Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance

DLXXVI

The Invention of Rome

Biondo Flavio’s

Roma Triumphans

and its Worlds

edited by
Frances M

uecke

and Maurizio C

ampanelli

LIBRAIRIE DROZ

11, rue Massot

GENÈVE

2017

Mentions légales

Résumé

“He has revealed to us the whole of antiquity”: so spoke Pope Pius II of the historian and archaeologist avant la lettre, Biondo Flavio (1392-1463). In his work Roma triumphans (1459), his last major treatise and the fruit of decades of engagement with the city of Rome and Roman history, Biondo Flavio was the first to attempt to present Roman civilization in all its complexity. His Roma triumphans is a key text of Italian humanism and the basis of the long-lasting discipline of antiquarianism. Despite its acknowledged originality, early European circulation, and centuries of influence, there have been few in-depth studies of its multifarious contents. In this book we present a range of strategic explorations of the work’s nature, contents, and influence, for the first time making it available to a wide modern readership and opening up a seminal chapter of the long European obsession with the exemplary role of Rome and its institutions. « Il nous a dévoilé toute l’Antiquité » : c’est ainsi que le pape Pie II parlait de Biondo Flavio (1392-1463), historien et archéologue avant la lettre. Dans son important ouvrage Roma triumphans (1459), son dernier traité et le fruit de décennies de travail sur Rome et l’histoire romaine, Biondo Flavio fut le premier à tenter de présenter la civilisation romaine dans toute sa complexité. Roma triumphans est un texte clé de l’humanisme italien et constitue la source de « l’antiquarianisme ». Malgré des siècles d’influence, son originalité reconnue et le fait qu’il circula très tôt en Europe, peu d’études approfondies de cette œuvre aux multiples facettes ont été publiées. Dans ce livre, nous présentons un éventail d’explorations ciblées sur la nature, le contenu et les influences de cet ouvrage, le rendant pour la première fois accessible à un large public contemporain et révélant un chapitre fondamental de la perception européenne du rôle exemplaire de Rome et de ses institutions.

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Abstract

“He has revealed to us the whole of antiquity”: so spoke Pope Pius II of the historian and archaeologist avant la lettre, Biondo Flavio (1392-1463). In his work Roma triumphans (1459), his last major treatise and the fruit of decades of engagement with the city of Rome and Roman history, Biondo Flavio was the first to attempt to present Roman civilization in all its complexity. His Roma triumphans is a key text of Italian humanism and the basis of the long-lasting discipline of antiquarianism. Despite its acknowledged originality, early European circulation, and centuries of influence, there have been few in-depth studies of its multifarious contents. In this book we present a range of strategic explorations of the work’s nature, contents, and influence, for the first time making it available to a wide modern readership and opening up a seminal chapter of the long European obsession with the exemplary role of Rome and its institutions.

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With the support of the Australian Research Council

www.droz.org

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Copyright 2017 by Librairie Droz S.A., 11, rue Massot, Genève.

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ISSN : 0082-6081

Copyright 2017 by Librairie Droz S.A., 11, rue Massot, Genève.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or translated in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, microfiche or any other means without written permission.

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Acknowledgements and Abbreviations

This book arose in the context of a Discovery Project funded by the Australian Research Council from 2013-16 (DP130102112). The three researchers involved, Maurizio Campanelli, Frances Muecke, and Maria Agata Pincelli are grateful for the support received for the project and specifically towards the cost of the publication of this book. The editors would also like to thank Dr Kit Morrell for her indispensable assistance in preparing the final copy. The first stage towards the book was a conference held at the British School of Rome (26-28 November 2014). We thank the Director, Professor Christopher Smith, for his enthusiastic acceptance of our proposal, and all the staff of the School for their kindness and efficiency.

It has been a pleasure to work with the authors of the papers and we thank them for their contributions and their patience. At Librairie Droz we would like to thank the production team for their helpfulness and efficiency and, last but not least, Dr Max Engammare for his support of our volume.

Two chapters of this book have been previously published and are reprinted here with the kind permission of the original publishers. Slight editorial changes and corrections have been made.

Chapter 1 first appeared as “La célébration des triomphes de Rome dans la

Roma instaurata

et la

Roma triumphans

de Flavio Biondo”, in

Grecs et Romains aux prises avec l’histoire: Représentations, récits et idéologie. Colloque de Nantes et Angers

, ed. by Guy Lachenaud and Dominique Longrée, 2 vols (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2003),

ii

, 643-54.

