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Exiled from the Cradle of Humanism

Francesco Filelfo’s Commentationes Florentinae de Exilio

Jeroen De Keyser (KU Leuven)

“Ainsi, la première chose que la peste

apporta à nos concitoyens fut l’exil. Et le

narrateur est persuadé qu’il peut écrire ici,

au nom de tous, ce que lui-même a éprouvé

alors, puisqu’il l’a éprouvé en même temps

que beaucoup de nos concitoyens.”

(Albert Camus, La peste)

The Italian humanist Francesco Filelfo (1398–1481),1 who during a seven-year stay in Constantinople achieved a high degree of proficiency in Greek and who in 1427 returned to Italy with numerous Greek manuscripts in his luggage,2 came to Florence shortly after his return from the East. Initially sponsored as a teacher at the Florentine Studio by, among others, Palla Strozzi, Leonardo Bruni and Cosimo de’ Medici. Soon he clashed with the humanists supported by Cosimo, especially Niccolò Niccoli, Carlo Marsuppini and Poggio Bracciolini. By October 1433, when Cosimo was exiled to the Veneto, Filelfo appeared secure, having sided with the triumphant aristocratic party. But on Cosimo’s recall less than a year later, in September 1434, a regime change took place, and Filelfo found himself exiled from the city along with the aristocrats.

In the early 1440’s, when already firmly established at the court of Filippo Maria Visconti in Milan, Francesco Filelfo composed his Commentationes Florentinae de exilio.3 This unfinished consolatory dialogue in three books focuses on the fate of the Florentine oligarchs, especially Palla Strozzi, his son Onofrio, and Rinaldo degli Albizzi, who were forced into exile at the return to power of Cosimo de’ Medici. Interlacing their arguments with long philosophical digressions, the participants discuss the unhappy condition of exile and poverty, while trying to define what precisely makes for virtuous behaviour.

The Commentationes were originally planned to take up ten books, but Filelfo apparently abandoned the work after writing only three: the first on the inconveniences of exile in general (De incommodis exilii); the second on infamy (De infamia); and the third on poverty (De paupertate). From a marginal note in one of the few manuscripts transmitting the Commentationes, we know the original lay-out of the entire work: the other seven books were supposed to be addressing slavery, contempt, untimely old age, illness, prison, death and misery.

Ordo decem librorum: Liber primus summatim De incommodis exilii, Liber II De infamia, Liber III De paupertate, Liber IIII De servitute, Liber V De contemptu, Liber VI De intempestiva senectute, Liber VII De aegrotatione, Liber VIII De carcere, Liber VIIII De morte, Liber X De miseria (Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, ms. II.II.70, f. 4^v).4

It is unclear why the remaining books were left unwritten, since even the existing three were composed at a time when the hopes of the expatriated aristocrats for a reestablishment of themselves in Florence were already unlikely to be realised – but quite a few of Filelfo’s other major writings fell short of their projected length as well.5

Filelfo includes in his text numerous long selections and shorter quotes from various Greek authors, among others Euripides, Sextus Empiricus,6 the pseudepigraphic Cynic Epistles,7 Plutarch and Aristotle, producing perhaps the most accomplished and creative use of Greek texts in the first half of the Quattrocento. The dialogues move from discussions of the contemporary political scene in Florence to anecdotes containing witty observations about famous men, to literary passages translated from ancient Greek sources, and to rather technical philosophical discussions, such as the analysis of the summum bonum or ultimate good in Book 2, which turns out to rely heavily on a discussion of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics by the medieval philosopher Albert the Great. There are also brief comical interludes, the purpose of which is to poke fun at the rival humanist and Cosimo supporter Poggio Bracciolini, who is consistently depicted as a greedy nitwit, glutton and drunk.8

In the first book of the Commentationes Filelfo quotes widely from a range of literary works, both classical and Christian, in order to disprove that exile is an unhappy condition in which to live. The discussion then skips to an analysis of pleasure and its role in human happiness, and to the notion of world citizenship, of worldly life as a state of exile from a homeland that is only truly to be found beyond earthly experience.9

