Vita Activa versus Vita Contemplativa in Petrarch and Salutati

Author(s): Paul A. Lombardo

Source: Italica, Vol. 59, No. 2 (Summer, 1982), pp. 83-92
Published by: American Association of Teachers of Italian
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 VITA ACTIVA VERSUS VITA CONTEMPLATIVA
IN PETRARCH AND SALUTATI

Several changing ideas have been identified, at least since the time of
Burckhardt, as characteristic of that shift of social and intellectual bearings we
call the Renaissance. Debates about the altered valuation of Latin in relation to
vernacular tongues; of rhetoric when compared to philosophy; or of a
Ptolemaic chain of being in confrontation with the Copernican world view are
all familiar to students of the period. Another commonplace notion describing
an evolution from religious to secular values is summarized variously by the
phrases vita contemplativa, vita activa and otium/negotium. These phrases sug-
gest the tension especially apparent in Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth cen-
turies between the value which had been attributed traditionally to life within
the. cloister, secluded and contemplative, and the life of an active citizen, in
commerce with the affairs of the world.
Specific examples of essays supporting the older, "medieval" value system
which accepted the life of religious seclusion as the highest calling have been
explored in detail in the literature on the subject. Equally available are later ac-
counts, arguing for the validity of the life of action and political involvement.
Questions are posed still concerning the individual most responsible for the
change and the work that represents most clearly the signal of change.
In this paper I will not attempt to answer those questions. I will, rather,
briefly survey the literature concerning the changing emphasis on the religious
versus the secular life in the work of Petrarch and Salutati. I will pay particular
attention to Petrarch's Secretum and, among the writings of Salutati, to De
Seculo et Religione and his letter to Peregrino Zambeccari, inasmuch as those
two works demonstrate several facets of the conflict between religious and
secular styles of life. Salutati's own position, as reference to the scholarship will
show, is far from a settled fact. And it is this unsettled ambiguity of Coluccio
which recommends him to us. He represents the tension between two value
systems that remained, at least in argument, unresolved well into the seven-
teenth century.
There is general agreement that Petrarch, despite his unchallenged position
as the foremost Trecento humanist, nevertheless adhered to a medieval' system
of values. A distinction must immediately be made between the values Petrarch
gave expression to in writing as part of a public position, and those values we
may infer from the various stages of his career. We may find large inconsisten-
cies between idea and act, but for the moment I am most concerned with the
consistency of his writings as a history of thought. Hence, while there are ques-
tions about Petrarch's ultimate rejection of all worldly involvement, we can
agree readily with Hans Baron when he says that "Petrarch rejected a life of ac-
tion and community in the family,"2 or that his disciples repeated "Petrarch's
83

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 84 PAUL A. LOMBARDO

ideal of the aloofness of the sage and the contempt for married life and civic
responsibilities. "'
Petrarch, like Dante before him, shared a perspective which gave very ex-
plicit attention to "other-worldly" ideals. The Divine Comedy can be taken as a
paradigm of this focus on life after death, or, perhaps, life simply as a way-
station before death. Dante's solution to the failures of the human comedy is
his eventual vision of Beatrice. His success is not in possession, but in the
mystical, contemplative apprehension of his ideal, occurring simultaneously
with his vision of the Godhead in the celestial rose. Petrarch shares the
religious belief and the cultural tradition of Dante which presumes that those
who are most disposed to the apprehension of divine truth and goodness on this
earth are those who forsake the pleasures of the here and now and fix their gaze
securely on the hereafter. Such a pose is most easily struck while within the
walls of a convent. Although neither Dante nor Petrarch chose the religious
life, both clearly revered it as an ideal, and it is this ideal that places them
within the medieval tradition.
But how firmly is Petrarch lodged in that tradition? And is the Secretum, his
dialogue with Augustine, a restatement of the "medieval commonplace" as
Trinkaus suggests, that "To be religious seems to mean quite simply to be a
religious," that is to say, a monk?4
The problems with the Secretum are several. Baron has given extended at-
tention to the textual corruptions introduced into the extant copies by both
Petrarch and others.5 His criticism of the "cross-sectional" research of Whit-
field may not conclusively demonstrate how one should regard the Secretum,
but it does establish the difficulty inherent in taking this oft-revised work as a
strong clue to a single phase of Petrarch's thought. Or to quote Baron directly,
. given his unique procrastination in the publication of his writings and the
countless fluctuations of his thought in a century of transition, Petrarch will always
set the student of the Renaissance one of his most trying tasks.6