Chapter 4 first appeared as “

Gentiles nostri

: Roman Religion and Roman Identity in Biondo Flavio’s

Roma triumphans”

,

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes

75 (2012), 93-110.

Abbreviations of Latin authors are based on those of the

Thesaurus linguae Latinae

; of Greek authors on those in the third edition of the

Oxford Classical Dictionary

. The following three works are abbreviated in bibliographical references:

ANRW

Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt: Geschichte und Kultur Roms im Spiegel der neueren Forschung

, ed. by Hildegard Temporini and Wolfgang Haase (Berlin and New York, 1972-)

DBI

Dizionario biografico degli Italiani

, ed. by Giuseppe Pignatelli et al. (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1960-)

MGH PLAC

Poetae Latini aevi Carolini

,

Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Poetae Latini Medii Aevi

, ed. by Ernst Dümmler and others, 6 vols (Berlin, 1881-1923)

Frances Muecke
Maurizio Campanelli
Sydney and Rome, November 2016

Introduction

Frances Muecke and Maurizio Campanelli

The aim of this volume is to further understanding of the nature, contents, driving ideas, and impact of

Roma triumphans

. The last of Biondo Flavio’s major works after

Roma instaurata

(1446) and

Italia illustrata

(1453),

Roma triumphans

(1459) is the culmination of the author’s long-standing admiration for the civilization of Rome. In it the fundamental humanist project of reconstructing ancient Roman culture is given urgency by Biondo’s anxiety over the ever-closer Ottoman threat since the Fall of Constantinople (1453). Indeed,

Roma triumphans

was completed at the Congress of Mantua, convoked by Pius II with the purpose of organizing a concerted response of the European leaders, and dedicated to this pope. The political motive is seen most clearly in the dedication and epilogue. The bulk of the lengthy treatise, on the other hand, is devoted to concrete explanation of the institutions of ancient Rome in ten books, divided into five main topics: religion (books

i

-

ii

), public administration (books

iii

-

v

), the army (books

vi

-

vii

), private life (books

viii

-

ix

), and the triumph (book

x

).

Roma triumphans

is one of the greatest literary monuments of Italian humanism and its greatest legacy to European culture in the early modern period. As an encyclopedic work of all-encompassing scope it might be called a cultural space, a

site in which the culture of an entire epoch is collected, synthesized, and passed on. Not only a representative of its own cultural worlds, it is also a place where worlds meet, situated between the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern era, between reconstruction of the past and construction of the future, between paganism and Christianity, between East and West. In its own time

Roma triumphans

was a stunning achievement, both for its conceptualization and its realization. It was a new kind of work, which initiated a new discipline aimed at the virtual reconstruction of the ancient world. This new discipline, now for convenience called “antiquarianism”, included and fed on other disciplines (philology, history, archaeology), absorbing their methods and results, and also providing them with a common ground for mutual comparison and confrontation. Its aspiration was to furnish models, on the basis of the authority of the ancient world, for the construction of a new world.

Biondo’s “invention” of Rome in

Roma triumphans

powerfully influenced these later centuries of engagement with antiquity both as an object of study and as a cultural model. As the only such comprehensive treatment of the Roman world as a whole written in the fifteenth century,

Roma triumphans

had a reputation and influence that outlasted its initial period of use. Such was its dominance that its main divisions became the established topics of subsequent treatises on Roman institutions and civilization, and its drive to describe and illustrate set the pattern for later antiquarian studies of ancient Rome.

Well into the eighteenth century

Roma triumphans

was remembered as an authoritative source. From Poliziano to Voltaire, with many lesser names in between, generations of readers addressed to themselves or to others the injunction “quaere Romam triumphantem”.

Despite its significance and interest

Roma triumphans

remains largely unread today. This is the challenge to which our book responds by offering contextualization and close readings of the work. One potent deterrent, but not the only one, has been the absence of a modern edition and of translations.

Readers are faced with hundreds of pages of densely printed Latin, in bulky folio editions, with none of the editorial aids of modern scholarship.

The other challenge for modern

readers is that the treatise is a compilation, and consists to a great extent of combinations of word-for-word citations, summaries, and paraphrases of Biondo’s ancient sources. In Biondo’s own time, and for some centuries after, however, as William Stenhouse argues in this volume,

Roma triumphans

was a book that readers wanted to have and consult precisely because, as a compilation, it made accessible information regarded as of great interest. Biondo’s own contribution, not a small one, was “in his ability to identify and order sources”.

