, evidente-
mente, risultano vani (Precisely Bernardo [Bembo] in 1476 does his best
to get the Serenissimas government to induce the people of Ravenna
to hand over Dantes bones to the Florentines, but all of his efforts were
evidently in vain).30 Only then does Bembo take it upon himself to do
what he can to honour Dante where he remains. Subsequently this
action takes on sometimes veiled, civically partisan interpretations.
During his period of service as vicedomino of Ferrara (14979), Bembo
enjoyed the intellectually dynamic Estense court, which included the
company of Ariosto, Strozzi, and Caviceo. As Giulio Bertoni says,
Genius Loci 129
Ferrara rappresenta infatti per il Bembo la pi grossa esperienza intel-

lettuale dopo gli anni fiorentini Non credo di esagerare dicendo che
probabilmente proprio questo soggiorno ferrarese del padre a decidere
la carriera futura di Pietro e della sua scelta a favore del volgare (In
fact, Ferrara represents for Bembo the greatest intellectual experience
after his Florentine years I do not believe I exaggerate in saying that
probably it is precisely this sojourn of his father in Ferrara that decides
the future career of Pietro and his choice to favour the vernacular).31
Bertoni also emphasizes the splendour of the Ferrarese court in these
years, attributing the credit to Lucretia Borgias patronage of the arts:
Non mai la corte estense aveva brillato di maggiore splendore32 (The
Este court had never shone with greater splendour). Of course, Pietro
Bembo finished and dedicated Gli Asolani to Lucretia Borgia in 1504.
Critics, including Achille Tartaro and Enrico Carrara, cite Caviceos
work in the same breath as Francesco Colonnas Hypnerotomachia
Poliphili (Poliphilos Strife of Love in a Dream, 1499), understood as
the pioneering novel that inspired Caviceo.33 While it would be impos-
sible to deny that there are some similarities most notably the dream
narrative mode and the non-Florentine vernacular language the two
projects diverge in important ways. For instance, the Poliphilis more
insistent allegory and its focus on esoteric mnemonic systems lend the
text a cipher-like inaccessibility. The viator of the Poliphili is, as Marco
Ariani and Mino Gabriele assert:
guidato dallabiezione della feritas a una humanitas non meramente pur-

gata, liberata dai sensi (come vuole il platonismo cristiano ), bens come
vitalizzata, fermentata dallintegrazione tra corpo e anima, tra sensi mate-
riali e sensi spirituali, tra Venere Pandemia e Venere Urania appunto,
coincidenti nellAlma Venus, nella grande Madre Physizoa ai cui misteri
verranno iniziati i due Amanti.
guided by the abjection of feritas to a humanitas not merely purged and

liberated of the senses (as Christian Platonism requires ), but rather as
vitalized, fermented out of the integration of body and soul, of material
and spiritual senses, of Pandemian Venus and Uranian Venus, coinciding
in Alma Venus, in the great Mother Physizoa into whose mysteries the two
Lovers will be initiated.34
Caviceos Peregrino, to put it more simply, celebrates not undergoing

that same ennoblement of the soul. Peregrino and Geneveras nuptials
represent a carnal union, the fruit of which heralds their death. But the
afterworld is a satisfactory place of eternal cultural reconciliation, or
at the least, Caviceos wishful thinking of a levelling of the civic, intel-
lectual playing field.
As is probably already evident, Caviceo was not the only non-Floren-
tine to remind the Florentines of their failure to honour their poets.
Another example is Toldo Costantini (1576c. 1651), a citizen of Ser-
ravalle (today known as Vittorio Veneto in the province of Treviso) by
birth. He wrote in his poem titled Il Giudicio estremo (The Final Judg-
ment) that he imagined a conversation with Dantes spirit in which
he pointedly asked Dante: E perch da Ravenna e non piuttosto/
Da Fiorenza ten vien? (And why do you come from Ravenna rather
than/from Florence?). Costantinis spirit of Dante responds by critiqu-
ing Florence as la mia ingrata terra [che] mi fe ingiusta e pertinace
Guerra (my ungrateful homeland [that] waged against me a persistent
and unjust War), while Ravenna mi raccolse e con pietose/Nenie mi
seppell (Ravenna welcomed me and buried me with pious lullabies).35
Dante also became a symbol and touchstone for other exiles, includ-
ing the author of the Sonetto allimagine di Dante (Sonnet on the
Image of Dante). Although the identity of the exiled poet is not clear
in this case, the poem expresses a common sentiment: Eccome lasso, a
te simil ancora/Nel cercar nova patria, e mutar stile huom di virt,
poco alla patria grato (Here I am, alas, so similar to you/In seeking a
new country, and changing my ways a virtuous man is appreciated
precious little by his own country).36
In sum, Florentine authors invoked the spirit of Dante in particular
to associate him with the city of his birth, to apologize for earlier Flo-
rentine mistreatment, to argue implicitly for the return of his body to
its rightful homeland, and to suggest an unbroken literary and cultural
heritage in the shared Florentine fatherland. Non-Florentine authors,
especially those like Caviceo in Ferrara who wrote in a language other
than the Florentine vernacular and who foresaw a new direction of liter-
ary development, emphasized instead the mobility of authors who Flo-
rentines claimed were Florentine, and even fictively naturalized them
as citizens of rival cultural courts. In the body of the romanzo, moreover,
Caviceo succeeded in making sharp critiques of the kind of high-flung
Florentine rhetoric concerning Dantes body that characterized Flo-
rentine proems. Caviceos Peregrino appeared, in fact, only two years
after Benivienis Cantico. It must be emphasized that in spite of its
entertaining qualities and its status as fiction, Caviceos Peregrino was a
Genius Loci 131
text profoundly engaged in the political realities of its day. Renaissance

writers invoked authorial ghosts not because they wished literally to
raise or to bring back the dead, or merely to tell entertaining stories.
Rather, by creating authoritative ghosts that speak for their Renaissance
causes, the later writers claimed some degree of literary authority for
themselves at the same time that they exercised control over who could
speak for earlier authors.
If for Florentines Dantes case was one of the most famous failures
of a Renaissance ghost to impose his will concerning his final rest-
ing place, the literary ploy was successful in at least one other case:
the translation of Picos corpse, to which I now turn. In addition to his
eidolopoeia of Dante in the Cantico, examined in chapter 2, Benivieni
presented a seemingly more successful instance of eidolopoeia using
Picos voice in two sonnets.
Picos Spirit Uncharacteristically Petitions

for a New Indoor Crypt
After Giovanni Pico della Mirandolas mysterious and unexplained

death in 1494 at the age of thirty-one, Benivieni was distraught to the
point of withdrawing from others and foregoing further writing.37 In
spite of their great differences, the two men were the closest of friends.
Benivieni was ten years Picos senior, and the two men came from vastly
different backgrounds. Pico enjoyed the wealth and privilege that his
nobility provided, while Benivieni sprang from a middle-class Floren-
tine family. Their temperaments also diverged. Pico, widely praised as
a quintessential exemplar of masculine beauty, could be overconfident
and even reckless, as evidenced by the dire consequences he endured
after the Margherita de Medici abduction scandal, or from the con-
demnation of his Five Hundred Theses, largely seeking to reconcile
pagan, Christian, and other belief systems.38 On the other hand, if life-
long bachelor Benivieni knew any love scandals, their memory has
not passed down to us,39 and the erudition of the Other Orpheus of
Lorenzos court was unfailingly tempered by Benivienis prudence and
diplomacy. Still, Pico and Benivieni enjoyed a closeness from the time
they met, probably shortly after Picos arrival for the first time in Flor-
ence in 1479 that went far beyond their poetic collaborations (most
notably Picos commentary on a love canzone by Benivieni) and their
shared spiritual conversions to Savonarolas piagnone program. Such
was the unusual state of trust between these two men that Benivieni
represented Pico as his elemosiniere (one who distributes alms) among

the poor who benefited greatly from Picos generosity.40
Picos death in 1494 came during uncertain and difficult times. The
very day Pico died, King Charles VIII of France marched on Florence
into the wake of the political vacuum created by political turmoil in the
city and Piero de Medicis precipitous flight out of the city. Savonarolas
political popularity was rising, and the piagnone religious frenzy urging
the repentance of sin and the performance of public acts of contrition
and self-abasement was waxing in the city, quickly transforming it from
a New Athens into a New Jerusalem. In this spirit, Pico had by the
end of his life resolved to go forth barefoot with a crucifix in his hands
to evangelize the people (sera proposto di andare a piedi scalzi e col
crocifisso in mano ad evangelizzare le genti).41 Moreover, he made
only two requests for his burial: [egli non poneva che due condizioni,]
fosse Cristiana, e si spendesse il meno possible (that it be Christian
and that it cost as little as possible).42 The counts family, in spite of their
nobility and wealth, seems to have assented to Picos burial requests.
Pico was buried very modestly outside the walls of Florences Domini-
can Church of San Marco. According to biographer Caterina Re, Il Pico
dunque fu riposte a tutta prima fuori di Chiesa, in qual punto non pos-
siamo dir di sicuro, ma probabilmente nel cimitero comune dei secolari,
e nel fondo di esso come gi il Poliziano (Pico thus was buried as soon
as possible outside of the church, in what precise place we cannot say
with certainty, but probably in the common laypeoples cemetery, and
in the back of it, as Politian had been).43
Even years after Picos passing, Benivienis praise of his friend
remained fresh and moving.44 Benivienis near-suicidal thoughts even-
tually moderated somewhat, however, and he outlived Pico by nearly
a half-century forty-eight years. Benivieni thus had ample occasion to
experience a prolonged period of grief, the waning of piagnone enthu-
siasms, and perhaps a nagging sense of the incongruity between Picos
merit and fame during his lifetime and the relative shabbiness and ano-
nymity of his burial place. Benivieni likely feared that Picos excellent
example would be forgotten, buried as his body was, outside the church
where few people would see his resting place. So Benivieni purchased a
tomb inside the walls of the church, intending it not merely for himself
but to be shared with his dearest friend, according to Benivienis biog-
rapher, his grandnephew Antonio Benivieni the Younger (15331598).45
However, it was not enough for Girolamo Benivieni to buy the tomb;
he also had to convince others to permit the translation of Picos bones.
Genius Loci 133
After all, Pico himself had shunned precisely this kind of exalted burial
in his deathbed testament.
Benivieni laboured on two fronts. At the age of seventy-nine, in 1532,
he agreed to participate in the Florentine government as a member of
the Duecento. His actions in this group were few, although, according to
Cesare Vasoli (in his entry on Benivieni in the Dizionario biografico), Benivi-
eni endeavoured to exert political influence to persuade the reluctant or
perhaps indifferent Duke Alessandro de Medici to permit the translation
of Picos body within the Church of San Marco. But Benivieni was noth-
ing if not persistent. He employed another tactic, penning two sonnets in
which a dead Pico himself is figured as speaking in the first person.46 In
the first poem his spirit implores Bishop Agnolo Marzi to intercede on his
behalf with Duke Alessandro de Medici to have his burial place moved:
Se lauro, quel sotto i cui sacri rami

Il primo nido mio gi n terra posi
Se fructi che di lui s gloriosi
Usciti son, se me, se l tuo ben ami,
Piet ti stringa, onde tu cerchi e brami
Che n pi honesta sede io mi riposi
Dove sia chi per me con pi pietosi
Affecti orando a Dio suplice exclami.
Oh se tuoi occhi e quei del tuo Signore
Vedessin come il sol, la pioggia, e venti
Batton hor lossa mie nude e nsepolte
Mosso a pieta de mie giusti lamenti
In miglior loco e con maggior mio honore
Sareben lossa mie subito accolte.
If you love the laurel, that one under whose sacred branches
Rested my first nest on earth,
Or the glorious fruits that have come from him,
If you love me or if you love your own good,
May pity move you, to seek and desire
That in a more honourable place you have me moved
Where someone with more pitying affections
for me can exclaim to God in prayer.
Oh! if your eyes and those of your Lord
Could see how the sun, rain, and winds
Now batter my naked and unburied bones
Then moved to pity by my just laments

In a better place and with greater honour
My bones would immediately be welcomed.47
It is, of course, Benivieni who wrote the sonnet, whose full title
is In Persona dello Ill. S. Conte Giovanni Pico Mirandula al R.do
Mon.S. De Marzi B[enivenius] Pregalo che gli impetri gratia appresso
della Ill.mo S. Duca Alexandro demedici che le ossa sue sieno rac-
colte e poste in pi celebre luogo chelle non sono (In the Person of
the Illustrious Count Giovanni Pico della Mirandola to the Reverend
Monsignor Marzi, Benivieni Begs Him to Supplicate the Favour from
the Illustrious Duke Alessandro de Medici that His [Picos] Bones
be Gathered and Moved to a More Celebrated Place than They Are
Now).48 Moreover, Benivieni is the one who initiated the request
to move Picos remains. But Benivienis petition appears to wield
greater weight of authority by dint of the rhetorical ruse of shifting
the voice so that it seems to come from Picos dead spirit. It is as if
Pico, offended by the harsh weather, has changed his mind about
his final resting place and now wishes to move inside to a more wor-
thy and restful tomb.
In making his request, Benivieni prudently passed over in silence
Picos adherence to Savonarolas program of radical religious reforma-
tion. He also did not mention the cause if it is true of Picos death
by poisoning at the behest of a Medici family member who blamed
governmental antagonisms on Pico, the one who originally insisted that
Lorenzo de Medici (the laurel of the first verse) bring Savonarola
from Ferrara to the city of Florence.49 Instead Benivieni emphasized the
glories of Lorenzos circle, which lent greater prestige also to this later
member of the Medici family. It is not clear if Alessandro was moved by
Benivienis verses, since no response remains.50
Benivieni then composed a second sonnet. This time the composi-
tion contains language meant to bolster Benivienis confidence and to
second his intent to translate Picos remains. In the second sonnet,
Benivieni portrayed the dead Pico as exhorting Benivieni to persevere
in his task:51
In quello immenso luminoso et vero

Specchio del mondo ovogni ben resulta,
Ovogni cosa incognita et occulta
Si vede, ogni concepto, ogni pensiero,
Genius Loci 135
Veggio hor ben il tuo pio desidero

Che quella veste chhor nuda e nsepulta
Giace cost in pi fertile e culta
Terra transumpta sia comio spero.
Seguita, non temer, ch se dal seme
Non degenera il fructo, il tuo disegno
Defraudato non fia, n la tua speme,
Et io gratie immortali, s come degno
A Lauro render, che meco insieme
Fruisce i ben di questo eterno regno.
In that immense, luminous, and true

Mirror of the world, whence every good comes,
Where everything unknown and hidden
Is seen, every concept, every thought,
I see well now your pious desire
That the covering that now lies naked and in the grave
Be exhumed, as I hope,
to a more fertile and venerated land.
Continue, do not fear that from the seed
The fruit will degenerate it cannot
Your plan will not be denied, nor your hope,
And I will render unending thanks to the Laurel,
As is right, who with me together
Enjoys the goods of this eternal kingdom.
In this poem, as in Dantes Paradiso, the blessed can see the thoughts
of others in God as in a mirror. Benivieni links together Dante, Pico, and
Lorenzo de Medici (lauro, the Laurel) in Gods paradise. Picos
spirit portrays Benivienis wish to be buried together with him as a pio
desiderio (pious desire), and the spirit hopes that they will repose in
the pi fertile e cultivata (more fertile and cultivated) sacred space of
the church.52
In the end, Benivienis hope found satisfaction: the two friends were
and are buried together in a stately tomb in San Marco, where a regu-
lar stream of faithful and tourists say prayers and render homage to
the renowned pair from the Florentine circle. Beneath them reposes
another shining star of Lorenzo de Medicis cultural firmament
Angelo Ambrogini, known as Poliziano (14541494) and their tomb
is now adorned with an arresting nineteenth-century bronze sculpture
of Savonarola. It bears noting, too, that Benivieni succeeded in his self-

imposed task to translate Picos corpse in spite of other attempts to
move the remains elsewhere. Benivieni faced some competition in the
enterprise. Just as Florentines sought Dantes remains from Ravenna,
the citizens of Mirandola also sought repatriation from Florence of the
bones of their most famous compatriot, and Montepulciano sought
the remains of the other humanist, Angelo Poliziano, sharing the same
space in San Marco.53 In their failure, the Mirandolans in Picos case, like
the Florentines in Dantes, also emphasized celebrating the famous citi-
zens spirit and works, even suggesting that to do so might be superior
to merely honouring the dead body.
Honouring the dead appears from this perspective to be a positive,
virtuous act. After all, Benivieni is Picos best friend and loves him
greatly. People can also change their minds over time, and Benivieni
seems to be assuming that Pico, had he lived, would have come to
change his mind and share Benivienis perspective in the 1530s that the
outdoor burial arrangement was no longer tenable. Is there, however,
another way of looking at this situation? How sacred and how absolute
are expressed final wishes before death? Does anybody ever have the
right that Benivieni claims to revise Picos final wishes concerning his
burial? After all, friends, even ones as close as these two men, can drift
apart over so many decades or, even if they do not, they can simply
disagree on any given issue. Seriously entertaining the possibility that
dead spirits can change their minds would presumably lead to disturb-
ing theological consequences, as well: A spirit of the dead is no more
likely to be able to change its mind than the damned and the blessed are
able to change places in the other world. Thus I must return to empha-
size that no matter how the author of eidolopoeia may represent a plea
from the spirit as being for the spirits benefit the narrative is written
to benefit the author in some way(s). It is a commonplace to say today
that funerals are for the living, not the dead; narratives featuring spirits
are also for the living and not for the dead. Moreover, the benefit to the
author besides being potentially selfish, in addition to self-serving
has the potential to hold less-than-virtuous aims. One can just as easily
imagine Picos spirit as nobly resolved to remain humbly buried out-
side the Church of San Marco and distressed or enraged by the location
of his remains today. At what point do authors of eidolopoeia cross a
line and transgress a sacred trust?54
Another lesson of these and many other eidolopoetic representations
of this period is this: by speaking for the dead, writers open a door on
Genius Loci 137
a place that is a kind of limbo in which dead authors are never really
dead. The dead do not possess identities (opinions, personal charac-
teristics/virtues, etc.) over which they have any control. Subsequent
writers can use the predecessors authority for personal purposes by
reauthoring the works, deeds, and perspectives of the dead. Moreover,
as in the last case, we see that Pico had no guarantee, in spite of his rati-
fied will and testament, that his wishes would be respected. His closest
friend was in fact the one to undo by means of poems the historical
Picos deliberate plans for self-determination of his body after death.
The full realization of the existential horror of this scenario will return
in the final sections of the following chapter.
4 Habeas Corpus, Habeas Spiritum:
Some Not-So-Final Thoughts
Da poi che Morte triunf nel volto

che di me stesso triunfar solea,
e fu del nostro mondo il suo sol tolto,
partissi quella dispietata e rea,
pallida in vista, orribile e superba
che l lume di beltate spento avea:
quando, mirando intorno su per lerba,
vidi da laltra parte giugner quella
che trae luom del sepolcro e n vita il serba.
When death had triumphed in the countenance

That had so often triumphed over me,
And when the sun was taken from our world,
That pitiless and evil one had gone,
Pallid in aspect, horrible, and proud,
By whom the light of beauty had been quenched,
Then, as I gazed across the grassy vale
I saw appearing on the other side
Her who saves man from the tomb, and gives him life.
Petrarch, Triumphus Fame, I.191
Ma per la turba a grandi errori avezza

dopo la lunga et sia l nome chiaro:
che questo per che s sapprezza?
Tutto vince e ritoglie il Tempo avaro;
chiamasi Fama, et morir secondo;
n pi che contra l primo alcun riparo.
Cos l Tempo triunfa i nomi e l mondo.
Habeas Corpus, Habeas Spiritum 139
And even though the errant crowd may hold

That for long ages Fame may still endure,
What is it that so highly is esteemed?
Time in his avarice steals so much away:
Men call it Fame; tis but a second death,
And both alike are strong beyond defense.
Thus doth Time triumph over the world and Fame.
Petrarch, Triumphus Temporis, 13945
In previous chapters I examined an array of early Italian authorial eido-

lopoeia in which fictive narratives of the speaking dead have raised
intriguing literary issues and at times disturbing ethical dilemmas that
have also on occasion effected real change in legal or political spheres.
Eidolopoeia underscores the importance of the spirit character as both
historical and dead. Iconic figures possess historical status and author-
ity. Their biographies can inspire readers by their actual words and
actions. Even if Renaissance writers subsequently embellish or change
aspects of the protagonists lives or beliefs when representing them as
spirits, some part of their recognized or remembered historicity still car-
ries a weight of credibility or authority. In addition, a storyteller, such as
Machiavelli, may want his audience to feel a collective civic guilt at the
earlier treatment of his interlocutor because events in the storytellers
life (Machiavellis) may resemble the exile and persecution in his idols
(Dantes). It would not be possible to call to mind this sense of guilt in
the same immediate way with a purely fictitious character.
Moreover, it is profoundly significant that authors portray their
respected predecessors as dead spirits. In doing so, the Renaissance
storytellers effectively add another dimension of authority to their
characters. The dead spirit by definition is assumed to possess knowl-
edge through experience that no living human being possibly could
the knowledge of both life and death. However, it is the storyteller, in
an intermediary role similar to that of a medium, who commands that
knowledge. The storytellers invention of the spirit character is a rhe-
torical form of one-upmanship: the storyteller claims to see something
that the audience cannot, making the writers role distinctively privi-
leged. The storyteller frames and presents a typically far-fetched nar-
rative that cannot be verified in any way, yet must be accepted on its
own terms. When the storyteller is also an editor or translator endeav-
ouring to impart authority on his own version of a text as in the case
of Girolamo Malipiero in Il Petrarcha spirituale, who conjures Petrarchs
spirit so that Petrarch himself can give his stamp of approval to

Malipieros awkward moralizations of the Canzoniere then the author-
ity ploy is also unavoidably circular.
Early modern Italian writers also play very effectively on the concept
of corpus to be both a corpse and a body of work. Writers of eidolopoeia
sometimes conflate these two understandings of corpus in pursuit of
scholarship. Instead of teasing out the message of a text, they might
conjure the spirit of the author to speak that message, but without
acknowledging the potential pitfalls of that communication. There is
no consideration of the licence of the author to create a dead spirit as
potentially ignorant, lying, or otherwise untrustworthy, for instance. In
other words, the eidolopoeia authors interpretation or representation
of the dead spirit typically risks becoming another layer of unreliable
text. Antonio Manettis interpretation of Guido Cavalcantis legacy is an
exception and a crucial lesson in this regard. Manetti does not assume
that because he sees Cavalcantis figure (the body corpus), he will nec-
essarily be enlightened concerning Cavalcantis textual corpus. In a move
that is unusual for the time, but not for this rigorous humanist, Manetti
distrusts the ephemeral quality of the ghostly visit. Cavalcantis works
could instead impart reliable information, something concretely verifi-
able by anyone else. Manettis character in the Notizia poses unverifi-
able questions to the fictive spirit of Cavalcanti and receives exactly
what he expects to receive, that is, no satisfaction. Manettis lesson to
his readers is that only by reading and studying Cavalcantis primary
texts and the good secondary sources that are cited in the narrative can
one come to a reliable knowledge of Cavalcantis corpus. Manetti may
be hindered by his own scepticism in this case, but if verifiable scholar-
ship is his aim, he too (along with every other conjurer of a dead idol)
receives precisely what he seeks in Manettis case, only as much as it
may be possible to know from other sources.
Reinventing the character of a person who is already dead can be a great
advantage when the storytellers message is particularly controversial
or unpopular. In his Cantico in laude di Dante, Girolamo Benivieni
presents a spirit of Dante with distinctly piagnone or pro-Savonarolan
sympathies, a political and spiritual attitude that only came into being
in the 1490s. Benivienis work appeared only eight years after the zeal-
ous Dominican friar was burned at the stake in Florences Piazza della
Signoria in 1498 on charges of grave suspicion of heresy, sedition, utter-
ing false prophecies, and other serious matters. Some of Benivienis
contemporaries endured harsh persecutions for their piagnone views, a
fate that Benivieni mostly avoided at least in part, I believe, because he

articulated his views in poetic and thus potentially ambiguous ways, as
well as by means of eidolopoeia: ventriloquizing those views through
the spirit of Dante. Choosing a dead protagonist also permitted Benivi-
eni to avoid damaging any reputations of living contemporaries or his
relationships with them, as might have happened, for instance, if he
had chosen to write his work in another very popular form around
this time: as a dialogue with living interlocutors (e.g., Baldassar Casti-
gliones Libro del Cortegiano, begun in 1508). Articulating a controversial
message through a dead spirit was effective, since the messenger (the
ghost or spirit of the dead) could not be killed or complain, as a living
interlocutor in a dialogue might. But like dialogues, eidolopoetic nar-
ratives remain open-ended. Significantly, the spirit character is never
definitively dead and can always be made to reappear.2 In fact, ghost
stories and eidolopoeia more broadly establish an eternally destabilized
situation in which death is not the end, nor can it settle definitively
any controversies. Those narratives bring up points for debate and rely
on the shifting of perspective to insinuate doubts about the reality
even of situations of fact (e.g., will Dantes body always rest in peace in
Ravenna?). Even if it is mere fiction, however, a spirits voice can seem
particularly imperious, almost like a divine proclamation, a message
that comes from beyond the grave that one dare not contradict.
Italian Renaissance eidolopoetic examples have been especially con-
cerned with imparting knowledge, determining the correct versions
of texts or translations, and clarifying truths concerning the afterworld,
for instance. But whose truths? And correct versions of works or of the
otherworld, according to whom? How important the eidolopoeia wri-
ters perspective really is might best be illustrated through the exami-
nation from three different authorial perspectives of the same fantasy:
to know while still alive what happens to the animate part (the anima,
soul) of the human being after bodily death. Rather than a conclusion, I
offer in this space a broadening of considerations to non-authorial eido-
lopoeia and to some of the potential consequences of the self after death.
Vows between Friends to Return from the Other World

with the Truth of What Happens after Death
Boccaccio has presented the best-known version of the narrative in

which two friends make a pact that whoever dies first will return in
spirit to impart true knowledge of the other world to the survivor. The
tenth novella of the seventh day in the Decameron recounts the case of two
Sienese friends, Tingoccio and Meuccio.3 Both have fallen in love with
a woman named Mita, who is Tingoccios comare, that is, godmother
or, in this case, the mother of Tingoccios godson. Tingoccio eventually
succeeds in having sex with Mita, an act that violates a particular bond
of religious kinship, and he dies shortly thereafter. Three nights after his
death, he keeps his promise and appears to Meuccio, rousing him from
sleep. Alarmed, Meuccio cries, Qual se tu? (879; Who [or what] are
you? 469).4 After Meuccio ascertains that the figure before him is indeed
the ghost of his dead friend, he asks if Tingoccio now counts himself
among the damned. Tingoccio says, Cosetto no, ma io son bene, per li
peccati da me commessi, in gravissime pene e angosciose molto (880;
I wouldnt put it that way, though Im getting a fair old grilling for
my sins, thats for sure, 469). Meuccio learns from Tingoccio how sins
are punished in the afterworld and agrees to have masses and prayers
said and alms given on his dead friends behalf. As Tingoccio is leaving,
Meuccio asks one final question: della comare con la quale tu giacevi
quando eri di qua, che pena t di l data? (880, that woman you were
sleeping with, the mother of your godson whats your punishment for
that? 469). In response, Tingoccio describes how, when he first reached
the otherworld, he was trembling like a leaf in a scorching fire, fearing
some greater punishment because of the religious bond he had violated
in his erotic congress with Mita. He confessed his fear to a fellow sufferer
in the otherworld: io ho gran paura del giudicio che io aspetto dun gran
peccato che io feci gi Il peccato fu cotale, che io mi giaceva con una mia
comare, e giacquivi tanto, che io me ne scorticai (881; Im dead scared of
the judgment Im expecting for a terrible sin I committed It was a bad,
bad one: I was sleeping with my godsons mother. I ploughed her up
so well I ploughed myself into the ground, 470). But the other spirit
merely elbowed Tingoccio and replied, Va, sciocco, non dubitare, ch
di qua non si tiene ragione alcuna delle comari! (881; Get along with
you, you ninny! Dont worry: godparents count for less than nothing
round here! 470). With that, Tingoccios ghost bids Meuccio goodbye,
and Meuccio, perhaps not too prudently, goes on to seduce his own
godsons mother, or so the text seems to imply.
Boccaccios story is told by the most subversive of the ten young nar-
rators of the Decameron, Dioneo. Moreover, all of the hundred tales are
told for pleasurable entertainment as a diversion from the ravages of
death and societal norms bought about by the bubonic plague of 1348.
The comic relief of this novella is highlighted because the storyteller
inverts listener (or reader) expectations. Instead of emphasizing eternal

punishment for breaching a sacred trust based on the godfamily rela-
tionship, Tingoccios message serves to encourage the friend to behave
in the same incestuous way (rather than seducing the original object
of his affections, Mita, who was of no godfamilial relation to Meuccio),
and portrays both men as too dull-witted to avoid infernal punishment,
perhaps even too dull-witted to recognize it as such.
Another tale with a very similar plot was told by Ludovico Domenichi
(15151564), who compiled this and many other stories and anecdotes
in his Historia di detti, e fatti degni di memoria di diversi principi e huomini
private antichi et moderni (Account of the Sayings and Facts Worthy of
Memory by Various Princes and Private Men Both Ancient and Mod-
ern). It is a brief tale in which the spirit of the notorious Pope Bene-
dict IX appears to a certain unnamed friend of his. When this friend
inquires why the dead popes appearance is so frightfully ugly, Bene-
dict replies: perche nella vita mia vissi senza legge, & senza ragione,
per ci volendo cosi Dio, & San Pietro, la cui sedia io lordai con tutti i
vittuperi del mondo, la mia sembianza ha molto piu della bestia, che
dellhuomo5 (Because during my life I lived lawlessly and without rea-
son, God and St Peter, whose seat I besmirched with all the vitupera-
tions of the world, have willed that my appearance seem more bestial
than human).6 Domenichi adds that the friend, who had encouraged
and shared to some extent in Benedicts sinful past, mended his ways
and tried to live a more virtuous Christian life from that day forward.
History records that Pope Benedict IX was born circa 1012 in Rome
with the name Theophylactus. He had the distinction of being the only
successor of Peter to sell the papacy. He served as pontiff for three
discontinuous periods from 1032 to 1044, briefly in 1045, and again
in 10478;7 his contemporaries accused him of simony, sodomy, and a
host of other mortal and venial sins. The moral of Domenichis story
is clearly implied: there is no escape from death for any mortal no
matter the status or position attained and punishment befitting ones
sins awaits the evildoer in the other world. The resolution is not comic,
as Boccaccios tale was, but rather more closely parallels conventional
medieval exempla of the type employed by preachers to illustrate the
lessons of their sermons.8 This outcome is in line with Domenichis
intent to collect and present in his Historia a wide-ranging collection of
facts, sayings, and in this case curiosities concerning famous men.
The third example with a near-identical plotline appears in the
Treatise on Vampires and Revenants by Dom Antoine Augustine Calmet
(16721757). While it is not an Italian example, and a significantly later

one at that, I include it for its focus on Italian Renaissance characters.
In this version of the tale, Marsilio Ficino and his friend Michael Mer-
cati (notary of the Holy See, a man of acknowledged probity and well
informed, particularly in the Platonic philosophy, to which he applied
himself unweariedly with Marsilius Ficin [Marsilio Ficino])9 make the
pact that whoever dies first will return to the survivor in spirit to dis-
close the secrets of the other world. This narrative, according to Calmet,
was related to him by a very grave and respectable man identified as
Cardinal Baronius.
The two Italian philosophers make their pact one day while con-
versing on the immortality of the soul. Time passes and Ficino dies. On
the morning of Ficinos death, Mercati is studying the same philosoph-
ical matters when he hears a horseman approach and a shout from
outside, Michael, Michael, nothing is more true than what is said of
the other life. Mercati rushes to his open window and pleads with the
horseman to stop, but the spirit of Ficino gallops away. The moral in this
version is a bit more ambiguous than it is in the previous two examples,
since its interpretation may depend on whether the reader sees Platonic
philosophical meanings, a strictly Christian message, or some kind of
syncretistic blending of the two. Given Calmets postscript Michael
Mercati, although very regular in his conduct before then, became quite
an altered man, and lived in so exemplary a manner, that he became a
perfect model of Christian life it is clear that the cleric interprets the
spirit of Ficinos message as an endorsement of a Christian otherworld
with rewards for the virtuous (and by implication, punishments for the
impenitent sinners). There is actually nothing in the spirits words to
suggest, however, that Ficino confirms anything other than the truth of
what the two Platonic philosophers have discussed during life. In other
words, at the level of the narrative, the message suggests that Mercatis
and Ficinos ideas about Platonism (or a syncretic religio-philosophical
approach) are correct, but perhaps at the narrative level of Cardinal
Baronius, and certainly by that of Dom Calmet, the same spirit is appro-
priated to confirm the ethical teachings of the Catholic Church.
The juxtaposition of these three tales with similar plots brings into focus
the perspective or ideology of the writer who employs spirit protagonists.
The same narrative ploy and plot can promote a sinful carpe diem mindset,
a pious conversion plea, or a recasting of a mysterious ambiguity over the
life-and-death material that it treats. Moreover, the focus on the authors
perspective and intent helps me to address how inherently idiosyncratic
the eidolopoetic message is. When eidolopoeia is modelled on texts with