Yet given this difficulty in solving the textual mysteries of the Secretum,
should one link it, as Whitfield does,7 with other "devotional" works like De
Vita Solitaria and De Ocio Religiosorum? He finds a common denominator in
the rhetorical style of all these works. While they clearly fall into a genre of
stylized writing, the objective of which was to praise the religious life of seclu-
sion, their "contempt for the world" thesis is clothed in reasonings more useful
to the humanist than the hermit. The apparent contradiction Whitfield finds in
Petrarch is the introduction of a classical argument for solitude, borrowed from
Cicero, which allows a "legitimisation of nature and the elegances of life, of
human and social activity."' This contradiction is the result of finding such an
argument within works purportedly written in exhortation of retreat from the
world. Thus, the solitude that Petrarch favors implies the leisure for study and
reflection, rather than a monastic ascetisicm. He is consistent, according to
Whitfield, neither in his choice of vocation, nor in his praise of the religious
life. Petrarch's coherence throughout his writings rests on his acceptance of the

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 PETRARCH AND SALUTATI 85

possible dignity of human activity, and it is solitude that provides the ambience
in which such activity might occur with the fewest encumbrances. Petrarch's
works on monastic life are stylized and artificial, though well intended. It was
"his own inaptitude for a monastic solitude"' which forced him to find reasotns
for a seclusion that did not rely on a religious denunciation of the world. His
own reasons are to be found in the study of the classics and in reflection on the
possibility of virtue outside the religious life. It is this positive note through
which Petrarch initiates the ideal of virtue ouside the monastery, and which
opened the way for eventual praise of the vita activa by those who followed.10
Whitfield's assessment of Petrarch, despite Baron's critique, rings more
true than the attempts by other writers who have tried to show the humanists'
lack of concern for consistency. Siegal's argument, for example, proposes that
the humanists' emphasis on eloquence allowed them to be "careless or indif-
ferent about the distinction between one philosophical position and another,"
and to defend "contrasting positions."" Trinkaus is even more cynical,
describing Petrarch's vacillation as if he were a sophist or, at best, a fuzzy-
minded versifier:

Petrarch is an anti-rationalist and a semi-sceptic, but also a rhetorician and a man of

faith. It is easy for him to be full of inconsistent statements, because logical con-
sistency has no value for him. However, there is consistency in these positions and
particularly with the life of man in the fourteenth century as he experienced it and
structured it with appropriate images. In the final analysis he was a poet.'2

It would seem much more likely that it was not a disregard for consistency
which motivated Petrarch's changing moods, but the intensity with which his
mind reached out for novel explanations. His greatness did not allow his im-
agination to be contained within the bounds created by others of his age. What
J. H. Hexter has said of More and Machiavelli may be said of Petrarch as well,
namely, that such visionaries produce work marked more by intensity than by
harmony."3 Inconsistency, at least in this context, is the mark of genius not of
sophistry. Or, to look at the argument from another vantage point, we should
expect the virtue of consistency more from souls secure in their beliefs and un-
troubled by doubt. Transitional figures like Petrarch catch our attention
precisely because they suggest new avenues of thought. The tension we see
beginning, though faintly, in a writer like Petrarch is out of step with the feel-
ings of his contemporaries. The problem is common to the study of intellectual
history, and is summarized by Lovejoy:
The tendencies of an age appear more distinctly in its writers of inferior rank
than in those of commanding genius. The latter are . . . for all time. But in those
sensitive responsive souls, of less creative power, current ideals record themselves
with clearness.'4

The point I am arguing against here is that it may not be crucial to deter-
mine if an author had an idea once and for all at a single time. We need not look
at Petrarch's return to Augustine on the trip up Mt. Ventoux as an apotheosis
where, like Gibbon on the steps of Ara Coeli, the motive of his life is finally