In this he was motivated not just by the urge to collect facts (strong as it was) but also by a desire to create knowledge through questioning, reasoning, and making connections.

In 1927 Nogara laid a solid foundation for further work on Biondo.

Since then attention to Biondo’s last great work has gradually been gathering momentum, and the past ten years have seen an acceleration of publications,

some devoted to particular books or themes within the work, or to aspects of them.

Digressions away from the main topics have also provided fertile avenues into Biondo’s attitudes and ideas, and we include in this volume a study of another one

(pp. 119-33).

Nevertheless,

Roma triumphans

is still “una miniera da esplorare”, as one of our contributors, Giuseppe Marcellino, once put it. In this volume we have gathered together exploratory forays that differ in nature, our aim being to showcase a range of possible approaches to the work. Good general work has been done; now, critical editions apart, the need is for closer study of Biondo’s works.

In Part I (Context, genre, and purpose), both Anne Raffarin (“La célébration des triomphes de Rome dans la

Roma instaurata

et la

Roma triumphans

de Flavio Biondo”) and Angelo Mazzocco (“The Rapport Between the

Respublica Romana

and the

Respublica Christiana

in Biondo Flavio’s

Roma triumphans

”) compare the epilogues of

Roma instaurata

and

Roma triumphans

, in the interests of exploring the literary, cultural, historical, and politico-religious contexts of the two works. Raffarin emphasizes the importance of Biondo’s conception of the ancient Roman triumph for his presentation of the triumph of the restored Christian Rome. Biondo’s endorsement of the papal project of restoration is grounded in the old tradition of the praise of a city. On the other hand, his concern with ancient models of institutions can be related to contemporary projects to reform the Curia and the Christian world. In contrast, Mazzocco insists on the differences between the two epilogues. He shows how the conclusion of

Roma triumphans

is closely connected to the purpose of Biondo’s work itself, infused as it is with admiration for the success of the Roman state. In the epilogue the Christian state is measured against the ancient Roman state and found wanting, however. Biondo’s disillusion is a reaction to the failure of the European leaders at the Congress of Mantua (1459) to deal with the Ottoman threat to Europe. Biondo had observed the growth of this threat all his adult life and had advocated strong military action against it in a group of works written after the Fall of Constantinople (1453), all of which are discussed by Mazzocco.

Frances Muecke’s questions are to do with the nature and composition of

Roma triumphans

(“The Genre(s) and the Making of

Roma triumphans

”). As a work it is difficult to label (“history” or “antiquarianism”?; “treatise” or “encyclopedia”?), and there seem to be no precedents of the same scope and scale dealing with Roman institutions. She argues that it is best situated in, but not limited by, the capacious tradition of the compilation, within which it founds a new branch. In

assembling it Biondo drew on a variety of current genres of scholarship, and different kinds of ancient or late antique scholarly works also leave their structural traces.

In Part II (

Mores et instituta

) the contributors explore aspects of some of the main topics of

Roma triumphans

: religion, government, the army, and private life. Frances Muecke’s contribution (“

Gentiles nostri

: Roman Religion and Roman Identity in Biondo Flavio’s

Roma triumphans

”) has two parts. In the first she discusses the inherent ambiguity in Biondo’s attitude to the religion of the Romans, which partly arises from the tensions in and between his Christian and ancient sources. She argues that Biondo uses large extracts from Eusebius’s

Preparation for the Gospel

to give a positive gloss to Roman religion in comparison with other pagan religions. In the second part she examines Biondo’s references to “survivals” of Roman religion life, and shows how Biondo’s account of the Roman priesthoods is coloured by his contemporary perspective.

James Hankins’ “Biondo Flavio on the Roman Republic” is an exciting demonstration that, though

Roma triumphans

is primarily descriptive, it is not simply a source book, or even a highly effective “research tool”. At its heart is a coherent interpretation of the workings of the Romans’ mixed constitution. Hankins sets Biondo’s reconstruction of republican institutions and mores in the contexts of contemporary historico-political thought and Renaissance understandings and uses of the term

respublica

, teasing out the elements of Biondo’s own reading of the dynamics of Roman government. For Biondo (and he was not alone in this), he argues that Rome’s greatness did not spring from a specific constitutional form but from the adherence of her leaders to private and public virtue.