carefully authenticated spiritual or religious tradition, such as hagiog-
raphies, then the message can seem to carry greater authority as well.
Recounting lives of the saints typically aims to encourage admiration and
veneration of exemplary Christians, while reinforcing readers faith, vir-
tue, or moral fortitude. Sometimes eidolopoetic authors articulate secu-
lar, ideological, or political messages, but they use as their mouthpieces
saintly spirits to lend a particular authority to those messages.
The Vision of St Thomas Aquinas by Antonio da Rieti
It is common in hagiographies for mortals to attest to seeing a holy

dead person in a vision. This figure, oftentimes a patron saint or one
favoured by the faithful percipient with frequent prayers, typically
appears in order to offer spiritual strength, to heal the sick, to answer
prayers and petitions, to confirm the Catholic faith (particularly in light
of later Lutheran and other reformational challenges), or otherwise to
offer evidence of the mercy and glory of God. Some visions, while fea-
turing recognized saints, nonetheless appear to have somewhat more
secular aims, frequently couched as prophecy.10
One example is the vision of St Thomas Aquinas (12251274) by
Franciscan friar Antonio da Rieti (fifteenth century, but precise dates
unknown), which is from a manuscript version dated 3 November 1442
contained in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence.11 Having
returned to Venice from Jerusalem in 1422, Antonio da Rieti dreams
that he experiences a heavenly vision bright light, pleasant smells,
and sweet singing of Glory to God in the Highest. A Dominican
friar appears to him and tells him to reveal to others in their Mendi-
cant orders what he is about to prophesy. In apocalyptic language and
symbolism, the Dominican who later identifies himself as Thomas
Aquinas predicts a series of political developments: the diffusion
across the Mediterranean of Turkish influences and an attack on an Ital-
ian city by a member of the House of Aragon, and actions that would
subsequently bring suffering to Florence. The saint also obliquely fore-
casts other events, including an incursion on Rome by Milanese forces.
Waking from the dream, Antonio dismisses it as a product of exhaus-
tion from his trip from the Holy Land. But three nights later, the saint
returns in another dream to rebuke Antonio for not making known his
prophecy. This time Antonio recounts his dream to two friars who are
with him, in addition to his addressee, a Reverend Father Roberto.
The main point in Antonios vision is that Florence will emerge as

a centre of leadership in religious matters, and the city will become a
refuge from heresy and Roman corruption. It was a message that Flo-
rentines evidently liked to repeat, since many fifteenth-century Floren-
tine manuscripts contain prophetic visions quite similar to it.12 While
it features a saint, this vision hardly conforms to the purposes of typi-
cal hagiographies. The figure of Aquinas surely serves to lend author-
ity, righteousness, and believability to the Florentine prophecy, but the
vision is not so much religious in nature as it is political, concerned far
more with worldly power relations than one might anticipate from a
vision of the saintly Catholic doctor and theologian. The figure of Aqui-
nas, who in Dantes sphere of the Sun (in Paradiso 1012) introduces
the harmony of religious orders and perspectives, serves here to bring
Franciscans and Dominicans together in praise of Florence in the citys
religious struggles against Rome. That Florence continued to exert
much influence in religious matters at this time might be due at least in
part to repeated Florentine articulation of similar prophecies placed
in the mouths of authoritative figures.13 In this regard, these visions are
similar to ones that Florentines proffered featuring the spirit of Dante
insisting on his Florentine citizenship and seeking to return to the city
of his birth. It is also possible that, by claiming an ability to see and
converse with the souls of the blessed departed, the authors of these
visions likewise intend to increase their estimation in the minds of their
audience, the members of their faith community.
With these considerations in mind, I would like to turn to a very dif-
ferent kind of eidolopoetic text that is almost exactly contemporaneous
with Antonio da Rietis vision, but penned by a Florentine merchant,
Giovanni Morelli. This passage from Morellis Ricordi has already
received a number of scholarly examinations, but none, as yet, have
emphasized the rhetorically manipulative and coercive nature of the
authors message.
Giovanni Morellis Account of His Dead Sons Spirit
Giovanni Morelli could surely be considered a success in terms of his

mercantile profession. Conscientious and skilled, he became quite com-
fortably well-to-do, but in other areas of his long life, which ended in
1444 when he was seventy-two, he knew his share of tragedies and hard-
ships. We know of them, as well, thanks to the diary that he began when
he was twenty-two years old (sometimes referred to as the Ricordi, other
times as the Cronaca di Giovanni di Paolo [or Pagolo] Morelli).14 In this

book, he detailed his difficult childhood. His father, whom he did not
remember, died when Morelli was three years old, and his mother aban-
doned him to other relatives when she remarried the following year.
He endured the subsequent deaths of his grandfather and older sister.
In his youth, he fell desperately in love with a woman who spurned
him. He subsequently married another woman, and noted the births of
their four children. Morelli reserved the greatest share of his affection
to his first-born son, Alberto, a waifish and somewhat sickly boy, who
nevertheless proved to be a quick student of ancient languages, as well
as of mercantile expertise.
Morelli decided to write his Ricordi as a kind of handbook of advice
for this beloved son in the event that Morelli should die unexpectedly,
as his own father had done.15 Thus he wrote about the importance of
staying abreast of civic political affairs and maintaining good relation-
ships with the men in power, as well as about the need to use money to
ones best advantage and to seek advice from uno o pi valente uomo,
savio e antico e sanza vizio (205; one or more worthy men of the great-
est wisdom and experience, who are without vices), and other advice
of this kind.
Unfortunately, what started out as a nosebleed eventually led to
Albertos untimely death at nine years of age. Compounding Morellis
crushing paternal grief was his overpowering sense of guilt for not
showing the boy more frequently how much he loved him, and for
not making sure that Alberto received last rites before he died. Richard
Trexler notes that at the time it would have been unusual for children so
young to make confession, an integral component of the sacrament of
viaticum.16 Morellis conscience was particularly heavy, since he feared
that Alberto would not be accepted into heaven for no fault of his own,
but rather due to his fathers negligence in calling a priest to admin-
ister extreme unction to the dying boy. Morelli lived in constant tor-
ment with his thoughts, deprived of sleep and feeling as if the dead boy
held a knife that pierced his heart (e ci tiene un coltello che ci passa il
cuore, 295).
Morelli marked the first anniversary of Albertos death with a long,
elaborate, and highly personal series of prayers and devotions.17
Dressed only in a shirt, Morelli prayed fervently before the image of
Christs crucifixion (which his dying son had repeatedly kissed in devo-
tion). The more he prayed, the more comforted he felt, hoping that, if
he could not have his son living with him again on earth, at least he
might know that his son was enjoying blessedness in his eternal life.
Morelli felt great sympathy with the Virgin Mary, figured in the cru-
cifixion image he contemplated, since she, too, had lost a beloved son.
When he had finished his orations to Mary and other saints, he got
into bed and made the sign of the cross. Immediately, however, he said
that his enemy, Satan, assailed him, insisting that the soul is nothing
but a bit of breath, which is able to feel neither good nor evil (lanima
fusse niente o un poco di fiato, che bene n male potea sentire, 311).
Satan insinuates in Morellis mind the impetus to despair, suggesting
that Albertos fate will match all the other sorrows and disgraces of
Giovanni Morellis life, and listing them in detail, from the deaths in
his family to the abandonment by his mother, from the sicknesses he
faced to the ill treatment he had at the hands of severe schoolmasters.
Satan upbraids Giovanni, accusing him of not treating Alberto like his
own son, but rather like a complete stranger (tu nollo trattavi come
figliuolo ma come istrano), and continues: tu non volesti mai dalgli
unora di riposo; tu non gli mostrasti mai un buon viso; tu nollo baciasti
mai una volta che buon gli paresse; tu lamacerasti alla bottega e colle
molte ispesse e aspre battiture (31516; You never conceded him an
hour of rest; you never showed him a happy face; you never once kissed
him when it might have done him good; you worked him to the bone
in your shop, giving him regular and bitter blows). As if this were not
enough, Giovanni hears Satan remind him of what torments him most:
that Giovanni is responsible for Alberto not being at peace with God:
Tu lo vedesti morire negli scuri, aspri e crudeli tormenti, e mai gli vedesti
avere requia unora di sedici d gli dur la nfermit. Tu lhai perduto, e
mai al mondo pi il rivedrai: e per memoria di quello tu istarai sempre in
paura e n tormento degli altri! (31516)
You saw him die in dark, harsh, and cruel torments, and you never gave
him an hours peace in the sixteen days that his sickness lasted. You lost
him, and you will never see him again in this world. And from the mem-
ory of what you did, you will forevermore be in fear and tormented by
others!
Waking from this dream, Giovanni Morelli verges on utter despair,

but instead he gazes again at the crucifix, putting his soul in Gods
hands, and he falls asleep. About an hour later, he notes that he had a
vision in his sleep that he believed was inspired by God (318). In this
vision, Giovanni tries to flee from the recurrent thoughts of his dead
son by walking toward Mount Morello. As he walks, he remembers
more details of his son, including his first movements in his mothers
womb. He filled various pages of his Ricordi with details of his dream,
which include specific trees, a marvellous white bird with a golden
beak and green legs, and some pigs and a sow, as well as a blindingly
bright light from which his favourite saint, Catherine of Alexandria,
emerges. Morelli would present any dream interpreter with an intrigu-
ing case.
Ultimately, St Catherine touches the white bird and it becomes
ispirito come un angelo bianco (322; a spirit like a white angel). When
Morelli is able to focus more carefully on the figure, he recognizes his
son Alberto. Figliuolo mio! Alberto mio! (322; My son! My Alberto!),
he shouts, running to embrace him. But though he moves forward vari-
ous times, non mi parea appresarmegli punto (322; it didnt seem
to me that I came any closer to [Alberto] at all). With St Catherines
approval, Albertos spirit speaks to Morelli in his dream:
Padre, prendete conforto, ch i vostri prieghi hanno passati i cieli e venuti

accetti dinanzi al cospetto del nostro Signore Ido; e per segno di ci mi
vedete qui a consolazione di voi. Datevi pace e sperate nella divina prov-
videnzia, ed esso benigno Signore vi dar consolazione delle giuste e
oneste vostre domande. (322)
Father, take comfort, for your prayers have been heard and accepted in
heaven in the presence of our Lord God. As a sign of this, you see me here
for your consolation. Be at peace, and have hope in divine providence,
and that good Lord will grant you consolation for your just and honest
petitions.
Morelli writes that, after giving thanks to God, St Catherine, and the
Virgin Mary, he practically overwhelms his sons spirit with a series of
questions, which clearly indicate his pre-eminent preoccupations, all
of which seem rather self-centred: (1) if his own sins were the cause of
Albertos death; (2) if the children left to him would satisfy him or if he
would have others; (3) if God would grant him wealth and status in the
Commune of Florence; and (4) how long he would live.
Albertos spirit smiles, stating: Padre del mio corpo, voi domandate
assai cose, e Idio umile e grazioso vi dar in parte contentamento al
vostro conosciere (323; Father of my body, you ask quite a number of
things, but God, humble and gracious, will satisfy in part your desire to
know). Alberto continues by clarifying that God called him to Himself
for the good of his fathers soul and his family because of our sin (per
lo nostro peccato, 323), and that he would do well to hold his other
children dear. The spirit also tells Morelli that he has had many graces
from God already, and will have still more if he recognizes that they
come from Him. He also expects that Morelli will die an old man. The
spirit of Alberto takes his leave, and Morelli awakes tutto ispaventato
e n parte allegro (324; all scared but partly happy).
Morellis narrative is relatively idiosyncratic when compared to the
many other instances of eidolopoeia in this study because of its pro-
foundly personal concerns. Unlike the majority of the other stories in
this study, Morellis narrative did not target a public audience, nor was
its message intended to influence public or political action or wide-
spread societal beliefs or behaviours. According to Trexler, There is
little doubt that Morelli, like more illustrious men, was himself record-
ing all these prayers and inflections as exemplary procedures that had
worked. Why else did he carefully transcribe each prayer and move-
ment, if not to pass on to his descendants this successful experience?18
Why indeed? Perhaps Morelli wanted to give his readers this impres-
sion, and yet, something tells me that his innermost ambition did not
concern whether or not his surviving children grew up to practise his
personalized form of penance.
Certainly on the narratological level of Giovanni the character, it is
easy to sympathize with him in his lifelong struggle against abandon-
ment and grief.19 I do not dispute that what Trexler writes is absolutely
true: Giovanni did for his sons what his father had not done for him
reconstruct a love he had never known.20 In the end, poor Giovanni
sought comfort and some knowledge of whether or not all this suffer-
ing was worthwhile. But what is happening on the level of Giovanni
the author? At this level, Giovanni transcribed a dream or invented a
story to write down. Why? In order for his Ricordi not to be superflu-
ous, but to have some purpose after Albertos death, he must recast
what had been a text specifically intended for Alberto into a gift for his
surviving children. Perhaps the writer became attached to his project
and could not bear to stop writing; perhaps he could not fathom writ-
ing merely for himself (as in a personal diary) and needed to believe
that he was doing something useful by offering advice to his remaining
offspring. In any event, the continuation of the Ricordi may have had
a complicated intent: both to excuse his own behaviour (and thereby
perhaps change the opinion that his readers have of him) and to effect
a change in the character or behaviour of the readers themselves, his
figli cadetti. As a father figure (quite literally), writing a story in which
ones authority is further reinforced by the appearance of a saint (Cath-
erine of Alexandria) and a comforting message related through com-
munication with his dead son, it may not be a stretch to suggest that
Giovanni Morelli intended to reinvent his paternal image. In other
words, Morellis purpose for presenting an example of eidolopoeia to
his surviving children may have been to substitute a nicer image of his
paternal behaviour or to attempt to supersede his actual fatherly image
(perhaps not a particularly good one, given his self-confessed strict-
ness and lack of affectionate displays, even to his favourite first-born
son). By means of the Ricordi, Morelli could present a much different
self-portrait: one of a man contrite, long-suffering, loving, concerned
about the welfare of his offspring and now rewarded by the divine
power of his angel-like son Alberto with whom he alone now has the
privilege of discoursing.
Even writers without public literary pretensions have motivations
for their stories, and sometimes, as in this case, they can be more dis-
turbing than they appear at first glance, particularly to the intended
reader. Place yourself, for arguments sake, in the role of Antoniotto,
the second-born son, presented with the gift of this book in which
your mean, self-absorbed, never-satisfied, emotionally stingy mer-
chant father is the hero in a divinely sanctioned narrative, and the
message you are supposed to learn seems to be: live up to your angel
brothers limitless potential and virtue. This invented version of
Giovanni Morelli might have presented an instructive, though per-
haps unintentional, lesson for the young readers on becoming keen
interpreters of underlying intentions and motivations. After all, they
received explicit instruction from their father within the narrative that
a Firenze ha gente viziata, e con cattivit e vizi rapportano male e
sottraggonti per nuove vi e tranelli (202; there are sinners in Flor-
ence who with vicious intentions relate evil gossip, and they cheat you
with new ways and tricks), and the children may have been able to
apply such scepticism and interpretive techniques to come to a greater
understanding of their fathers possible authorial traps. In this case, it
is not particularly easy to determine if Morellis invented eidolopoetic
vision is not a form of male [rapportato]. At the heart of Giovannis guilt
is the self-accusation placed in the mouth of the character of Satan
that the father did not treat Alberto as a son, but rather as an outsider.
In this admission, addressed to his younger sons ostensibly in order

to give them practical instruction in navigating their way in highly
politicized Florentine society, the father essentially comes face to face
with his guilt, prompted by treating his son as a political instrument
of his own wealth and security. However, he does not fully or openly
acknowledge this disturbing motivation. Without Alberto, Giovanni
instead multiplies his efforts through this writing to ensure that his
remaining sons will be useful to him.
Giovanni the author dated the final entry of his Ricordi in 1421, fif-
teen years after Albertos death and fourteen years after the elaborate
vision of Albertos spirit. He noted that his second-born son, Anto-
niotto, became ill with tertian fever near the town of Laiatico outside
of Florence: Non volle Idio vandassi, o la mia nigrigenzia, per pi
mio dolore (338; God did not want me to go to him there [to Laiatico],
or perhaps it was due to my own negligence, which only adds to my
suffering). However, this time the father made sure to reach his son
before he died in Empoli, on the way back to Florence. This time he
gave his son his blessing and provided for his confession and final rites
(ivi il vidi: conobbemi e benedissilo; e da chio giunsi vivette circa a 3
ore e pass con buono conoscimento, confesso, comunicato e innoliato,
3389). He concluded his Ricordi with a prayer: Cristo abbi lanima
e me faccia degno non vedere la morte degli altri, prestando loro vita
lunga e buona, con figliuoli maschi e femmine buoni cristiani. E cos
piaccia a Dio donatore dogni bene e dogni grazia. Amen (339; Christ
take his soul to heaven and make me worthy not to see the death of my
other children. Give them a long, good life with male and female chil-
dren, good Christians. May this please God who is the giver of every
good and every grace. Amen.)
Although Giovanni lived another twenty-three years, curiously
enough his Ricordi end here. It is as if the death of his second son with
all of the proper rites could bring to an end his task of writing. He may
have come to believe that he had finally exculpated himself in doing
properly the second time what he did not manage to do at the death
of his first son. Alternatively, his other children might have been old
enough at this point that continuing his advice book would be unnec-
essary (one reason Giovanni gave near the beginning of the Ricordi for
writing it was that his sons would have good advice from their father in
the event that their father should die young, as his own father had). Yet
another possibility is that he recognized that his intended readers were
no longer quite as young and impressionable and would not necessarily
accept any more fictional recastings of his character from him. In any
case, this text so very intimate might be terrifying to the reader not
on the level of the narrative (Albertos ghost, for all its otherworldli-
ness, does not set anyones teeth on edge), but on the level of autho-
rial motive. My reading of Morellis vision thus differs greatly from the
reaction of Jean-Claude Schmitt, who largely seconds Trexlers emo-
tional response: Such a document gives the strongest impression of
veracity. The modern reader feels sympathetic, in the primary sense of
that term, toward Giovanni, the tormented father whose trial seems so
credible, so believable, to us. The authenticity of the feelings expressed
is undeniable. He adds:
This extraordinary tales shows [sic] perfectly how a cultivated layman

at the end of the Middle Ages was able to confide to the intimacy of his
record book the painful and anguishing experience of his mourning and
the precise analysis of his own dreams. The entire Christian afterlife is
present in this long tale: God, Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the saints to
whom Giovanni vows a particular devotion. On the other side, incar-
nating his bad conscience, are the face and the voice of Satan. Between
the two is the dead child, whose memory, day and night, haunts the
father, who accuses himself of not having loved his son enough and
of having perhaps compromised his sons salvation. This man was
not fundamentally different from us, and we can well understand his
unhappiness and the images that haunted him. Thanks to him, we can
grasp what ghosts truly were: they existed only through the strength
of the imagination of the living, of the relatives who could not accept
the unexpected and premature death of a child or someone else dear
to them; they felt guilty for an unfortunate destiny or for the lack of
concern they showed while there was still time to do so. The father saw
the son as if he were alive; Giovanni wanted to take his son in his arms
but understood that the distance between them was uncrossable, for the
ghost was only an image in a dream. At the end of a year, to the day, the
child was saved, the labor of mourning was finally completed thanks
to the internalization of a temporal rhythm that had long been part of
the liturgy of the dead, the anniversary marked the end of the obses-
sive return of the deceased, signifying his separation from those close to
him, the liberation of the living.21
On the contrary, I believe that Morellis narrative shares a power-

centred deceit with other more public instances of eidolopoeia.
Another tale may illustrate by contrast just how manipulative Morel-

lis Ricordi might be. Boccaccios fourteenth eclogue, composed in Latin,
presents a pastoral vision of comfort to a bereaved father who likewise
must face life after burying a child. Boccaccio casts himself recognizably
in the role of Silvius, shepherd and forester in a world where Christ is
Roman.22 Violante, Boccaccios real-life daughter, died at five years of
age; in the poem she is figured with the name of Olympia and leaves her
heavenly realm to appear to Silvius. Olympia describes a joyous other
world and leaves Silvius yearning to know what he can do to be worthy
of joining her there after his death. She urges him to accomplish acts of
Christian charity, barely disguised in pastoral terms:
Pasce famem fratris, lactis da pocula fessis,

assis detentis et nudos contege, lapsos
erige, dum possis, pateatque forensibus antrum:
hec aquile volucres prestabunt munera pennas,
atque Deo monstrante viam volitabis in altum. (874)
Feed your brothers hunger, to the weary

offer cups of milk, visit the prisoner,
clothe the naked; when you can, raise up
the fallen, let the entrance of your cave
be open to all; these services will lend
you feathered eagle wings, and you will fly
up to the height with God showing the way. (173)
Boccaccios intended audience is clearly not any figli cadetti, and his
motive for writing the poem cannot be to project himself as sanctioned
with special powers to communicate with the divine in order to motivate
surviving children, by means of envy and sibling rivalry, to attempt to
attain greater status in their fathers mind than a now angelic first son.
Boccaccio may have intended this eclogue as a form of self-consolation
for the grief he experienced on the heels of his daughters tragic pass-
ing.23 Its message to perform acts of charity in the practice of Christian
virtue and in hopes of attaining salvation and a path toward beatitude
in the afterworld is not nearly so ambiguous as Morellis intent in pass-
ing his Ricordi to his surviving children. Giovannis written communi-
cations with the dead represent one private, relatively circumscribed,
yet powerful message, aimed at directing to his own ends the behaviour
and actions of his living children.
Executor of the Estate/Executioner of Ones State

(of Being): The Lessons of Petrarchs Testamentum
and Epistola posteritati
That a child should die before a parent strikes most people not only as
appallingly tragic but also as unnatural, since a childs death does not
respect the order of the progression of generations. More typical are the
preparations that mature adults make for their own passing, including
bequeathing possessions to children or to others they believe will sur-
vive them. These last wills or testaments are not examples of eidolopoeia,
when the living cause the dead to speak, since they are the words of the
living, often declared quite emphatically that they were made while in
sound mind and body. However, these documents are not intended to
be legally or publicly divulged until after the death of the ones who
dictate them. For this reason, a testament may be written as if one were
speaking from beyond the grave, indicating precisely to whom certain
possessions should pass.
Petrarchs Testamentum (Last Will) opens with the admission: Sepe de
eo mecum cogitans de quo nemo nimis, pauci satis cogitant, de novis-
simis scilicet ac de morte (I have often reflected on a matter concerning
which no one can reflect too much and only a few reflect enough, namely,
the last things and death).24 Indeed Petrarch may have thought about
his end more than most people, given that he received more than one
false report of his own death. According to Giovan Andrea Gesualdo,
Alcuni invidiosi del nome di [Petrarca] o vaghi dimpetrarsi i suoi ben-
eficii, sparsero pi volte fama per Italia e per Provenza chegli era morto,
essendo lor mal grado pur vivo (Some men envious of [Petrarchs]
name or desirous to plead for his benefices repeatedly scattered reports
in Italy and Provence that he was dead, though unfortunately for them
he was still alive).25 Gesualdo noted that another grido del suo morire
per Italia non pur una volta si rinovell (419; alarm about his death
throughout Italy not just one more time was renewed). This time, during
the papacy of Pope Urban V (136270), Gesualdo wrote:
non so chi, il quale dice aver saputo fingendo chegli era spento, gli
amici in Provenza nella corte ed in Milano miserevolmente lo piansero:
onde non pur la prebenda che il papa novellamente conferito gli avea
e quel che conato lo Imperatore si diede altrui, ma tutti suoi benefici e
quanti per allora ne possedeva e quanti dieci anni addietro a poveri
suoi amici. (419)
I do not know who said he feigned learning that [Petrarch] had died.
Friends in the court in Provence and in Milan wept piteously for him.
Then not only the prebend that the pope had recently conferred on him
and the one which the emperor had approved were given to others, but all
of the benefices that he then possessed as well as those that [Petrarch] had
given some ten years earlier to his poor friends.
In light of the frenzy of envious men to seize Petrarchs benefices

and property following these false rumours of his death, the final sen-
tence of Petrarchs Testamentum rings especially harshly: Ego Francis-
cus Petrarca scripsi, qui testamentum aliud fecissem, si essem dives, ut
vulgus insanum putat (I, Francesco Petrarca, have written this, who
would have drawn up a different testament if I were rich, as the mad
rabble believes me to be, 923). Armando Maggi has rightly empha-
sized the way that this text defies what one would anticipate from a
standardized, strictly legalistic document; instead it is an unforget-
table self-portrait, a reflection on the meaning of [Petrarchs] own
death, and most interestingly, an invitation to contemplate an alter-
native and inexistent Petrarch.26
Important for my present purposes is Petrarchs elaborate discus-
sion in his Testamentum of his instructions for his burial. Petrarch
insisted, Corpus autem hoc terrenum ac mortale, nobilium gravem
sarcinam animorum, terre unde sibi origo est volo restitui et hoc abs-
que omni pompa, sed cum summa humilitate et abiectione quanta
esse potest (This earthly and mortal body, a heavy burden for noble
souls, I wish to be returned to the earth from whence it drew its origin,
and this to be done without any pomp but with utmost humility and
all possible lowliness, 701). He went on to claim, De loco autem
non magnopere curo (As to the burial place I do not care greatly,
723), a statement that he immediately contradicted by offering not
one place as a potential location for his tomb, but seven in Padua,
Arqu, Venice, Milan, Pavia, Rome, and Parma (catalogued along
with details concerning specific churches, chapels, or cathedrals in
each city).27
The Testamentum is hardly out of character for Petrarch. Many of his
writings have as their focus death, the possibility of triumphing over
death, and the purpose of life as an endeavour to leave a written legacy
of oneself after death.28 Petrarchs letters to the dead in his Rerum famil-
iarum libri (or Familiares, Letters on Familiar Matters) voice his schol-
arly queries, his personal ambitions, and his priorities in what they
pointedly contain and what he prefers to leave unmentioned. These

communications with the dead typically end with the reminder that
they were written in the land of the living. Moreover, Petrarch also
demonstrated other efforts to control or even micromanage public dis-
plays that concerned him. The most famous example was his careful
choreography of his poet laureate ceremony, as indicated in his Epistola
posteritati (Letter to Posterity), and it is to this astoundingly experimen-
tal composition that I now turn.29
The Epistola posteritati spans approximately ten pages, and Petrarch
likely intended it to conclude another collection of his public circulat-
ing epistles, his Rerum senilium libri or Seniles (Letters of Old Age). He
endeavoured to promote himself and his works, despite of the posture
of humility and feigned self-doubt evident from his opening words:
Fuerit tibi forsan de me aliquid auditum quamquam et hoc dubium
sit, an exiguum et obscurum longe nomen seu locorum seu tempo-
rum perventurum sit et illud forsitan optabis, nosse, quid hominis
fuerim aut quis operum exitus meorum, eorum maxime, quorum ad
te fama pervenerit (Possibly you will have heard something about
me although I am not sure whether my petty, obscure name will reach
far into either space or time and perhaps you will wish to know what
kind of man I was or which works I wrote, especially those whose
fame has reached you).30 After a brief comment on the fickleness of
public opinion, he begins his self-assessment with the seemingly dif-
ficult admission, fui autem vestro de grege unus, mortalis homentio
(I was one of your own troop, a mortal man, 2567). He mentions his
descent from an old family and confesses to various sins of his youth,
considering first and foremost his vanity, followed by his attitudes
concerning the seven deadly sins. He claims to disagree with people
who find his eloquence or writing style claro ac potenti (clear and
forcible), since he believes it to be fragili et obscuro (weak and
obscure, 2623), before turning to a summary of his life: his birth,
his familys exile, and his travels and studies. Petrarch highlights key
events in his life, including his stay in Vaucluse and the Good Friday
inspiration to write his Africa. While scholars know (and no doubt
Petrarchs contemporaries did, too) that Petrarch worked doggedly to
organize laurel ceremony invitations to both Paris and Rome, his ver-
sion of the situation to posterity makes it seem as if mirabile dictu!
though he was unworthy of such attention, he received two invitations
to laureate crowning festivities on a single day (2723). He preferred
Rome, then in his later years embraced the clerical life and became at
the behest of Jacopo da Carrara the Younger a canon of Padua. But

alas, Petrarch moans, among mortals nothing endures; and if any-
thing nice happens, it soon ends in bitterness (2801; Sed heu
nichil inter mortales diuturnum, et si quid dulce se obtulerit, amaro
mox fine concluditur), announcing Jacopos death and his return to
France, before the letter broke off in 1351. Though Petrarch did not die
for a full twenty-three years, he did not choose to continue this narra-
tive of his life.
The Epistola posteritati shifts the narrative roles of literary composi-
tions in a way that contrasts with examples of eidolopoeia presented
thus far in this study. From Dantes encounters with the spirits of the other
world in his Commedia to Benivienis poetic representations of the dead
(Dante, Pico), the author of eidolopoeia is the one who narrates, claim-
ing to have heard a message from spirits of the deceased. In this way the
authors of eidolopoeia claim control over the dead (how they represent
spirits, what the message is, how it is to be presented and interpreted,
etc.). The role of the reader is to accept the word of the eidolopoetic
author (and to second whatever explicit or implicit recommendations
the dialogue with the spirit might suggest: examine the state of ones
soul, assist in translating the remains of the dead in order to honour a
memory, etc.). What Petrarch does in his Letter to Posterity is to figure
himself, not as the living percipient of a spirit, but rather, I would argue,
as the dead spirit speaking directly to his readers. Petrarch effectively
takes away the intermediary, and in doing so, attempts to control more
carefully his image and message. While some of Petrarchs epistles in
the Seniles or Familiares were addressed to living interlocutors, many
others he addressed to famous predecessors, including Cicero, Seneca,
Varro, Livy, and Homer. In these latter intentionally monological com-
munications, Petrarch praised, critiqued, chided, and pleaded with
souls of the esteemed dead, who he did not anticipate would respond.31
But why does Petrarch want to seem dead already, and what exactly is
his message to us?
Certainly by deliberately casting himself as another dead man, Petrarch
cleverly writes himself into the company of his classical auctoritatis. More-
over, he aims to take charge of his image (or how he wished to be remem-
bered) by writing the script of his legacy while he is still alive and can do
it himself. He clearly does not want to depend on others to get it right.
While ostensibly not a spirit of the dead, Petrarch in his pose as a voice
from beyond the grave addressing the reader seeks to be accepted with-
out question, even if aspects of it may seem downright mirabili. There is a
seriousness in another sentence from Petrarchs Testamentum, the declara-

tion that he intends as the expression of his last wishes:
Si autem forte, quia omnes sumus mortales nec omnino ullus est ordo
moriendi, dictus Franciscolus de Brossano, quod avertat Deus, ante me
moreretur, tunc heres meus esto Lombardus a Serico predictus, qui plene
animum meum novit, quem ut in vita fidelissimum expertus, non minus
fidelem spero post obitum.
But if by any chance, since we are all mortal and there is no set order for
dying, the said Francescuolo da Brossano were to die before me which
may God avert in that case my heir is to be the aforesaid Lombardo della
Seta. He knows my mind fully, and I hope that he whom I have found to
be most faithful during my lifetime will be no less faithful after my death.
(901)
This statement almost suggests that Petrarch feared his final wishes
would not be respected. When it is read alongside an earlier passage of
the Testamentum, concerning the consequences of ignoring his requests
to be buried without pomp, the reader can almost detect the expression
of an unspecified threat: hoc negligant, cum sic omnino me deceat ac
sic velim, ita ut, si forte quod absit contrafecerint, teneantur Deo et mihi
de gravi utriusque offensa in die iudicii respondere (For this request
befits me so well and I wish it to such a degree that if they were to act
against it may that not happen they ought to be held responsible
to God and to me on the day of Judgment for such a grave offense
against both God and myself, 701). In other words, associates who
disobey what is plainly decreed in his will, even if they should do so in
an attempt to show him greater homage or honour, Petrarch vows, will
be held to answer to God, as well as to his outraged ghost. The same
fearsomeness could not possibly be achieved in a standard letter one
between living correspondents. Standard letters invite dialogue, and
Petrarch is clearly not seeking to be queried, contradicted, or corrected.
I see the Letter to Posterity as a form of eidolopoeia in reverse, in
which the writer is not figured as the living interlocutor, but rather as
the dead spirit speaking to the living. Petrarch may have seen this form
as his best option to pre-write his legacy, to control his post-mortem
image, and to fix with some finality his fama.
The fama of the author is a double-edged sword. Fame (under-
stood as a lofty and admired reputation) is necessary for the author
to attain or retain his status as such, causing him to be remembered

through his works as a paragon of literary achievement. But fame is
also precisely what makes the author prey to invocations and repre-
sentations, or more properly misrepresentations as a spirit after death.
When Machiavelli conjured the spirit of Dante in his Dialogo intorno
alla lingua nostra, he chose Dante because no other author could speak
so authoritatively on his subject of the pre-eminence of the Florentine
vernacular. Dantes fame as the greatest author in that vernacular, most
prominently through the example of his Commedia but also as found-
ing theoretician on the subject in his Latin De vulgari eloquentia, made
him the perfect mouthpiece for Machiavellis Renaissance rearticulation
of the subject. However, the historical Dante would not have recognized
the arguments that as a spirit Machiavelli placed anachronistically
in the Dante characters mouth. In his own time, Dante advocated an
Italian vernacular capable of uniting the various regional peoples of
the peninsula. Machiavelli relied on Dantes fama to articulate through
his spirit a substantively different intellectual position: against Italian
or courtly languages, in preference for a strictly Florentine language.
Dantes reputation thus made him vulnerable to later misrepresenta-
tions and misappropriations of the kind that Machiavelli presented.
The dead spirit represented in Renaissance eidolopoeia can thus be a
doubly tragic figure, twice scorned, as in the case of Dante. During his
lifetime, Florentines rejected him, leaving him to die in exile. Then, after
his death, never succeeding in repatriating his remains for honourable
burial within his beloved citys walls, other Florentines feigned wit-
nessing Dantes ghostly apparition only to force him to state political
and ideological positions as a spirit that he fundamentally would have
opposed in life. While Petrarch died long before Machiavelli composed
his eidolopoeia, he may have already understood the disturbing poten-
tials of this act of appropriating a dead spirit.
What is discernible in the silence, in the abrupt break at the end of
Petrarchs unfinished Epistola posteritati, is his grim encounter with the
horror vacui, the full realization of his ultimate impotence at the point of
death to determine his legacy. Just as he had rewritten the memory of
Scipio and Ennius in his Africa, even though for the good from Petrarchs
perspective, others, including Malipiero, would subsequently recast
Petrarch as a spirit (and believed that they were doing so for the bet-
ter). Although Petrarch avidly sought fame, in spite of his laments con-
cerning its toilsome burden, he may also have recognized that his fame
might be precisely what prevented him from finding peace.32 Frail and
increasingly sickly in his advancing years, Petrarch composed Seniles