The figure of Rinaldo degli Albizzi dominates the discussion in book two, with an extensive passage consisting in Ridolfo Peruzzi’s rendering of Rinaldo’s speech before Pope Eugenius IV on the eve of the Medici coup, trying to convince the pope to take the aristocrats’ side. The second part of the book is designed to provide a deeper understanding of the nature of ‘praise’ as an outcome of virtuous behaviour. One should pursue right or virtuous action for its own sake, and even though allegations of infamy may come from their fellow citizens, the aristocrats must avoid concerning themselves with how they appear to others; they must instead continue to behave as virtuously as possible.

In book 3, the accent is on the ethical dimensions of poverty and wealth. Filelfo’s interlocutors are looking for an understanding of wealth that is both socially acceptable and philosophically tenable. The guiding light for this dialogue is Leonardo Bruni, who had supported Filelfo’s career when the latter arrived to teach in Florence in the late 1420s. Bruni expounds on the Stoic definition of wealth and maintains that wealth is acceptable when it is linked to virtue.

*

In the third book, when discussing the differences between voluntary and involuntary action – drawing for the greater part on Aristotle’s Eudemian Ethics and on the Magna Moralia – Palla Strozzi has just argued that “Since we have now completed – not so much carefully as briefly – one of the three parts in one of which we classed the voluntary (appetency, itself being tripartite), two parts remain, choice and reasoning: let us briefly skim over these lest we annoy our friend Poggio with this prolix discourse of ours” (3, 125).10 Poggio at once quips that he is done with this hair-splitting, since he is hungry and running to a banquet “both prolix and elegant is in readiness; that is where all my reasoning and choice reside” (3, 126). Rinaldo replies that if Poggio were like Socrates rather than Epicurus, he “would have judged this learned and wise discourse of our friend Palla far preferable to all the rest of your delicacies. But you define everything by the standard of pleasure – not that of the mind, which perhaps even Epicurus recognised, but rather that of the body, by which the senses, gently soothed and as it were lulled to sleep, are customarily moved.” When Poggio is gone, Leonardo Bruni states that he would love to hear Palla continue his explanations, “in particular the part where you expounded for us doctrines from the outstanding philosophical schools” (3, 127), on which, so he confesses, he did not expect Palla to deliver such a detailed and learned discourse. Palla replies with an anecdote (3, 129–130):

At noli mirari, Leonarde. Num es oblitus quod dicere solitum tradunt Philolaum: esse quosdam sermones nobis meliores? Non enim de prophetis et Sibyllis hominibusque afflatis modo intelligi id arbitror oportere, sed de iis omnibus qui quemadmodum ego apud vos gravissimos eruditissimosque viros loquuntur aliquid supra se. Sermo hic profecto meus non est, sed maximi illius sapientissimique viri, quo tu et ego doctore olim amicoque usi sumus, Manuelis Chrysolorae, cuius neptem Theodoram, modestam et pudicam adolescentulam, Iohannis Chrysolorae filiam, Franciscus Philelfus his noster uxorem habet. Cum enim per id temporis quo illustris ille summusque philosophus Graecam sapientiam Florentiae doceret, et nostra haec urbs et universa prope Tuscia pestilentiali morbo laboraret, institui mutandi aeris gratia ruri tantisper agere, donec illa caeli inclaementia mitior Florentiae redderetur. Itaque invitatus a me Manuel, ut erat vir omni humanitate humanior, rus una mecum profectus est, ubi quandiu Florentiam pernicies illa vexavit, mansit assidue. Nam ruri quod est mihi in Casentino, erat aer saluberrimus.