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 86 PAUL A. LOMBARDO

discovered. And helpful though Baron is, we may not need the certitude of
dating some works which his exercises yield. It may be enough in noting
Petrarch's brief vacations from the medieval temper to see them, to borrow a
phrase from T. S. Eliot, as hints and guesses, or rather, hints followed by
guesses.
In summary of Petrarch and the vita activalvita contemplativa controversy, I
think it is fair to say that he retained a basically medieval posture toward the
relative value of a life of solitude over a life of action in the world. His contribu-
tion to the changing focus of Renaissance thought was a suggestion that a
religious, other-worldly contempt for this life was not necessary to maintain a
preference for life in retreat from mundane cares. The life of the scholar, busy
though solitary, was one way to have the benefits of the monastic life. Within
such a setting, one could profitably reflect on the glory of man, as well as that of
God.
The history of Coluccio Salutati brings us only a few years closer to the
modern period. His death thirty-two years after the passing of his mentor
Petrarch occurred only on the threshold of the Quattrocento (1406). But the
hints I have alluded to above that were left by Petrarch as justification for a
non-religious life had already begun to take root in Salutati's lifetime. His
career as Florentine chancellor placed him, in the civic involvement he chose,
in sharp contrast to the semi-clerical Petrarch. His own contribution to the rise
of the new "civic humanism" in Florence had to evolve, as Baron notes,'5 with
some prodding from the likes of Cino Rinuccini. But it too eventually found
motives quite dissimilar to the arguments for the lives of early humanists like
Petrarch. In what ways do their arguments for an active or contemplative life
differ?
Baron has pointed out the various uses to which Cicero was put by the
early and later humanists.1" And as he suggests, the difference between
Petrarch and Salutati was not simply that they referred to different sources. In
fact they did not. Both had access to and quoted liberally from Augustine and
the Church fathers, and both used arguments they had found in the writings of
Cicero. The difference between Petrarch and Salutati is that each used his
sources, patristic, classical or scriptural, for a specific purpose. Petrarch was
able to point to the enforced solitude of Cicero's old age as the time when
freedom from the cares of Rome's political problems allowed his thought to
flower. Petrarch finally condemned the shade of Cicero for his return to the
chaos of the Roman civil wars which were his downfall. And Petrarch was able
to find an apologia for his own life of scholarly leisure in Cicero's description of
Scipio Africanus. In De Republica Cicero says of Scipio: "In solitude he
meditated upon action."'7 Petrarch could borrow words of support for his own
life of intellectual activism from Cicero while rejecting the example of a
politically active life.
Coluccio, on the other hand, found in Cicero's Epistolae Familiares ample
argument for setting aside private concerns and the leisure of a scholar to take a

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 PETRARCH AND SALUTATI 87

public position when republican liberty was in danger. Drawing parallels be-
tween Cicero's role and his own, the Florentine chancellor found a use for those
parts of Cicero's life and testament which were consonant with the rising tide
of civic awareness. The influence of Cicero on Salutati, as on Petrarch, is clear.
But it was the clearly medieval temper of Petrarch and the political needs of
Salutati which led them to the different conclusions they drew from Cicero's
thought. The convenience of Cicero as a source was common to both men.
Their use of him simply corresponded to their individual needs. As Baron has
asked:

During the Middle Ages, when the bearers of culture were chiefly clerics and
monks, which part of Cicero's legacy could be less appreciated than all this Roman
craving for activity and for a civic culture? Again-when in the dawn of the
Renaissance the citizens of the Italian city-states longed for a laic literature and
moral ideals suitable to citizens who led an active life, where could they find a
better ally?'"

Robert Bonnell has pointed to Salutati's attention to the language of

Augustine in the City of God as a key to the understanding of the value of the
active life to civic humanists.19 According to Bonnell, Augustine made a
distinction which Salutati later followed closely. Augustine spoke first of the
vita activa and the vita contemplativa as two stages of the interior life of study.
The focus of philosophy, that is, the study of wisdom, could consist either of
subjects having to do with the conduct of life and morals, or of more fundamen-
tal questions such as the nature of truth or the causes of nature. The former was
characterized among the ancients by Socrates, and could be called active; the
latter was characterized by Pythagoras, and could be called contemplative. In
the Christian context, the two tendencies are labelled temporal, as exemplified
by the Apostle Peter, and eternal, as exemplified by St. John. The temporal life
lasted only during the duration of earthly years while the eternal life of con-
templation was normally deferred until after death. Attribution of the con-
templative motive to the mystic who authored Revelation was an indication of
the rare nature of such a commitment on earth. When he spoke of possible
styles of life on earth, Augustine separated them by a different language, speak-
ing of the first type as a life of undisturbed contemplation (otioso), the second as
being busily active (vitae negotiosum), and a third as a moderated mix of the
other two. While Coluccio admits the ultimate value of the contemplative side
of man, he sees both otium and negotium as operational in most men. It is im-
possible for a good man to ignore his religious duties to either God or man, and
therefore the two types of life cannot be mutually exclusive. Coluccio, as
Bonnell indicates, shares the point of view of Augustine that the contemplative
life begins on earth.20
But if we put Coluccio in the camp of the moderns who had discarded the
values of the monastic life of contemplation, how can his treatise De Seculo et
Religione be explained? This essay to a friend who had taken monastic vows has
been seen as confirmation of the "medieval outlook" of Coluccio since it was