VI, 2, addressing it to Boccaccio, bringing full circle his writings on
Scipio and his own prospects for the end of his mortal life:
Certe Africanus maior, ut vides, conversatione diutina viluit in oculis

Romanorum. Quid minores putas in oculis aliorum? Crede michi, multis
maximeque egris expedit interdum volvi nec est inconstantis sed pruden-
tis pro varietate ventorum et tempestate negotiorum vela flectere. Non
possunt literis cunta committi. Sed si que novi omnia et tu nosses, sua-
deres certus sum non dico ut discederem, sed ut quandoque secederem
viteque fastidiis locorum alternatione consulerem. Proinde Deum ora ut
fabelle huius nostre, que vita dicitur, finis bonus et sibi placitus sit.33
Certainly the elder Africanus, as you see, by a long abode lost his value in
the eyes of the Romans. What do you suppose happens to lesser men in
the eyes of others? Believe me, to many, and especially to the ill, an occa-
sional change of scene is advantageous; and it is a mark not of inconstancy
but of wisdom to turn ones sails in accord with the variation of the winds
and the tempest of affairs. All things cannot be entrusted to a letter; but if
you knew everything I do, you would advise, I am sure I do not say that
I depart but that I at some time take care of lifes unpleasantnesses by a
change of places. Pray God, then, that the end of this tale of ours, which is
called life, will be good and pleasing to him.34
Unfortunately for Petrarch, even very clumsy writers, such as Malip-

iero, as discussed in chapter 1, found ways to co-opt his post-mortem
spirit and to rewrite entirely his legacy and image in ways that would
likely have caused him to turn over in his grave. Petrarch understood
that the act of appropriating a dead spirit held the potential, not just to
pay homage, but also to slander, to debase, or otherwise to desecrate
the memory of the defenceless deceased. Long before Jean-Paul Sartre,
Petrarch must have intuited that To be dead is to be a prey for the liv-
ing. This means therefore that the one who tries to grasp the meaning
of his future death must discover himself as the future prey of others.35
Habeas Corpus, Habeas Spiritum
Legal protections of habeas corpus have existed for many centuries.

Habeas corpus (literally you shall have the body) refers to the legal
writ through which a person can seek relief from arbitrary or unlawful
possession or imprisonment of the body. The Oxford English Dictionary

details the first use of the term in 1231, though the understanding of
habeas corpus protections appeared as article 39 in the Magna Carta of
1215, and is believed to predate even this articulation by centuries in
Anglo-Saxon common law.36 However, such codified treatment of the
deceased body by a collective surviving Other failed to include par-
ticular protections for the deceased persons spirit, or what I would call
habeas spiritum. Perhaps the same legal question at the heart of assessing
motive should be raised in the case of eidolopoeia as well: Cui bono? Who
benefits from the invention and dissemination of eidolopoeia? Even in
epideicdic examples, it is not the dead person being praised who reaps
the advantage. In the tomb, what advantage could be gained? It does
not belong to the dead person honour is perhaps conferred on an
idol of that person, but the real advantage goes to the one who has
the spirit: the one who makes the idol in the first place.
It is not surprising why injunctions against idol-making are so
imperatively strong. Idols mask the agent (essere) with inevitable con-
sequences for enti (human beings) and their reason for being, to say noth-
ing of their (ultimately unfixable) state of being. Not even at the point of
death, when ones identity is literally written in stone, the tombstone or
grave marker, is that persona truly fixed. While the bones may return to
dust, in eidolopoeia the simulacrum of the person continues to appear
and to speak at the potential service of anyone possessing the advan-
tage of still living and writing. Because of the lapidary quality of the
tombs text typically carved in stone it is usually not prolix: name,
birth date, and date of death, sometimes accompanied by a blessing
(i.e., rest in peace) or epithet (i.e., devoted mother, or soldier fallen but
not forgotten).37 The scarcity of words must somehow be in proportion
to how seriously they are intended: the gravity of the graves message.
Eidolopoeia transgresses what might be this final word by falsely
representing the dead as speaking again.
Throughout this study I have been interrogating the cultural contexts
that permit the post-mortem refabrication of identity by others through
eidolopoeia. If authors of future generations can so readily reappropri-
ate the spirits of their predecessors, then there are consequences for
our own identities as well. Whatever identities or legacies we might
strive to leave in memory, after we die, we will no longer have any say
in the matter. It is one thing for philosophers or theologians to theorize
the powerlessness that limited mortals have to determine their (eter-
nal) beingness; it is quite another to stare at ones work and ponder if
death were to come in the next moment. For some scholars, perhaps
most famously Harold Bloom, the fundamental problem in literary
encounters of authors living and dead is a struggle for primacy, apo-
phrades (or the return of the dead).38 But there is no literalization of apo-
phrades, the dead do not really return; the dead can only be used to voice
the message of the living author, who has no advantage in wishing his
mouthpiece were otherwise. The author needs the dead to remain dead.
The most basic level of the struggle is not so much with other writers,
though this competition is undeniably ever-present. The fundamental
battle concerns self-determination the desire to assert ones will now
and (in human hopefulness) always and the inevitable elusiveness of
that quest.
Sit tibi terra levis.
May the earth rest lightly on you.39
Notes
Introduction. Eidolopoeia: Idol Making
1 This and all subsequent citations of Dantes Divina commedia in the original
Italian and in English translation are from The Divine Comedy of Dante
Alighieri in three volumes, ed. and trans. Robert M. Durling with notes by
Ronald L. Martinez (New York: Oxford University Press, 19962011). The
verse lines of the English translation occasionally do not correspond with
the original, as in this case.
2 From the fourth volume of Quintilian, The Orators Education. Books 910,
ed. and trans. Donald A. Russell (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2001), 501. The emphasis is mine.
3 Henrik Specht is translating Priscians definitions here in Ethopoeia
or Impersonation: A Neglected Species of Medieval Characterization,
Chaucer Review 21.1 (1986): 5. See Heinrich F. Pletts caution in Rhetoric and
Renaissance Culture (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2004), 284: Distinctions like
these [between ethopoeia, pathopoeia, prosopopoeia, etc.], however, have
only a limited validity in the Renaissance, since prosopopoeia is in some
cases expanded to all fictional impersonations, and certain other categories
are added for the purpose of specialization eidolopoeia, for example, for
the depiction of dead persons and anthropopatheia for the depiction of
God. Literary decorum was a requirement in impersonation and in the
representation of the acts or speech of persons, since fictional portrayals
had to be convincing and persuasive. Quintilian addresses ethopoeias
relationship to mimesis at 9.2.58 (pp. 689 in Russells edition). See also
Heinrich Lausberg, Handbook of Literary Rhetoric: A Foundation for Literary
Study, trans. Matthew T. Bliss, Annemiek Jansen, and David E. Orton, and ed.
David E. Orton and R. Dean Anderson (Leiden: Brill, 1998), especially 36970.
166 Notes to pages 56
4 Basil Dufallo, The Ghosts of the Past: Latin Literature, the Dead, and Romes
Transition to the Principate (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2007),
noted that most ancient rhetoricians distinguished between prosopopoeia,
which could be used to have the dead speak as the dead (in which case
it was sometimes called eidolopoeia [ghost-making]), and ethopoeia or
sermocinatio, the technique for introducing the speech of natural persons
(130n; the translation in the square brackets is in the original).
5 For the Trattatello I cite from the first redaction in Tutte le opere di Giovanni
Boccaccio, ed. Vittore Branca (Milan: Mondadori, 1974), 3.481. The English
translation is by James Robinson Smith, in The Earliest Lives of Dante
Translated from the Italian of Giovanni Boccaccio and Lionardo Bruni Aretino
(New York: Russell and Russell, 1968 [1901]), 61.
6 H. Wayne Storey rightly reminds us that authentic Petrarchan
manuscripts were guaranteed by the poets own hand (that is, according
to the rubric tradition in selected manuscripts such as Laurentian Segniano
1 from 14201430s Scripto ipsa manu decti Poete) in The Economies
of Authority: Bembo, Vellutello, and the Reconstruction of Authentic
Petrarch in Accessus ad Auctores: Studies in Honor of Christopher
Kleinhenz, ed. Fabian Alfie and Andrea Dini (Tempe: Arizona Center for
Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2011), 495.
7 Like William Franke in Dantes Interpretive Journey (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1996), I am intrigued and inspired by Thomas M.
Greenes scholarly excavations in The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery
in Renaissance Poetry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982). Franke
writes: science (archaeology, philology) and its method begin to come
between past and present. The past no longer speaks except in an ersatz
voice. It is an object for scientific analysis rather than a subject speaking
with the wholeness and authority of an auctor, for the humanist is
positioned outside it and its hermeneutic horizon. He may resurrect
the past within his own present, but as something sham. Humanism in
its relation to the past is dominated, Greene suggests, by the imagery
of necromancy. Manipulative technologies of magic and science, which
are hardly distinguishable at this stage, operate on objects in ways
illustrative of the necromantic superstition at the heart of the humanist
enlightenment (Greene, Light in Troy, p. 93). According to Greene, the
image that propelled the humanist Renaissance and that still determines
our perception of it, was the archeological, necromantic metaphor of
disinterment, a digging up that was also a resuscitation or a reincarnation
or a rebirth (p. 92). In a letter to Giovanni Colonna, Petrarch actually
ventriloquizes the ruins (ruinae) of Rome, as each step stirs tongue
Notes to pages 710 167
and mind: Aderat persingulos passus quod linguam et animum

excitaret (p. 88). He is bodily taken over by the past, but in a step-by-step,
fragmentary fashion, in what is clearly an image of magic as opposed
to hermeneutic conversion and its transformation of the whole man
through an altering of his horizons and his structural framework of self-
understanding. The image of necromancy suggests how close humanism
remains to the ideal of a living relation with the past, even while in
possession merely of its corpse, now reanimated only by tricks and
techniques of magic or science (77).
8 I cite the original from Tutte le opere storiche e letterarie di Niccol Machiavelli,
ed. Guido Mazzoni and Mario Casella (Florence: G. Barbra Editore, 1929),
885. The English translation is provided by Allan H. Gilbert in Letters of
Machiavelli (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), 142. John M.
Najemy provides an outstanding study of the correspondence in Between
Friends: Discourses of Power and Desire in the Machiavelli-Vettori Letters of
15131515 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).
9 I cite Machiavellis original from Opere letterarie, ed. Luigi Blasucci (Milan:
Adelphi, 1964), 222.
10 In fact, anytime that authors portrayed (or did not portray) living people
as characters in literary works, they might have run the risk of offending
their peers. Machivellis assessment of Ludovico Ariostos Orlando
furioso, and in particular its list of contemporary celebrities in the final
canto, is among the most notable: Veramente il poema bello tutto, et in
molti luoghi mirabile mi dolgo solo che, avendo ricordati tanti poeti,
che mi abbia lasciato indietro come un [] (Truly the poem is lovely
throughout, and wondrous in many passages I am sorry only that,
having remembered so many poets, [Ariosto] left me out like a []).
The letter, dated 17 December 1517 to Lodovico Alamanni, is number 46
in Lettere familiari of the Opere of Machiavelli published by Alcide
Parenti in Florence in 1816. The citation appears in volume 8, pp. 1534.
Scholars have since provided the vulgarity elided in this edition: cazo (in
Machiavellis spelling, signifying the male sexual organ).
11 Quite useful in the consideration of classical examples is Mario Erasmos
Reading Death in Ancient Rome (Columbus: Ohio State University Press,
2008), though his scholarly focus moves beyond eidolopoeia/prosopopoeia
to include epitaphs, inscriptions on tombs, funereal performances, etc.
12 In the Pro Caelio, for example, Cicero speaks through the spirit of Appius
Claudius Caecus. The censor is summoned from the grave to refute
the charges of aurum et venenum (gold and poison) levelled against his
defendant, Caelius. According to Dufallo, the spirit of Appius blames
instead his own descendant Clodia, whom the ghost accuses of being
carried away by lust for Caelius: Through Appius, Cicero stigmatizes
Clodias brother and his own political archrival, Clodius: he juxtaposes a
prosopopoeia of the latter with his performance as the grave Censor, Appius,
whose stature helps to set in relief the moral laxity he imputes to Clodius.
Appius acts, at the same time, as an exemplum of gravitas. He recalls a series
of his own achievements and those of other exemplary men and women
from the Claudian gens of which he is patriarch. Cicero exploits Appius
gravity to lend authority to his attack upon Clodia and her brother,
Clodius, and to his own public persona. He seeks to magnify his own
image and belittle that of his opponents through aligning himself with the
most august civic traditions, as embodied by Appius (The Ghosts of the
Past, 78).
13 Other classical literary scholars, including Sarah Iles Johnston and D.
Felton, argue that ancient Greek and Roman authors typically featured
whining spirits of the dead that express personal dissatisfaction with
unresolved aspects of their own passing, including the need to receive
proper burial or the desire to incite revenge for an untimely death.
14 Dufallo, The Ghosts of the Past, 12.
15 According to Ronald C. Finucane in Appearances of the Dead: A Cultural
History of Ghosts (London: Junction Books, 1982), 85: Medieval apparitions
of the dead functioned on many levels. To take the longest view, in the
first place they reinforced belief in a life beyond death. Though this
is so obvious that in the Middle Ages it was usually unstated or even
unperceived, in a later era it will become practically the only purpose
behind such phenomena. Secondly, these supernatural beings reinforced
teachings about punishment and reward after death according to Catholic
doctrine and dogma Thirdly, and more specifically, these encounters
clarified and nourished the belief in purgatory, especially from the twelfth
century, and the belief that the living, through the church, ought to assist
the dead Finally, the medieval narrations emphasize a broad spectrum
of ethical and social desiderata.
16 Some scholars have been especially keen to distinguish between ghost
stories and otherworldly journeys. For example, Jean-Claude Schmitt in
Ghosts in the Middle Ages: The Living and the Dead in Medieval Society, trans.
Teresa Lavender Fagan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998),
pointed out that in visions and voyages to the other world, the visionary
encounters souls of the dead that, through their example of eternal pain
or blessedness, serve to impart moral lessons to readers. In ghost stories,
on the other hand, it is the spirit that crosses the threshold between life
Notes to page 12 169
and death to speak with and among the living. The ghostly apparitions
for Schmitt represent a kind of journey to the other world in reverse.
According to Schmitt, Apparitions of ghosts represented a reverse
movement between the dead and the living in the travels to the hereafter
from Book VI of Virgils Aeneid to the Divine Comedy of Dante, including
Saint Patricks Purgatory visionaries encountered the souls of the dead
whom they themselves had once known on earth or whose names and
renown had come to their attention. But the goal of such revelations was
not, as a general rule, to account for the fate of a specific dead person in the
hereafter (with the exception of certain rulers, in highly political visions).
Rather, the goal was to reveal to the living, to the listeners or readers
of the visio, the geography of the places of the hereafter: the steep paths,
the frozen rivers, the furnaces, and the list of tortures beyond the grave
throughout the centuries the great reservoirs of the Western imaginary
Ghosts, on the other hand, still had one foot on the ground, so to speak:
they had just departed from the living, to whom they later appeared and
from whom they seemed not to be able to separate themselves With
tales of ghosts, the historian is also immediately confronted with all the
complexities of the social relationships that existed between the living and
the dead, who returned again to visit those still living. Thus, unlike the
great visions of the hereafter, ghost tales concentrated on the status of the
deceased, who was an ordinary person (12). I prefer to focus less on who
or what fictively crosses that boundary between the realms of the living
and the dead and more on the invention of the speech of the characters
figured as dead and the rhetorical potential of the message.
17 One of a multitude of potential examples is Ariostos ghost of the pagan
warrior Argala appearing to the Spanish knight, Ferra, in the first canto
of the Orlando furioso (The Madness of Orlando, 1532 in its final version).
It is as if these characters already lived because they figured in earlier
epics, most prominently in the Orlando innamorato (Orlando in Love) by
Matteo Maria Boiardo (1440/4194), though they are purely figments of
the imagination. In Ariostos version, Ferra accidentally loses his helm
in a stream, which prompts the ghost of Argala to rise out of the water
and rebuke the Spaniard for not fulfilling his promise (made in Boiardos
poem) to return Argalas helm to him. Shame from the just rebuke
prompts Ferra to resolve not to wear any other helm than the one that
Orlando possessed and to hasten to search for him. Thus, Ariosto uses
the ghost figure in this case as a narrative ploy at the outset of his work
to remind readers of the plot of Boiardos precedent, while propelling
forward the action of his own highly imaginative narrative. Literary
ghosts, like this one, clearly have different uses and motivations from the
spirit characters of historical figures.
18 These creatures do not possess human identities and thus have little
to contribute to the present investigation of constructions of identity
and post-mortem legacies. For the same reason, I exclude consideration
of other types of personifications (of inanimate objects, cities, entire
populations, animals, qualities [such as Liberty], etc.). Among the scholars
who have offered outstanding perspectives on aspects of the Italian
Renaissance supernatural (demons, witches, etc.), which present quite
different considerations from the representations of the historical dead, are
Armando Maggi, Walter Stephens, Douglas Biow, Nancy Caciola, Marjorie
B. Garber, and Wayne Shumaker.
19 It is difficult not to notice a gender divide between predominantly female
religious visionaries and male secular authors of eidolopoeia. Though
these categories have their exceptions, I might venture to hypothesize
that the nature of the divine messages may have a determining influence
on the gender divarication of religious and secular otherworldly
encounters. Broadly generalizing, female religious visionaries tend to
communicate with Mary or Christ, or deceased spiritual advisers or
family members, who offer messages on the endurance of suffering,
comfort in tribulation, encouragement in faith and prayer, or some kind
of succour for the visionarys living peers. Spiritual nuptials with Jesus
also find articulation, oftentimes by men who write down the accounts
for women visionaries of limited literacy (which becomes an important,
but not often clearly acknowledged frame for these narratives that is,
the narratives take on the perspective and authority of the male scribe,
not the female speaker). Catherine of Sienas visions prominently contain
political opinions (i.e. the pope/anti-pope querelle), though male authors
of eidolopoeia more frequently feign passing along otherworldly messages
that concern politics, exile, or other information intended to bolster
worldly status, authority, or estimation.
20 For more detailed considerations of hagiographic speech and the
representation of saints, please see the volumes by Alison Knowles Frazier,
Peter Brown, and Timothy Verdon and John Henderson.
21 The vast majority of the characters Dante-pilgrim hears speak during the
journey are, in Virgils words, no longer, though once [they were],
that is, they were once historical, living, individual, identifiable human
beings but are now deceased. In addition to Virgil and Beatrice, they
are Homer, Francesca da Rimini, Ciacco, Filippo Argenti, Farinata degli
Uberti, Cavalcante de Cavalcanti, Pier delle Vigne, Brunetto Latini, Iacopo
Rusticucci, Guido Guerra, Tegghaio Aldobrandi, Reginaldo Scrovegni,

Venedico Caccianemico, Alessio Interminei, Pope Nicholas III, Ciampolo
of Navarre, Catalano dei Malavolti, Vanni Fucci, Cianfa Donati, Agnello
dei Brunelleschi, Francesco de Cavalcanti, Ulysses, Guido da Montefeltro,
Mohammed, Pier da Medicina, Mosca, Bertran de Born, Griffolino,
Capocchio, Master Adam, Sinon of Troy, Camiscion de Pazzi, Bocca degli
Abati, Buoso da Duera, Ugolino, Cato of Utica, Casella, Manfred, Belacqua,
Jacopo del Cassero, Buonconte da Montefeltro, Pia of Siena, Sordello,
Nino Visconti, Conrad Malaspina, Omberto degli Aldobrandeschi, Oderisi
da Gubbio, Sapia of Siena, Guido del Duca, Rinieri da Calboli, Marco
Lombardo, an unnamed Abbot of San Zeno (perhaps Gerard, who died
in 1187 [see the notes by Martinez and Durling in Purgatorio, p. 306]),
Pope Adrian V, Hugh Capet, Statius, Forese Donati, Bonagiunta da Lucca,
Guido Guinizelli, Arnaut Daniel, Piccarda Donati, the Emperor Justinian,
Charles Martel, Cunizza dEste, Folquet, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure,
Cacciaguida, Solomon, Peter Damian, Benedict of Nursia, Peter, James,
John, Adam, and Bernard of Clairvaux. Granted, the historical lives
of some of these figures are not easy to trace (Adam, most notably).
Some excluded figures do not readily correspond to historical identities
(especially Matelda). Some speakers are not individuals (the Eagle in the
heavenly sphere of Jupiter). Others, such as Frate Alberigo, are portrayed
as not yet dead, and thus would be more properly termed doppelgngers.
For Giovanni Papini, Dante Vivo (Florence: Barbra, Alfani e Venturi, 1933),
33940: Dante il pi grande poeta dei morti. Eppure, se ben guardate,
la morte, nel suo poema, non c I morti di Dante somigliano in quasi
tutto ai vivi: parlano, ricordano, rimpiangono, profetizzano, insegnano
(Dante is the greatest poet of the dead. But on careful examination, we
see that in his poem there is no such thing as death The dead of Dante
resemble the living in almost every way. They speak, they remember, they
lament, they prophesy, they teach). The English translation is by Eleanor
Hammond Broadus and Anna Benedetti (New York: Macmillan, 1935), 259.
Of course, none of the above-mentioned spirit actions is possible for Dante
the author without eidolopoeia.
22 In M.L. McLaughlins words in Humanism and Italian Literature, in The
Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism, ed. Jill Kraye (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996), 224: In a sense Dante discovered
the Aeneid, in that he was the first to make Virgil talk again to his age after
centuries of silence. As he himself was aware, he was the first Italian writer
to read the Roman poet in both a political and intertextually creative way
the latter is alluded to in Dantes famous address to Virgil when he meets
172 Notes to page 14
him in the first canto of the whole Commedia: You are the single author
from whom I derived the fine style which has brought me such honour.
On Dantes character of Virgil in the context of scholarly precedent, see
Albert Russell Ascoli, Dante and the Making of a Modern Author (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2008), 30729.
23 This was the argument forwarded by Mowbray Allan in the article Does
Dante Hope for Vergils Salvation, Modern Language Notes 104 (1989):
193205. Contrary views are ultimately more convincing. See especially
the response to Allan by Teodolinda Barolini, where she argues, The
pilgrim may hope for Vergils salvation, but the poet wills otherwise
It is, therefore, from a textual point of view, spurious to speculate about
Vergils salvation (Q: Does Dante Hope for Vergils Salvation? A: Why
Do We Care? For the Very Reason We Should Not Ask the Question,
in Barolini, Dante and the Origins of Italian Literary Culture [New York:
Fordham University Press, 2006)],157). See also the recent essays from
differing perspectives by Ed King (Saving Virgil, 83106) and Mira
Gerhard (Sacrificing Virgil, 10719), both in Dante and the Unorthodox: The
Aesthetics of Transgression, ed. James Miller (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier
University Press, 2005).
24 Critical scholarship has mapped in detail the narratological distinction
between Dante-poet and Dante-pilgrim in the Commedia. From the
duality of voices of Dante within the poem the pilgrim making the
journey in 1300 and the poet subsequently looking back on and writing
about his experience I distinguish the historical man who wrote the
Commedia, referring to him as Dante-author. In the process of forwarding
his influential vision of the many facets of Dantes authorship, Ascoli
confronted the question of what made Dante into a modern author in
his groundbreaking work, Dante and the Making of the Modern Author. He
charted Dantes place within a complex social and discursive history
and his continous, if evolving, understanding of his authorship as an
activity of making, at once the artisinal mastery of the techne of poetry
(and, more broadly, the disciplines of rhetoric, philosophy, and theology)
and an imitatio of the Divine Maker, the Author of all authors, the origin
of every legitimate authority (x). Ascoli goes on to identify more
specific authorities, as Dante understood them: supreme institutional
authorities, including emperor and pope, canonical classical writers
(Aristotle, Virgil), poetic authorship taken in isolation, and God as
supreme Author and Authority (8). And Ascoli succeeds in detailing and
distinguishing the weighty contributions of previous scholars (including
but certainly not limited to Leo Spitzer, Charles S. Singleton, Francis
Ferguson, Gianfranco Contini, John Freccero, Giuseppe Mazzotta, Patrick

Boyde, Lucia Battaglia Ricci, and Teodolinda Barolini), especially in
chapters 1 and 7.
25 Scholarly debates concerning the nature of Latinis sin continue to rage at
an astounding rate of publication. Peter Armour lucidly categorizes the
critical sides of this debate in his entry on Latini in The Dante Encyclopedia,
ed. Richard Lansing (New York: Garland, 2000). As he notes, recent
criticism has attempted to argue that Latinis sin of Sodom is not
sexual, but rather an intellectual sin against nature. For Andr Pzard,
this takes the form of Latinis rejection of his Florentine language by
writing the Trsor in French; for Richard Kay, it is Latinis political position
against the empire; and for Armour, for instance, it is Latinis quasi-
Manichaean rejection of the doctrine of the goodness of human nature
(128). These are truly excellent studies; nonetheless, since Dantes day,
there remain decidedly sexual associations with Latinis legacy. Alan
Stewart in Close Readers: Humanism and Sodomy in Early Modern England
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997) does an outstanding job of
demonstrating how sodomy, in spite of the fact that it is investigated and
punished as an act, begins as a cry in its biblical derivation in the cry
of Sodome and Gomorrah of Genesis 19: in other words, there may or
may not be any truth to the historicity of the act of sodomy, if what matters
is the convincing quality of the accusation (the rhetoric) (xxixxii). At
a very late stage in the preparation of this book, Justin Steinbergs work
Dante and the Limits of the Law (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013)
came to my attention. Steinberg argues persuasively in his first chapter on
infamia that in a system that valorized verisimilitude as a legal basis for
conviction, Dante deliberately chose well-respected Florentines to further
his message throughout the Divina commedia that the deads salvation or
damnation did not depend on doxa, what people think they know, and by
extension to rehabilitate his own reputation as an exile and condemned
criminal. See 37ff.
26 Please see also the arguments made by Mark Doty in his keen essay
Rooting for the Damned, in The Poets Dante: Twentieth-Century
Responses, ed. Peter S. Hawkins and Rachel Jacoff (New York: Farrar, Straus
and Giroux, 2001), 376: Oh, but it is the pilgrim Dante, the character who
approves and lauds. The poet Dante has outed Latini who was not
known as a sodomite in his own time and placed him in the depths of
Hell. It is not an attractive gesture, and it raises inevitable questions: who
is this poet who so energetically conjures a world of torture, an endlessly
imaginative range of ways to exact revenge? Suddenly the pitying,
awestruck pilgrim seems disingenuous, the ethical terms of the entire

poem thrown in question. Doesnt he lament, with one side of his mouth,
the cruelty of the universe, while with the other he quite literally makes
it so? See also Gary P. Cestaro, Queering Nature, Queering Gender:
Dante and Sodomy, in Dante for the New Millennium, ed. Teodolinda
Barolini and H. Wayne Storey (New York: Fordham University Press,
2003), 945: The distinction between acts and identities, however, is
particularly problematic when we come to Dantes sodomites, especially
in the Inferno. The modern commentary tradition has repeatedly noted
that there is no independent written record of Brunetto Latini (or Priscian,
for that matter) having been a sodomite. But the poetic logic of the Inferno
bestows upon all the sinners in cantos 1516 eternal identities as sodomites
as it imposes eternal identities upon all its sinners. The sinner steps up
to Minos and tutta si confessa out comes the eternal character (see Inf
5.115). In Dantes universe, ser Brunetto takes on an essential identity as
a sodomite, no matter that he had a wife and children in his earthly life
(pace most recently Peter Armour). In this poetic sense, at least, Dante
gives us homosexuals avant la lettre, without the help of nineteenth-
century medical or legal discourse.
27 See John S. Carroll, Prisoners of Hope (London: Hodder and Stoughton,
1906), 7; John Ciardi leaves Catos fate a bit more ambiguous (a special
triumph at the Final Judgment) in his translation and exposition of The
Purgatorio (New York: New American Library, 1961), 38.
28 Other critics labour to clarify an understanding of free will or political
virtue (for example, John A. Scott in Dantes Political Purgatory
[Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996]) that might explain
Catos status as guardian of the mountain.
29 Erich Auerbach, Dante Poet of the Secular World in the translation by Ralph
Manheim (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), 134.
30 Auerbach, Dante Poet of the Secular World, 86.
31 Inf. 27.1005: Tuo cor non sospetti:/finor tassolvo, e tu minsegna fare /
s come Penestrino in terra getti./Lo ciel possio serrare e diserrare, /
come tu sai; per son due le chiavi/che l mio antecessor non ebbe care
(Let not your heart fear: henceforth I absolve you, if you teach me how
to raze Palestrina to the ground. Heaven I can lock and unlock, as you
know; for that reason the keys are two which my predecessor did not
prize.)
32 Another form of the word, idolatre, is used at Inf. 19.113 in the midst of a
scathing critique of the Donation of Constantine, but it is not used with the
same significance as idolo.
33 Among those who have put forth this argument is Renato Poggioli,
Tragedy or Romance? A Reading of the Paolo and Francesca Episode in
Dantes Inferno, PMLA 72.3 (1957): 31358.
34 In the final passage of Platos dialogue concerning the ideal form of
government, the character of Socrates relates to Glaucon the story of Er the
Pamphylian. Ers fellow citizens found him dead on the field of battle and
sent his body home for funeral rites. As he lay on the pyre, Er purportedly
reanimated and told his amazed listeners about what happens to ones
soul after death, namely that the human soul is immortal and that ones
place in the afterlife depends on the virtuous or shameful qualities of ones
soul, as demonstrated during mortal life.
35 This is also the source and favourite classical reference of Florentine
Matteo Palmieris work in praise of citizens who make sacrifices on behalf
of their homelands, Vita civile (On Civic Life, c. 1439), which incidentally
contains an intriguing example of a speaking spirit of Dantes unnamed
friend who died in the Battle of Campaldino in 1289. This spirit praises
fellow patriot Vieri de Cerchi, who also perished in battle, and explains to
Dante a vision of blessedness accorded in the afterlife to the courageous
defenders of ones country. Palmieris opinion that serving the republic
is the primary humanist virtue seems to take on greater authority
when he articulates it by means of a dead spirit, in this case of a heroic
Florentine soldier granted a vision of the other world guided by none
other than Charlemagne. Palmieri clearly aims to praise Dante in this
narrative as well, especially given how frequently Dantes name recurs
in the text. While both the spirit of the soldier and that of Charlemagne
describe a Neoplatonic/Christian other world that differs in various ways
from Dantes version in the Commedia, this narrative may also intend
to imply why Dante composed the Commedia in the first place. Palmieri
may be suggesting that already in 1289 Dante had conceived the idea
of communing with the dead in order to discuss the virtues that would
earn man honour in the both this life and the next. The ethical import of
creating speaking spirits would not be lost on Palmieris contemporaries
and subsequent authors who would employ it to articulate their own
views and judgments. See chapter 2. Another important Renaissance
example of the redeployment of the Somnium Scipiones appears in
Torquato Tassos Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem Delivered), specifically
Goffredos dream in canto 14. For a detailed reading of Tassos use of
the dream vision, see the third chapter of James Christopher Warner, The
Augustinian Epic: Petrarch to Milton (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 2005).
36 An excellent analysis of Petrarchs Scipio the elder with respect to Ciceros