(Do not be surprised, Leonardo. Have you forgotten what Philolaus is reported to have said: some discourses are better than we are? I think this must be understood not only about prophets and Sibyls and inspired men, but also about all those who say something over their heads, as I just did in your presence, you who are the most serious and erudite of men. You see, this discourse is not mine but that of a very great and wise man whom you and I once had as a teacher and a friend, Manuel Chrysoloras, whose grandniece Theodora, a modest and chaste young woman, daughter of John Chrysoloras, our friend Francesco Filelfo here has as his wife. For at the time when that distinguished and supreme philosopher was teaching Greek wisdom in Florence, and this city of ours and practically all Tuscany was suffering from plague, I decided for the sake of a change of air to spend time in the countryside until the rigors of the climate softened in Florence. Therefore, on my invitation, Manuel, being a man more humane than all humanity, set out with me for the countryside, where he remained constantly for as long as the plague was attacking Florence, for the air was very salubrious at my estate in the Casentino).

Reading the framing of this anecdote about Manuel Chrysoloras,11 one recalls Giovanni Boccaccio’s frame story about the plague raging in Florence in 1348, fifty years before Chrysoloras’ sojourn in the city, and about the allegra brigata leaving town and escaping the lethal disease in order to indulge in some storytelling.12 So far scholarship has not, to my knowledge, pointed to any correspondences between Filelfo and Boccaccio, but alongside this narrative element, I believe some more parallels can be drawn. First of all, in the initial setting of his Commentationes in the first book, Filelfo points out that (1, 6):

Quoniam igitur aliquando cum Florentiae agerem, evenit ut quorundam clarissimorum et optimorum civium et eorundem gravitate doctrinaque praestantium de exilio commentationi disputationique familiariter interessem, quae decem deinceps continuis diebus ab illis dicta eleganter, erudite, divinitus audieram, in decem itidem libros contuli.

(Once when I was living in Florence, I happened to be present at a friendly discussion and debate among some of the finest and most distinguished citizens, who were likewise among the most excellent in authority and learning; the topic was exile. So I later set down in ten books what was said eloquently, learnedly, and with inspiration by these men on ten successive days).

The number of interlocutors staged in the three books of Commentationes that Filelfo in the end actually wrote are only nine, but while not participating in the conversations as he recorded them, Filelfo himself may be considered the one who completed the company to ten, which also happens to be the number of speakers during the ten-day long symposium we see related in Boccaccio’s Decameron.

Filelfo’s deliberate interest for significant numerical choices and patterns can be determined beyond all doubt: his collection of satires, for example, consists of ten books of ten satires each – all of them running to exactly one hundred verses in length. And all completed books of his Sphortias, an epic poem about the conquering of Milan by Francesco Sforza, run to exactly 800 verses, while Filelfo initially wanted the epic poem to comprise twenty-four books, matching Homer’s canonical number of books in both the Iliad and Odyssey.

It is a legitimate question, though, whether it would have been plausible for Filelfo to practice imitation of Boccaccio in his oeuvre. A striking aspect of Filelfo’s prolific writings is indeed that he hardly ever dwells on any of the tre corone. For sure, this silence should not be interpreted as an implicitly negative attitude, since Filelfo was allegedly the first humanist who ever lectured on Dante and Petrarch.13 Still, the passages in his Latin writings where he explicitly mentions one of the three canonical vernacular authors are very few. He is even rather dismissive of his efforts in this respect: in a letter sent to Giovanni Andrea Bussi on 13 February 1471 (PhE·33.05),14 Filelfo states that he cannot comply with Bussi’s wish to obtain a copy of Filelfo’s commentary on Petrarch’s poems, which he once produced at the request of Filippo Maria Visconti, since he does not have the text at hand (anymore), nor does he know where it is (Petis tu quidem quae quondam ducis Philippi iussu in Ethruscas Francisci Petrarcae delicias commentati sumus. Ea mihi non sunt, neque cui sint novi.).