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88 PAUL A. LOMBARDO

rediscovered by Alfred Von Martin in 1913.21 An edition of De Seculo was

published in 1948 by B. L. Ullman which collated three originals and twenty
derivative manuscripts and it remains the definitive text. Professor Ullman
took the occasion of his preface to the new edition to criticize those who, like
Von Martin, felt the need to place Coluccio among the medievals. Ullman
pointed out that the eloquence of Coluccio's argument for the benefit of his
friend is not enough evidence of his own commitment to the cloistered ideal.
De Seculo should not be taken as "a mirror of the author's mind but as a
demonstration of his ability to argue and his knowledge of holy scripture."22
Ullman is unable to ignore Salutati's involvement in the secular consideration
of Florentine politics nor his influence on students like Leonardo Bruni,
Poggio, and Antonio Lusco. Nor is he willing to dismiss this "lover of ancient
poets" (amator poetarum antiquorum) from the company of his fellow
humanists by a simple-minded interpretation of the work as an exhortation to
monks.
R. P. Oliver explicated Ullman's argument in an early review of the 1948
De Seculo.23 Oliver pointed out three considerations within the Ullman inter-
pretation. The first involved the origin of De Seculo, which was written in 1381
in response to a request from a monk who wanted a treatise that would
strengthen him in his new way of life. Coluccio had avoided writing it for two
years because he thought it inconsistent for one so involved in worldly affairs to
recommend the cloistered life to others.
The second consideration was the vow which bound the monk. While
Coluccio may have had no qualms about his own life work, he believed com-
pletely in the binding nature of the religious vow. It would have been contemp-
tible and sacrilegious of him to try to dissuade his friend from a commitment
already undertaken. If he was to respond to the request at all, he must respond
in support of the religious life.
The third consideration Ullman stressed was Coluccio's behavior in similar
situations. Especially in his letters, one of which I will turn to shortly, Coluccio
found occasion to argue both for and against a religious vocation to various
friends in different circumstances. "If it were requested," Ullman speculated,
"he would have been able to argue against the monastic life in a similar
manner.'"24
For this comment, Ullman sustained a few blows from critics25 but in a later
publication he clarified his intent. Coluccio's flexibility demonstrated his per-
sonal evolution. He could be sincere in support of the vow of a friend, even
though he would not make such a vow himself. His own beliefs would probably
not allow him to condemn the monastic life in general, but he knew that there
was a place in the world both for laymen and monks. He was a transitional
figure between the medieval age and the Renaissance.26
Trinkaus' assessment of De Seculo corresponds to Ullman's later remarks.
He finds "no inconsistency" in Salutati's "purely rhetorical endorsement of
the religious life" nor any "contradiction in Salutati's mind between

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 PETRARCH AND SALUTATI 89

humanism and his inherited religious faith and practices."27 Salutati was able
to see a gradation of religious achievement ranging from the social good to be
done by those in his own active life, to a more solitary, studious and sublime
commitment undertaken by those in religious orders. The question remains,
however, since Trinkaus defines De Seculo as a "purely rhetorical" tract,
whether the charge of Kohl and Witt that the humanists were the purveyors of
"eloquence without a conscience"28 can be maintained against Salutati. I de-
tailed the charges of inconsistency against Petrarch earlier, and find them no
more convincing in the case of Salutati. His arguments show an ability not
simply to follow the shifting winds of expedience, but to use a humane tact. To
one friend who has pledged a life of withdrawal, Coluccio points out the
ultimate destiny of man. To others not fit by temperament for such a life,
Salutati is able to write in support of life in the world. He wrote to a variety of
people who differed in their abilities to seek the good in life. A clear example of
one whom Coluccio would not recommend for the cloister was Peregrino
Zambeccari.