In “Un excursus umanistico sulle letterature dell’Antichità: Biondo Flavio e i classici (

Roma triumphans

,

iv

, p. 96-100)”, Giuseppe Marcellino tackles a telling digression on writers and literary production in ancient Rome. He considers the puzzling placement of the excursus in the central book of the set of three on Roman government, inset into a discussion of slavery and manumission, concluding that it is intended to contribute to a characterization of the contrasting condition of the “free man”, devoted to study of the liberal arts. In the main part of his chapter Marcellino analyzes Biondo’s choice, use, and presentation of his “mosaic” of sources in the service of the positive picture of Roman civilization that he wants to offer.

The next main division of

Roma triumphans

, books

vi

and

vii

devoted to the military system, is represented by Ida Gilda Mastrorosa’s “Roman Military Discipline in Biondo Flavio’s

Roma triumphans

: Punishments and Rewards”. She traces Biondo’s trains of thought through the particular combination of sources he uses to highlight the central importance of discipline for Roman military success, something on which the humanist sets great store. One the one hand Biondo

adduces specific episodes from the historians, but on the other he makes use of sections of the

Digest

, which offer socio-cultural comments together with technical legal details. Again, historically-aware analysis of the sources is the key to understanding Biondo’s multi-faceted reconstruction of the institutions of Roman society.

At the beginning of book

ix

(the second on private life) Biondo signals the topic of the buildings of ancient Rome as one long dear to his heart. Accordingly, our last two chapters in this section deal with this subject. A disagreement Biondo once had with his friend Francesco Barbaro (reported at the beginning of book

ix

) gives Maurizio Campanelli in “Il libro

ix

della

Roma triumphans

: una

querelle

umanistica degli antichi e dei moderni?” the entrée to his wide-ranging study of medieval and humanist attitudes to the monumental remains of Rome. Biondo resists the view that the unimpressive ruins to be seen in the Rome of his own day represent the magnificence of Rome in her greatest period. That is irrecoverably lost and, Biondo contends, beyond modern imitation. Ancient Rome far surpassed the most splendid dwellings to be seen in any modern Italian city, as the real evidence — the literary sources that, for Biondo, must be the basis of a true historical reconstruction — shows.

Peter Fane-Saunders (“Pyres, Villas, and Mansions: Architectural Fragments in Biondo Flavio’s

Roma triumphans

”) considers Biondo’s response to three categories of Roman architecture: the tower-shaped pyre in book

ii

, and the villa and the city mansion in book

ix

. Setting his account within the context of Quattrocento architectural discourse (primarily Leon Battista Alberti’s

De re aedificatoria

), Fane-Saunders first shows that Biondo is not alone in his interest in the construction of stepped-tower structures. Next, he gives a close analysis of the detail of Biondo’s discussion of the villa and mansion, which was built on a rich range of literary sources, and inspired by a continuing fascination with the ruins to be seen in the Roman

campagna

.

In Part III (Reception) we focus on three phases: that of the manuscript dissemination of

Roma triumphans

immediately following its completion; then of the later fifteenth to early sixteenth centuries, before the publication of any other major historico-antiquarian synthesis of similar material; and finally of the late-sixteenth-century antiquarianism and beyond. In “‘Librariis certatim transcribere contendentibus’: la tradizione manoscritta e la prima ricezione della

Roma triumphans

di Biondo Flavio”, Maria Agata Pincelli shows that the results of her collation of a number of the surviving manuscripts support Biondo’s own account of the publication of

Roma triumphans

. Differently from

Italia illustrata

and the

Decades

, it was published once and for all as a finished work, in multiple copies produced under the supervision of the author. A number of manuscripts with common elements can be attributed to this early stage of diffusion in which elite readers were keen to obtain copies.

Paul Gwynne’s “Triumphs and Triumphators in the Wake of the

Roma triumphans

” comes back to Biondo’s call for a crusade and a new triumph of Rome and its legacy well into the sixteenth century. He tackles an unavoidable problem:

Roma triumphans

speaks to many of the central interests and concerns of the generation following Biondo, yet its influence is hard to document. From the antiquarian scholarship of Raffaele Maffei and Pomponio Leto to the papal triumph in real life and in commemorative art and epic poems, Gwynne samples a range of rich material to demonstrate the continuing relevance of

Roma triumphans

.