Scipio the younger and the ideological motivations for their projects is
provided by Aldo S. Bernardo in Petrarch, Scipio and the Africa: The Birth
of Humanisms Dream (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1962).
37 This and subsequent English translations of the Africa are by Thomas G.
Bergin and Alice S. Wilson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977).
The book and verse numbers I cite refer to the original Latin text, since
the verse numbers in the English translation do not always correspond
precisely.
38 Petrarchs Africa, trans. Bergin and Wilson, 243.
39 The spirit of Homer continues: Florentina omnis magis ut sit grata
propago/Idem unus tibi, Roma, dabit, nec protinus urbem/Peniteat
Tusci fundasse ad gurgitis undam./Hic quoque magnorum laudes
studiosus avorum/Digeret extrema relegens ab origine fortes/Romulidas,
vestrumque genus sermone soluto/Historicus, titulosque urbis et nomina
reddet./In medio effulgens nec corpore parvus eodem/Magnus erit Scipio:
seque ipse fatebitur ultro/Plus nulli debere viro (Africa 9.25463; Tis
he, O Rome, who shall endear to you/the folk of Florence, nor shall you
repent/of having founded on the Tuscan stream/that daughter town.
Zealous in study, he/will sing the glories of the men of old/and trace from
their first origins the sons/of Romulus; a faithful chronicler,/in syllables
unfettered he will tell/of your great race, its titles and its clans./Wherein,
resplendent and by no means least,/great Scipio will stand, and he who
writes/will openly admit indebtedness/to him above all heroes of the
past).
40 See also Craig Kallendorfs excellent treatment of the work in In Praise of
Aeneas: Virgil and Epideictic Rhetoric in the Early Italian Renaissance (Hanover:
University Press of New England, 1989), 23ff.
41 See especially the fundamental studies by Hans Baron, The Crisis of the
Early Italian Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966),
and Ernst H. Wilkins, Petrarchs Later Years (Cambridge, MA: Medieval
Academy of America, 1959).
42 According to Germaine Greer, who wrote the Foreword to J.G. Nicholss
translation of My Secret Book (London: Hesperus Press, 2002), viiviii:
It has been suggested that there was nothing private let alone secret
about My Secret Book, but there is no evidence that any of Petrarchs
contemporaries actually saw it and it does not figure in the lists of works
that he compiled for various of his patrons. Three of his closest friends,
Boccaccio, Francesco Nelli and Barbato da Sulmona, mention some such
book but can say of it no more than that it was some kind of Ciceronian
dialogue No copy of My Secret Book was made in Petrarchs lifetime;

it has survived only in a copy made from Petrarchs autograph after his
death by Tedaldo della Casa, a Franciscan friar from Florence. The original
is lost.
43 Citations of the original Secretum come from Petrarchs Prose, ed. G.
Martellotti et al. (Milan: Ricciardi, 1955), 22. The translation by Nichols
here and following is from the above-cited volume.
44 Truth appealed to Augustine with the words: nisi te presens forte
felicitas miseriarum tuarum fecit immemorem, multa tu, dum corporeo
carcere claudebaris, huic similia pertulisti (24; unless the blessedness
you now enjoy makes you forgetful of all unhappiness, you know that you
yourself suffered much, and in much the same way, while you were still
imprisoned in your body (4).
45 According to David Marsh in The Burning Question: Crisis and
Cosmology in the Secret, in Petrarch: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works,
ed. Victoria Kirkham and Armando Maggi (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2009), 217.
46 In another letter (Sen. 11.10) to Lombardo da Serico dated 29 November
1370, Petrarch calls life the hardened ground of our toils, the training
camp of crises, a theatre of deceits, a labyrinth of errors a forgetful
journey, hatred of the fatherland, love of exile, a city of goblins and ghosts,
a kingdom of demons, a principality of Lucifer, for that is what the truth
calls the prince of this world; in short, a lying, breathless life, a breathing
death, sluggish carelessness about ones self, worry over useless things,
concern for appearances, an appetite for the superfluous, a painstaking
preparation for the worms, a living hell, an elaborate funeral procession of
living bodies, a lingering burial, pompous vanity, an exhausting campaign,
dangerous temptation, proud misery, and pitiful happiness. That, dear
friend, is how I view life There is only one good thing in all the bad:
unless one deserts the right path, it is the way to a good eternal life.
Francis Petrarch, Letters of Old Age (Rerum senilium libri IXVIII), trans.
Aldo S. Bernardo, Saul Levin, and Reta A. Bernardo, 2 vols. (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 2:413.
47 Sen. 1.5, trans. Bernardo, Levin, and Bernardo, Letters of Old Age (Rerum
senilium libri IXVIII), 1:16.
48 Sen. 1.5, trans. Bernardo, Levin, and Bernardo, Letters of Old Age (Rerum
senilium libri IXVIII), 1:17.
49 Vittorio Zaccaria addressed the difficulties in dating the different redactions
of this work in his introduction to De casibus in Tutte le opere di Giovanni
Boccaccio, ed. Vittore Branca et al., vol. 9 (Milan: Mondadori, 1983), xvxx.
50 Boccaccios representation of a parade of spirits imitates various classical

antecedents, perhaps most notably the one in Virgils Aeneid 6.1014ff in
which the spirit of Anchises points out to his son Aeneas the illustrious
figures of Dardan ancestry before foretelling the generations of Italian
descent.
51 All citations of the original text of De casibus come from the
aforementioned edition by Vittore Branca. While I am greatly indebted to
the English translation by Louis Brewer Hall under the title The Fates of
Illustrious Men (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1965), some of the
renderings here and following are my own.
52 According to Ascoli, who carefully traces the connotations of fabula in
Petrarch from Cicero and Horace through medieval uses of the term in
his lecture and essay Favola fui: Petrarch Writes His Readers (Binghamton:
Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, SUNY, 2010), 20: In this
period, Italian favola can be used to indicate either a literary composition
or a pack of lies, though it seems clear that there is a genealogical if not
genetic relationship between the two senses, and that in this case, with its
intense meta-literary focus, both are operative.
53 Moreover, it may also be the case that the passive role that Boccaccio
fashions for himself of merely writing down what others dictate to him,
rather than exercising greater authorial creativity, saps his writerly vitality.
54 I quote the Italian text from Agamben, Stanze: La parola e il fantasma nella
cultura occidentale (Turin: Einaudi, 1977), 5; the English translation is by
Ronald L. Martinez in Stanzas: Word and Phantasm in Western Culture
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 3.
55 Citing from Sancti Nili and John Cassian, Agamben writes: Lo sguardo
dellaccidioso si posa ossessivamente sulla finestra e, con la fantasia, egli
si finge limmagine di qualcuno che viene a visitarlo di nuovo li rimette
[gli occhi] sul libro, va avanti per qualche riga, ribalbettando la fine di ogni
parola che legge; e intanto si riempie la testa con calcoli oziosi, conta il
numero delle pagine e i fogli dei quaderni; e gli vengono in odio le lettere
e le belle miniature che ha davanti agli occhi, finch, da ultimo, richiude
il libro e lo usa come cuscino per il suo capo, cadendo in un sonno breve e
non profondo Non appena questo demone comincia ad ossessionare la
mente di qualche sventurato, gli insinua dentro un orrore del luogo in cui
si trova, un fastidio della propria cella e uno schifo dei fratelli che vivono
con lui, che gli sembrano ora negligenti e grossolani. Lo fa diventare
inerte a ogni attivit ed ecco che il disgraziato comincia a lagnarsi
querimoniosamente si proclama inetto a far fronte a qualsiasi compito
dello spirito e si affligge di starsene svuotato e immobile sempre nello
stesso punto, lui che avrebbe potuto essere utile agli altri e guidarli, e non
ha invece concluso nulla n giovato a chicchessia. Si profonde in sperticati
elogi di monasteri assenti e lontani ed evoca i luoghi dove potrebbe essere
sano e felice (6; The gaze of the slothful man rests obsessively on
the window, and with his fantasy, he imagines the image of someone
who comes to visit him Again he gazes at the book, proceeds for a few
lines, mumbling the end of each word he reads; and meanwhile he fills
his head with idle calculations, he counts the number of pages and the
sheets of the bindings, and he begins to hate the letters and the beautiful
miniatures he has before his eyes, until, at the last, he closes the book and
uses it as a cushion for his head, falling into a brief and shallow sleep As
soon as this demon begins to obsess the mind of some unfortunate one, it
insinuates into him a horror of the place he finds himself in, an impatience
with his own cell, and a disdain for the brothers who live with him, who
now seem to him careless and vulgar. It makes him inert before every
activity and behold the wretched one begin to complain Querulously
he proclaims himself inept at facing any task of the spirit and afflicts
himself with being always empty and immobile at the same point, he who
might have been useful to others and guided them, and who has instead
not concluded anything or benefited anyone. He plunges into exaggerated
praise of distant and absent monasteries and evokes the places where he
could be healthy and happy 34). Boccaccio perceives this horror not
so much as one of place (such as a monastic cell) as existential: he toils
through writing without the imagined satisfaction to be gleaned from rest
or leisure. Boccaccio the wretched character bemoans not the convent of
his community of brothers, resorting to exaggerated praise of distant and
absent monasteries, but rather a present that causes him to fancy distant
stories of illustrious people. But here, too, is a proximity so intolerable
that it brings shame to Boccaccio, who recognizes that his own life after
death in the memory of others depends on the very act he must strive
to complete on behalf of these illustrious predecessors. Agamben, citing
Thomas Aquinas, states it even more boldly: acedia precisamente
il vertiginoso e spaurito ritrarsi (recessus) di fronte allimpegno della
stazione delluomo davanti a Dio (10; acedia is precisely the vertiginous
and frightened withdrawal [recessus] when faced with the task implied by
the place of man before God, 6).
56 Jason Houston emphasized other allusions by Boccaccio to Dante in his
study, Building a Monument to Dante: Boccaccio as Dantista (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2010), 67. For example, the words of Petrarchs
doppelgnger to the indolent character of Boccaccio in De casibus 8.1 Quid
iaces, ociorum professor egregie? Quid falsa inertie suasione torpescis?

(Why do you sleep, o excellent master of tranquillity? Why do you laze
about persuaded by false idleness?) echo Catos rebuke of Dante in
Purgatorio 2.
57 See also Massimo Miglios analysis in this regard in Boccaccio biografo
in Boccaccio in Europe: Proceedings of the Boccaccio Conference, Louvain,
December 1975, ed. Gilbert Tournoy (Louvain: Leuvan University Press,
1977), 14964. Citing Vittore Branca, Miglio argues (1502) that the way
exemplars are remembered indicates a difference between Petrarchs and
Boccaccios attitudes toward history and historiography.
58 According to Houston, In this passage, the spirit of Petrarca completely
isolates fame derived from literary excellence from the political fame that
is at the heart of Boccaccios text. According to Boccaccios Petrarca, the
authors invention can overcome the deformities of a mans body, which,
in the genre of political biography[,] usually indicate an ethical deformity,
and create a figure that will gain fame. Petrarca does not interest himself
with writing the history of events or lives; instead he uses historical
figures, regardless of their true nature, to serve his purpose of literary
invention. Petrarca ultimately aims at his own literary fame over historical
or ethical veracity (Building a Monument to Dante, 68),
59 In this respect, Houston is correct in his conclusion that this passage
continues the project of figuring Dante as a poet eternally concerned with
the political past, present, and future of Florence (Building a Monument to
Dante, 71). However, one must be careful, where eidolopoeia is concerned,
not to fall into fallacies of agency that require further clarification. Houston
continues on the same page: The task that Boccaccio has Dante set before
him in the De Casibus is specifically political. First, Dante asks Boccaccio
to describe Walters abuses of power that his tyranny might be exposed.
Second, Dante wants Boccaccio to show that Florence, in exiling him and
welcoming Walter, suffers from a grievous lack of wisdom in her citizens
political decisions. Just as Cacciaguida gives Dante the pilgrim his poetic
charge as a poet in Paradiso XVII, so here Dante gives Boccaccio his
orders. Dante sets before [Boccaccio], asks, and wants nothing, of
course, since Dante (the spirit) is merely a projection of Boccaccios own
imagination, just as Cacciaguida became one of the political mouthpieces
for Dantes own views in the Commedia.
60 Stephen Greenblatt addressed a similar, though not identical, concern: It
is paradoxical, he noted at the outset of Shakespearean Negotiations: The
Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1988), to seek the living will of the dead in fictions, in places where there
was no bodily being to begin with. But those who love literature tend to
find more intensity in simulations in the formal, self-conscious miming of
life than in any of the other textual traces left by the dead, for simulations
are undertaken in full awareness of the absence of the life they contrive to
represent, and hence they may skillfully anticipate and compensate for the
vanishing of the actual life that has empowered them (1). In tracing the
differences between addressing a figure of the past and attributing speech
to that figure in early theories of prosopopoeia in the works of Abraham
Fraunce and John Hoskyns, Gavin Alexander concludes, Both sets of
theorists see that something of very fundamental significance occurs
when a voice is created, speaking in address to another, that the power
to conjure up human presences and endow them with speaking voices is
not just a momentary trick of the orator but is the basis of the making of
fictions. Whether we come at the figure from the direction of Elizabethan
rhetorical theory or from that of modern critical theory, we can see that
prosopopoeia engages with, and is implicated in, many different degrees
and forms of personation. And we can recognise that these various shades
of literary personation are being investigated continuously in many works
of Renaissance English literature. Prosopopoeia: The Speaking Figure,
in Renaissance Figures of Speech, ed. Sylvia Adamson, Gavin Alexander, and
Katrin Ettenhuber (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 108.
1. Rewriting the Auctor: Revising according to

the Texts Letter or Spirit?
1 See Petrarch: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works, ed. Victoria Kirkham and
Armando Maggi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), xviixxii.
2 Citations from Boccaccios De mulieribus claris in Latin and English are
from Giovanni Boccaccio, Famous Women, ed. and trans. Virginia Brown
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001). For Baglis edition, I
cite from Boccaccio, Le opere de misser Giovanni Boccaccio De mulieribus claris
(Venice: Zuanne de Trino, 1506), held in the Special Collections Library
of the Pennsylvania State University. I have selectively modernized the
spelling.
3 According to F. Regina Psaki and Thomas Stillinger, editors of Boccaccio and
Feminist Criticism (Chapel Hill: Annali dItalianistica, 2006), 2.
4 Virginia Brown documents the various stages of works composition in
the introduction to her edition of Boccaccios Famous Women, xixii: The
nucleus of this innovative work, consisting in its final form of 104 chapters,
was written at Certaldo between the summer of 1361 and the summer of
1362. It was dedicated to Andrea Acciaiuoli, Countess of Altavilla, a Tuscan

noblewoman living in southern Italy. Andrea was the sister of Niccol
Acciaiuoli, an old friend of Boccaccio who was a member of an eminent
Florentine family and a major power behind the throne of Joanna, Queen
of Naples. In later stages, Boccaccio wrote the present chapters XXXI and
LXXX [eliminated] three doublets [inserted] three new chapters [and]
a conclusion (xiii), etc., bringing the work to the 106-chapter form of her
critical edition.
5 Rhiannon Daniels provides an excellent study of these paratexts in
Boccaccio and the Book: Production and Reading in Italy 13401521 (London
and Leeds: Modern Humanities Research Association and Maney
Publishing, 2009). Further references appear in the text.
6 If others were aware that there was such a virtuous paragon in their
Perugian milieu, they were remarkably reticent about it.
7 The error that Bagli produced the translation has persisted at least since
Niccola Francesco Hayms assertion in Biblioteca italiana, o sia notizia de libri
rari italiani, vol. 2 (of 2) (Milan: Giuseppe Galeazzi, 1773), 168.
8 As Daniels correctly summarizes, De mulieribus was translated into Italian
as early as 1367 and twice more before the end of the century (Boccaccio
and the Book, 1656). She bases her conclusions on previous studies by
Laura Torretta, Antonio Altamura, Claudio Scarpati, Vittorio Zaccaria,
Pamela Joseph Benson, and Stephen Kolsky.
9 Boccaccio, Famous Women, ed. Brown, xiv.
10 Stephen Kolsky, The Ghost of Boccaccio: Writings on Famous Women in
Renaissance Italy (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), 1. It is Kolsky who inserts
Baglioni in square brackets here. Moreover, it is inexact to assert, as
Kolsky does on the same page: In the preface to this translation, the
long-dead author appears to the translator (my emphasis). Not only is Bagli
not the translator, but it is not the long-dead author who appears to him,
but rather a representation of Boccaccios spirit. But Kolsky is correct
in his subsequent assessment: No doubt these three modifications
[the substitution of the Italian vernacular for Latin, the printing of the
text rather than its original manuscript form, and the encomium of a
contemporary woman] assisted in re-proposing the De mulieribus claris to
significantly new audiences in early sixteenth-century Italy. The apparition
of Boccaccio aptly personifies the ambiguous status of his work on
women, and its formal restoration to the Italian publishing and cultural
scenes in 1506. All previous editions of the Latin text had been produced
outside Italy; it would seem that the work had been virtually ignored by
the foremost, mainstream Italian humanists in the major centres. Yet the
present volume demonstrates that the De mulieribus claris had been taken
up by other writers, elsewhere in north Italy, as a work of intellectual
worth, and perhaps also of entertainment. Indeed, Boccaccios presence in
the 1506 preface confidently acknowledged a return to relevance for the De
mulieribus claris. This return was in effect the culmination of a discursive
preoccupation with the work over the preceding twenty-five years in Italy.
11 According to William J. Kennedy in Authorizing Petrarch (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1994), 34: In some respects the popularity of poetry
throughout Italy appears to compensate for a decline in formal religious
and theological publication during the Counter-Reformation. Notably
at this time a bizarre spiritualizing redaction of the Rime sparse by the
Franciscan friar Girolamo Malipiero, Il Petrarch spirituale, first published
in 1536, underwent six popular editions (154587) and it initiated a flood
of imitations, including Stefano Colonnas I sonetti, le canzoni, et i triomphi
di M. Laura in risposta di M. Francesco Petrarch (1552). This remarkably
derivative sequence rewrote Petrarchs amatory complaints as a series of
exemplary replies by the virtuous Laura.
Citations from Malipieros edition are from the 1536 Marcolino da Forl
edition held in the Special Collections Library of Penn State University. I
have selectively modernized the spelling of Malipieros text. I came across
Simone Turbevilles partial translation of Malipieros work Prefatory
Dialogue and Certain Sonnets from Girolamo Malipieros Il Petrarcha
spirituale, Allegorica 1.1 (1976): 12665 after I had completed my own
English translations of the passages included in this study.
For more on Colonnas work and subsequent imitations, see Amadeo
Quondam, Il naso di Laura: Lingua e poesia lirica nella tradizione del classicismo
(Modena: Franco Cosimo Panini, 1991), and Roberto Fedi, Soli e pensosi:
Censura, parodia, fortuna di un sonetto petrarchesco (RVF XXXV), Lingua
e stile 26.3 (September 1991): 46581. Further references to Quondam
appear in the text.
12 Quondam proposes various possibilities in the title of the fourth part of
Il naso di Laura, Riscrittura, citazione e parodia: Il Petrarca spirituale di
Girolamo Malipiero, 20362 that is, a rewriting, citation, or parody of
Petrarchs canzoniere. Quondam meticulously reconstructs the context of
Venetian publishing in the 1530s and 1540s, suggesting quite convincingly
that Malipieros ideological adversary is Pietro Bembo and by extension
the multitude of self-declared Petrarchisti Bembo had encouraged by his
model of lyric poetry. Building on Quondams contribution, Fedi calls
Malipieros project, as well as works by Stefano Colonna and Pellegra
Bongiovanni, three hypertexts tre ipertesti (466), showing the likes of
dipendenza e, stilisticamente di parodia (dependence and stylistically [a

relationship of] parody) with respect to the Petrarchan model.
13 In this respect, Malipieros project anticipates other moralizing rewritings
of Petrarchs poetry by Gian Giacomo Salvatorino, who produced a
Thesauro de sacra scrittura sopra Rime del Petrarcha (Thesaurus on Sacred
Scripture on the Poetry of Petrarch), and by Gian Agostino Caccia
(Petrarca spirituale, published circa 1550). Other authors texts endured
pious censoring attempts as well, including Boccaccios Decameron by
Francesco Dionigi da Fano in 1594, Ariostos Orlando furioso by Vincenzo
Marini in 1596, and Tassos Rime amorose by Crisippo Selva in 1611. On
this procedure, see also the various contributions to Scritture di scritture:
Testi, generi, modelli nel Rinascimento, ed. Giancarlo Mazzacurati and Michel
Plaisance (Rome: Bulzoni, 1987).
14 Original and English translation appear in Petrarchs Lyric Poems: The Rime
Sparse and Other Lyrics, trans. Robert M. Durling (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1976), 356.
15 According to Fedi: Girolamo Malipiero, proprio a cavallo del 1535 e
proprio nella imprenditoriale Venezia degli industriali-tipografi, coglie
subito la duplice natura (construens e destruens insieme, potremmo
dire) del petrarchismo alla maniera bembiana scovandone linterno
dispositivo di autodistruzione, essendo limitatio di per s una pratica
tendente certo a illuminare, ma insieme ad annullare, quasi per
un processo di metabolismo loggetto della sua attenzione (470;
Right around 1535 [the same year in which Bembos second edition
of his Rime appeared in Venice] and in precisely the same Venetian
industrial typographical publishing houses, Girolamo Malipiero seizes
on the double nature (construens and destruens together, we could say)
of Petrarchism in the Bembian manner, by delving into its internal
disposition moving toward self-destruction, given that imitatio in and
of itself is a practice that tends certainly toward illuminating, but at the
same time toward destroying almost as if by a process of metabolism
the object of its attention.)
16 This setting is the one depicted by the woodcut on the title page of Il
Petrarcha spirituale.
17 The response by Petrarchs spirit echoes, of course, the words of Virgils
shade to Dante the pilgrim in Inf. 1.657 in the English translation by
Durling: Miserere di me, gridai a lui,/qual che tu sii, od ombra od omo
certo!/Rispuosemi: Non omo, omo gi fui (Miserere/ on me, I
cried to him, whatever you may be,/whether shade or true man!/He
replied: Not a man, I was formerly a man ).
18 Petrarchs remark to Malipiero echoes Virgils counsel to Dante

the pilgrim at the sight of those souls relegated to the vestibule of Hell
(Inf. 3.51), and the context of the allusion may have been particularly
significant for Malipiero. In Dantes poem, this realm is reserved for the
pusillanimous, those human beings who did not exercise the divine gift
of free will to choose good or evil, but instead merely existed during their
lifetimes in a state beneath their dignity and intelligence. These souls
appropriately remain without identities or individual voices in Dantes
Commedia. In Malipieros dialogue, the throng of fools who prefer to
read filthy, evil, or wicked things while this is not an act that, properly
speaking, could be defined as pusillanimous are certainly beneath the
dignity of the spiritual decorum to which Malipiero aims.
19 Quondam continues with a bit more melodramatic characterization: La
vittima non pu che affidarsi al proprio carnefice, non pu che appellarsi
allufficio di piet del vivente Malipiero, sollecitare a mia istanza la
necessaria emendazione (209; The victim cannot but throw himself on
the mercy of his torturer, or do otherwise than call on the office of pity
of the living Malipiero, soliciting at my insistence the necessary
emendation).
20 According to Quondam: Malipiero deve sgombrare il campo da queste
interpretazioni allegoriche del Canzoniere, proprio perch attraversano
orientandola funzionalmente lambiguit del testo e dei suoi significati,
e rendono inutile ogni operazione di emendamento e di riscrittura,
parziale o totale che sia (207; Malipiero must get rid of these allegorical
interpretations of the Canzoniere, precisely because they jump the
ambiguity of the text and its meanings functionally reorienting it and
rendering useless any measures to emend it or rewrite it in part or
entirely). I believe that Quondam is correct when he says that Malipieros
introduction betrays the underlying motivation of the Dialogo. La
finzione del Dialogo qui si scioglie: non per soccorrere lanima di Petrarca
condannata allesilio del purgatorio donec corrigatur la sua opera, ma per
dare pietoso aiuto a questi tanti giovani inesperti, in balia di illecebrose
sirene, per proporre loro un esempio efficace e concreto, Malipiero si
assunto la fatica di riscrivere per intero, verso dopo verso, Petrarca (223;
The fiction of the Dialogue falls apart here: not in order to succour the soul
of Petrarch condemned to purgatorial exile must his work be corrected,
but in order to give pious aid to so many of these young inexperienced
ones in the throes of lecherous sirens by offering them an efficacious
and concrete example has Malipiero assumed the task of entirely rewriting
Petrarch, verse by verse). Quondam went on to muse: questo Petrarca
spirituale del 1536 mi sembra poter assumere i contorni di una maschera.

Nel troppo che ostenta c qualcosa o qualcuno che si nasconde (224; this
Petrarca spirituale of 1536 seems to me to take on the outlines of a mask. In
the excesses that it flouts, there is something or somebody who is hiding),
and he then examines the motivations of the publisher Marcolini and
Aretino, ultimately finding that there may be a doppio effetto di parodia
e di sberleffo (225; a double effect of parody and mockery) on their part,
as if they intended to far le fica a Petrarca e al petrarchismo con questo
Petrarca spirituale (225; give the fig to Petrarch and Petrarchism with
this Petrarca spirituale).
21 Fedi suggests another intriguing possibility: Malipiero agisce contro il
codice petrarchesco-bembiano, nel momento in cui accetta non di misurarsi
col modello bens di parodiarne in senso spirituale la traccia stilistica. Se,
infatti, rispondere per le rime significa laccettazione della sopravvivenza
dellipotesto dei Rerum vulgarium, la sua traslitterazione moraleggiante ne
crea un raddoppio che sulloriginale si distende fino a farlo scomparire
(forse non per caso il Petrarcha spirituale modifica la struttura interna del
modello, separando i sonetti dagli altri metri e addirittura con una distinta
prefazione: ultima manovra di uno smontaggio o de-semantizzazione
ormai evidente anche nella dispositio) (471; Malipiero acts against the
Petrarchan-Bembian code when he agrees not to measure himself against
the model but rather to parody its stylistic tracks in a spiritual sense. If, in
fact, responding by means of the same rhymes [that is, poking fun at it
line by line] signifies accepting the survival of the hypotext of the Rerum
vulgarium, his moralizing transliteration creates a double of the original
covering it to the point of making it disappear (perhaps not by chance
Petrarcha spirituale modifies the internal structure of the model, separating
the sonnets from the lyrics in other metres and even a separate preface: the
ultimate manoeuvre of a disassembly or de-semantization by now evident
even in its dispositio)). It should be remembered, however, that Malipiero
was certainly not the first editor to attempt to reorder or to rearrange
Petrarchs lyric poems. In 1528, for instance, Alessandro Vellutello
produced an edition of the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta that was divided
into three sections. In addition to the two sections on love sonnets and
canzoni, there was a third section on occasional poems, including those
with overtly political themes.
22 Teodolinda Barolinis outstanding contribution, The Self in the Labyrinth
of Time: Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, to Petrarch: A Critical Guide to the
Complete Works, 3362, traces many more subtle motivations for Petrarchs
ordering of the poems, all very different from Malipieros reorganization
and reformation of them. Some scholars read the collection as