Interestingly, however, in one of his earliest satires (1, 5), written probably in 1436, shortly after his Florentine period, Filelfo attacks Niccoli – Utis, as he is nicknamed, ‘Nobody’ – who allegedly dismisses Chrysoloras, Dante and Petrarcha (Additur huic dius Dantes suavisque Petrarca, 38), Leonardo Bruni, Antonio Beccadelli (Panormita), Guarino, Cencio de’ Rustici, Antonio Loschi, Flavio Biondo, Giovanni Aurispa and Giannozzo Manetti, while he usually only praises people of his own kind, “pederasts and drunks” (cinaedos / ac madidos, 46b–47a), such as Poggio Bracciolini and Carlo Marsuppini. Furthermore, so Filelfo claims, Niccoli does not refrain from criticizing major classical writers like Ovid, Statius, Lucan and Virgil and even Cicero himself.15

Within the context of this grotesque attack on Niccolò Niccoli, perhaps the über-classicist of his era, it may seem remarkable that Dante and Petrarch are placed on the same level as both the founding fathers of the humanism movement and the Latin classics, yet we should bear in mind that Dante and Petrarch were Latin writers as well. However, apart from the above-mentioned tepid remark about Filelfo’s previous occasional interest in Petrarch, the topic of the opposition between ancients and moderns, between Latin and volgare, that is, the central issue of Leonardo Bruni’s important Dialogi ad Petrum Paulum Histrum,16 seems absent from Filelfo’s writings. In Filelfo’s mind that issue was not really an issue: for him it was crystal clear that Latin was the only language and literature that mattered. Although he considered Tuscan the superior version of the volgare, he asserted that the volgare was to be used only in casual communication that was not to be transmitted to the posteri. A more relevant distinctive element, according to Filelfo, was the role of Greek. Filelfo always fashioned himself as a Graecus, and as he was producing writings in both languages and seeking prominence in more literary genres than anybody else, the issue whether it was possible to equal, let alone surpass the ancients, is answered by Filelfo by producing his own versatile oeuvre, not by settling any quarrel about Latin and volgare.17

Only once, in a letter sent to Lorenzo de’ Medici on 29 May 1473 (PhE·37.02), does Filelfo briefly mention Boccaccio, along with Guido Cavalcanti, Guido Guinizelli, Dante, Petrarch, and Cecco d’Ascoli. While he is praising all these writers, the context is one in which Filelfo adamantly denies that the ancient Romans could ever have spoken anything like “this vulgar language which is now used all over Italy,” for if they did, there would be traces of it, that is, “poetry or prose writings such have been produced in a most learned and elegant way by the writers of our times, and which will never be erased from human memory.” Therefore, the modern-day vernacular has nothing whatsoever in common with the language used in Cicero’s times.18

*

While it might thus be doubted that Filelfo had an interest in Italian vernacular literature great enough to see him really engaging in literary imitatio and aemulatio with it, the presentation of the Chrysoloras anecdote as a gathering of friends leaving Florence during a plague epidemic, within the whole narrative concept of a ten-day frame story, must almost inevitably have summoned a recollection of the Decameron in the mind of Filelfo’s readers. A more interesting parallel, though, beyond the decadal formalism, is in my opinion the immediate cause of the escape to the countryside. The plague that is driving away both Boccaccio’s bunch in the Decameron and Chrysoloras with Palla from Florence, has a metaphoric counterpart in the Commentationes as a whole. When describing how the aristocrats’ exile came about, Filelfo relates how the imminent fall of the aristocratic republic in Florence was first avoided by the noble class, who “resolved to come to the rescue of the failing state and quench the crisis as if it were a public plague (et eam veluti publicam pestem extinguere) by the moderate punishment of a single individual. Therefore, they banned for ten years to the Veneto the hottest spark and instigator of all those fires, Cosimo de’ Medici, son of Giovanni, without bloodshed, torture, proscription, or loss besides” (1, 8). Yet after Cosimo had been banned, Filelfo continues, “without warning that clever and crafty old fox, Cosimo de’ Medici – that deceiver, poisoner, and blasphemer, than whom no one, in my opinion, is more dangerous or criminal or more skilled at every kind of villainy and evil – when he met with his kindred spirit Giovanni Vitelleschi, who, as patriarch of Alexandria and likewise cardinal, condottiere or rather monstrous beast (atrocissima belua) in the service of Pope Eugenius, just now suffered due punishment – Cosimo de’ Medici, I say, that unholy criminal, relying not so much on the daring and strength as the deceit and intrigue of the aforementioned Giovanni Vitelleschi, whom he easily bribed, once again roused, kindled, and raised the deadly fires of civil feuds (pestiferos civilium bellorum ignis), strife, sedition and war that by now were slumbering and practically snuffed out, and he cast the state into such woes that by now it is all but enslaved, nay, it is manifestly enslaved, as you see” (1, 11).