In contrast, Anne Raffarin (“Fulvio lecteur de Biondo: questions religieuses dans la

Roma triumphans

et les

Antiquitates urbis

”) studies one later reader of

Roma triumphans

. Andrea Fulvio’s

Antiquitates urbis

(1527) is primarily a work on the topography of ancient Rome, yet one in which the new world of Roman institutions opened up by

Roma triumphans

must now be brought to bear on the understanding of the physical city. Particularly productive in this regard are Biondo’s materials on temples and gods, rites, cults, and festivals, the transformation of which Raffarin traces especially in

Antiquitates

book

v

, where Fulvio describes “the sacred places of the city”.

Finally, William Stenhouse (“Flavio Biondo and Later Renaissance Antiquarianism”) explores the survival of

Roma triumphans

as sixteenth-century scholarship on Roman institutions took new paths after Biondo (such as in the more specialized disciplines of humanist jurisprudence and numismatics). The last Latin edition of

Roma triumphans

was printed in 1559, at which point its usefulness as the catch-all reference work its users wanted it to be was beginning to decline, though Biondo’s reputation was still high. In the ensuing century, professional historians distanced themselves from

Roma triumphans

, but other writers consulted it and cited it just as much as before, despite the competition of more up-to-date antiquarian syntheses.

Since the early Renaissance the relationship of

Roma triumphans

with its readers has undergone a drastic change. Biondo’s first readers were primarily interested in his systematic and detailed reconstruction of the world of ancient Rome, a mirror by which they were invited to reflect upon their own world.

Today’s readers look elsewhere, for what

Roma triumphans

can tell us about its own world and that of its author.

p.9

1

For surveys of Biondo’s life and works see Riccardo Fubini, “Biondo Flavio”, in

DBI

, 10 (Rome, 1968), pp. 536-59; Domenico Defilippis, “Biondo (Flavio)”, in

Centuriae Latinae

,

vol.

ii

: Cent une figures humanistes de la Renaissance aux Lumières: À la mémoire de Marie-Madeleine de La Garanderie

, ed. by Colette Nativel and others, Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 414 (Geneva, 2006), pp. 87-105; Marc Laureys, “Biondo Flavio”, in

Brill’s New Pauly Supplements

i

, vol. 6: History of Classical Scholarship — A Biographical Dictionary

(Leiden and Boston, 2014), pp. 53-54; Angelo Mazzocco, “Introduction” to

A New Sense of the Past: The Scholarship of Biondo Flavio (1392-1463)

, ed. by Angelo Mazzocco and Marc Laureys, Supplementa humanistica Lovaniensia, 39 (Leuven, 2016), pp. 9-34. Mazzocco is working on a book entitled

Biondo Flavio and Renaissance Thought

.

p.10

2

Angelo Mazzocco, “Biondo Flavio and the Antiquarian Tradition”, in

Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Bononiensis

:

Proceedings of the Fourth International Congress of Neo-Latin Studies

, ed. by Richard J. Schoeck (Binghamton, NY, 1985), pp. 123-36; Id., “A Reconsideration of Renaissance Antiquarianism in Light of Biondo Flavio’s

Ars Antiquaria

”,

Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome

, 59/60 (2014/2015), 121-59; William Stenhouse, “Panvinio and

Descriptio

: Renditions of History and Antiquity in the Late Renaissance”,

Papers of the British School at Rome

, 80 (2012), 233-56.

3

For Poliziano, see Frances Muecke, “

Fama superstes

? Soundings in the Reception of Biondo Flavio’s

Roma triumphans

”, in

A New Sense of the Past

, pp. 219

-

41 (p. 224) and, for Voltaire, Fubini, “Biondo Flavio”, p. 557.

4

The sole translation is the one into Italian of Lucio Fauno,

Roma trionfante

(Venice, 1544, 1548, 1549), which omits many of the citations of Latin sources.

5

It is only recently that this situation has begun to be remedied. It was lamented by Denys Hay, “Flavio Biondo and the Middle Ages”,

Proceedings of the British Academy

, 65 (1960), 97-127 (pp. 101-02) = Id.,

Renaissance Essays

(London, 1988), pp. 35-63 (pp. 39-40). More generally see Christopher S. Celenza,

The Lost Italian Renaissance: Humanists, History and Latin’s Legacy

(Baltimore and London, 2004), with William Stenhouse’s review in

Bryn Mawr Classical Review

2004.09.29. Critical editions of all of Biondo’s works are now in progress for the “Edizione Nazionale delle Opere di Flavio Biondo”. The first volume of the I Tatti Renaissance Library edition of

Rome in Triumph

appeared in 2016.

p.11

6

P. 273.

7

Bartolomeo Nogara, ed.,

Scritti inediti e rari di Biondo Flavio

, Studi e testi, 48 (Rome, 1927). See Augusto Campana, “Biondo Flavio da Forlì”,

La Romagna

, 16 (1927), 487-97 = Id.,

Scritti

,

vol.

i

: Ricerche medievali e umanistiche

, ed. by Rino Avesani, Michele Feo, and Enzo Pruccoli (Rome, 2008), pp. 7-22.