dramatizing an achieved conversion. Others, including the author of
this essay, do not, for instability is at the core of this work: thematically,
psychologically, and as we shall see, textually and materially.
23 Quondam hypothesized to a similar conclusion if Malipiero had written
his objections in a different genre: Se Malipiero si fosse limitato a scrivere
e dare alle stampe questo suo trattatello in forma di predica, nessuno
certamente se ne sarebbe accorto: il punto di forza, ora e poi, nel vettore
impiegato, nellosare trasformare in campione di questa nuova poesia
sacra il campione assoluto di tutta quanta la poesia profana (215; If
Malipiero had limited himself to writing and publishing this little treatise
in the form of a sermon, surely nobody would have noticed: the point
to emphasize, now and again, is in the vector employed, in daring to
transform the absolute champion of all of secular poetry into the champion
of this new sacred poetry).
24 Cited from Giovanni degli Agostini, Notizie istorico-critiche intorno La Vita,
e le Opere degli Scrittori Viniziani (Venice: Simone Occhi, 1754), 441. Further
references appear in the text.
25 Nicolo Francos letter to Petrarch is titled Pistola di M. Nicolo Franco
ne la quale scrive al Petrarca and is among his Pistole vulgari (Venice:
Antonio Gardane, 1539). Citations are from this edition.
26 Charles Davis, Two Early Statements about Michelangelo Not in
Steinmann-Wittkower, FONTES 42: http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/
artdok/volltexte/2009/840/, 4.
27 Roberto Leporatti has recently prepared a critical edition of this work
published in Interpres 27 (2008): 144298.
28 The passage appears on 3v in Girolamo Benivieni, Commento sopra a pi
sue canzone et sonetti dello Amore et della Belleza Divina (Florence: Antonio
Tubini, Lorenzo de Alopo Veneziano and Andrea Ghirlandi, 1500). In my
citations here I have selectively modernized Benivienis spelling.
29 By this end I understand: converting lascivious-minded Petrarchisti to
more edifying reading and writing of lyric poetry, not aiding the spirit of
Petrarch to find blessed eternal rest, as Malipiero claimed.
30 Another consideration might be the genealogy of the nature of the spirit
itself. Malipieros vision of Petrarch resembles the classical pagan depiction
of umbrae, spirits forced to hover around their tombs until issues concerning
their previous life or the circumstances of their death are properly resolved,
more than a representation of a Christian soul. After all, Christians believed
that after death souls went to an otherworldly place hell, purgatory, or
heaven and certainly did not remain near their burial places.
31 Barolini, The Self in the Labyrinth of Time, 36, cites from Augustines
Confessions 8.9, and the emphasis is hers. She continues along the same
lines on p. 39: Petrarch was well aware of the gravity of conversion; he
wrote about it in the Secretum. Time in its metaphysical multiplicity can
lead to moral confusion: in the Secretum Augustinus cautions Franciscus
not to delay his conversion, not to be deceived by the divisibility of time.
32 According to Giuliano Tanturli in his entry dedicated to Manetti in the
Dizionario biografico degli Italiani (Rome: Istituto dellEnciclopedia Italiana,
1925 ).
33 I cite passages from Gaetano Milanesis edition of the Operette istoriche edite
ed inedite di Antonio Manetti (Florence: Successors Le Monnier, 1887).
34 According to Milanesi in the Preface of his 1887 edition, Manetti had
close ties of friendship to Ficino, che nel Dialogo DellAmore,
introdusse interlocutori il Manetti e Bernardo del Nero, chiamandoli suoi
amicissimi; e a loro dedic il volgarizzamento del libro De Monarchia di
Dante (xviiixix; who in the dialogue On Love introduced Manetti and
Bernardo del Nero as his interlocutors, calling them his closest friends;
and to them Ficino dedicated the vernacular Italian translation of
Dantes De monarchia). According to Tanturli in Proposta e risposta: La
prolusione petrarchesca del Landino e il codice cavalcantiano di Antonio
Manetti, Rinascimento 32 (1992): 220: Mi sembra probabile che si riferisse
alla traduzione della Monarchia di Dante dal Ficino dedicata a lui e a
Bernardo del Nero il 21 marzo 1468; anzi non vedo a che cosaltro si
sarebbe potuto riferire (It seems probable to me that he refers to Ficinos
translation of Dantes De monarchia, dedicated to him and Bernardo del
Nero on 21 March 1468, actually I cannot see to what else he could be
referring). It should be noted, however, that according to Tanturli, Ficino
did not translate Platos Libro dellamore (Book on Love) until dopo il
1469 (after 1469), that is, after Manetti wrote the Notizia.
35 Maria Luisa Ardizzone situates Manettis dedication to Giovanni Cavalcanti
in the broader context of Cavalcanti studies: Del Garbos commentary
(which Boccaccio would later copy by hand) enlarges Cavalcantis fame.
This text, which probably influenced the portrait of Guido we see in the
Decameron, opens a new perspective on him. From this point onward,
Guidos poetry is ascribed more to a tradition of science than to one of
literature. This perspective is no doubt responsible for the relevant role
that will be given to Cavalcanti in the Florentine Platonic school. In the age
of humanism, Antonio di Tuccio Manetti, the biographer of Brunelleschi,
organizes the first historical codex ([Domenico] De Robertis) of Guidos work
and dedicates it to Giovanni Cavalcanti, a member of Guidos family and a
friend of Marsilio Ficino. Manetti includes, along with Guidos texts, the
two commentaries on Donna me prega. The exegesis that Ficino reserves
for Donna me prega in his commentary on Platos Convivium is one tile
of the composite mosaic that, during the age of Lorenzo de Medici,
recreates the legend of Cavalcanti. Polizianos dedicatory letter to Raccolta
Aragonese, which emphasizes the quality of Cavalcantis poetry, and
the acknowledgment to Cavalcanti in the Giuntina edition (1527), which
devotes an entire volume to him, are also influential for the sixteenth-
century editions and studies of Guido and his Donna me prega. Guido
Cavalcanti: The Other Middle Ages (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2002), 4. I will return to examine aspects of both the Raccolta aragonese and
the 1481 Florentine edition of Dantes Commedia in the following chapter.
36 Cited from Tanturlis entry on Manetti in the Dizionario biografico degli
italiani. Moreover, as Tanturli notes in Proposta e risposta, 223, Manetti
insists that Il peso (gravit), loggettivo valore (verit) del contenuto si
impone attraverso e a dispetto di qualsiasi forma (The weight (gravity),
the objective value of the content (truth) shows itself by means of and
despite any particular form), as opposed to Landinos argument that
writers who were not elegant in their work were unlikely to express truth
in their writings either.
37 In this regard, it is perhaps not coincidental that Manettis language echoes
Dantes in Paradiso 25.11829, when, faced with the blindingly bright figure
of John the Apostle, Dante wrinkles his brow in an attempt to determine
the truth of what has been said about Johns ascension in both body and
soul to heaven. Manettis experience of this version of a transfiguration,
for all of its representation of a blessed soul in a luminous body speaking
to a living witness, is a comparatively secular vision.
38 Guido Cavalcantis in-laws were examples of the potential for even
the deceased to be found heretical: Farinatas family (the Uberti) was
explicitly excluded from later amnesties (he had died in 1264), and in
1283 he and his wife (both posthumously charged with heresy) were
excommunicated. Their bodies were disinterred and burned, and the
possessions of their heirs confiscated. Cited from http://danteworlds.
laits.utexas.edu/circle6.html on 7 January 2013. For an excellent
perspective on Cavalcantis reputation among his contemporaries and the
controversy surrounding his beliefs, see Zygmunt G. Baraski, Guido
Cavalcanti and His First Readers, in Guido Cavalcanti tra i suoi lettori,
ed. Maria Luisa Ardizzone (Fiesole: Edizioni Cadmo, 2003), 14975.
Baraski convincingly rejects Ernesto G. Parodis arguments in La
miscredenza di Guido Cavalcanti e una fonte del Boccaccio, Bolletino della
Societ Dantesca 22 (1915): 40 on Cavalcantis association with Averroism

and Epicureanism: like any human being, he has flaws (the listing of
weaknesses was a commonplace of the vitae, though, as in Guidos case,
they were never allowed to submerge the authoritys virtues). He was
irascible and sdegnoso (that key epithet), and there were occasional hints
of homosexuality, of avarice and materialism, and of arrogance. Of what
there is no trace, other than in Dante, and after him in Boccaccio and
his imitators, is any suggestion of intellectual unorthodoxy, never mind
of Epicureanism (167). He concludes, Durlings point is well made,
especially in the light of Guidos burial in holy ground in Santa Reparata,
which confirms that his fellow-citizens did not deem him a heretic or
an unbeliever. Baraski is referring to Robert M. Durling, Boccaccio
on Interpretation: Guidos Escape (Decameron VI.9), in Dante, Petrarch,
Boccaccio: Studies in the Italian Trecento in Honor of Charles S. Singleton, ed.
Aldo S. Bernardo and Anthony L. Pellegrini (Binghamton: Center for
Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, SUNY, 1983), 297. See also Guido
Favati, Inchiesta sul dolce stil nuovo (Florence: Le Monnier, 1975), 193.
39 More precisely, Epimenides in his Cretica was believed to have written
without self-reflexive irony the following verses concerning Zeuss
immortality: They fashioned a tomb for thee, O holy and high one/The
Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies!/But thou art not dead: thou
livest and abidest forever. Today these words serve as an illustration of
contingency, rather than the paradox of insolubilia or sophism that it was
called in previous ages.
40 This and subsequent citations from the Decameron are from Vittore Brancas
edition (Turin: Einaudi, 1987 [1980]), 7538, and the English translation by
Guido Waldman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 4013.
41 The critical bibliography on this subject is vast. Discourses of Authority
in Medieval and Renaissance Literature, ed. Kevin Brownlee and Walter
Stephens (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1989), remains a
good point of departure for the way in which the contributors synthesize
theories from Dante to Giambattista Vico, as well as from T.S. Eliot, Erich
Auerbach, Paul de Man, Geoffrey Hartman, Harold Bloom, and many
others in their focus on the literature of this period.
2. Divining Dante: Scandals of His Corpus and Corpse
1 Todd Boli noted, Boccaccios strategy of defending Dantes work and

promoting it in the emerging humanist environment is twofold: let Dantes
poetry speak for itself and add his own voice to speak on Dantes behalf
To capture humanist approval, the Trattatello subjects Dantes character

and works to revealing deformations. It contradicts what Dante says in the
Convivio about not wanting to accuse the Vita Nuova of undue passion and
claims instead that Dante davere questo libretto fatto negli anni pi maturi
si vergognasse molto (was ashamed in his more mature years of having
made this little book, 175) precisely as Petrarch in his maturity affected
embarrassment at having written the amorous trifles of his vernacular
canzoniere. The Trattatello contradicts what Dante says in the Vita Nuova
about the moral improvement he experienced through his love of Beatrice
and claims instead that tanto amore e s lungo (so great and long a love)
impeded Dantes cibo, i sonni e ciascuna altra quiete (diet, sleep, and every
other quiet) and constituted a harsh avversario agli sacri studii e allo ngegno
(adversary to sacred study and to his genius, 38) precisely as Petrarch
claimed his love for Laura caused him to lose appetite and sleep and kept
him from completing important poetic works. Perhaps the most significant
of all the Trattatellos deformations is its recasting of the Commedias divine
mission in more earthly terms. For the Trattatello, the Commedias purpose
is not so much to lead those living in misery to blessedness (Epistle to
Cangrande, 21) as to secure earthly glory for the poet. From Boccaccio,
Giovanni, in The Dante Encyclopedia, ed. Richard Lansing (New York:
Garland, 2000), 112.
2 On Boccaccios Trattatello and its two subsequent redactions, see Pier
Giorgio Ricci, Le tre redazioni del Trattatello in laude di Dante, Studi sul
Boccaccio 8 (1974): 197214.
3 Although John Ahern does not treat explicitly Boccaccios account, in his
Trattatello in laude di Dante, of the way the final cantos of Dantes Paradiso
were found after Dantes death, he does note the following in his essay
What Did the First Copies of the Comedy Look Like? in Dante for the
New Millennium, ed. Teodolinda Barolini and H. Wayne Storey (New
York: Fordham University Press, 2003), 6: When Dante died during the
second year of Petrarchs stay in Bologna, so far as we know, no complete
single-volume manuscript of the Comedy was in circulation. In Ravenna
his patron Guido da Polenta probably possessed a copy, as did members of
his circle there: Dino Perini, a doctor in correspondence with Giovanni del
Virgilio in Bologna, Piero Giardini, a notary active between 1311 and 1348
who, according to Boccaccio, had been Dantes disciple and also served
as Boccaccios informant (Trattatello 1974, 186), and Guido Vacchetta,
who knew Giovanni del Virgilio. According to Boccaccio (Trattatello, first
redaction 18589; second redaction, 12127), Dantes son Iacopo, then in
his twenties, working from a holograph, prepared the first one-volume
Comedy for Guido da Polenta (Francescas uncle). In an accompanying

sonnet, Acci che le bellezze, signor mio, probably sent on April 1,
when Guido assumed his duties as Capitano del Popolo in Bologna,
Iacopo asked Guido to correct the text (Im sending it so that you might
correct it), a request that suggests that Guido knew the work, possessed
authoritative copies, and would circulate the corrected version (Iacopo
Alighieri 1990, 7). Iacopo appears also to have sent Guido his own Latin
commentary, the Chiose, as well as a short verse summary, or capitolo.
4 Unless otherwise indicated, for the Trattatello I cite from the first redaction
in Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio, ed. Vittore Branca, vol. 3 (Milan:
Mondadori, 1974), 43796 (this passage appears on page 484). The English
translation of the Trattatello is by James Robinson Smith, The Earliest Lives
of Dante Translated from the Italian of Giovanni Boccaccio and Lionardo Bruni
Aretino (New York: Russell and Russell, 1968 [1901]), 978 (here page 65).
For the subsequent redactions of this episode, the variants of which do not
substantively alter the narrative, please see pages 5278 of Brancas above-
cited volume.
5 Pier Desiderio Pasolini, Ravenna e le sue grandi memorie: Ravenna Felix
(Rome: Ermanno Loescher, 1912), 149.
6 Boccaccio, The Life of Dante (Trattatello in Laude di Dante), trans. Vincenzo
Zin Bollettino (New York: Garland, 1990), 94.
7 Giuseppe Billanovich, La leggenda dantesca del Boccaccio dalla lettera di
Ilaro al Trattaello in laude di Dante, Studi Danteschi 28 (1949): 113: Perch
il dettatore, oltre le biografie dei classici, aveva estratto anche dallarca,
sempre pronta, dei testi sacri come modelli naturali per questi racconti
le leggende dei santi, ora facile la discesa: Dante compare in visione
miracolosa verso il mattutino al figlio dormiente e gli rivela il nascondiglio
riposto dove ha lasciato i tredici canti. E quindi quei canti sono ricuperati,
e inviati a Cangrande. Con questa invenzione il novelliere benevolo
allunga in terra la mano di Dio (Since the scribe had extracted from
his ever-ready quiver of sacred texts the legends of the saints, in addition
to biographies of the classics, as natural models for these stories, the
connection is easy to make now: Dante appears in a wondrous vision
around dawn to his sleeping son and reveals to him the hiding place where
he left the thirteen cantos. And thus those cantos are recovered and sent to
Cangrande. With this invention the well-intentioned storyteller extends the
hand of God to earth ).
8 Todd Boli summarized this debate in Boccaccios Trattatello in laude di
Dante, or Dante Resartus, Renaissance Quarterly 41.3 (Autumn 1988):
389412. For more recent interventions, see Saverio Bellomo, Il sorriso
di Ilaro, Studi sul Boccaccio 32 (2004): 20135; Simon A. Gilson, Dante

and Renaissance Florence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005);
Giuseppe Indizio, Lepisola di Ilaro: Un contributo sistemico, Studi
danteschi 71 (2006): 191263; Emilio Pasquini, Riflessioni sulla genesi della
Commedia, in Dante e la fabbrica della Commedia, ed. Alfredo Cottignoli
et al., Atti del convegno internazionale, Ravenna, 1416 September
2006 (Ravenna: Longo, 2008), 1536; and Jason M. Houston, Building a
Monument to Dante: Boccaccio as Dantista (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 2010).
9 Giorgio Padoan, Il lungo cammino del poema sacro (Florence: Olschki,
1993), 120.
10 Bruni, Opere letterarie e politiche, ed. Paolo Viti (Turin: UTET, 1996),
5378. The English translation is by Smith, The Earliest Lives of Dante, 81.
Alessandro Vellutello, in his 1544 Venetian edition of the Commedia, will
echo Brunis characterization of Boccaccios Trattatello when he states,
Il primo che scrisse la vita di Dante fu Giovanni Boccaccio da Certaldo,
quasi in tragico stile, o vogliamolo dire tutta piena damorosi sospiri e
lacrime (cited from Le vite di Dante, Petrarca e Boccaccio scritte fino al secolo
decimosesto, ed. Angelo Solerti [Milan: Vallardi, 1904], 202; The first to write
a biography of Dante was Giovanni Boccaccio from Certaldo, almost in a
tragic style, or we might say full of amorous sighs and tears).
11 Among other early Dante commentators to mention Jacopos dream as an
explanation for finding the final cantos of Dantes Paradiso after his death
are Filippo Villani, Cristoforo Landino, and Alessandro Zilioli, though
none of these scholars offers new details or a critical consideration of the
issue. Please see Le vite di Dante, Petrarca e Boccaccio, ed. Solerti, 90, 190, and
236 respectively.
12 According to Stefano U. Baldassarri in his introduction to Giannozzo
Manettis Biographical Writings, ed. and trans. Baldassarri and Rolf
Bagemihl (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), xiii.
13 I cite here and following from Baldassarri and Bagemihls above-cited
Latin-English facing-page edition (note 12).
14 Jason M. Houston came to a similar conclusion in Building a Monument
to Dante, 89: During the 1350s, Boccaccio was an important player in a
Florence that was in a political quagmire similar to the one that had so
troubled Dantes day. Florence, fresh from the disaster of Walter, Duke of
Athens, struggled to maintain its political independence from the growing
shadow of Viscontian tyranny spreading down from the north. The city
itself suffered from catastrophic internal divisions similar to those that had
forced Dante into exile. In Dante, Boccaccio found a potentially powerful
voice from beyond the grave that might serve as an authority that would
rein in the tyrannical abuses of the magnates and drive the city toward
a more virtuous, and therefore stable, existence. For this reason, in the
Trattatello Boccaccio speaks in clear and literal terms about Florences need
to honour Dante with a monument rather than to continue to treat him as a
political exile.
15 This passage is cited from Brancas edition of Tutte le opere of Boccaccio,
vol. 5.1 (Milan: Mondadori, 1992), 724 (emphasis mine). Edward Hutton
in Giovanni Boccaccio: A Biographical Study (London: John Lane, 1910) and
Thomas G. Bergin, Boccaccio (New York: Viking Press, 1981) both provide
excellent studies and translations of the passage in English. Here and in
the pages that follow I use Bergins translation (278).
16 Andrew Butterfield, Monument and Memory in Early Renaissance
Florence, in Art, Memory, and Family in Renaissance Florence, ed. Giovanni
Ciappelli and Patricia Lee Rubin (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2000), 135. On death and modes of commemoration in the Italian
Renaissance, see also the studies by Stephen Murphy, Allison Wright, and
Alberto Tenenti.
17 I recognize the difficulties in arguing Florentine versus non-Florentine
positions concerning Dantes remains. For one, not even citizens of the
same city always agree on which course of action to take or on which
famous figures to honour. Moreover, issues of citizenship, including the
naturalization of foreigners and the reintegration of previously exiled
Florentines, were extremely complicated. For instance, although Bruni
was born in Arezzo, he considered himself Florentine well before his
citizenship was made official in 1416. Meanwhile, Filelfo, though he held
for a period the Florentine cattedra to lecture on Dante, he remained an
outsider, born in Tolentino in the Marche region of Italy, and referred to
Florence as la citt vostra (your city, my emphasis) in his orations. See,
for instance, the one delivered on 29 June 1432 (cited in Gilson, Dante and
Renaissance Florence, 102). Thus I am attempting to distinguish between
their very different perspectives in seeing Bruni as a Florentine seeking
the repatriation of Dantes bones for the greater glory of his city, but
seeing Filelfo as a non-Florentine outsider trying to shame Florentines into
showing more honour toward Dante.
18 Riccardo Fubini included the Provision of the Signoria, which was dated 23
December 1396, as an appendix in his volume Lumanesimo italiano e i suoi
storici. Origini rinascimentali, critica moderna (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2001), 1013.
19 The original Latin is cited from Paolo Vitis Leonardo Bruni e Firenze: Studi
sulle lettere pubbliche e private (Rome: Bulzoni, 1992), 789. The English
translation is by Gilson in Dante and Renaissance Florence, 113. Further

references to Gilsons translation are in the text.
20 According to Filelfo biographer Vespasiano da Bisticci in Le vite, ed. Aulo
Greco, 2 vols. (Florence: Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento,
19706), 2:54: ebbe tutti i figliuoli degli uomini da bene alle sua letioni.
Aveva del continovo dugento iscolari o pi (he attracted all the sons of the
well-to-do to his lessons. He always had two hundred students or more).
21 From Paolo Vitis entry on Filelfo in the Dizionario biografico degli italiani,
vol. 47 (1997).
22 This excerpt appears in Gilsons Dante and Renaissance Florence, 102, and the
English translation is his. For the rest of the oration and others by Filelfo,
see Prose e poesie volgari, ed. Giovanni Benaducci, in Atti e memorie della
Reale Deputazione di storia patria per le provincie delle Marche 5 (1901): xli262.
23 On Cristoforo Landinos edition of the Commedia, including the editions
collaborators, see his Scritti critici e teorici, ed. Roberto Cardini in two
volumes (Rome: Bulzoni, 1974), from which citations here are taken, and
Cardinis monograph La critica del Landino (Florence: Sansoni, 1973); Arthur
Field, Cristoforo Landinos First Lectures on Dante, Renaissance Quarterly
39.1 (Spring 1986): 1648; and Field, The Origins of the Platonic Academy
of Florence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). For broader
questions of Dantes Renaissance reception, see Michele Barbi, Della fortuna
di Dante nel secolo XVI (Pisa: Tipografia T. Nistri E.C., 1890); Eugenio
Garin, Dante nel Rinascimento, Rinascimento 7 n.s. (1967): 328; Aldo
Vallone, Linterpretazione di Dante nel Cinquecento (Florence: Olschki, 1969);
and Deborah Parker, Commentary and Ideology: Dante in the Renaissance
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993).
24 On Botticellis illustrations for the Commedia, please see Peter Dreyer,
Botticellis Series of Engravings of 1481, Print Quarterly 1 (1984): 11115;
and Sandro Botticelli: The Drawings for Dantes Divine Comedy, ed. Hein-
Thomas Schulze Altcappenberg (London: Royal Academy of the Arts, 2000).
25 Cardini, La critica del Landino, 99.
26 Florentine poet Bernardo Bellincioni (14521492) was among those who
encouraged Cristoforo Landino to re-edit Dantes masterpiece. After
receiving from Landino an old edition of the Commedia, Bellincioni
acknowledged receipt with a sonnet in the voice of Dante, which begins:
Non guarderete al mio rotto mantello,/Ch spesso quel di fuor par che ci
inganni:/Vedete il rusignuol co bigi panni/Cantando sempre vince ogni
altro uccello (You will not look at my torn cloak,/since often what
appears on the outside can fool us:/Witness the nightingale in its gray
clothes/always triumphing in song over every other bird ). The original
appears in Carlo del Balzos anthology, Poesie di mille autori intorno a Dante
Alighieri, 14 vols. (Rome: Forzani E.C., 18931908), 4.1489. I see no reason
not to accept del Balzos hypothesis: Evidentemente questo sonetto, che
berteggia le strampalate e strane interpretazioni del commentatori della
Divina Commedia, dov essere scritto prima dellanno 1481 in cui vide la
luce il Commento del Landino con i disegni di Sandro Botticelli, che allora
fu un vero avvenimento letterario ed artistico. Di certo se fosse stato
scritto dopo, Bernardo non avrebbe mancato di eccettuare dal suo biasimo
il Commento del suo amico. Nondimeno, io opino, considerando che il
Landino non avrebbe fatto dono di quel Dante antico pieno di commenti,
se non avesse dato fine al suo lavoro, che questo sonetto fu scritto poco
innanzi il 1481, cio tra il 1479 e 1480 (Evidently this sonnet, which targets
the peculiar and strange interpretations by commentators of the Divina
commedia, must have been written before 1481, the year that the Commento
by Landino with the illustrations by Sandro Botticelli came to light, which
then was a true literary and artistic event. Of course if it had been written
later, Bernardo would not have neglected to bracket from his critique the
Commento by his friend. Nevertheless, I believe that this sonnet was written
a bit before 1481, that is between 1479 and 1480, since Landino would not
have sent a gift of that ancient Dante full of comments if he had finished
his own work).
27 Landino, Scritti critici e teorici, 1.139. Mandred Lentzen chronicles the
development of Landinos patriotic writings vis--vis Lorenzos political
ambitions in Le lodi di Firenze di Cristoforo Landino, Romanische
Forschungen 97.1 (1985): 3646.
28 Ravenna was under Venetian rule at the time. The letter appears in
Scrittura di Artisti Italiani del secolo XIV al SVII, riprodotta colla Fotografia da
Carlo Pini, ed illustrate da Gaetano Milanesi 69.1 (Florence, 1870), which was
republished in 1874 by Archivio Storico Italiano series 3, vol. 19.1.
29 Landino, Scritti critici e teorici, 1.129.
30 In fact, Bernardo Bembo emphasizes in the epitaph that he wrote for
the tomb that Dantes remains have waited far too long for honourable
restoration: Exigua tumuli Dantes hic sorte jacebas Squallenti nulli cognite
pene situ. At nunc marmoreo subnixus conderis arcu Omnibus et cultu
splendidiore nites Nimirum Bembus musis incensus ethruscis Hoc tibi quem
in primis hoc coluere dedit. Ann Sal. mcccclxxxiii. vi. Kal. Jvn. Bernardus
Bemb. Praet. aere suo Posuit (Here, Dante, in the squalor of your burial you
have lain, in this place hardly known to anybody. But now you rest under a
marble vault, and you shine in brightest splendour, for Bembo, inspired by
the Tuscan Muses, to you, their favourite, offered this tribute. In the year of
salvation 1483, the sixth day before the first of June, Bernardo Bembo, chief
magistrate, erected this at his own expense). See Corrado Ricci, Il sepolcro e
le ossa di Dante (Ravenna: Longo, 1977), 16; and Catherine Mary Phillimore,
Dante at Ravenna (London: Elliot Stock, 1898), 192.
31 See Cardini, La critica del Landino, 97. On the life and accomplishments of
Bernardo Bembo, see Nella Giannetto, Bernardo Bembo umanista e politico
veneziano (Florence: Olschki, 1985). E.G. Ledos republished the letter in
Lettre indite de Cristoforo Landino Bernardo Bembo, Bibliotheque
Lcole de Chartes 54 (1893): 7214.
32 Carlo Dionisotti notes in Dante nel Quattrocento, in Atti del Congresso
Internazionale di Studi Danteschi, ed. Societ Dantesca Italiana e
dellAssociazione Internazionale per gli Studi di Lingua e Letteratura
Italiana (Florence: G.C. Sansoni, 1965), 371: Gi, come si visto,
ledizione veneziana del 1477 aveva messo in primo piano la vita di
Dante del Boccaccio, estendendone il titolo, che anche fungeva da titolo
dellintero volume, al sommario del primo capitolo, in cui il Boccaccio
tocca la sententia de Solone, la quale mal seguita per gli Fiorentini. Ma
nelledizione Milanese del 1478 faceva spicco in buon latino un passo che
a Firenze non poteva esser lasciato senza risposta. Giustificando la sua
scelta del commento di Jacopo della Lana, il Nidobeato aveva scritto che
gli otto commenti a lui noti potevano considerarsi allincirca equivalenti
per ingenio, elloquio, doctrina, diligentia, ma che quello di Jacopo della
Lana materna eadem et bononiensi lingua superare est visus, cum sit illa
urbs ita in umbilico Italie posita ut assiduo commertio non tersa solum
vocabula sed provintiis omnibus etiam communia habeat, nec minore
gratia dignitateque sit in Italia bononiensis sermo quam laconicus olim
in Grecia fuit (As has been seen, the Venetian 1477 edition already
foregrounded Boccaccios Trattatello, extending its title, which also served
as the title of the whole volume, to the summary of the first chapter in
which Boccaccio touches on Solons judgment that is poorly followed
by the Florentines. But in the 1478 Milanese edition, a passage in
nice Latin stood out a passage that could not be left unanswered in
Florence. Justifying his choice of the commentary by Jacopo della Lana,
Nidobeato had written that the eight commentaries known to him could
be considered more or less equal in cleverness, eloquence, learning, and
diligence, but the one by Jacopo della Lana seemed superior because of
his mother tongue, the same as that of Bologna. For that city is positioned
in the centre of Italy in such a way that through its continual trade it has
a vocabulary that is not only precise but also common to all provinces,
and the language of the Bolognese is held in no less esteem and authority
in Italy than that of Sparta once was in Greece). According to Emilio