Peregrino had written to Salutati before, both in his role as chancellor of

Bologna, and as a friend seeking advice about a tempestuous love life. Salutati's
letter of April 23, 139829 responds to an earlier note from Zambeccari in which
he had vowed to build an oratory where after two years he would retreat from
the cares of the world. The motivation for his sudden impulse to leave public
life was the apparent disappointment Peregrino had sustained as the unsuc-
cessful suitor to a young lady in Bologna. Peregrino's resolve was to set aside
the "relics of that mad Cupid" and to leave Coluccio "behind in this confused
world." He would cherish now the Virgin Mary rather than his "false
Giovanna."
Salutati's comments take full advantage of the melodramatic irony of
Zambeccari's promises. He is to leave the world; but only after a two year wait.
He is to give his love now to the Virgin; but will she arouse his passion as
Giovanna did? He is to trade his busy life for the solitude of an oratory; but
how will he escape his own desires?
Salutati's mockery gives way to an analysis of the two directions in which
Peregrino is being pulled. Love of Giovanna and love of the Virgin are two ex-
tremes. The love of one is physical; the other spiritual. The passion for
Giovanna is marveled at among transitory things; love for the Virgin is
numbered among goals which are eternal. Peregrino is advised not to try to
trade one kind of love for another, but rather to divert his passion for Giovanna
to other earthly goals. Obligations to family and to the state must be satisfied
before eternal goals are undertaken.
Coluccio spends several paragraphs citing justifications from scripture for
his stand against Peregrino's retreat from the world. Zambeccari's duties as
chancellor are recalled in the parable of the talents (Matthew 25: 15-30), and he
is exhorted to labor and make himself a worthy servant. God lives not just in
oratories and churches, but in the temple of the soul (Psalms 7: 9), and

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 90 PAUL A. LOMBARDO

Peregrino can serve God in his own heart while in the world. Like the Lord
purging the Temple in Jerusalem of the money changers (Matthew 21: 12-13),
Peregrino can conduct the business of his soul in the world if he will but purify
his mind.
Coluccio moves his argument from the particular problem of his friend
Zambeccari to the more general problem of the religious life in contrast to the
life of action. The monastic life, he argues, is thought a refuge only by those ig-
norant of its pitfalls. "We praise all those things that we have not learned to
fear; the active man and the contemplative man alike have their troubles."30
Minds under control, which can shut out the disturbances of the court and the
city are themselves remote and solitary.
But if remembering things absent or confronted with enticements, our mind
reaches outside itself, I do not know how it is an advantage to live as a solitary. For
whether it is comprehended by the senses, represented by the memory, constructed
by the sharpness of intellect, or created by the desire of the feelings, it is a property
of the mind always to think something.31

While Salutati goes on to argue that the hermit Paul was no more pleasing
to God than the prophet Abraham, and that it is easier to succeed in doing
charity in the world than in retreat to heavenly pursuits, he returns to restate
the traditional evaluation in conclusion of his letter. "I grant that the con-
templative life is more sublime," he admits, ". . . nevertheless, it is not always
to be chosen by everybody. The active life is inferior, but many times it is to be
preferred.",32
He returns to the evidence of the example as well as the language of the
busy life of Augustine. Like the Saint, Zambeccari must nurture both his
worldly and his solitary tendencies.
Indeed, although we distinguish those two ways of life with words and argu-
ment, they are really mixed; no one can be so connected with material things that
he does for God's sake that he entirely lacks a contemplative element; nor can a con-
templative if he lives as a man, be completely dead to secular matters.33

We may ask the question if the seventeen years between De Seculo (1381)
and the letter to Peregrino Zambeccari (1398) had changed the mind of
Coluccio Salutati. I think not. His system of values, placing the sacred above
the secular, was still intact. What had changed, and what sets him apart from
most of his predecessors, was a willingness to argue for a moral value to the ac-
tive life. He moved beyond the tone of contemptu mundi characterized by
stylized works such as Petrarch's Secretum, and also went beyond Petrarch's em-
phasis on the value of a solitary life of "secular letters" as analogous to the
monastic study of Scripture. He opened the way for an even more radical focus
on the "dignity of man" theme by Leonardo Bruni, Pier Paolo Vergerio and
Lorenzo Valla who followed him. He began a trend that may be likened to what
J. N. Figgis has attributed to Martin Luther in the realm of politics: "to change
the admiration of men from the saintly to the civic virtues, and their ideals
from the monastic to the domestic."34