8

Important landmarks are Arnaldo Momigliano, “Ancient History and the Antiquarian”,

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes

, 13 (1950), 285-315 (often republished); Denys Hay, “Flavio Biondo and the Middle Ages”; Fubini, “Biondo Flavio”; Angelo Mazzocco, “Some Philological Aspects of Biondo Flavio’s

Roma triumphans

”,

Humanistica Lovanensia

, 28 (1979), 1-26; Id., “Biondo Flavio and the Antiquarian Tradition”; Marina Tomassini, “Per una lettura della

Roma triumphans

di Biondo Flavio”, in

Tra Romagna ed Emilia nell’Umanesimo: Biondo e Cornazzano

, ed. by Marina Tomassini and Claudia Bonavigo (Bologna, 1985), pp. 9-80; Maria Agata Pincelli, “La

Roma triumphans

e la nascita dell’antiquaria: Biondo Flavio e Andrea Mantegna”,

Studiolo

, 5 (2007), 19-28, reprinted in

Mantegna e Roma. L’artista davanti all’antico

, ed. by Teresa Calvano, Claudia Cieri Via, and Leandro Ventura (Rome, 2010), pp. 79-97.

9

On books

i

-

ii

: Frances Muecke, “

Gentiles nostri

: Roman Religion and Roman Identity in Biondo Flavio’s

Roma triumphans

”,

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes

, 75 (2012), 93-110 (= pp. 77-99 of this volume); Ida Gilda Mastrorosa, “Paganesimo e cristianesimo nella ‘Roma Triumphans’ di Biondo Flavio”, in

Roma pagana e Roma cristiana nel Rinascimento

, ed. by Luisa Rotondi Secchi Tarugi (Florence, 2014), pp. 217-30. On the last section of book

iii

: Frances Muecke, “Biondo Flavio on the Roman Elections”,

Papers of the British School at Rome

, 84 (2016), 275-97. On book

vi

: Ida Gilda Mastrorosa, “Biondo Flavio e i

militiae Romanae instituta

: una lezione ‘moderna’ su fondamenti e caratteri dell’impero di Roma”,

TECHNAI: An International Journal for Ancient Science and Technology

, 2 (2011), 85-103. On the first part of book

viii

: Ida Gilda Mastrorosa, “Biondo Flavio e le istituzioni di Roma antica: matrimonio e famiglia nella

Roma Triumphans

”, in

Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Budapestinensis

, ed. by Rhoda Schnur, David Money, and others (Tempe, AZ, 2010), pp. 471-79.

p.12

10

Frances Muecke, “

Ante oculos ponere

: Vision and Imagination in Flavio Biondo’s

Roma triumphans

”,

Papers of the British School at Rome

, 79 (2011), 275-98; Giuseppe Marcellino, “Lo studio delle antichità romane e la propaganda antiturca nella

Roma triumphans

di Biondo Flavio”,

Studi Classici e Orientali

, 60 (2014), 163-86.

11

Ottavio Clavuot,

Biondos “Italia illustrata” — Summa oder Neuschöpfung? Über die Arbeitsmethoden eines Humanisten

, Bibliothek des Deutschen Historischen Instituts in Rom, 69 (Tübingen, 1990), p. 9; Riccardo Fubini,

Storiografia dell’umanesimo in Italia da Leonardo Bruni ad Annio da Viterbo

, Storia e letteratura, 217 (Rome, 2003), p. 177.

p.15

12

“... the City of Rome when it flourished, a mirror, model, image, and lesson of all moral excellence and of the way of living well, religiously, and happily...”, Biondo,

Roma triumphans

, Proem, p. 2.

Part I Context, Genre, and Purpose

La célébration des triomphes de Rome par Flavio Biondo dans la

Roma instaurata

et la

Roma triumphans

Anne Raffarin

Le 28 septembre 1443, le pape Eugène IV reprend possession de Rome après quelques années d’éloignement du siège pontifical, mais l’incurie des pouvoirs publics et les guerres intestines propres à cette époque avaient contribué à semer dans la ville un désordre comparable à celui des années avignonnaises. Dès lors, la volonté pontificale de reconstruire la Ville apparaît dans la littérature de l’époque en même temps que le dessein de la rétablir dans sa double autorité, terrestre et spirituelle.