Bigi, Forme e significati nella Divina Commedia (Bologna: Cappelli, 1981),
161: Il significato del mito trasparente: per merito del commento
del Landino, Dante stato onorevolmente riaccolto nella sua citt la
Firenze, sintende, medicea come nellepistola del Ficino, anche nel
commento del Landino, laspetto pi caratteristico e centrale da indicare
nella compresenza di quei due temi: rivendicazione di Dante come
elemento del prestigio politico-letterario della Firenze medicea, e insieme
insistenza sul carattere contemplativo, anzi platonico e neoplatonico,
della sua poesia (The meaning of the myth is clear: thanks to Landinos
commentary, Dante was honourably brought back to his city the
Florence, one understands, of the Medici and in the letter by Ficino, so
also in Landinos commentary, the most characteristic and central aspect
is notable in the presence together of two terms: Dantes revindication as
an element of the political-literary prestige of Medicean Flroence, and the
insistence on the contemplative specifically Platonic and Neoplatonic
character of his poetry).
33 Cardini in La critica del Landino, 97, rightly emphasizes the fact that this
was also a hasty mobilization, taking just a little over a year in 14801.
34 Ficinos Latin preface is in Landino, Scritti critici e teorici. The translations
are from Images of Quattrocento Florence: Selected Writings in Literature,
History, and Art, ed. Stefano Ugo Baldassarri and Arielle Saiber (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 180. Further references are in the text.
35 Rachel Jacoff analyses how the illuminations of Inc 6120A held by Harvard
Universitys Houghton Library also contributed to its function as civic
promotional propaganda. See Charles Eliot Nortons Medicean Dante,
Harvard Literary Bulletin n.s. 5:3 (1994): 4552.
36 The 1506 edition of Dantes Divina commedia is the only Florentine edition
of the complete work printed between 1481 and 1595. In fact, Benivienis
edition was widely considered the third most important sixteenth-century
edition of the entire Divina Commedia after the 1595 Crusca Academy
project and Pietro Bembos Venetian edition, published by Aldus Manutius
in 1502. The 1572 edition and commentary by Vincenzo Buonanni
contained only the Inferno.
37 The rhyme scheme of the Cantico is only approximate in places, such as
at lines 47, 49, and 51: vediensi-sensi-sospinsi. Benivieni also falls out of the
rhyme at roughly the halfway point: lines 1012 display rima baciata in seco-
cieco. The text of the Cantico appears in the fourth volume of Carlo del
Balzos anthology, Poesie di mille autori intorno a Dante Alighieri. It should
also be noted that Benivieni on occasion referred to the Commedia itself
as the Cantica, that is, the Canticle, as he did in the Dialogo di Antonio di
Tuccio Manetti cittadino fiorentino circa al sito, forma et misure dello Inferno in
the context of a list of Dantes works that Benivieni had read: Ho visto
anchora in latino [la Monarchia], pi sue egloge ad diverse persone, della
sua Cantica, o vero Commedia, in versi heroici (cited from the edition by
Nicola Zingarelli [Citt di Castello: S. Lapi, 1897], 53; I saw another [work]
in Latin [the De Monarchia], some eclogues to various people, and his
Canticle, that is his Comedy, in heroic verse). For Benivieni, the feminine
form, cantica, appears to refer to the entire collection of the masculine
cantici, or cantos.
38 The name of Orpheus had numerous connotations in Florence during this
time, as Stanley Meltzoff rightly notes in his discussion of Ficinos Orphic
nickname in Botticelli, Signorelli and Savonarola: Theologica Poetica and
Painting from Boccaccio to Poliziano (Florence: Olschki, 1987), 128. Benivieni
may be considered another Orpheus as much for his poetic or rhetorical
eloquence as for his musical virtuosity. For more details concerning
Benivienis life development, the most complete source remains Caterina
Res Girolamo Benivieni fiorentino: Cenni sulla vita e sulle opere (Citt di
Castello: S. Lapi, 1906).
39 Testifying to the esteem Benivieni had earned in these studies is the fact
that he was asked later in life to make an Italian vernacular translation
of the Bible, a task that he never accomplished. See Olga Zorzi Pugliese,
Girolamo Benivieni: Umanista riformatore (dalla corrispondenza
inedita), Bibliofilia 72.3 (1970): 25388.
40 See Ludovico Passarini, Sepulcrum Dantis (Florence: Libreria Dante, 1883), 10.
41 From Savonarola, the Scelta di prediche e scritti di Fra Girolamo Savonarala con
nuovi documenti intorno alla sua vita, edited by. P. Villari and E. Casanova
(Florence: Sansoni, 1889), 493.
42 According to Dionisotti in Dante nel Quattrocento, 377.
43 This work, Commento di Hieronymo Benivieni a pi sue cantone et sonetti dello
Amore et della Belleza Divina (Florence: Antonio Tubini, Lorenzo (de Alopo)
Veneziano e Andrea Ghirlandi, 1500), combines poetry and prose, much
like Dantes Vita nuova and Convivio, for instance, but also contains some
elements that evoke Dantes Commedia, as well. Even though Benivienis
Commento and Dantes Commedia are admittedly quite different in tone,
genre, and intent, Benivieni shows his debt to Dante, for instance, in the
Commentos narration of the Souls narrow escape from the whirlpool
of damnation to its arrival at the heavenly Jerusalem. Benivienis work
consists of precisely one hundred self-glossed lyric poems, divided
into three parts, reflecting Dantes hundred cantos in three canticles.
The three parts of the Commento correspond roughly to the poets fall,
repentance, and reascension in Gods grace. The Commento contains,
moreover, significant references to some of Dantes most recognizable
characters, including Francesca da Rimini and Ulysses, and to Dantean
treatments of such concepts as memory and exile. It may be possible that
Benivienis reputation as a dantista also came from his work in editing
Antonio Manettis Dialogo circa il sito, la forma, e le misure dellInferno
di Dante (Dialogue on the Site, Form, and Dimensions of Dantes Inferno).
Benivieni in the 1506 Dialogo honours his deceased friend Manetti by
reassembling Manettis notes on the Commedias first canticle. The work
likely circulated in manuscript prior to its publication in 1506.
44 La concubina di Titone antico/gi simbiancava al balco dorente,/fuor
de le braccia del suo dolce amico (The concubine of ancient Tithonus
was already/turning white on the eastern balcony, having left/the arms
of her sweet lover, trans. Durling). There seems to be some confusion
concerning the relationship between Tithonus and Aurora. As Charles
S. Singleton notes, Dante is unique in calling her Tithonuss concubine,
since most interpreters describe Aurora as his spouse. Benivieni appears
to refer to another understanding of the myth, which holds Aurora to be
the daughter of Tithonuss wife, Dawn, and not the self-same figure. On
Dantes conviction that early morning dreams are true, see Inf. 26.7: Ma
se presso al mattin del ver si sogna See also Purg. 9.1318, and his
Convivio II, viii, 13.
45 On Benivienis Cantico as dream narrative akin to Ciceros Somnium
Scipionis with evident Dantean influence, see Bigi, Forme e significati nella
Divina Commedia, 158.
46 Benivieni likely had in mind other exclamations honouring Dante in his
citation Honorate laltissimo poeta. Benivieni would have been well
aware of the inscription (ca. 1430) by Antonio Neri beneath the portrait
of Dante in the Church of Santa Maria del Fiore: LA MANO/Onorate
laltissimo poeta/ch nostro, e tiellosi Ravenna,/perch di lui non chi
nabbia pieta (THE HAND: Honour the greatest poet who is ours, but
Ravenna keeps him because there is nobody [here] who feels pity for him )
The emphasis is mine.
47 Cantico, lines 626: colui che l grido/S sopr ognaltro poetando
acquista,/Che non pur solo a luno e laltro Guido/Tolt ha la gloria della
lingua l nome/Ma con lor tratto ognaltro ha fuor del nido (he who
acquires higher acclaim than every other poet through his writing, such
that not only from both Guidos has he taken the pre-eminent place in the
[vernacular] language, but with them has cast all others from the nest).
48 The exchange between the spirit of Oderisi da Gubbio and Dante the
pilgrim takes place on the purgatorial ledge of pride where Dante
participates to a limited extent in the act of penance for that sin, as
marked by his way of proceeding stooped like the souls carrying massive
boulders on their backs. I noted Benivienis acknowledgment of his own
risk of excessive pride in the allusion to the Phaeton myth and in the
varying ways that the issue of poetic pride reasserts itself in Dantes and
Benivienis poems in Dante as Piagnone Prophet: Girolamo Benivienis
Cantico in laude di Dante (1506), Renaissance Quarterly 55 (2002): 4980.
The risk of pride may also be suggested, for instance, in Benivienis
repetition of to me to me (ad me ad me) in Cantico line 70. The
anaphoric echo may intend to recall the io son, io son of the Siren in
another of Dantes prophetic dreams (Purg. 19.19). Certainly there is cause
to question Benivienis show of poetic humility. Unlike the long tradition
of poets, including Dante, who repeatedly beg the muses to come to their
aid, Benivieni penned a vision in which all nine ladies without prompting
circle round him. Moreover, Benivieni enjoys the special favour of being
transported directly to the Earthly Paradise, skipping over a journey
through hell or up the mountain of Purgatory. Similar to Dantes flight up
to the first purgatorial ledge, to which a sleeping Dante was snatched up
by St Lucy in the form of an eagle, Benivieni seems to ascend the mountain
while dozing, nor do I know how between earth and heaven (n so gi
com infra la terr e l cielo, line 15).
49 Concerning the Florentine Studios promotion of Dante as a Neoplatonic
poet-philosopher, see Bigi, Forme e significati nella Divina Commedia,
especially 15761. Bigi sees no coincidence in the fact that it was precisely
Lorenzo de Medici who after more than fifty years reinstated the push
to bring Dantes remains back to Florence: lo sappiamo da una lettera di
Antonio Manetti, che ricorda a Lorenzo una promessa in proposito da lui
fatta (la coincidenza significativa) durante i funerali di Matteo Palmieri,
lautore della Citt di Vita (we know this from a letter by Antonio Manetti
reminding Lorenzo of the promise he made in this regard and the
coincidence is significant during the funeral of Matteo Palmieri, author of
the City of Life). Bigi further emphasizes Lorenzos promotion of a civic-
ideological agenda: vede egli [Lorenzo] pure in Dante soprattutto, come
aveva detto il Ficino, un filosofo poetico, e in concreto un modello da
imitare specialmente in opere ispirate ai concetti e ai gusti dellambiente
neoplatonico (Lorenzo sees above all in Dante, as Ficino also did, a poetic
philosopher, and in concrete terms a model to imitate, especially in the
works inspired by the concepts and tastes of the Neoplatonic milieu).
50 In fact, Benivienis claim to know the Commedia well because he has read
it many times parallels Dantes claim to know Virgils Aeneid by heart (Inf.
20.11314).
51 Cantico, lines 13944. This passage, similar to various other ones from
Benivienis poem, may echo different possible sources without preferring
one to another. Underlying these Cantico verses in which Benivieni
describes himself as having been snatched to another place, may be both
Francesca da Riminis coy remark, Amor chal cor gentil ratto sapprende
(my emphasis) from Inf. 5.100 and the Stilnovistic tradition it carries with
it, as well as a specific contemporary source: Marsilio Ficinos De Raptu
Pauli (On the Rapture of St Paul), a dialogue between Ficino and St Paul
that allegorizes, according to Neoplatonic notions, the account of St Paul
being caught up into paradise (II Cor. 12:24).
52 The first of the Paradiso passages alluded to the anti-imperial Florentine
political forces that condemned Dante to exile: Se la gente chal mondo
pi traligna/non fosse stata a Cesare noverca,/ma come madre a suo figlio
benigna,/tal fatto fiorentino e cambia e merca (Par. 16.5861; If the
people who are most degenerate in the world had not been a step-mother
to Caesar, but kindly, as a mother toward her son, such a one has become
a Florentine and changes money and sells). In the second passage,
Cacciaguida confirmed and explained previous prophecies of Dantes
imminent exile by comparing Dantes plight to that of Hippolytus from
Athens: Qual si partio Ipolito dAtene/per la spietata e perfida noverca,/
tal di Fiorenza partir ti convene./Questo si vuole e questo gi si cerca,/e
tosto verr fatto a chi ci pensa/l dove Cristo tutto d si merca (Par.
17.4651; As Hippolytus left Athens because of his pitiless, treacherous
step-mother: so must you leave Florence. This is willed, this is already
sought, and soon will be done by him who plans it where Christ is sold all
day long).
53 As with the reference to Phaeton earlier in the Cantico, there may be
another exorcism of the risks of pride in this tercet. Benivieni speaks of
his native city in a way that calls to mind the ledge where sins of pride
are atoned in Dantes Purgatorio. On the ledges walls and walkways,
Dante the pilgrim scrutinizes bas reliefs, friezes, and other visual
representations that both discourage the sin of pride and encourage the
virtue of humility through allusions to exemplary stories.
54 Par. 16.289: Come savviva a lo spirar di venti/carbone in fiamma (As
in the breathing of the wind a coal livens in the flames).
55 See Lentzen, Le lodi di Firenze di Cristoforo Landino, 412.
56 Landino, Scritti critici e teorici, 1.37980.
57 Landino, Scritti critici e teorici, 1.380. Like Landino, Benivieni did not stop
at praising Dante in his Cantico. Rather, he added to those praises a
familiar call to civic virtue.
58 On the political and economic ramifications of Florentine and Venetian
typesetting rivalries, see the 1972 doctoral dissertation by William Anthony
Pettas, The Giunti of Florence: Merchant Publishers of the Sixteenth
Century (University of California, Berkeley).
59 Benivieni continued to evoke Landinos example by including in the
1506 edition the Dialogo circa il sito, la forma, e le misure dellInferno di
Dante. In the 1481 edition, in fact, Landino offered a discourse on the
Sito, forma e misura dello Nferno e statura de giganti e di Lucifero.
Benivieni thus framed his text of the Commedia in such a way as to call
explicitly to mind Landinos edition. However, Benivieni also made a point
of showing his independence from his predecessor by underscoring the
places in which he was correcting and revising Landinos earlier assertions
on the subject.
60 By focusing on the political motivations of literary editing, I bring to the
1506 edition the kind of attention that has already been granted to the
1481 Landino edition of the Commedia by scholars such as Cardini, Alison
Brown, Field, and Jacoff.
61 In a previous study, Dante as Piagnone Prophet, from which I have taken
this part of my analysis, I went on to trace in detail how some symbols,
such as the lion, could be adopted to signify different things to different
audiences. Sergio Di Benedettos subsequent points on the matter are
well taken. In Girolamo Benivieni e la questione della lingua: Alcune
considerazioni sulle correzioni al Commento del 1500, ACME: Annali
della Facolt di Lettere e Filosofia dellUniversit degli Studi di Milano 63.1
(2010): 165203, he states that some of my hypotheses for the identification
of the lion are to be preferred to others. Some associations do resonate
more strongly. Nevertheless, my intent has been not so much to limit
interpretations as to consider potential polyvalences, ambiguities, and
associations as a way of deepening both the literary understanding of
Benivienis work and the political understanding of the tensions that
are also inherent in it. As a piagnone moderate in Florence in the wake
of Savonarolas death at the stake and subsequent political upheavals,
Benivieni would want to cultivate the widest symbolic ambiguities.
Consideration of the Elegia Iohannis Pici Mirandulae adolescentis
Egregij ad Florentiam in laudem Hieronymi Beniuenij eius ciuis (Elegy
in Praise of Girolamo Benivieni) in my previous study also provides
clues to understanding the rhetorical and poetic techniques that its writer
(or writers) uses to associate the spirit of Dante with piagnone ideas
and imagery. I refer readers to all of these studies, and to the previous
scholarship of Donald Weinstein and Lorenzo Polizzotto for further
treatment of these questions.
62 This letter and the next two from the Accademia appear in Poesie di mille
autori intorno a Dante Alighieri, ed. del Balzo, 4:4745.
63 In addition to signing this letter, Benivieni wrote another letter to Lucrezia
de Medici Salviati with the same request to forward to her brother. For
further details, please see Pugliese, Girolamo Benivieni, 254n8.
64 Cited from Pasolini, Ravenna e le sue grandi memorie, 155.
65 Phillimore, Dante at Ravenna, 215.
66 From the official documents of the city of Ravenna, collected and
published by Corrado Ricci in L'ultimo rifugio di Dante Alighieri (Milan:
Hoepli, 1891), 358.
67 Dennis Looney, Compromising the Classics: Romance Epic Narrative in the
Italian Renaissance (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1996), 312,
traces a similar nationalistic spirit in the calls for the renovation of
Ludovico Ariostos tomb in Ferrara in the 1880s. For more on the Romantic
reception of Dante, see Aldo Vallone, Storia della critica dantesca dal XIV
al XX secolo, vol. 4, parts 1 and 2 of Storia letteraria dItalia (Padua: La
Nuova Libraria Editrice, 1981), and Francesco Mazzoni, Il culto di Dante
nellOttocento e la Societ Dantesca Italiana, Studi danteschi 71 (2006): 335
59, as well as the recent contribution in English by Joseph Luzzi, Romantic
Europe and the Ghost of Italy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008).
68 Giambattista Giuliani, Nella solenne deposizione delle ritrovate ossa di Dante
nellantico loro sepolcro (Genoa: La donna e la famiglia, 1865), 3.
69 Giuliani, Nella solenne deposizione, 5.
70 Both quotations from Giuseppe Riminesi are from his Dante Alighieri e
Ravenna Carme con note illustrative anche sul rinvenimento delle sacre ceneri
(Ravenna: Gaetano Angeletti, 1865), 910.
71 Giorgio Gruppioni traces the history of Dantes skeletal remains into
the twentieth century with irresistible allusions to the reappearances of
Dantes spirit at sances, including those recounted in Dantis Ossa by
Nella Doria Cambon in Il convegno celeste (Turin: Fratelli Bocca Editori,
1933), 25567. English Romantic poets also contributed to the controversy
surrounding Dantes bones, conjuring his ghost to make their points
even more forcefully. Perhaps the most famous example is Byrons poetic
composition in four cantos titled The Prophecy of Dante. See The Works
of Lord Byron. Poetry, vol. 4, ed. Ernest Hartley Coleridge (London and
New York: John Murray/Charles Scribners Sons, 1905). In this work,
penned in 1819, the English exile hoped to incite Italians to change their
political destiny to revolt against Bourbon rule and to seize a specifically
Italian national political identity that he believed that Dante had foreseen
centuries earlier. In the ancient pine grove of Ravenna, Byron attributes
words to the spirit of Dante, words that probably imply a sentiment similar
to what he feels with respect to his own homeland of England: Alas! how
bitter is his countrys curse/To him who for that country would expire
(lines 6970ff). In this way, Byron harnessed a particularly strong rhetorical
strategy by ventriloquizing his own poetic, personal, and political
aspirations through a dead poet hero.
72 Identification of the author is uncertain. Carlo del Balzo refers to the
author as the Anonimo della Magliabechiano (anonymous writer of
the Magliabechiano papers, Poesie di mille autori intorno a Dante Alighieri,
4.473), but Phillimore attributes the poem to a Baldassare Alvisi. In Dante at
Ravenna, she also elaborated on Florentines dismay at not finding Dantes
bones and their explanation: And thus, recites the memorial drawn
up by Carlo Nardi to Pope Leo, there could be no translation made of
the bones of Dante, because the deputies from the Accademia (Medicea)
having visited his tomb, they found Dante neither in soul nor yet in body;
and it being believed that he had in his lifetime, in body as well as in spirit,
made the journey through the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, so in
death it must now be assumed that in body as well as in spirit in either
one or other of those realms he has been received and welcomed. Whether
or not this explanation was considered satisfactory we do not know, but
the very sudden death of Leo X early in the following year may account
for no steps having been taken to press the matter further at the time
(198). There ensued the brief papacy of Adrian VI before Pope Clement
VII ascended. Alvisi addressed his sonnet Sommo Pastore (Supreme
Shepherd) to Clement VII, another Medici pope (Giulio de Medici, 1478
1534). However, Clement VII had an array of even more pressing concerns
to prevent him from mobilizing to translate Dantes bones from Ravenna
to Florence, not least of which were the events precipitating the 1527 Sack
of Rome, including the Colonna family attack on his person, resulting
in his imprisonment in the Castle of SantAngelo, and its aftermath.
For a detailed account of the historical context, see Kenneth M. Setton,
The Papacy and the Levant (12041571), 4 vols. (Philadelphia: American
Philosophical Society, 197684).
73 Cited from del Balzo, Poesie di mille autori intorno a Dante Alighieri, 4:473.
74 While my focus in this chapter has been on Florentines attempts to
repatriate Dantes remains and assess their responses to non-Florentine
editions of Dantes Commedia, this is not to say that there are not other
non-Florentine uses of Dantes spirit. One of the most curious examples
for propagandistic purposes is the Roman Giovanni Giacomo Riccios
eidolopoeia of Dante in I diporti di Parnaso (The Pastimes of Parnasus, 1635)
in order to criticize the use of the arquebus in bombardments. See del
Balzo, Poesie di mille autori intorno a Dante Alighieri, 5:5847: Dante contro
larchibugio e la bombarda.
3. Genius Loci: Exile, Citizensip, and the Place of Burial
1 There is no textual evidence that Machiavelli knew or was aware of

Ferreris Somnium. In fact the narratives, as I will show, are quite different
and do not warrant explicit juxtaposition for any other reason than their
inclusion of a Dante-spirit character.
2 For a near-contemporary definition of the piagnone, bigi, arrabbiati, palleschi,
and other political factions of Florentine politics during the time, see
Filippo de Nerlis Commentarj dei fatti civili corsi dentro la citt di Firenze
dallanno 1215 al 1537 (Trieste: Colombo Coen, 1859), 10813. A critical
edition of the work was presented by Sergio Rossi as a doctoral thesis
to the Universit degli Studi di Napoli Federico II during the 20056
academic year, available at: http://www.fedoa.unina.it/2921/1/Russo
_Il_Testo_tra_Filologia_e_Storia.pdf.
3 Machiavelli, Opere letterarie, ed. Luigi Blasucci (Milan: Adelphi, 1964), 212.
Page numbers for Machiavellis work refer to this edition.
4 These scholars include Giorgio Inglese, who, in his edition of Machiavellis
Clizia, Andria, Dialogo intorno alla nostra lingua (Milan: Rizzoli, 1997),
provides an insightful postilla (2069) summarizing the mostly Italian
critical and philological debates up to that point concerning the works
questione della lingua. Among the scholars writing in English and
contextualizing the Dialogo in broader linguistic, political, or philosophical
debates are William J. Landon, Politics, Patriotism, and Language: Niccol
Machiavellis Secular Patria and the Creation of an Italian National Identity
(New York: Peter Lang, 2005), and Barbara Godorecci, After Machiavelli:
Re-writing and the Hermeneutic Attitude (West Lafayette: Purdue
5 As Brian Richardson notes in The Cinquecento: Prose, in The Cambridge
History of Italian Literature, ed. Peter Brand and Lino Pertile (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996), 184, Machiavelli was reacting to
[Giangiorgio] Trissinos adjective Italian and to the way in which the
Vicentine was using Dantes De vulgari eloquentia to show that the greatest
Florentine poet had advocated a poetic language which was not Florentine
but courtly (curialis). Claudio Tolomei of Siena (c. 14921556) argued
in favour of the Tuscan (rather than narrowly Florentine) nature of the
literary vernacular in Il Cesano (drafted by 1529).
6 Incidentally, this motif of dying again has precedents in classical literature,
some with a similarly half-humorous, half-spiteful tone. See Ronald C.
Finucane, Appearances of the Dead: A Cultural History of Ghosts (London:
Junction Books, 1982), 26: Some classical apparitions are very substantial
indeed. One unusual example was the girl who returned six months after
death to sleep with her lover. When her parents burst in on them, the
ghost, after angrily telling them to mind their own business, died again.
7 For biographical details of Ferreris life, I supplement summaries by Carlo
del Balzo and M.E. Bernardo Morsolin, Un latinista del Cinquecento
imitatore di Dante, Atti del Reale Istituto veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti 7
(18934): 142946, with the excellent entry for the Dizionario biografico degli
italiani (Rome: Istituto dellEnciclopedia Italiana, 1925 ) by Eckehart Stve.
Del Balzo in Poesie di mille autori intorno a Dante Alighieri, ed. del Balzo, 14
vols. (Rome: Forzani E.C., 18931908), 4.402, cites (Girolamo) Tiraboschi
for the claim that Ferreri earned a third laurea in poetics during the two-
year period he spent in Rome, but it was more likely, according to Stve,
that Ferreri was publically recognized for his Latin poetic compositions.
8 The full text of Ferreris Lugdunense somnium appears in Carlo del Balzos
Poesie di mille autori, 4.373403. The title seems to suggest some kind of
allusion to the Dream of Scipio, but the spirit featured in Ferreris poem
is somewhat different from Ciceros. Io non so se il titolo del poemetto
gli sia stato suggerito dal Somnium di Scipione, rimastoci de libri De
Republica di Cicerone: certo che tra luno e laltro corre una qualche
analogia; tanto che si pu dire che il frammento del filosofo antico non sia
sfuggito al Ferreri, come non era sfuggito in antecedenza allAlighieri
(Morsolin, Un latinista del Cinquecento imitatore di Dante, 1435; I
do not know if the title of the short poem had been suggested by the
Dream of Scipio, left to us in the books of Ciceros Republic. It is certain
that some analogy runs between them, such that one can say that the
ancient philosophers fragment had not escaped Ferreri, just as it had not
previously escaped the attention of Alighieri).
9 Charles L. Stinger, Roman Humanist Images of Rome, in Rome Capitale
(14471527), ed. Sergio Gensini (Pisa: Pacini, 1994), 16.
10 See Morsolin, Un latinista del Cinquecento imitatore di Dante, 1443:
Non che il Ferreri disconoscesse desser trasceso specialmente nella parte
avuta del Concilio di Pisa; ma di questo eccesso si fa scusare dallAlighieri
medesimo, che pure ebbe a oltrepassare talvolta i giusti confini e che del
proprio errore trovava le attenuanti nellesempio di tanti grandi uomini,
anche santi, tratti per soverchio acume di ingegno a bandir come vero ci,
chera falso e riabilitati poi per la sincera ritrattazion dellerrore (Not that
Ferreri did not recognize that he had overdone it, especially in the part he
played in the Council of Pisa. But he makes Alighieri himself excuse this
excess, Dante who also had occasion to exceed the just bounds sometimes,
an error that he found ways of softening because of the example [of it] in
so many great men, even saints, taken by excessive acumen of genius to
announce as true that which was false, and later forgiven for their sincere
retraction of the error). Moreover, the figure of Dante lends particular
weight to Ferreris assertion because LAlighieri costituiva allora, come
adesso, la gloria pi grande di Firenze: e il fatto non poteva sfuggire certo
al Ferreri per dare maggior rilievo ad un altro, che tornava a grande onore
della citt (1440; Alighieri constituted then, as he does now, the greatest
glory of Florence).
11 See Morsolin, Un latinista del Cinquecento imitatore di Dante, 1439.
12 Passages from Ficinos proem to the De Monarchia are cited from Mario
Martelli, Letteratura fiorentina del Quattrocento: Il filtro degli anni sessanta
(Florence: Le Lettere, 1996), 60. The second citation reads: peregrine
quelli che fuori di detta citt sono, ma non iudicati in sempiterno essilio
(Pilgrims are those who are outside the said city, but are not judged to be
in perpetual exile).
13 Luigi Vignali has provided an excellent critical edition of Caviceos
work under the title Il Peregrino (Rome: La Fenice Edizioni, 1993). All of
the citations of the Peregrino indicate page numbers from this edition.
Some portions of this section are taken from my previous study Dante
Ravennate and Boccaccio Ferrarese? Post-Mortem Residency and the
Attack on Florentine Literary Hegemony, 14801520, Viator 35 (2004):
54362. According to Vignali (xiiixiv), there is a particular significance in
the city of publication for Caviceos last and most important works: La
scelta di Parma, come luogo di pubblicazione (in questa stessa citt egli
far pubblicare, lanno seguente, anche la successiva ed ultima sua opera,
in latino, il Confessionale), sar stata presumibilmente determinate dal
desiderio del Caviceo di essere presente, se non con la propria persona,
almeno con le sue due ultime, e maggiori, opere nellamata citt natale (a
Parma dedicato, nel romanzo, il riferimento relativamente pi ampio
e circostanziato; il Caviceo andr a morire appena fuori dal territorio
di giurisdizione parmense) (xii; The choice of Parma as the place of
publication (in this same city he will also see published the following year
the next and final work of his in Latin the Confessional) presumably must
have been determined by Caviceos desire to be present, if not in person,
then with his due last and most important works in his beloved birth
city (in the novel the relatively broadest and most detailed reference is
dedicated to Parma; Caviceo will go to just outside Parmas jurisdictional
territory to die)).
14 Marcello Turchis characterization of Peregrino, who initially seeks to
avoid Loves snares, as a novello, ma appesantito, Iulo delle Stanze
(a new, but heavier Giulio from [Angelo Polizianos] Stanze) is not entirely
inaccurate, either. Composizione e situazione del romanzo umanistico di
Iacopo Caviceo, Aurea Parma: Rivista di Storia, Letteratura e Arte 46 (1962):
13. Nonetheless, I believe Turchis assessment of the work as a whole as
merely escapist literature and, what is worse, an example that si perde in
sostanza in una prova dilettantesca e divulgativa (16, is substantively
lost in an amateurish and popularizing attempt) is unduly harsh. Despite
the works occasional long-windedness, it takes a substantial leap beyond
Boccaccian romance toward the complex agency of Renaissance works.
Certainly it is far more coherent and engaging in its narrative development
than its near contemporary, the 1499 Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, for instance.
15 Lorenza Simona has written an indispensable biography of Caviceo, which
presents the fruits of painstaking archival research: Giacomo Caviceo: Uomo di
chiesa, darmi e di lettere (Bern: Herbert Lang, 1974). I refer the reader seeking
greater detail to that study, of which I sketch only some highlights here.
16 Simona, Giacomo Caviceo, 55.
17 Simona, Giacomo Caviceo, 5585.
18 According to Simona in Giacomo Caviceo, 967.
19 Besides the Peregrino, Caviceo penned other works, but none of them resemble
the Peregrino in terms of genre or quality of the narrative. These include the
Lupa (The She-Wolf), a life of his patron Pier Maria Rossi, a dialogue on Marys
virginity, an anti-Semitic Libellus contra Hebreos (Tract against the Jews), and the
aforementioned Confessionale. See Simonas study, Giacomo Caviceo.
20 Some critics, according to Luigi Vignali in his introduction to the
1993 edition of the Peregrino, have suggested (and contested) that the
protagonists name might allude to Pier Maria Rossis love interest, Bianca
Pelligrini. See his summary of the debate on p. xvii, especially note 22.
21 See also the discussion concerning the dissolution of the body at the point
of death in Peregrino 2.31 (p. 205).
22 The translation is from The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, 3 vols., ed.
and trans. Robert M. Durling; notes by Ronald L. Martinez (New York and
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 19962011).
23 While the Peregrino has earned a reputation as a racy, erotic tale, Clive
Griffin is correct in noting that only two of the works more than two
hundred chapters could be described as erotic. Giacomo Caviceos
Libro del Peregrino: The Fate of an Italian Wanderer in Spain, in Book
Production and Letters in the Western European Renaissance: Essays in Honor
of Conor Fahy, ed. Anna Laura Lepschy, John Took, and Dennis E. Rhodes
(London: Modern Humanities Research Association, 1986), 13246 (note 2).
Nonetheless, Caviceos reputation for womanizing probably contributed
to this erotic emphasis in his novels reception. It is very curious that
when the seventeenth-century writer Nicolas Chorier wrote the patently
pornographic Dialogues of Luisa Sigea (Aloisiae Sigae Satyra sotadica de arcanis
amoris et veneris), he gave to his male protagonist the highly uncommon
name of Caviceo, likely taking advantage of the names potential for double
entendre as well. Caviceo is a Latinized form of Cavizzi, a screw.
24 The spirit of Boccaccio asserts cittadina in the feminine gender here
because he emphasizes his state of being as ombra, shade.
25 Landino, Scritti critici e teorici, ed. Roberto Cardini, 2 vols. (Rome:
Bulzoni, 1974), 1:151. Moreover, Landino is in turn echoing passages from
Boccaccios works, including from Filocolo 1.2 and from the Prologue of the
Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta.
26 Caviceo could not have meant Filippo Beroaldo the Younger, the Tacitus
scholar, Latin poet, and prefect of the Vatican Library under Pope Leo X,
who also receives mention in Ariostos Orlando furioso (46.13), since he
was still alive when Caviceo imagines the ghostly encounter in 1508. The
younger Beroaldo died in 1518.
27 Ma credi, veramente, che fu insognio? Lanima nostra perspicace a
movere il senso dal subiecto e mutarlo ad ogni forma; e secundo se ritrova il
subiecto costante e disposito, cos gli rendeno o timore o letitia Tali son a
la fiata le representatione de la mente nostra, quali son gli pensieri e cogitati;
et in quel habito ne apareno li simulacri, quali gli desideremo vedere (127;
Do you really believe that it was a dream? Our soul is keen to move the
sense of the subject and change it into every form; and according to whether
the subject is constant and so disposed, it is moved by fear or pleasure
So on the face are the representations of our mind, such as the thoughts and
imaginings; and in this way simulacri appear, which we wish to see).
28 Macrobius, pre-eminent commentator of Ciceros dream narrative, also
gets passing mention in the Peregrino (283).
29 It is tempting to wonder whether Caviceo, in his position as vicar general
of Ravenna, could have had some direct influence in keeping Dantes
remains out of Florentine control. Despite my best research efforts in
various Italian archives, I have not found any proof that Florentine
petitions passed directly through Caviceos hands. However, it is not
unthinkable that the vicar general of Ravenna might be carefully informed
of these attempts to remove one of the treasures now housed in one of the
churches for which he had oversight responsibilities.
30 Nella Giannetto, Bernardo Bembo umanista e politico veneziano (Florence:
Olschki, 1985), 156.
31 Giulio Bertoni, LOrlando furioso e la Rinascenza a Ferrara (Modena:
Umberto Orlandini, 1919), 21314.
32 Bertoni, LOrlando furioso, 180.
33 See Achille Tartaro, La prosa narrativa antica, in La narrativa italiana dalle
Origini ai giorni nostri, ed. Alberto Asor Rosa (Turin: Einaudi, 1997), 43140,
and Enrico Carraras edition of the Opere di Iacopo Sannazzaro con saggi
dellHypnerotomachia Poliphili di Francesco Colonna e del Peregrino di Iacopo
Caviceo (Turin: UTET, 1952).
34 In the introduction to Francesco Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, ed.
Marco Ariani and Mino Gabriele, 2 vols. (Milan: Adelphi, 1998), xxxvii.
35 The original text of Il Giudicio estremo appears in Corrado Ricci, Il sepolcro e
le ossa di Dante (Ravenna: Longo, 1977), 17.
36 Ricci, Il sepolcro e le ossa di Dante, 30. Gasparo Martinetti Cardoni, Dante
Alighieri in Ravenna: Memorie storiche con documenti (Ravenna: Gaetani
Angeletti, 1864), also noted that the sonnet, which accompanied a portrait
of Dante donated to the city of Ravenna by Giovanni Rasponi, was
recorded by Tommaso Tomai in his record of notable things in Ravenna in
the sixteenth century. Neither nineteenth-century contribution mentions
the poets identity.
37 Benivieni mentions to his dedicatee Giovanfrancesco Pico in the proem of
his Commento di Hieronymo Benivieni a pi sue canzone et sonetti dello Amore
et della Belleza Divina (also known as his Canzoni e sonetti con commento,
published in Florence by Antonio Tubini et al. in 1500), 1r: ecco subito
come a Dio piacque fu per corporale morte alli occhi nostri subtracto epso
mio bene Iohanni Pico predecto: La cui troppo certo acerba morte/& come
infra le altre presente afflictione di tutta Italia per tempo prima/cosi certo
per damno non ultima clamita de la christiana Republica/mi afflixe alhora
intanto/che subito in el porto del mio poco innanzi male abrupto silentio
mi ritrassi: Parendomi che insieme con quello mi fussi tolta ogni occasione
di mai piu dovere scrivere alcuna cosa/o comporre (then suddenly, as
God willed, my dear Giovanni Pico whom I already mentioned was taken
before our eyes by bodily death. His so surely bitter death, paramount
among the other afflictions that befell all of Italy at the time, certainly
not the least of the calamities for its damage to the Christian Republic,
so pained me then that I immediately withdrew [my intent to launch
the present Commento, figured as a barque] back to the port of silence. It
seemed to me that with him was taken from me every occasion to ever
write or compose another thing).
38 Caterina Re details these episodes in the life of Pico in Girolamo Benivieni
fiorentino: Cenni sulla vita e sulle opere (Citt di Castello: S. Lapi, 1906), 823.
39 His collection of love poetry does not seem to be inspired by passion
as much as it is by poetic emulation. Moreover, Re in Girolamo Benivieni
Fiorentino, 778, convincingly argues against those critics who imply that
there may have been una relazione meno che onesta fra i due (a less-
than-honest relationship between the two men).
40 Re, Girolamo Benivieni, 834.
41 According to Caterina Re, La tomba di Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
e di Girolamo Benivieni in S. Marco di Firenze, in In memoria di Oddone
Ravenna (Padua: Fratelli Gallina, 1904), 129.
42 See Re, La tomba di Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, 127. Pico was
certainly not the only personage of renown to request what was considered
by contemporaries an unworthy burial arrangement. Petrarch in his will
requested that his body be buried without any extravagance in the chapel
that he had had made, according to what he could afford, in honour of the
Virgin Mary. Instead, those who survived him determined that Petrarch
should be praised in a regal sermon by the celebrated Bonaventura da
Peraga, and that his body should be placed in a coffin covered by a
gold cloth under a baldacchino of gold and ermine in front of the said
chapel in an exquisite sepulchre upon four columns, etc., as described by
Marcantonio Micoletti in his biography of Petrarch, excerpted in Solerti,
Le vite di Dante, Petrarca e Boccaccio scritte fino al secolo decimosesto (Milan:
Francesco Vallardi, 1904), 53864: Il Petrarca puoco dinanzi aveva in
Padova fatto il suo testamento, et espressamente comandato che l corpo
suo senza pompa fosse sepolto nella capella chegli, non secondo il suo
desiderio ma le forze dellavere, aveva in onore della santissima Vergine
madre fabricata. Ma perch il rispetto de meriti non tenuto alle volte
alla disposizione del meritevole, non defraud giammai di dovuti premi
il valore, avendo prima in lode del defunto recitato un real sermone
Bonaventura da Peraga, frate eremitano, teologo eccellentissimo, et poi per
qualit deccellenza fatto cardinale, il corpo disteso in una bara, coperta
di panno doro sotto un baldacchino doro e darmellini, dinanzi la porta
dellistessa capella, fu posto in un superbo sepolcro, sovra quattro colonne,
con la base di due gradi di pietra rossa: che cos Francesco dAmicolo,
milanese di porta Vercellina, erede del morto, e marito di una illegittima

figliuola del Petrarca, giudic convenirsi al sopra glorioso nome del socero,
facendo ancora nella tomba intagliar questo epitaffio di cadenza conforme,
a modo delle rime volgari: Frigida Francisci lapis hic tegit ossa Petrarcae;/
Suscipe Virgo parens animam; sate Virgine parce,/Fessaque jam terris coeli
requiescat in arce (556).
43 Re, La tomba di Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, 123; the emphasis is hers.
44 Benivieni stated in Commento that molte erano per certo le cagioni/
le quali mi sforzavano ad amare questo unico infra le cose humane &
singulare mio bene (1v; many were certainly the reasons that induced me
to love this unique good of mine among all human things). The qualities
that Pico possessed included la grandeza dello admirabile & sopra a
qualunche altro de la nostra eta eminente suo ingegno: La excellentia
de la multiplice & incomparabile sua doctrina: la elegantia de costumi
in universo: & in particulare la innata & oltre a ogni fede incredibile
mansuetudine/gratia & benignita: Lascio in drieto la prudentia/lascio
el iudicio/lascio tutte le altre sue rare & a pochi con si larga mano da
Dio concedute virtu: Non dico alcuna cosa de la belleza del corpo/de la
nobilita del sangue/de la affluenza de le riccheze (1v; the greatness of
his admirable genius, eminent above all others of our age; the excellence
of quantity and quality of his doctrine; the elegance of his habits in
everything; and in particular his innate and beyond all belief incredible
mildness, grace, and goodness. I leave aside his prudence, his judgment,
all of his other rare virtues, so infrequently conceded by God with such a
generous hand. I say nothing about the beauty of his body, the nobility of
his blood, or the abundance of his riches).
45 According to Re, La tomba di Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, 13940,
repeated in Girolamo Benivieni, 97.
46 Re indicates (La tomba di Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, 112) that ms.
Riccardiano 2811 contains the two sonnets, transcribed along with other
works by Girolamo Benivieni by his grandnephew. Girolamo probably
wrote the poems, Re conjectures, between 1531, when the dukes rule
began, and 1537, the year of the dukes death (131). This hypothesis leaves
open the possibility that Benivieni resorted to writing the sonnets in
Picos voice only after his political attempts as part of the Duecento were
unsuccessful.
47 The Italian version is transcribed from Res version (La tomba di
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, 113) with two corrections: substitution of
apostrophe for accent on e in Se (line 3) and correction of the spelling
of ossa (line 11).
214 Note to pages 134
48 Re emphasizes what she perceives as the inexplicable strangeness in

