Polydor Virgil

Polydor Virgil (Italian Polidoro Virgilio , Latin Polydorus Vergilius or Virgilius ; * around 1470 , † April 18, 1555 in Urbino ) was an Italian humanist who worked in England for half a century.

Life

The second son of the pharmacist Giorgio Virgilio grew up near Urbino . Later he received a humanistic degree in Padua , probably also in Bologna. He was ordained priest around 1496. Virgil had contact with the ducal court in Urbino with his famous Renaissance library, because the tutor of the young Guidobaldo da Montefeltro , Lodovico Odassio , encouraged him in his first years of work. Virgil showed his gratitude by dedicating his work De rerum inventoribus to Odassio, which was printed in Venice in 1499. The year before, Virgil's first book De Proverbiis ( On Proverbs , the later, greatly expanded edition was called De adagiis ) had been printed in the same city. At a young age, this revealed his two main activities later on for Virgil: as a cleric and author of humanistic works.

In 1502 he was sent to England to exercise the post of sub- collector and to collect the taxes to be paid to the Curia in Rome. In this office he represented the main collector (since 1489) Adriano Castellesi , who, although staying only a little in England, was also Bishop of Hereford and was appointed cardinal in 1503. This bustling cardinal practiced under Pope Alexander VI. exerted a great influence on the curia and also enjoyed a high reputation at the English royal court.

Apart from a few stays in Italy, Polydor Virgil lived in England for around 50 years and only finally returned to his hometown Urbino at the age of 83. Between 1503 and 1513, Virgil received a number of benefices that ensured him a stable livelihood and, despite the beginning of the Reformation, enabled a certain influence in the English Church. The most important of these were from 1508 the office of Archdeacon of Wells in the western English diocese of Bath and Wells (Castellesi was now enthroned on this bishopric) and a benefice at St. Paul's Cathedral in London. When not at the Wells Chapter, Virgil lived near St. Paul's Churchyard in London. Since 1508 a member of Doctors' Commons, a fine London dining club for the intellectual elite, he enjoyed the company of important prelates and scholars there.

His career in the Church - as a priest, as a representative of the papal curia in England and as a church politician in this country - as well as as a scholar, was very European at the time. He was known or friends with important humanists and churchmen such as Thomas More , John Fisher , Erasmus of Rotterdam , Richard Fox , the Venetian historian Marcantonio Sabellico and the humanist Filippo Beroaldo from Bologna. He also enjoyed good connections with the English court, the Dukes of Urbino and the Curia in Rome. Virgil's books were printed in numerous European countries and translated from Latin into eight different languages.

It was arguably the patronage of the increasingly controversial Cardinal Castellesi and the hostility of the powerful Thomas Wolsey , Archbishop of York and later Lord Chancellor, that ultimately contributed to Virgil's career stagnating in the hierarchy of the Church. Castellesi, church diplomat at international level and one of the most colorful personalities of his time, was able to after the death of Alexander VI. (1503) did not expand his power base in Rome under the later popes. As the Cardinal's star began to decline in the second decade of the sixteenth century, Virgil's position in London also weakened. In 1515, Virgil was imprisoned in the Tower of London for eight months after letters to Castellesi containing incriminating statements were intercepted and passed on to Wolsey. Virgil was released after violent protests, including from Leo X. , but had to give up the post of sub-collector in the same year. On top of that. When Castellesi was accused of involvement in the murder plot against Leo X. in 1517 and fled Rome, Virgil stood without a protector at the curia. He drew the consequences of the violent political scuffles and then stayed away from international church diplomacy. He remained active in his church offices and in the convocation (the English church parliament) for another three decades, but now devoted himself primarily to his literary interests. With his excellent knowledge of Latin and as an astute observer of the development of his very troubled time, especially in the field of religion, Virgil contributed to the worldview and scholarship of the Renaissance humanism developed in Italy being adopted in England and other European countries.

Works

Anglica historia

The up-known today Product Virgil's literary activity is its Anglica historia (written 1506-1514, printed 1534), the first humanist, source-critical view of English history with a report of the events leading to the death of Henry VII. 1509 (in later editions to 1538 ). The then English King Henry VII, impressed by Virgil's erudition and early literary success, commissioned him to write the work. With him, the Italian made great contributions to English historiography and influenced authors such as Francis Bacon and William Shakespeare . Many of his contemporaries in England, however, attacked him because of his myth-destroying dealings with the history of the country and especially with the legend of Arthur , but also because Virgil remained an old believer even after the break with Rome in 1534 under Henry VIII . In the Anglica historia, his portrayal of Henry VII is particularly valued. Virgil's account of the reign of Henry VIII is considered to be a bit one-sided because of his malicious characterization of Wolsey but also his emphasis on foreign affairs (in order to divert attention from his silence about many domestic political developments).