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 PETRARCH AND SALUTATI 91

While some scholars have concentrated upon the revolutionary nature of

pronouncements by writers like Pomponazzi and Valla in support of secular
virtue as a worthy goal,35 I think it is a mistake to say that by the sixteenth cen-
tury in Italy the value of the contemplative life as a theoretical good was no
longer valid. The decline of respect for the clergy in general could have played
a part in affecting such an attitude, but I think it more profitable to regard the
period of the Renaissance as an era of ongoing change. Hardin Craig has put it
well: "The Renaissance indeed looked both ways."36 Or as E. M. W. Tillyard
concluded similarly: "... it is an error to think that with the Renaissance the
belief in the present life won a definitive victory."37
The focus of this paper has been the suggestion that in writers like Petrarch
and Coluccio Salutati change was afoot, but moving slowly. This slowness of
change may be seen in poems like Milton's "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso,"
written as late as 1630. Even at that late date we hear that "Towred cities please
us then / And the busy humm of men." And those active settings are still set
beside the "dim religious light" of "studious cloisters pale / The hairy gown
and mossy cell." The value of the active life was an idea whose time had surely
come for Quattrocento Florence. But like most such debates concerning
timeless values, the argument did not end in the Renaissance.

PAUL A. LOMBARDO
University of Virginia

I I use the term "medieval" and will use the term "modern" without concern for the confu-
sion they have engendered in the work of some authors. In this context I simply mean to indicate
the difference between the traditional scheme of values that found merit in the religious, con-
templative life (medieval), and the focus on the merit of an active life which gained acceptance in a
later period (modern). Whether the change took place partially, completely, or at all during the
Renaissance is (I hope it will be clear) the main question of the paper.
2 Hans Baron, "Cicero and the Roman Civic Spirit," Bulletin of the John Rylands Library,
Vol. 22 (1938), p. 88.
3 Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance (Princeton: University Press, 1955), Vol.
1, p. 286.
4 Charles Trinkaus, In Our Image and Likeness (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1970), Vol. 2, p. 661.
' Baron, From Petrarch to Leonardo Bruni (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968),
especially chapters 1 and 2.
6 Op. cit., p. 50.
J7 . H. Whitfield, Petrarch and the Renascence (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1943), p. 54.
8 Ibid., p. 54.
9 Ibid., p. 55.
10 Ibid., p. 93.
" Jerrold Siegal, Rhetoric and Philosophy in Renaissance Humanism (Princeton: University
Press, 1968), p. 256.
12 Trinkaus, op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 50.
13 Hexter in "The Loom of Language and the Fabric of Imperatives," American Historical
Review, Vol. 29, No. 4, July 1964, p. 950.

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 92 PAUL A. LOMBARDO

14 Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, Harvard University Press,
1936), p. 20.
'5 In Crisis, Vol. 1, p. 88.
16 Cf. "Cicero and the Roman Civic Spirit", pp. 86-91.
17 "In otio de negotio cogitabat" quoted by Baron, ibid., p. 75.
18 Ibid., p. 76.
"' Cf. "An Early Humanistic View of the Active and Contemplative Life", Italica, Vol. 43,
September 1966, pp. 225-239.
20 Ibid., p. 227.
21 Noted in the review of Ullman's edition of De Seculo by R. P. Oliver, Speculum, Vol. 32,
January 1959, p. 131.
22 "Liber ergo Colucci non est speculum mentis auctoris sed demonstrat eius facultatem
disputandi et scientiam divinarum scripturam," B. L. Ullman, ed., De Seculo et Religione
(Florence: Olschki, 1948), p. vi.
23 Cited above, note 21.
24 "Si res postulasset, contra vitam monasticam perinde disputare potuisset," De Seculo, p. vi.
25 Notably, from Giuseppe Toffanin in "Per Coluccio Salutati," Rinascimento, Vol. 9, June
1958, pp. 3-10.
26 B. L. Ullman, The Humanism of Coluccio Salutati (Padua: Antenore, 1963), pp. 28-30.
27 Trinkaus, In Our Image and Likeness, Vol. 2., p. 673.
28 Benjamin Kohl and Ronald Witt, eds., The Earthly Republic: Italian Humanists on Govern-
ment and Society (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978), p. 5.
29 The text is presented in translation in Kohl and Witt, The Earthly Republic, pp. 93-114.
30o Ibid., p. 108.
31 Ibid.

32 Ibid., p. 111.
33 Ibid., p. 112.
34 J. N. Figgis, Studies of Political Thought from Gerson to Grottius (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1931), p. 72.
35 P. O. Kristeller, for example, concludes that Pomponazzi "demolishes the ideal of con-
templation," in Renaissance Thought: The Classic, Scholastic and Humanistic Strains (New York:
Harper and Row, 1961), p. 136.
36 Craig, The Enchanted Glass (New York: Oxford University Press, 1950), p. 87.
37 E. M. W. Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture (New York: Random House, 1961), p. 5.

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