Dans ce contexte, les œuvres de Flavio Biondo, secrétaire à la curie pontificale de 1435 à 1460, revêtent une importance cruciale puisqu’elles constituent un état des lieux détaillé et exhaustif ainsi qu’une restauration virtuelle, préalable nécessaire à la restauration matérielle que vont entreprendre les pontifes. Les titres des ouvrages de Flavio Biondo auxquels nous allons nous intéresser sont assez éloquents :

Roma instaurata

(1446), Rome restaurée dans sa topographie et sa splendeur antiques, et

Roma triumphans

(1459), Rome triomphante rétablie dans sa grandeur passée sur le plan institutionel, politique, et religieux.

Si

instaurare

implique, au sens premier, une restauration matérielle des monuments, qu’elle soit l’œuvre des ouvriers ou de l’antiquaire, il faut également envisager l’

instauratio

au sens de refondation, de rétablissement de la Ville sur les fondements stables, en prélude à un nouvel essor, à une renaissance. La concomitance des deux projets se fait jour dans quelques passages des œuvres de Biondo : quoique prépondérante, la restauration matérielle de la Ville n’exclut pas — elle introduit même — sa refondation sur de nouvelles bases, non seulement matérielles, mais également institutionnelles et religieuses. Les deux textes s’achèvent sur une comparaison entre la Rome antique et la Rome des papes qui ne comporte pour autant aucune confusion, tant la diversité des situations est bien perçue par Biondo.

Pour lui en effet, il s’agit bien de restaurer Rome dans sa prime autorité sur l’ensemble des nations et de restituer l’

aura

antique que lui conférait son rôle de modèle et d’inspiratrice de tout ce qu’il y a de grand en ce monde. Au terme de la préface de la

Roma triumphans

, une formule contient à elle seule le programme de l’œuvre entreprise : c’est l’

Vrbem Romam florentem

que Biondo veut redéfinir afin d’insuffler à ses contemporains, par l’admiration du modele antique, la détermination de forger à leur tour une cité à l’image de cette

rerum domina

de la

Roma instaurata

.

Cette entreprise de création d’une nouvelle image de Rome se situe au carrefour de trois influences nettement distinctes : tout d’abord, celle des historiens antiques dont les œuvres sous-tendent l’exposé sur les triomphes et permettent la transition avec le triomphe de la nouvelle Rome ; d’autre part, ce genre bien codifié qu’est l’éloge des cités, et s’il faut se souvenir que ce genre s’était constitué au Moyen Age et jusqu’au milieu du Quattrocento, on ne peut ignorer ni la distance que prend Biondo par rapport à cette tradition, ni l’originalité de l’idée selon laquelle Rome peut renaître sur les vestiges antiques sans ignorer le Moyen Age ; enfin, les sermons des prêcheurs et des réformateurs de la curie qui définissent les préalables à un nouveau triomphe de Rome. Etudier la réception de ces trois types d’œuvres chez Biondo, c’est aussi examiner leur réappropriation par l’historien qui les met au service d’une idéologie nouvelle et d’un objectif propre.

La

restauratio

est justifiée par la sacralité de Rome nouvellement rétablie dans sa dignité par le retour si significatif d’Eugène IV. Aussi la continuité de Rome est-elle due à la présence du pontife qui va précisément légitimer et donner un sens à la célébration du triomphe d’une nouvelle Rome. Pourtant, la présentation du triomphe de cette Rome restaurée et christianisée n’est jamais séparée chez Biondo de la célébration de sa splendeur antique. Comme en prélude à la double évocation des triomphes de Rome dans la

Roma triumphans

, la célébration du triomphe de la Rome chrétienne dans la

Roma instaurata

(

iii

.82) prenait pour point de départ le rappel de la notice officielle du triomphe de Pompée dans l’

Histoire Naturelle

de Pline (

vii

.97) avant de se prolonger en un rapprochement entre les deux Rome : « comparatio qualis vetustae et praesentis Romae » (

iii

.84). Les dernières pages de la

Roma instaurata

s’avèrent essentielles par le lien qu’elles établissent avec la

Roma triumphans

qui, de treize années postérieures, introduit une nouvelle fois la célébration du triomphe de Rome sur la base d’une étude institutionelle des triomphes antiques.