De rerum inventoribus

Virgil's second major work is a treatise on the inventors of all things: De rerum inventoribus , published in Venice in 1499 initially as a three-volume work, supplemented by five further volumes and printed in Basel in 1521 by Johannes Froben . With this work, Virgil established the new interest of modernity in the figure of the inventor. In contrast to the term inventor, which is more narrowly defined today, Virgil took the term invention very broadly, because he interpreted it as a creative cultural act of human self-assertion. Ultimately, all (cultural) history since creation is a series of inventions in the sense of first steps and origins. The first three volumes of the work include such innovations as alphabets, laws and forms of government, fruit growing, obelisks and warm baths, sorted by subject area.

While Virgil dealt mostly with the inventors of the ancient world in the first volumes, he devoted himself in the five later volumes to the beginnings (ie inventions) of Christian institutions. With his astute analysis of the institutions of the Christian church (priesthood, confession, sacrifices, various rites, etc.) as they existed in his time, and their beginnings in Jewish and Roman customs and institutions or as papal renewals, Virgil entered new territory and contributed significantly to the historicization of the process of development of the medieval church. Overall, his De rerum inventoribus can be seen as a prototypical cultural history. During the first decades of the Reformation, Virgil remained loyal to the Roman Church; but with his critical remarks about the origins and thus the legitimacy of the institutions, Virgil drew the attention of the censors to his book. It was added to the Forbidden Book Index in the mid-16th century ; later editions had to be expurgated (ie "cleaned") in Catholic countries.

Editions of one or more of Virgil's works can be found in numerous libraries with historical books; In the Munich State Library alone there are 61 copies of De rerum inventoribus in 41 editions. Even in Virgil's time, this work was translated into five languages ​​and reprinted around 40 times; it was a Renaissance bestseller.

Other works

• the edition of the 8th edition of Niccolò Perotti's huge Martial Commentary, Cornucopiae , Venice 1496
• In dominicam precem commentariolum ( Commentary on the Our Father ), first printed in Basel with De rerum inventoribus in 1525,
• an edition of Gildas ' De calamitate, excidio et conquestu Britanniae , the first critical edition of a work of older English historiography, printed in 1525
• At the suggestion of Erasmus, Virgil translated a short work, ascribed to the church father John Chrysostom , Regis et monachi comparatio (printed in Paris 1530)
• De prodigiis et sortibus libri III (written in 1526 and 1527, but not printed until 1531); Virgil dedicated this dialogue to Francesco Maria I della Rovere , Duke of Urbino.
• three dialogues, printed in 1545 in Basel: De patientia et eius fructu libri II , De vita Perfecta liber I and De veritate et mendacio liber I . The first dialogue, On Patience , was dedicated to Guidobaldo II, Duke of Urbino.
• his last dialogue De Iureiurando et periurio liber I , dedicated to John, the 1st Duke of Northumberland, was printed in Basel in 1553, together with the four previous dialogues.

Text editions and translations

• Brian P. Copenhaver (Ed.): Polydore Virgil: On Discovery . Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Massachusetts) 2002, ISBN 0-674-00789-1 (contains Books I – III; Latin text and English translation)
• John Langley (translator): Polydori Virgilii de Rerum Inventoribus. Translated into English. New York 1868.
• Markus Tach ( transl .): Vergilius Polydorus, From the inventors of the Dyngen. Augsburg 1537.
• Beno Weiss, Louis C. Pérez (translator): Beginnings and discoveries. Polydore Vergil's De inventoribus rerum . Nieuwkoop 1997 (translation of all eight volumes into English)

literature

• Catherine Atkinson: Inventing inventors in Renaissance Europe. Polydore Vergil's De inventoribus rerum , Tübingen 2007.
• Rolando Bacchielli (ed.): Polidoro Virgili e la cultura umanistica europea (= Atti del convegno internazionale di studi e celebrazioni ). Urbino 2003.
• Brian P. Copenhaver: The historiography of discovery in the Renaissance: The sources and composition of Polydore Vergil's De inventoribus rerum, I – III . In: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 41 (1978), pp. 192-214
• Denys Hay: Polydore Virgil. Renaissance Historian and Man of Letters . Oxford 1952
• Frank Rexroth : Polydor Virgil as a historian and the English contribution to European humanism . In: Johannes Helmrath , Ulrich Muhlack, Gerrit Walther (eds.): Diffusion of Humanism. Studies on the national historiography of European humanists . Göttingen 2002, pp. 415-35.

Web links

• Works by and about Polydor Virgil  in the German Digital Library
• Anglica Historia (Latin text and English translation)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Polydori Vergilii Urbinatis De inventoribus Rerum Libri Tres. Venice 1499.