Benivienis addressing the Bishop and the Duke of Florence, potential
enemies of the Savonarolan Pico, in the titles of these sonnets (La tomba
di Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, 137ff). But Benivieni was a nuanced
and cleverly diplomatic personality, never an extremist partisan. Even
in his years of closest adhesion to the piagnone ethos, he continued to
cultivate Medicean friendships. One need only call to mind an anecdote
provided by Antonio Benivieni the Younger in his Vita di Girolamo
Benivieni (Archivio di Stato Firenze, codice Gianni, n. 43 of the Leonetti
Mannucci Gianni archives). At a dinner party hosted by Cardinal Giulio
de Medici, Benivieni found himself the only one at the table willing to
defend the reforms of Savonarolas government, well after the friar had
been executed. The other guests lambasted the piagnoni without mercy,
anticipating that they would shame Benivieni. The cardinal finally
intervened: Girolamo voi fate professione di credere al Frate, come pu
stare lessere insiememente amico et affezzionato nostro? (40v41r;
Girolamo, you make the profession of belief in the friar, how can it
be that you are at the same time our friend and intimate?). Benivieni
silenced his instigators with his prompt reply: Monsignore mio, se
lopera del Frate humana, la si risolver presto per se stessa; se l di
Dio, che ch gli homini se ne facciano, landr per certo innanzi. Ma
Vossignoria Illustrissima non tema gi mai delli amici e devoti del Frate,
essi aspettando il miracolo, e che Dio operi, quieti se ne stanno. Guardisi
bene ella da alcuni di questi mormoratori inquieti che lha dattorno, i
quali, sempre insatiabili, non restano o resteranno gi mai di travagliare,
e nuovi e vasti concetti concependo altrui sollevare per compimento
e sfogo dei loro smoderati appetiti (41r41v; Monsignor mine, if the
friars work is human, it will resolve itself quickly on its own; but if it
is of God, then no matter what men might do, it will move ahead. But
your Excellency need not ever fear the friars friends and disciples, who
quietly await the miracle that God might work. Rather guard yourself
well against these dissatisfied slanderers around you who, insatiable,
never cease to trouble others with their impious machinations and to
vent their excessive appetites). I consider this episode at greater length
in Piagnone Exemplarity and the Florentine Literary Canon in the Vita di
Girolamo Benivieni, Quaderni dItalianistica 27.1 (2006): 320. I argue that
it would be reasonable to expect that, in addition to support that he had
from members of the Pico family, especially Gianfrancesco Pico, Benivieni
might need the support of both secular and religious authorities to
exhume and reinter his friends remains.
49 See Leon Dorez, La mort de Pic de la Mirandole et ldition Aldine des

oeuvres dAnge Politien (14941497), Giornale storico della letteratura
italiana 32 (1898): 3604, cited in Re, La tomba di Giovanni Pico della
Mirandola, 126. Moreover, Re notes, Strane le suppliche in proposito
al vescovo dAssisi e per lui ad Alessandro, a quellAlessandro, non
tenero certo del Savonarola e dei Savonaroliani, che occupava il seggio
perduto gi da Piero de Medici, presunto mandatario dellassassinio
del Pico (137; The requests in this regard to the bishop of Assisi and
through him to Alessandro are strange, since Alessandro certainly did not
concern himself about Savonarola and the Savonarolans who occupied
the seat lost by Piero de Medici, presumably the one who ordered the
assassination of Pico). Picos death at the age of thirty-one, after thirteen
days of inexplicable fevers, was considered suspicious even in his
own time. According to Jader Jacobelli in Quei due Pico della Mirandola:
Giovanni e Gianfrancesco (Rome: Laterza, 1993), who cites Marin Sanudos
Diarii, nearly three years after Picos death, the government directed by
Savonarola arrested partisans of Piero de Medici, presumably to thwart
an attempted coup. Five of the arrested men, including Picos former
secretary, Cristoforo di Casalmaggiore, who confessed to poisoning Pico,
were decapitated. Nonetheless, confessions under torture, as this one was,
are not reliable. Others have also speculated that, given the contentious
inheritance struggles within the Pico family, the young count might have
had a mortal enemy among them, if indeed he was poisoned at all.
50 Re, La tomba di Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, 139.
51 The full title to this composition is In persona del medesimo S. Conte
Giovanni Pico a Gir.mo Benivieni: exhortalo a perseverare nel chiedere
la sopradecta gratia con certa speranza di impetrarla come facilmente fia
mpetrata (In the person of that same Count Giovanni Pico to Girolamo
Benivieni, exhorting him to persevere in petitioning the above-mentioned
favour with a certain hope of receiving it in as much as it is easily
received).
52 Like Polizianos Nutricia, dedicated to the spirit of Lorenzo, Benivieni
recovers important associations between Lorenzo and the laurel.
According to Stephen Murphy, The Gift of Immortality: Myths of Power and
Humanist Poetics (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997),
1867: The ideal portrait of Lorenzo in Nutricia, far from being extraneous
flattery, forms the culmination of the poem. It befits a poem of the genre
sylva to declare its debt to the patrons shade. And yet, that shade also
has the effect of setting the poem in opposition to itself. The essential
phrase concerning Lorenzo the patron, securus ad umbram (730), clearly
recalls through its cadence and position the famous lentus in umbra from
Virgils first Eclogue. Shade can be said to be the sine qua non of pastoral
repose, and thus of literary creation. As the protection necessary to rural
otium, umbra also makes possible the reversion to primitivism that is
inherent in pastoral. Anyone resting in the shade thereby assumes the
role of a shepherd in the golden age. However, what is the central myth
of Nutricia if not a denial of the golden age? So it might be suspected
that the generic metaphor of Polizianos Sylvae does not refer primarily to
literary activity and literary history as Arcadia. The shade in which poets
write is the shade of the selva that forms the original situation of poetry.
The Florentine professors exploration of his genre means a return to
wandering through the original wood; it means an attempt to renew the
power of that original contact between the first barbarism and the first
cure for barbarism. But still: there remains something more for poetry in
the forests shade. Umbra evokes not only pastoral repose, not only the
obscurity of origins, but also the dead. Umbrae populate the underworld
in the Latin tradition. Orpheuss descent, which, we recall, resumes the
movement of inspiration, takes the poet to the realm of shades. Polizianos
Sylvae and Nutricia, in particular, seek their inspiration in otium, in mythic
origins, and among the dead.
53 Concerning the request for Picos remains, see Jacobelli, Quei due
Pico della Mirandola, 69. Isidoro del Lungo, Florentia: Uomini e cose del
Quattrocento (Montepulciano: Le Balze, 2002), 279, notes the request
for Polizianos remains: Nella primavera del 1875 il Comune di
Montepulciano chiedeva al Comune di Firenze che gli fosse concesso
di trasferire le ossa del grande umanista alla citt nativa, per onorarle
di monumento nellinsigne tempio della Madonna di San Biagio. La
dimanda rest senza effetto: ma se anche il Consiglio comunale fiorentino
avesse deliberata tale concessione, evidente che la estrema volont di
Angelo Poliziano di riposare in San Marco era ormai al sicuro (In spring
1875, the Comune of Montepulciano asked the Comune of Florence for
permission to transfer the bones of the great humanist to his native city,
in order to honour him with a monument in the illustrious temple of the
Madonna of San Biagio. The request remained unanswered. But even if
the Council of the Florentine Comune had deliberated such a concession,
it is evident that the final wishes of Angelo Poliziano to rest in San Marco
were by now assured).
54 One might consider the question from the contrary perspective, as well:
How absolute are expressed final wishes, or must human beings relinquish
their will to determine any actions in this world once their spirits leave it?
4. Habeas Corpus, Habeas Spiritum:

Some Not-So-Final Thoughts
1 Here and following, the original is from Petrarch, Trionfi, Rime estravaganti,
Codice degli abbozzi, ed. Vinicio Pacca and Laura Paolino (Milan:
Mondadori, 1996), and the English translation of The Triumphs of Petrarch is
by Ernest Hatch Wilkins (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962).
2 Ghost stories, by the mere fact that they feature a spirit character, typically
frustrate the audiences expectation of closure. Unlike the detective
novel or crime story, for instance, by the end of the ghost story, the figure
of interest is still at large. See Jack Sullivans comparison in Elegant
Nightmares: The English Ghost Story from LeFanu to Blackwood (Athens: Ohio
University Press, 1978), 10. Moreover, Sci[ence] fi[ction] and detective
stories progress toward clarity, transparency, and explicit illumination
of a puzzle or concept. They depend on the power of reason and logic;
they invariably explain themselves. Ghost stories, however, sabotage the
relationship between cause and effect. The parts are self-consistent, but
they relate to an inexplicable, irrational whole. Instead of lighting up, the
stories darken into shadowy ambiguity; instead of depending on logic,
they depend on suggestion and connotation (134).
3 Since the spirit in Boccaccios story is a fictional ghost and not one that
has any evidence of having historically lived, it is not an example of
eidolopoeia as presented in previous chapters.
4 Page numbers for the Italian citations of Boccaccios Decameron are the
Vittore Branca edition (Turin: Einaudi, 1987 [1980]. English translations of
the Decameron here and following are by Guido Waldmen (Oxford: Oxford
5 Lodovico Domenichi, Historia di detti, e fatti degni di memoria di diversi principi e
huomini private antichi et moderni (Venice: Gabriel Giolito De Ferrari, 1557), 5434.
6 Though frightful, this image pales in comparison to that painted of him
by his contemporary Peter Damian: Peter Damian recorded a story that
Benedict had been seen after his death in the form of a monster, half bear,
half ass, doomed to prowl the surface of the earth until the last judgment.
E.R. Chamberlin, The Bad Popes (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1969), 74.
7 Theophylactus was son of Alberic III, Count of Tusculum, and the nephew
of Pope Benedict VIII (who was pontiff during the period 101224) and
Pope John XIX (102432). Theophylactus was approximately twenty years
old when he became Pope Benedict IX. According to the New Advent
Catholic Encyclopedia (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02429a.htm,
consulted 12 August 2013), Benedict IX was briefly forced out of Rome
in 1036; but, backed by Emperor Conrad II, he returned later that year.
Hostile forces ousted him in 1044 and elected John, Bishop of Sabina, as
Pope Sylvester III; Benedict IX returned to reclaim the seat of Peter early
in 1045. In May 2045, however, Benedict IX, wishing to pursue marriage,
resigned the papacy, reportedly selling the office to his godfather, John
Gratian, who took the name Gregory VI. Soon regretting his decision,
Benedict IX returned to Rome and reclaimed the papacy; Gregory VI
continued to be recognized as the true pope. The Council of Sutri in
December 1046 determined that Benedict IX and Sylvester III (who
continued to claim the papacy) were deposed. Gregory VI was encouraged
to resign, which he did. Pope Clement II succeeded him.
8 Carlo Delcorno provides an excellent analysis of the genre in Exemplum e
letteratura tra medioevo e rinascimento (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1989).
9 The English translation is from Dom Augustine Calmet, Treatise on Vampires &
Revenants: The Phantom World. Dissertation on those Persons who Return to Earth
Bodily, the Excommunicated, the Oupires or Vampires, Vroucolacas, & c., trans.
Henry Christmas, ed. Clive Leatherdale (Brighton: Desert Island Books, 1993
[1850]), 11617.
10 Although Ottavia Niccoli does not treat the vision of Antonio da Rieti
specifically, she offers many more examples of similar visions in the
first chapter of her book Profeti e popolo nellItalia del rinascimento (Rome:
Laterza, 1987), translated into English by Lydia G. Cochrane as Prophecy
and People in Renaissance Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1990). In addition to tracing the sociological and political uses of these
visions, she meticulously examines non-eidolopoetic forms of propaganda,
including interpretations of ghost battles, monsters, and heavenly portents.
She emphasizes in these cases the crucial role of the medium, the person
who interprets the significance of perceived signs, extraordinary events, or
visions. In literary eidolopoeia, the medium is the storyteller, the one who
speaks for the dead.
11 Codice Magliabechiano XXV, 344, fols. 336. The English translation
presented here is from Images of Quattrocento Florence: Selected Writings in
Literature, History, and Art, ed. Stefano Ugo Baldassarri and Arielle Saiber
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 2325.
12 Images of Quattrocento Florence, 232: The Biblioteca Nazionale and other
Florentine libraries possess a great number of fifteenth-century codices
of prophecies, in which Florence is usually envisioned as the daughter of
Rome, a daughter who will come to rescue her mother from the corruption
of the clergy As with [Girolamo] Savonarolas prophecies at the end of
the century, Antonios vision foretells the religious primacy of Florence and
its future as a capital in which Christians can take shelter from heresy and
violence.
13 Another instance of a narrative written by a friar who claims to have
received in a dream interpretations of apocalyptic visions from a dead
saint or esteemed member of his religious order is by Giovanni Caroli
(14291503). Caroli was a Florentine Dominican friar at Santa Maria
Novella and author of Liber dierum lucensium (The Book of the Days of
Lucca). According to Salvatore I. Camporeale, the third part of the Liber
dierum is a dream vision, a premonition of the future: the destruction
of the conventual structures of Santa Maria Novella and the dissolution
of the Florentine community: The dream reveals a vast plain lit by a
sinister moonlight gleam as the last rays of the sun fade. Along the side of
a mountain, rising in the middle of the plain, the conventual buildings of
Santa Maria Novella gather around the church; the glimmering moonlight
throws into sharp relief the architectural contours of the complex. While
the Dominican gazes, fascinated, at the splendid nocturnal scene, an
enormous multitude surrounds the monumental edifice and attacks it
from all sides. The structures, so harmoniously arranged, collapse one after
another, as if torn apart stone by stone. Nothing remains but an immense
pile of rubble; a vast expanse of rocks and falling walls stretches out
beneath the vault of heaven. See Camporeale, Giovanni Caroli, 14601480:
Death, Memory, and Transformation, in Life and Death in Fifteenth-Century
Florence, ed. Marcel Tetel, Ronald G. Witt, and Rona Goffen (Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 1989), 1920. Afterward, Giovanni Dominici and
Antonino Pierozzi, whom Caroli considered the last of the great men of
his order, appear in his dream and interpret its significance (20). They
proceed to state that the reason mendicant orders are in decline has to do
with the waning spirit of their current members with respect to the zeal of
the orders founders. Caroli goes on to use Pierozzi, whose status makes
him a more authoritative mouthpiece, to pronounce his own opinions on
the state of the Dominican order and the Florentine community, and the
need for renewed caritas (21).
14 This section of Morellis Ricordi has become quite well known, given its
treatment in various contexts by Claudio Varese, Jean-Claude Schmitt,
Richard Trexler, and other scholars, though it likely was not widely known
in its day because it appeared in a Florentine merchants ricordi, or daily
account book. I cite the original here and in the following pages from
Vittore Brancas edition of Mercanti scrittori: Ricordi nella Firenze tra medioevo
e rinascimento. Paolo da Certaldo, Giovanni Morelli, Bonaccorso Pitti, et al.
(Milan: Rusconi, 1986).
15 See Richard C. Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence (New York:

Academic Press, 1980), 16872.
16 Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence, 175.
17 George W. McClure considers other responses to the death of ones son in
The Art of Mourning: Autobiographical Writings on the Loss of a Son,
the fifth chapter of Sorrow and Consolation in Italian Humanism (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1991), 93115.
18 Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence, 179,
19 Many readers, including Carmine Jannaco, in I Ricordi di Giovanni
Morelli, Citt di vita 20 (1957), understand Morellis Ricordi as letteratura
moralistica (64; moralizing literature), and conclude: Assistiamo cos
al dramma angoscioso dellanima paterna stretta dal dubbio di esser egli
dinanzi a Dio, con le sue colpe, linconsapevole causa di quella morte;
al suo buttarsi disperato nella preghiera, fino alla visione rassicuratrice
e consolatrice, apparsagli in sogno, dellanima serena del suo doce [sic]
figliuolo. Sono pagine queste, verso la fine del caro libro di ricordi, che
veramente non possono leggersi senza commozione, senza partecipazione
profonda. N si potr pi dimenticare lo slancio di quel padre
amorosissimo teso nel tentativo di abbracciare lombra vana della sua
creatura, con un grido ch dellanima: Figliuolo mio! Alberto mio! (66;
We are witnesses in this way to the distressing drama of the fathers soul,
gripped by doubt and with all his sins facing God unaware of the causes
of that death, his desperate launch into prayer, through the comforting
and consoling vision that appeared to him in a dream of the serene soul
of his sweet son. These are pages that toward the end of this precious
book of memories one truly cannot read without being moved, without
participating to the most profound degree. Nor can one ever forget the
burst of enthusiasm from that most loving father, straining in his attempt
to embrace the empty shade of his child with a cry that comes from his
soul, My son! My Albert!). My sympathies in Giovanni Morellis regard
are decidedly more circumspect, as I shall presently show.
20 Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence, 172.
21 Jean-Claude Schmitt, Ghosts in the Middle Ages: The Living and the Dead in
Medieval Society, trans. Teresa Lavender Fagan (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1998), 578.
22 The original appears in Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio, vol. 5.2, Buccolicum
Carmen XIV, in both Latin and Italian, pp. 85877; the English translation is
by Janet Levarie Smarr, Eclogues (New York: Garland, 1987), 252.
23 In this case, the impetus for writing (self-consolation) would be similar
to the one that various scholars have speculated prompted the writing of
another work by Boccaccio: Il Corbaccio. Among the critics who suggest

that this work is Boccaccios confession and self-consolation for a love or
lust interest that ultimately left him profoundly ashamed, see Anthony
K. Cassells introduction to his English translation of Il Corbaccio, The
Corbaccio or The Labyrinth of Love (Binghamton: Center for Medieval and
Early Renaissance Studies, SUNY, 1993 [1975]), as well as the contributions
of Boccaccio and Feminist Criticism, ed. Thomas C. Stillinger and F. Regina
Psaki (Chapel Hill: Annali dItalianistica, 2006).
24 The text of the original, as well as the English translation, here and
following are from Petrarchs Testament, ed. and trans. Theodor E.
Mommsen (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1957). This passage appears
on pp. 689.
25 La Vita del Petrarca (Life of Petrarch) by Giovan Andrea Gesualdo appeared
in Angelo Solertis collection Le vite di Dante, Petrarca e Boccaccio scritte
fino al secolo decimosesto (Milan: Francesco Vallardi, 1904). The original
appears on p. 419, and the English translation is mine. Further references
appear in the text. See also Petrarchs Sen. 3.7, A Nerium Morandum
foroliviensem, de fama mortis sue sepius conficta et figmenti causis (To
Neri Morando of Forl, on the rumor of his [own] death which is quite
often fabricated and invented [Venice, 25 April 1363]), in Letters of Old
Age (Rerum senilium libri IXVIII), trans. Aldo S. Bernardo, Saul Levin,
and Reta A. Bernardo, 2 vols. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1992), 103: De qua re amicus ille tunc noster, non mali vir ingenii sed vagi,
carmen illud flebile texuit quod audisti: qui, ut vides, me ad ipsam quam
deflevit mortem incertum quo spatio antecessit. Ceterum carmen ipsum et
vulgaris rumor sic ora omnium auresque compleverat eoque processum
erat, ut me reducem quasi umbram defuncti hominis admirantes
dubitantesque conspicerent vixque oculis crederent cuius contrarium
auribus credidissent; fueruntque in eo prestigio nonnulli qui, Thome in
morem, non me prius vivum crederent quam manibus attrectassent et,
ceu prodigium aut fantasma complexi, corpus solidum comperissent.
Sic vix tandem primus auditus visui ac tactui et contrario cessit auditui
(That friend of ours at the time, a man of considerable talent, but erratic,
composed that plaintive ode about the event, which you heard. As you
see, he has gone before me, I know not by how much time, to the very
death which he had bewailed for me. But the poem itself and the general
rumor spread about on every mouth and into every ear, had such success
that people viewed me upon my return with amazement and doubt,
as if I were a dead mans ghost. They could scarcely believe their eyes,
having believed their ears to the contrary. During that hocus-pocus, there
were several who, like Thomas, did not believe that I was alive until they
had touched me with their hands; and embracing me as though I were a
miracle or a ghost, they discovered a solid body. Thus, finally, what they
had previously heard barely gave way to sight and to touch and to hearing
the opposite).
26 Armando Maggi, To Write as Another: The Testament, in Petrarch: A
Critical Guide to the Complete Works, ed. Victoria Kirkham and Armando
Maggi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 3334.
27 Petrarchs Testament, 725. Even after making these many hypothetical plans,
Petrarch included a further proviso: Seu ubicumque terrarum alibi in loco
fratrum minorum, si sit ibi; sin minus, in quacumque alia ecclesia, que
vicinior fuerit loco mortis. (if, though, [I should die] anywhere else, [I wish
to be buried] in a church of the Franciscans if there should be one; if not, in
some other church in the neighbourhood of the place of my death, 745).
28 See McClure, Sorrow and Consolation in Italian Humanism, 61, where he
summarizes: Petrarch certainly had seen the specter of death many
times in his life: this is quite evident in the despairing letters and verse of
134849, when he lost Laura, Cardinal Colonna, and various other friends.
Events of the 1360s only deepened his awareness of deaths physical
and psychological presence. In 1361 he lost his son Giovanni and his
Socrates. In May of 1362 he wrote his lengthy Sen. 1.5 to Boccaccio, who
was frightened over the prophecy of death. In 1363 the rumor of Petrarchs
own death began circulating, and, even worse, he lost his beloved friends
Laelius and Simonides Petrarch seems to be contemplating his old
age: For us now the sole task is to be firm against the terrors and blows
of sorrow, because the contrary, namely, either anxious hope or unbridled
happiness, offers no threat to us these days. Should Petrarch die, only his
Boccaccio now remains to be caretaker of his works in progress. Clearly
Petrarch is increasingly looking toward a lonely senescence, looking
toward the end of his life.
29 See David Thompson, A Humanist among Princes: An Anthology of Petrarchs
Letters (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 1, where he noted that the
inspiration for Petrarchs epistle is Ovids Tristia IV, 10, but it is clear that
Petrarchs work demonstrates uniqueness and innovation with respect to
his model.
30 For the Epistola posteritati, I cite both the Latin original and English
translation by Karl Enenkel from Modelling the Individual: Biography
and Portrait in the Renaissance with a Critical Edition of Petrarchs Letter
to Posterity (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998), 2567. Giuseppe Mazzotta
provides a masterful reading of the letters tone in the second appendix,
Ambivalences of Power, of his monograph The Worlds of Petrarch

(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993), 18192, rightly describing it
as self-consciously posthumous (182).
31 There is at least one instance in which one of Petrarchs dead addressees
seemed to answer him. The conspirator in the exchange was identified
as Pietro da Muglio, a professor at the University of Bologna, who
once wrote Petrarch in the voice of Homer. See Roberto Weiss, Notes
on Petrarch and Homer, Rinascimento 4 (1953): 26375. It is clear that
Petrarch nevertheless envisioned his Familiares addressed to the dead as
an outlet for his own views or laments, as he states in Familiares 24.3 to
Cicero: Unum hoc vicissim a vera caritate profectum non iam consilium
sed lamentum audi, ubicunque es, quod unus posterorum, tui nominis
amantissimus, non sine lacrimis fundit. O inquiete semper atque anxie,
vel ut verba tua recognoscas, o preceps et calamitose senex, quid tibi tot
contentionibus et prorsum nichil profuturis simultatibus voluisti? Ubi
et etati et professioni et fortune tue conveniens otium reliquisti? I am
citing from Le Familiari, vol. 13 of the Edizione nazionale delle opere di
Francesco Petrarca, ed. Vittorio Rossi (Florence: Sansoni, 1942), 226; the
following English translation is by Aldo S. Bernardo, Letters on Familiar
Matters. Rerum familiarium libri XVIIXXIV (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1985), 317: Now it is your turn, wherever you may
be, to hearken not to advice but to a lament inspired by true love from
one of your descendants who dearly cherishes your name, a lament
addressed to you not without tears. O wretched and distressed spirit, or
to use your own words, O rash and ill-fated elder, why did you choose
to become involved in so many quarrels and utterly useless feuds? Why
did you forsake that peaceful ease so befitting a man of your years, your
profession, and your fate?)
32 In De sui ipsius et multorum ignorantia, Petrarch admits, Verum ego,
laboriosam michi et quibus minime suspicabar inuidiosam fame sarcinam
perosus fesso nil dulcius est quiete. Hanc michi semper ad hunc diem
mendax, ut nunc audio, literarum fama preripuit (I detest the laborious
burden of fame, which arouses envy in those I least suspected. [and ]
nothing is sweeter to the weary than rest. Such rest has been stolen from
me by a literary reputation that is false, as I now learn. I cite the original
and English translation from Petrarchs Invectives, ed. and trans. David
Marsh (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).
33 I cite the original from Le senili, ed. Guido Martellotti (Turin: Einaudi, 1976
[Milan: Ricciardi, 1955]), 64.
34 Thompson, A Humanist among Princes, 220.
35 Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. Hazel E. Barnes (New York:
Washington Square Press, 1992 [1956]), 695.
36 Today habeas corpus has come to include the legal safeguard of individuals
against arbitrary state actions, including secret rendition and torture. Early
Italian eidolopoeia addressed a range of issues concerning dead bodies,
issues that were deeply imbued with the rhetoric of power and, at least
in the most complex stories discussed in chapters 2 and 3, with state-level
actions.
37 Epithets can even seem to be interpretations or re-presentations of
identities imposed by another on the deceased.
38 Apophrades, or the return of the dead; I take the word from the Athenian
dismal or unlucky days upon which the dead return to reinhabit the
houses in which they had lived. The later poet, in his own final phase,
already burdened by an imaginative solitude that is almost solipsism,
holds his own poem so open again to the precursors work that at first
we might believe the wheel has come full circle, and that we are back
in the later poets flooded apprenticeship, before his strength began to
assert itself in the revisionary ratios. But the poem is now held open to the
precursor, where once it was open, and the uncanny effect is that the new
poems achievement makes it seem to us, not as though the precursor were
writing it, but as though the later poet himself had written the precursors
characteristic work. Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of
Poetry, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997 [1973]), 1516.
39 STTL, as it was oftentimes abbreviated, was a common prayer or blessing
of ancient Romans on behalf of the deceased.
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Index
Acciaiuoli, Andrea, 38, 412, 182n4 2078n10, 211n36; Convivio, 191n1,

Acciaiuoli, Niccol, 182n4 199n43, 200n44; De monarchia,
Adamson, Sylvia, 181n60 60, 99, 116, 118, 188n34, 199n37,
Adrian VI, 205n72 208n12; De vulgari eloquentia, 7,
Aeneas, 8, 125, 128 111, 160, 206n5; Divina commedia,
Agamben, Giorgio, 27, 1789nn545 3, 6, 8, 11, 1318, 22, 323, 61, 64,
Agnese di Montepulciano, 12 70, 736, 80, 837, 8999, 101, 103,
Ahern, John, 191n3 112, 115, 1256, 135, 146, 158, 160,
Alamanni, Lodovico, 167n10 165n1, 169n16, 172n22, 172n24,
Alberic III, Count of Tusculum, 217n7 173n25, 174n31, 175n35, 180n56,
Alberti, Leon Battista, 32 180n59, 184nn1718, 189n35,
Alexander, Gavin, 181n60 189n37, 191n1, 1912n3, 193n11,
Alexander VI, 88, 124 195nn234, 1956n26, 1989nn367,
Alfie, Fabian, 166n6 199200nn434, 2012nn4850,
Alighieri, Dante, 3, 58, 1219, 202nn524, 203nn5960, 205n72,
234, 29, 314, 58, 602, 64, 66, 206n74, 209n22, 210n29; Epistle to
69118, 123, 125, 1301, 135, Cangrande, 191n1; Vita Nuova, 22,
13941, 146, 158, 160, 169n16, 191n1, 199n43
170n21, 172n22, 173n25, 175n35, Alighieri, Jacopo [Iacopo], 33, 705,
17980n56, 180n59, 184nn1718, 1912n3, 193n11; Divisione/Chiose,
188n34, 189n35, 18990nn378, 73, 192n3
190n41, 1902nn14, 1923nn78, Alighieri, Piero, 71, 73
193nn1011, 1934n14, 194n17, Allan, Mowbray, 172n23
1956n26, 196n30, 1978n32, Altamura, Antonio, 182n8
1989nn367, 199200nn436, Alvisi, Baldassare, 205n72
2012nn4853, 203n57, 204n61, Anderson, R. Dean, 165n3
204n67, 2046nn714, 206n5, anthropopatheia, 165n3
254 Index
Antonio da Rieti, 34, 1456, 218n10 Baron, Hans, 176n41

apophrades, 163, 224n38 Barnes, Hazel E., 224n35
Aquinas, Thomas, 13, 34, 1456, Barthes, Roland, 13
171n21, 179n55 Battle of Campaldino, 175n35
Ardizzone, Maria Luisa, 188n35, Bellincioni, Bernardo, 195n26
189n38 Bellomo, Saverio, 192n8
Aretino, Pietro, 53, 186n20 Bembo, Bernardo, 845, 98, 100,
Ariani, Marco, 129, 211n34 1289, 196n26, 1967nn301
Ariosto, Ludovico, 106, 128, 167n10, Bembo, Pietro, 52, 91, 98100, 117,
169n17, 184n13, 204n67, 210n26; 126, 129, 183n12, 184n15, 186n21;
Orlando furioso, 119, 167n10, Gli Asolani, 129; Rime, 184n15
169n17, 184n13, 210n26 Benaducci, Giovanni, 195n22
Aristotle, 13, 28, 172n24 Benedetti, Anna, 171n21
Armour, Peter, 173n25 Benedict IX (Theophylactus), 143,
Artemidorus, 127 21718nn67
Ascoli, Albert Russell, 172n22, Benintendi, Antonio dOrsino, 33,
172n24, 178n52 70, 100
Asor Rosa, Alberto, 211n33 Benivieni, Girolamo, 334, 556, 66,
Auerbach, Erich, 1315, 18, 70, 8799, 101, 107, 109, 1306,
174nn2930, 190n41 1401, 158, 187n28, 1989nn369,
Augustine of Hippo, 18, 223, 30, 199200nn436, 201n48, 202nn501,
578, 177n44, 188n31 202n53, 203n57, 203n59, 203n61,
Averroism, 190n38 204n63, 211n37, 213n44, 213n46,
214n48, 215nn512; Cantico in
Bagemihl, Rolf, 193nn1213 laude di Dante, 87, 8999, 109,
Bagli, Vincenzo, 31, 33, 3744, 58, 67, 1301, 140, 1989n37, 200n45,
69, 181n2, 182n7, 182n10 2001nn478, 202n51, 202n53,
Baglioni, Gianpaolo, 42 203n57; Canzone e Sonetti, 55;
Baglioni, Lucrezia, 37, 3943, 182n10 Commento a pi sue canzone
Baglioni, Rodolfo, 413 et sonetti, 55, 8990, 187n28,
Baldassarri, Stefano U., 193nn1213, 199200n43, 203n61, 21112n37,
198n34, 218n11 213n44; Dialogo circa al sito, forma
Baraski, Zygmunt G., 18990n38 et misure dello Inferno, 200n43,
Barbarigo, Antonio, 122 203n59; In Persona dello Ill.
Barbarigo, Marco, 122 S. Conte Giovanni Pico della
Barbaro, Francesco, 22 Mirandula, 134
Barbato da Sulmona, 176n42 Benivieni the Younger, Antonio, 132,
Barbi, Michele, 195n23 213n46, 214n48
Barolini, Teodolinda, 57, 172n23, Benson, Pamela Joseph, 182n8
173n24, 174n26, 186n22, 188n31, Bergin, Thomas G., 176nn378,
191n3 194n15
Index255
Bernardo, Aldo S., 176n36, 177n46, Bongiovanni, Pellegra, 183n12

