Traditio

A LAYMAN'S LIFE OF ST. AUGUSTINE IN LATE MEDIEVAL ITALY: PATRONAGE AND POLEMIC By ALISON FRAZIER During the century before the Reformation, lay elites on the Italian peninsula composed a striking number of classicizing Latin texts about the saints.1 These narratives are little known, although some — for example, Leonardo Giustiniani's life of St. Nicholas, Francesco Diedo's vita of St. Roch, and Giovanni Calfurnio's passion of Simon of Trent — went into print 1 The following abbreviations will be used: BHG = Bibliotheca hagiographica graeca antiquae et mediae aetatis, ed. François Halkin, 3rd ed. (Brussels, 1957). BHL = Bibliotheca hagiographica latina antiquae et mediae aetatis, ed. Bollandist Society, 2 vols. (Brussels, 1898-99; repr. Brussels, 1949 and 1992). Sup. ed. Henri Fros (Brussels , 1986). Cf. BHLms = http://bhlms.fltr.ucl.ac.be/. CNCE = Ministro per i béni e le attività culturali (Rome), Censimento nazionale délie edizioni italiane del XVI secólo = http://editl6.iccu.sbn.it/web_iccu/ihome.htm. DBI = Dizionario biográfico degli italiani (Rome, I960-) = http://www.treccani.it/Portale/ ricerchesearchBiografie.html. DIP = Dizionario degli lstituti di Perfezione (Rome, 1974-97). ISTC = British Library, Incunabula Short Title Catalogue = http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/ istc/. Kristeller, Iter = P. O. Kristeller, 7/er Italicum: A Finding List of Uncatalogued or Incompletely Catalogued Humanistic Manuscripts of the Renaissance in Italian and Other Libraries , 6 vols. (New York, 1963-92). LA = Iacopo da Varazze, Legenda áurea, ed. Giovanni Paolo Maggioni, 2nd ed. (Florence, 1998). Lind, Letters = Levi R. Lind, The Letters of Giovanni Garzoni, Bolognese Humanist and Physician (1419-1505) (Atlanta, 1992). A version of this article was originally prepared for the 2008 Université de Nice seminar "Les Humanistes et l'Église: Pratiques culturelles et échanges entre les litterali laïcs et ecclésiastiques (Italie, début ???G-début XVIe siècle)" and will appear in the conference proceedings; I am grateful to organizers Cécile Caby and Rosa-Marie Dessi for allowing me to publish this longer version here. Other aspects were presented at the Medieval Academy of America (2008), the Center for Epigraphical and Paleographical Studies at Ohio University (2004), and the American Academy of Religion (2003). I thank the respective panel organizers — Mark Vessey, Frank Coulson, and Theodore Vial — for their comments . Work on this article was facilitated by a fellowship from the Institute for Historical Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Corrections and suggestions by the anonymous reviewer for this journal, by John Monfasani , and by Karl Gersbach, O.S.A., greatly improved this article. The errors that remain are my own. 232traditio early and have thus been more or less available for centuries.2 Others, such as Giovanni Carrara's life of Clare of Montefalco, have been recovered and edited only recently. Some remain unstudied, even unrecognized — among them Nicolaus Secundinus's translation of a Greek account of Gregory Nazianzus.4 Yet others depend on an uncertain manuscript tradition (such as George of Trebizond's passion of Andrew of Chios) or are lost entirely (e.g., Pier Candido Decembrio's life of Ambrose).5 I propose here that the authorial ambitions, the details of style and content, and the complications of context embodied in this minor literature make it very much worth knowing. This essay explores one aspect of the phenomenon of humanist hagiography — the commissioning of laypeople's Latin vitae sanctorum by the church itself — through examination of a lay humanist's life of St. Augustine. I begin by addressing the inevitable problems of definition; these problems are not new per se, but as they are new for this particular area of study, they merit some brief attention. Then, because the author is not well known, I 2 Giustiniani's Nicholas (BHL 6128) was first printed in the bilingual collection Poetae chrisiiani veteres published by Aldus in 1501/4 [CNCE 36115]. Diedo's Rochus (BHL 7273) appeared in six incunable, editions — on their importance see now Antonio Rigon and André Vauchez, eds., San Rocco: Genesi e prima expansione di un culto; Incontro di studio — Padova, 12-13 febbraio 2004, Subsidia hagiographica 87 (Brussels, 2006). Calfurnio's account can be read in the forthcoming facing-page edition and translation of...