Halfway through the first book, when describing the fatal danger of riches without virtue, Filelfo cites the telling example of Cosimo de’ Medici: “There is no need for us to recall for this purpose the examples of our ancestors. In this very city of ours we have seen many [examples of riches without virtue] at various times, but in our time we have the greatest example of all in Cosimo de’ Medici, who, through the power of the money he has procured and continues to procure for himself by all manner of outrage and crime, has inflicted upon the republic innumerable disasters, conflagrations, and plagues (quantas pestes)! Were he stripped of his money, he would have done no harm, and not only would he have been able to do no harm, but perhaps he would not even have desired to do so. For when he understood that his efforts would be in vain, he would clearly have preferred to follow reason rather than impulse so as to take better care of himself and his interests (rationem quam libidinem sequi, quo rectius rebus suis sibique consuleret)” (1, 99).

The same opinion about the risks of riches without virtue is expressed in a passage in book 3, where Filelfo points out that Jesus Christ possessed nothing on earth and taught us that the kingdom of heaven belongs to the poor, while hell is the destiny of the rich: “It is worthwhile for us to be poor in our spirit but rich in the Spirit of God if we should wish to achieve true blessedness. It is appropriate for us to be poor in all those matters by which we are provoked to destructive emotions, which are like savage beasts in the body (quibus in pestiferas animi permotiones quasi efferatas corporis beluas irritamur). No one doubts that the riches of the world are among them, since they draw people into other diseases of base appetite, but especially into pride” (3, 96).

Although the comment is generic, it is not far-fetched to consider it an echo of the criticism of the immensely rich Cosimo: in both passages the allegation is that those following the savage beasts that are their raging emotions, and of their greed in particular, rather than reason, are suffering a disease, a plague that makes it impossible for them to be virtuous persons.

Apart from conveying the plague image as a symbol for the pernicious role of Cosimo de’ Medici and his confederates, Filelfo also uses it for depicting the condition humaine and our relegation to this earthly prison in general. He evokes it when describing the ordeals of life – the fear of which, however, is nothing else than a self-inflicted punishment. “For the mind, being subject to pain and pleasure, fear and desire, is afflicted day and night as if by some savage inner demons (intimis quibusdam et efferatis beluis). For even if the mind were to alleviate its diseases (eas pestes) somewhat with the pharmacopeia of reason, yet it can never be rid of its torments altogether; for as long as it is housed in the body, it can never be free of the passions it receives from the body” (1, 189).

*

The associatively layered imagery of Florence suffering the plague called Cosimo, who himself, as an extremely rich man, falls inevitably victim to the plague of his virtue-inhibiting emotions, is a recurring theme in Filelfo’s letter collection as well.19

Filelfo himself had to flee in exile from Florence, but in the year before the political turmoil that made him do so came about, on 1 May 1433, when they were still on speaking terms, Filelfo wrote one of his three letters to Cosimo de’ Medici himself. While the letter (PhE·02.42) mainly concerns the troubles which Filelfo’s rivals Niccolò Niccoli and Carlo Marsuppini were causing him, there is a quite interesting passage where Filelfo moves from a reference to an actual plague epidemic that made Cosimo and his family take refuge in Verona to an elaborate metaphorical use of the plague imagery. Filelfo wishes that the plague would have been locked up in the city of Florence, which would then have contained its “pestiferous poison”. Yet that is not how things went: Cosimo was followed by two men whose souls are “more pestiferous than any plague,” Niccolò Niccoli and Carlo Marsuppini, who infected Cosimo himself with their “pestiferous disease” and so to speak put a spell on him, so that they had Cosimo in their power, which made him comply with whatever those two flatterers and scoundrels wanted him to do.20