190n38, 221n25, 223n31 Boniface VIII, 16
Bernardo, Reta A., 177n46, 221n25 Borgia, Cesare, 110, 124
Beroaldo the Elder, Filippo, 1256, Borgia, Lucretia, 120, 124, 129
210n26 Boscoli, Pietro Paolo, 110
Bertoni, Giulio, 1289, 211nn312 Botticelli, Sandro, 83, 87, 195n24,
Betussi, Giuseppe, 44 196n26
Bigi, Emilio, 198n32, 200n45, 201n49 Boyde, Patrick, 173n24
Billanovich, Giuseppe, 72, 192n7 Bracciolini, Gian Francesco Poggio,
Biow, Douglas, 170n18 22, 117
Blasucci, Luigi, 167n9, 206n3 Branca, Vittore, 66, 166n5, 177n49,
Bliss, Matthew T., 165n3 178n51, 180n57, 190n40, 192n4,
Bloom, Harold, 163, 190n41, 224n38 194n15, 217n4, 219n14
Boccaccio, Giovanni, 6, 9, 13, Brand, Peter, 206n5
2334, 3744, 58, 62, 65, 6980, Brewer Hall, Louis, 178n51
87, 98, 10811, 118, 11921, 126, Broccardi, Girolamo, 812
1413, 154, 161, 166n5, 176n42, Brown, Alison, 203n60
1778nn4950, 178n53, 179nn556, Brown, Peter, 12, 170n20
180nn579, 182n4, 1823nn910, Brown, Virginia, 38, 41, 181n2,
184n13, 188n35, 18990nn38, 181n4, 182n9
191nn13, 193n10, 1934nn1415, Brownlee, Kevin, 190n41
197n32, 209n14, 210nn245, Brunelleschi, Filippo, 188n35
217nn34, 220n22, 221n23, 222n28; Bruni dArezzo, Leonardo, 22, 32,
Il Corbaccio, 221n23; Decameron, 62, 74, 7981, 99, 193n10, 194n17;
656, 111, 142, 184n13, 188n35, Historiarum Florentiarum, 79; Vita
190n40, 217n4; De casibus virorum di Dante, 74, 79
illustrium, 9, 2432, 38, 177n49, Buonarroti, Michelangelo, 101, 106,
179n56, 180n59; De mulieribus 187n26
claris, 33, 3741, 58, 181n2, 182n9, Butterfield, Andrew, 79, 194n16
183n10; Eclogues/Olympia, 34, Byron, Lord [George Gordon],
154, 220n22; Elegia di Madonna 108, 2045n71; Childe Harolds
Fiammetta, 210n25; Filocolo, 210n25; Pilgrimage, 108; The Prophecy of
Trattatello in Laude di Dante, 6, 70, Dante, 204n71
724, 110, 166n5, 1912nn14,
1923nn78, 193n10, 194n14, Caccia, Gian Agostino, 184n13
197n32; Zibaldone Laurenziano/ Cacciaguida, 94, 96, 98, 171n21,
Letter to Ilaro, 73, 192n7, 193n8 180n59, 202n52
Boiardo, Matteo Maria, 169n17; Caciola, Nancy, 170n18
Orlando innamorato, 169n17 Calmet, Dom Antoine Augustine,
Boli, Todd, 190n1, 192n8 1434, 218n9; Treatise on Vampires
Bollettino, Vincenzo Zin, 72, 192n6 and Revenants, 143
256 Index
Cambon, Nella Doria, 204n71 Christmas, Henry, 218n9

Camporeale, Salvatore I., 219n13 Chorier, Nicolas, 210n23; Dialogues of
Capponi, Agostino, 110 Luisa Sigea, 210n23
captatio benevolentia, 423, 63 Ciappelli, Giovanni, 194n16
Cardini, Roberto, 834, 195n23, 195n25, Ciardi, John, 14, 174n27
197n31, 198n33, 203n60, 210n25 Ciccarese, Maria Pia, 11
Caroli, Giovanni, 219n13; Liber Cicero, 4, 10, 19, 54, 127, 158,
dierum lucensium, 219n13 1678n12, 178n52, 200n45, 207n8,
Carrara, Enrico, 129, 211n33 223n31; Pro Caelio, 167n12;
Carroll, John S., 14, 174n27 Republic/Dream of Scipio, 19,
Casanova, E., 199n41 127, 175n35, 200n45, 207n8
Casella, Mario, 167n8 Clement II, 218n7
Cassell, Anthony, K., 221n23 Clement VII, 205n72, 214n48
Cassian, John, 178n55 Cochrane, Lydia G., 218n10
Castiglione, Baldassar, 141; Libro del Coleridge, Ernest Hartley, 204n71
Cortegiano, 141 Collenuccio, Pandolfo, 87
Caterina da Siena, 12, 170n19 Colonna, Francesco, 129, 211nn334;
Caterina di Genova, 12 Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, 129,
Cato of Utica, 14, 171n21, 174nn278, 209n14, 211nn334
180n56 Colonna, Giovanni, 166n7
Cavalcanti, Cavalcante de, 934, Colonna, Stefano, 183nn1112
170n21 Conrad II, 218n7
Cavalcanti, Giovanni di Niccol, 59, Contini, Gianfranco, 173n24
624, 66, 188n35 conversion, 578, 88, 91, 95, 131, 144,
Cavalcanti, Guido, 33, 38, 5866, 167n7, 188n31
91, 93, 140, 1889n35, 18990n38, Costantini, Toldo, 130; Il Giudicio
200n47; Donna me prega, 189n35 estremo, 130, 211n35
Cavalcanti, Mainardo, 25, 32 Cottignoli, Alfredo, 193n8
Caviceo, Jacopo, 31, 33, 109, 11822, Council of Costanza, 115
12430, 2089nn1319, 210n23, Council of Pisa, 115, 117, 2078n10
210n26, 21011n29, 211n33; Council of Sutri, 218n7
Confessionale, 2089n13, 209n19; Crescimbeni, Giovanmario, 53
Libellus contra Hebreos, 209n19; Cristoforo di Casalmaggiore, 215n49
La lupa, 209n19; Il Peregrino, 109, Curtius, Ernst Robert, 13
11830, 208n13, 209nn1921,
210n23, 210n28, 211n33 dAragona, Alfonso, 124
Cellini, Benvenuto, 119 dArezzo, Domenico, 623
Cestaro, Gary P., 174n26 dEste, Alfonso, 124
Chamberlin, E.R., 217n6 da Brossano, Francescuolo, 77, 159
Charles VIII, 88, 132 da Carrara the Younger, Jacopo, 158
Index 257
da Muglio, Pietro, 223n31 Dominici, Giovanni, 219n13

da Peraga, Bonaventura, 212n42 Donation of Constantine, 174n32
da Polenta, Guido, 734, 1912n3 donec corrigatur (method of the
da Polenta, Nastagio, 80 Inquisitional censor), 50
Da SantElpidio, Antonio, 41 doppelgnger, 25, 2731, 171n21,
da Serico, Lombardo, 177n46 179n56
dal Corno, Ugo, 62 Dorez, Leon, 215n49
Daniels, Rhiannon, 41, 434, 182n5, Doty, Mark, 173n26
182n8 Dreyer, Peter, 195n24
Davis, Charles, 53, 187n26 Dufallo, Basil, 1011, 166n4, 167n12,
de la Riva, Bonvesin, 12 168n14
de Man, Paul, 190n41 Durling, Robert M., 45, 165n1,
De Robertis, Domenico, 188n35 171n21, 184n14, 184n17, 190n38,
de Cerchi, Vieri, 175n35 200n44, 209n22
de Filipepi, Simone, 89
de Nerli, Filippo, 206n2; Commentarj eidolopoeia, definition of, 47,
dei fatti civili, 206n2 165n3, 166n4
de Pazzi, Maria Maddalena, 12 Eliot, T.S., 12, 190n41
de Ricci, Caterina, 12 embriology, 12
degli Agostini, Giovanni, 53, 187n24 Enenkel, Karl, 222n30
degli Albizzi, Rinaldo, 812 Ennius, 910, 1922, 160;
del Balzo, Carlo, 196n26, 198n37, Annales, 20
204n62, 2056nn724, 207nn78 entelechy, 15
del Garbo, Dino, 62, 188n35 Epicureanism, 190n38
del Lungo, Isidoro, 216n53 Epimenides, 65, 190n39; Cretica,
del Nero, Bernardo, 60, 188n34 190n39
Delcorno, Carlo, 218n8 Erasmo, Mario, 167n11
della Casa, Tedaldo, 177n42 eschatology, 12, 15
della Lana, Jacopo, 197n32 ethopoeia, 5, 165n3, 166n4
della Rovere, Giuliano. See Julius II Ettenhuber, Katrin, 181n60
della Scala, Cangrande, 705, 192n7
della Seta, Lombardo, 159 Fagan, Teresa Lavender, 168n16,
Della Torre, Giacomo Antonio, 121 220n21
Di Benedetto, Sergio, 203n61 Favati, Guido, 190n38
Dini, Andrea, 166n6 Fedalto, Giorgio, 11
Dionigi da Fano, Francesco, 184n13 Fedi, Roberto, 183nn1112, 184n15,
Dionisotti, Carlo, 197n32, 199n42 186n21
Domenichi, Ludovico, 143, 217n5; Felton, D., 168n13
Historia di detti, e fatti degni di Ferdinand II of Aragon, 100
memoria, 143, 217n5 Ferguson, Francis, 1723n24
258 Index
Ferreri, Zacharia, 33, 109, 11418, Giacomino da Verona, 12

206n1, 207nn78, 2078n10; De Giannetto, Nella, 128, 197n31, 211n30
Gallico in Venetos triumpho, 115; Giardino [Giardini], Piero, 72, 75,
Somnium Lugdunense de divi Leonis X, 191n3
109, 11417, 206n1, 207n8 Gilbert, Allan H., 167n8
Ficino, Marsilio, 33, 60, 64, 66, 70, 83, Gilson, Simon A., 80, 83, 193n8,
867, 118, 1256, 128, 144, 188n34, 194n17, 195n19, 195n22
189n35, 198n32, 198n34, 199n38, Giraldi Cintio, Giovanni Battista,
201n49, 202n51, 208n12; De raptu 36, 53
Pauli, 202n51; DellAmore, 188n34 Giovanni del Virgilio, 191n3
Field, Arthur, 195n23, 203n60 Giuliani, Giambattista, 1034,
figura impleta, 14 204nn689
Filelfo, Francesco, 79, 813, 194n17, Godorecci, Barbara J., 206n4
195n20, 195n22; Satyrae, 81 Goffen, Rona, 219n13
Finucane, Ronald C., 11, 168n15, Gragnolati, Manuele, 11
207n6 Gratian, John, 218n7
Fior di virt, 51 Greenblatt, Stephen, 13, 180n60
Flaubert, Gustave, 12 Greene, Thomas M., 166n7
Foscolo, Ugo, 106 Greer, Germaine, 176n42
Francesca da Rimini, 123, 170n21, Gregory VI, 218n7
200n43, 202n51 Griffin, Clive, 210n23
Francesco di Roma, 12 Grillo, Angelo, 102
Franco, Niccol, 534, 187n25; Pistole Gruppioni, Giorgio, 204n71
vulgari, 187n25 Guido da Montefeltro, 16
Franke, William, 166n7 Guinizzelli, Guido, 91, 171n21,
Fraunce, Abraham, 181n60 200n47
Frazier, Alison Knowles, 170n20
Freccero, John, 173n24 habeas corpus, 34, 1612, 224n36
Fubini, Riccardo, 194n18 Hammond Broadus, Eleanor, 171n21
Hartman, Geoffrey, 190n41
Gabriele, Mino, 129, 211n34 Hawkins, Peter S., 173n26
Galilei, Galileo, 106 Haym, Niccola Francesco, 182n7
Garber, Marjorie B., 170n18 Henderson, John, 170n20
Garibaldi, Anita, 104 hermeneutics, 1667n7
Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 104 hermeticism, 96
Garin, Eugenio, 195n23 Hermogenes, 5
Geary, Patrick J., 11 Hieatt, Constance B., 12
Gerhard, Mira, 172n23 Homer, 910, 1922, 28, 78, 90, 125,
Gesualdo, Giovan Andrea, 155, 158, 170n21, 176n39, 223n31
221n25 Horace, 90, 178n52
Index 259
Hoskyns, John, 181n60 195n23, 1956nn267, 196n29,

Houston, Jason M., 179n56, 197n31, 198nn324, 2023nn557,
180nn589, 193n8, 193n14 203nn5960, 210n25
Hutton, Edward, 194n15 Landon, William J., 206n4
Huygens, Constantijn, 12 Lansing, Richard, 173n25, 191n1
Latini, Brunetto, 3, 1415, 170n21,
idol making, 5, 13, 162 1734nn256; Trsor, 173n25
idolo (as hapax legomenon in Dantes Lausberg, Heinrich, 165n3
Commedia), 1617, 174n31 League of Cambrai, 99, 115
imitatio maiorum, 11 Leatherdale, Clive, 218n9
Indizio, Giuseppe, 193n8 Ledos, E.G., 197n31
Inglese, Giorgio, 206n4 Lentzen, Manfred, 196n27, 202n55
insolubilia, 190n39 Leo X, 10011, 110, 11417, 205n72,
210n26
Jacobelli, Jader, 215n49, 216n53 Leporatti, Roberto, 187n27
Jacoff, Rachel, 173n26, 198n35, Lepschy, Anna Laura, 210n23
203n60 Levin, Saul, 177n46, 221n25
Jannaco, Carmine, 220n19 Livy, 158
Jansen, Annemiek, 165n3 Looney, Dennis, 204n67
Jerome, 30 Lucan, 10, 90
Joanna Queen of Naples, 402, Luzzi, Joseph, 204n67
182n4 Lynch, Kathryn L., 12
John, Bishop of Sabina, 218n7
John XIX, 217n7 Machiavelli, Niccol, 68, 12,
Johnston, Sarah Iles, 168n13 33, 1067, 10914, 11718, 139,
Joynes, Andrew, 11 160, 167n10, 206n1, 206nn35;
Julius II, 110, 115 Dialogo intorno alla nostra lingua,
78, 10913, 160, 206n4
Kallendorf, Craig, 176n40 Macrobius, 19, 127, 210n28
Kay, Richard, 173n25 Maggi, Armando, 156, 170n18,
Keats, John, 12 177n45, 181n1, 222n26
Kennedy, William J., 183n11 Magna Carta, 162
King, Ed, 172n23 Malipiero, Girolamo, 31, 33, 35,
Kirkham, Victoria, 177n45, 181n1, 37, 4458, 67, 69, 13940, 1601,
222n26 183nn1112, 184n13, 184n15,
Kolsky, Stephen, 41, 182n8, 182n10 1856nn1821, 187n23, 187nn
Kraye, Jill, 171n22 2930; Il Petrarcha spirituale, 35,
37, 44, 47, 556, 139, 183nn1112,
Landino, Cristoforo, 837, 91, 978, 184n16
106, 125, 128, 189n36, 193n11, Malispini, Riccardano, 62
260 Index
Manetti, Antonio di Tuccio, 6, 33, Medici, Piero de, 88, 132, 215n49
38, 5868, 84, 140, 1889nn317, Medici Salviati, Lucrezia de, 204n63
200n43, 201n49; Dialogo circa al Meditazioni sulla vita di Cristo, 51
sito, forma et misure dello Inferno, Meltzoff, Stanley, 199n38
589, 199n37, 200n43; La novella Mercati, Michael, 144
del Grasso Legnaiuolo, 59; Notizia Michelet, Jules, 12
di Guido Cavalcanti, 5866, 140, Micoletti, Marcantonio, 212n42
188n34; Uomini singolari in Miglio, Massimo, 180n57
Firenze, 58 Milanesi, Gaetano, 188nn334,
Manetti, Giannozzo, 32, 58, 62, 745, 196n28
193n12; Vita Dantis, 74 Miller, James, 172n23
Manheim, Ralph, 174n29 mimesis, 13, 165n3
Marini, Vincenzo, 184n13 Mommsen, Theodor E., 221n24
Maripietro, Girolamo. See Malipiero, Morando of Forl, Neri, 221n25
Girolamo Morelli, Giovanni, 34, 14654,
Marsh, David, 177n45, 223n32 219n14, 220n19; Ricordi, 34,
Marsuppini, Carlo, 812 14452, 154, 219n14, 220n19
Martelli, Mario, 208n12 Morsolin, M.E. Bernardo, 207nn78,
Martellotti, G., 177n43, 223n33 2078nn1011
Martinetti Cardoni, Gasparo, 211n36 Murphy, Stephen, 194n16, 215n52
Martinez, Ronald L., 165n1, 171n21,
178n54, 209n22 Najemy, John M., 167n8
Marzi, Agnolo, 1334 Nardi, Carlo, 205n72
Mazzacurati, Giancarlo, 184n13 narratology, 9, 172n24
Mazzoni, Francesco, 204n67 necromancy, 1667n7
Mazzoni, Guido, 167n8 Nelli, Francesco, 176n42
Mazzotta, Giuseppe, 173n24, 222n30 Neri, Antonio, 200n46
McClure, George W., 220n17, 222n28 New Historicism, 13
McLaughlin, M.L., 171n22 Niccoli, Ottavia, 218n10
Medici, Alessandro de, 1334, Nichols, J.G., 176nn423
215n49 Nidobeato, Martino Paolo, 97,
Medici, Cosimo de, 812, 85 197n32
Medici, Giovanni de. See Leo X
Medici, Giuliano de, 85 Orsini, Rinaldo, 122
Medici, Giulio de. See Clement VII Orton, David E., 165n3
Medici, Lorenzo de, 66, 82, 845, Ovid, 90, 222n29; Tristia, 222n29
878, 97, 128, 131, 1345, 189n35,
196n27, 201n49, 215n52 Pacca, Vinicio, 217n1
Medici, Margherita de, 131 Padoan, Giorgio, 734
Index 261
Palmieri, Matteo, 84, 175n35, 201n49; 1856nn202; Res seniles. Libri

Citt di vita, 201n49; Vita civile, IIV/Seniles, 234, 1578, 161,
175n35 177nn468, 221n25, 222n28, 223n33;
Paolino, Laura, 217n1 Secretum, 18, 223, 1767nn423,
Papini, Giovanni, 171n21 188n31; Testamentum, 24, 1556, 159,
Parenti, Alcide, 167n10 222nn267; Triumphi, 1389, 217n1
Parini, Giuseppe, 106 Pettas, William Anthony, 203n58
Parker, Deborah, 195n23 Pzard, Andr, 173n25
Parodi, Ernesto G., 189n36 Phillimore, Catherine Mary, 102,
Pasolini, Pier Desiderio, 72, 101, 197n30, 204n65, 205n72
192n5, 204n64 Plett, Heinrich F., 165n3
Pasquini, Emilio, 193n8 Pico della Mirandola, Gianfrancesco,
Passarini, Ludovico, 199n40 214n48, 215n49
pathopoeia, 165n3 Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni, 4,
Paul II, 41, 121 34, 109, 1256, 1317, 158, 203n61,
Pazzi conspiracy, 85 21112nn378, 212n42, 213nn446,
Pellegrini, Anthony L., 190n38 214n48, 215nn4951, 216n53
Pelligrini, Bianca, 209n20 Pierozzi, Antonino, 219n13
performance theory, 11 Pieters, Jrgen, 1213
Perini, Dino, 191n3 Plaisance, Michel, 184n13
Pertile, Lino, 206n5 Plato, 19, 175n34, 188n34, 189n35;
Petrarca, Francesco, 4, 6, 910, 1213, Convivium, 189n35; Libro dellamor,
1825, 2732, 347, 4458, 62, 188n34; Republic/Myth of Er, 19,
67, 6970, 778, 87, 106, 108, 111, 175n34
13840, 15561, 166n6, 176n36, Plutarch, 10
177nn423, 177n46, 178n52, Poggioli, Renato, 175n33
180nn578, 1834nn1215, Poliziano, Angelo Ambrogini,
1845nn1718, 1857nn202, 87, 132, 1356, 189n35, 209n14,
187n25, 1878nn2931, 21213n42, 215n49, 21516nn523; Nutricia,
217n1, 2213nn2432; Africa, 9, 21516n52; Stanze, 209n14; Sylvae,
1824, 157, 160, 176n38; De sui 216n52
ipsius et multorum ignorantia, Polizzotto, Lorenzo, 204n61
223n32; De viris illustribus, 25; Polo, Marco, 106
Epistola posteritati, 24, 34, 48, 155, Priscian, 5, 165n3, 174n26;
15760, 222n30; Rerum familiarium Praeexercitamina, 5
libri XVIIXXIV/Familiares, 22, prosopopoeia, 4, 10, 165n3, 166n4,
156, 158, 223n31; Rerum vulgarium 167n11, 168n12, 170n18, 181n60
fragmenta (Canzoniere), 37, 447, Psaki, F. Regina, 181n3, 221n23
513, 58, 67, 140, 1834nn1114, Pugliese, Olga Zorzi, 199n39, 204n63
262 Index
Quintilian, 45, 165nn23; Institutio 140, 203n61, 214n48, 215n49,

oratoria, 45, 165n1 218n12
Quondam, Amedeo, 501, 183nn1112, Scarpati, Claudio, 182n8
185nn1920 Schmitt, Jean-Claude, 11, 153,
1689n16, 219n14, 220n21
Raccolta aragonese, 61, 189n35 Schulze Altcappenberg, Hein-
Raphael, 106 Thomas, 195n24
Rasponi, Giovanni, 211n36 Scipio Africanus, 1822, 69, 108, 127,
Re, Caterina, 132, 199n38, 1601, 176n36
2123nn3843, 21315nn4550 Scott, John A., 174n28
Rhodes, Dennis E., 210n23 Selva, Crisippo, 184n13
Ricci, Corrado, 102, 197n30, 204n66, Seneca, 158
211nn356 Serdonati, Francesco, 44
Ricci, Lucia Battaglia, 173n24 Setton, Kenneth M., 205n72
Ricci, Pier Giorgio, 191n2 Sforza, Giovanni, 124
Riccio, Giovanni Giacomo, 206n74; Shumaker, Wayne, 170n18
I diporti di Parnaso, 206n74 Sidney, Sir Philip, 12
Richardson, Brian, 206n5 Simona, Lorenza, 121, 209nn1519
Riminesi, Giuseppe, 1046, 204n70 Singleton, Charles S., 172n24, 200n44
Romano, Egidio, 62 slander, 16
Rossi, Pier Maria, 209nn1920 Smith, James Robinson, 166n5,
Rossi, Sergio, 206n2 192n4, 193n10
Rossi, Vittorio, 223n31 Socrates, 10, 175n34
Rovorella, Filasio, 1201, 125 Soderini, Piero, 110
Rubin, Patricia Lee, 194n16 Solerti, Angelo, 193nn1011, 212n42,
Russell, Donald A., 165nn23 221n25
Russell, J. Stephen, 12 Solon, 76
Ruvoldt, Maria, 12 Sonetto allimagine di Dante, 130
Specht, Henrik, 165n3
Saiber, Arielle, 198n34, 218n11 Spini, Doffo, 89
Saint Patricks Purgatory, 169n16 Spitzer, Leo, 172n24
Sallust, 39 Statius, 14, 18, 91, 171n21
Salvatorino, Gian Giacomo, 184n13 Steinberg, Justin, 173n25
Sancti Nili, 178n55 Steiner, George, 13
Sanudo, Marin, 215n49; Diarii, Stephens, Walter, 170n18, 190n41
215n49 Stewart, Alan, 173n25
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 161, 224n35 Stillinger, Thomas, 181n3, 221n23
Sassetti, Niccol, 41 Stinger, Charles L., 116, 207n9
Savonarola, Girolamo, 55, 64, 879, Storey, H. Wayne, 166n6, 174n26,
934, 979, 110, 1312, 134, 136, 191n3
Index 263
Stve, Eckehart, 207n7 Vallone, Aldo, 195n23, 204n67

Strozzi, Ercole, 1246 Varese, Claudio, 219n14
Strozzi, Palla di Onofrio, 82 Vasoli, Cesare, 133
Suetonius, 10 Vellutello, Alessandro, 186n21,
Sullivan, Jack, 217n2 193n10
Sylvester III, 218n7 Verdi, Giuseppe, 106
Verdon, Timothy, 170n20
Tanturli, Giuliano, 188n32, 188n34, Vergerio, Pier Paolo, 22
189n36 Veronese, Guarino, 22
Tartaro, Achille, 129, 211n33 Vico, Giambattista, 190n41
Tasso, Torquato, 106, 175n35, 184n13; Vignali, Luigi, 122, 208n13, 209n20
Rime amorose, 184n13 Villani, Filippo, 62, 193n11
Tenenti, Alberto, 194n16 Villani, Giovanni, 62
Tetel, Marcel, 219n13 Villari, P., 199n41
Theophylactus. See Benedict IX Virgil, 10, 14, 18, 78, 902, 989,
Thompson, David, 222n29, 223n34 125, 169n16, 1712n22, 178n50,
Tiraboschi, Girolamo, 207n7 184nn1718, 202n50, 216n52;
Tolomei of Siena, Claudio, 207n5; Aeneid, 169n16, 171n22, 172n24,
Il Cesano, 207n5 178n50, 202n50; Eclogues, 216n52
Tomai, Tommaso, 211n36 Visconti, Ennio Quirino, 106
Took, John, 210n23 Vitello, Camillo, 412
Torelli, Barbara, 124 Viti, Paolo, 81, 193n10, 194n19,
Torretta, Laura, 182n8 195n21
Tournoy, Gilbert, 180n57
Trexler, Richard C., 147, 150, 153, Waldman, Guido, 190n40, 217n4
219n14, 220nn1516, 220n18, 220n20 Walter, Duke of Athens, 312,
Trissino, Giangiorgio, 206n5 193n14
Trivulzio, Gian Giacomo, 115 Warner, James Christopher, 175n35
Turbeville, Simone, 183n11 Weinstein, Donald, 204n61
Turchi, Marcello, 209n14 Weiss, Roberto, 223n31
Wilkins, Ernest H., 176n41, 217n1
Uguccione da Lodi, 12 Wilson, Alice S., 176nn378
Ulysses, 125, 171n21, 200n43 Witt, Ronald, 219n13
Urban V, 155 Wright, Allison, 194n16
Vacchetta, Guido, 191n3 Zaccaria, Vittorio, 177n49, 182n8

Valla, Lorenzo, 32 Zingarelli, Nicola, 199n37

SPEAKING SPIRITS: VENTRILOQUIZING THE DEAD IN RENAISSANCE ITALY

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SPEAKING SPIRITS: VENTRILOQUIZING THE DEAD IN RENAISSANCE ITALY

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Contents

Introduction. Eidolopoeia: Idol Making 3

1 Rewriting the Auctor: Revising according

2 Divining Dante: Scandals of His Corpus and Corpse 69

3 Genius Loci: Exile, Citizenship, and the Place of Burial 108

4 Habeas Corpus, Habeas Spiritum: Some Not-So-Final Thoughts 138

This study began more than a decade ago as an examination of Italian

editorship of the late Ron Schoeffel at the University of Toronto Press.

Triolo, Robert R. Edwards, William R. Blue, Maria Truglio, Nichols

Ventriloquizing the Dead in Renaissance Italy

ch n la mente m fitta, e or maccora,

for in my memory is fixed, and now it weighs on

opinion for two main purposes: (1) to establish authoritative versions

His et adversariorum cogitationes velut secum loquentium protrahimus

These [personifications] both vary and animate a speech to a remarkable

(2) to introduce conversations between ourselves and others, or of others

Quintilians insistence on the credibility of the representation based

Rhetoricians referred to dead people as perfect, though not in

addressed to Francesco Vettori dated 10 December 1513, Machiavelli

On the coming of evening, I return to my house and enter my study I

In speaking with the great historians, philosophers, and poets of the

Advantages of Eidolopoetic Protagonists

What emerges in the consideration of the personas in literary texts are

to have communicated with a dead person suggests that the claimant

Brief Survey of Classical/Medieval Eidolopoeia

Classical examples of eidolopoeia, especially among Latin authors,

sometimes ideological motivational scope of classical ghost stories.13

Although Dufallos study relied on modern performance theory, its

The Great Eidolopoetic Experiment:

Dante created a veritable multitude of damned, repentant, and blessed

people differed so strikingly from historical record, literary precedent,

I am struck by the enthusiasm that permeates Auerbachs praise of

I do not dispute that what Dante-author has done is undeniably

of this statement, however, because the strength of Dantes rhetorical

Eidolopoeia in Africa and Secretum and Petrarchs

Petrarch also experimented with eidolopoeia in many of his works,

Quin etiam ingenii fiducia quanta,

mine by warrant of this double sponsorship. Whoever he may be I cher-

was relaying the substance of a warning: Petroni predicted that the

Boccaccios Use of Eidolopoeia in Facing

Boccaccio lived long enough to offer public lectures on Dantes

Boccaccio is even more amusingly insistent in the opening chapter

Quid demens sudore excruciaris in tanto? Quid veterum monimenta

famam atque protelare dies nomenque tuum desideras. O insana cupido!

Death, Boccaccio reasons with himself, is about to turn him into a

(including Cicero). Boccaccio portrays most of the spirits as pleading

with particular severity the writers slothful attitude, praising the

that leads to heaven the souls of dying bodies by a bright light, as if by a

Petrarch remembers great men from the past (including Abraham,

Much of the soaring speech attributed to Petrarchs spirit consists

The potential problem is this: physical traits are readily apparent to

Dante, whose literary masterpiece had as a clear outcome the record-

Breakdown of Chapters and Procedures

In chapter 1, Rewriting the Auctor: Revising according to the Texts

Florentine tales featuring Dantes spirit in the previous chapter did.

In the Introduction, I began to examine some of the literary strategies

text, for instance. In this chapter I examine three distinct examples of

consideration: who has the authority to determine the identity of the

Vincenzo Baglis Boccaccio: Still without

The humanists dream to continue to live after death through written

appending to it a series of paratexts:5 an unattributed woodcut illustra-

the character of Vincenzo to dedicate the new edition of the work to

Voglio che quella opera Da claris mulieribus da me composta e intitulata a