La description détaillée des triomphes des empereurs à partir de César prend appui sur les œuvres des historiens et l’on constate d’ailleurs que certaines sources sont communes aux deux textes : ainsi, le récit que fait Pline du triomphe de Pompée est cité dans les deux œuvres, complété dans la

Roma triumphans

par une référence à Plutarque,

Vie de Pompée

, 45.1 ; Suétone est cité pour son récit des triomphes respectifs de César et d’Auguste (

Vie de César

, 37,

Vie d’Auguste

, 42) ; Flavius Josèphe est cité, de même que dans la

Roma instaurata

, pour son récit du triomphe de Vespasien et Titus (

La guerre des Juifs

,

vii

.5.4), Flavius Vopiscus est cité à deux reprises pour le triomphe d’Aurélien, puis de Probus (

Histoire Auguste, Aurélien

, 33.1-5 ;

Probus

, 19.2), et enfin une rapide allusion est faite à Tite-Live pour le triomphe de Scipion (

Histoire Romaine

,

xxx

.45.5-6). Pour un humaniste tel que Flavio Biondo, la célébration de la nouvelle Rome nécessitait un solide ancrage dans l’Antiquité afin de développer un parallèle transcendant les clivages chronologiques et permettant l’articulation avec les triomphes de la Rome chrétienne : ainsi, au terme du chapitre intitulé

triumphi descriptio

, Biondo souligne-t-il la similitude entre le triomphe des généraux Romains et le cortège triomphal qui accompagne les papes du Vatican jusqu’au Latran, similitude qui le frappe même dans les vêtements d’apparat des cardinaux qui ne peuvent manquer de rappeler ceux des prêtres Saliens. Par ailleurs, les chroniqueurs qui décrivent le couronnement des papes et codifient les nouvelles pratiques pontificales emploient des termes qui rappellent les pratiques antiques : au sujet d’Innocent VIII (1490) par exemple, on lit : « per decem dies triumphavit ». De même, à l’occasion du couronnement d’Alexandre VI ou de Jules II ont été construits « multi arcus triumphales ». C’est l’époque où l’on commence à prendre l’habitude d’élever à la gloire de la cité des édifices éphémères, destinés à décorer ultérieurement différents sites urbains. Par ailleurs, le récit du couronnement de certains papes dans le

Liber pontificalis

rappelle également le déroulement des triomphes antiques. Or nous savons que Biondo connaissait bien ce texte dont il subsiste même un manuscrit annoté de sa main ; il est tout à fait possible que le

Liber pontificalis

constitue une source inavouée de notre auteur lorsqu’il souligne les points communs entre ces deux types de cortèges triomphaux. En effet, certaines formules renvoyant à la liesse qui entourait le triomphateur, à la densité de la population réunie ce jour-là et à la magnificence de Rome, sont aussi bien caractéristiques des deux types de triomphes et permettent le parallélisme envisagé par Biondo : « plurimis turbis utriusque sexus et diversi ordinis acclamantibus, cum ingenti applausu populi plebisque... ».

De plus, le cérémonial des processions pontificales fait l’objet de descriptions détaillées dans des textes portant le nom d’

Ordo

 ; le premier

ordo

connu et celui de Benoît, chanoine de Saint-Pierre, compilé entre 1140 et 1143. Cinquante ans plus tard, l’

ordo

de Cencius Camerarius indique, outre l’itinéraire de la procession, l’atmosphère et le faste qui régnaient dans la Ville à cette occasion et qui méritent d’être rapprochés des triomphes antiques : en effet, les riverains ornaient les rues avec des arcs décorés de guirlandes, les tours étaient décorées de bannières et de tentures pourpres et dans le cortège lui-même, la noblesse était vêtue de soie claire ou de pourpre, la musique des trompettes, des harpes, et des cymbales retentissait et le peuple accompagné d’enfants accueillait le pontife avec des rameaux d’olivier. Les hauts personnages, à commencer par le pontife, ne manquaient pas non plus de jeter des pièces que le menu peuple se précipitait pour ramasser : les pièces projetées dans les directions opposées avaient pour fonction d’éviter l’engorgement des ponts ou des artères trop étroites par la foule compacte des badauds.

On ne peut donc que souligner l’originalité que présente la célébration de la Rome triomphante par Biondo dans la mesure où elle associe le triomphe de la Rome antique, solidement assis...