Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester (1390-1447) and the Italian Humanists by Susanne Saygin (review)

Abstract

MLRy 99.3, 2004 799 1950s that a critical edition was imminent, but it was only in 1979 that Altamura produced his edition (Naples: Societa Editrice Napoletana), improving on the defective one by Lumbroso (Rome: Accademia dei Lincei, 1888), followed by those of Lo Monaco (Bergamo: Lubrina, 1990) and Paolella (Bologna: Commissione per i Testi di Lingua, 1993). Apart from these editions, which contain both the Latin and the vernacular versions of the text, Cachey was also able to benefit from Michele Feo's studies, which he calls 'the most important contributions to the philological reconnaissance of the text [. . .] short of a critical edition' (p. 63). He has accepted Feo's identification of the late fourteenth-century Cremona codex as being the closest to Petrarch's original 1358 text and has thus used it forhis edition. The firstfeature which strikes one in Petrarch's text is that the pilgrimage starts from Genoa and proceeds down the Tyrrhenian coast of Italy, whereas one is used to early pilgrimages starting from Venice and calling at Dalmatian and Greek ports on the way to Jaffa.Cachey accepts Alfonso Paolella's simple and credible explanation for this deviance. With this route Petrarch could describe places he knew well, particu? larly the Ligurian and Campanian coasts. Differently again from the norm, pilgrims are not urged to revere many relies, apart from the 'catino santo' in Genoa (this is here called the Holy Grail?I would have liked a fuller note), but are mostly treated to classical and historical reminiscences, or to details of architecture and landscape. Once in the Holy Land and furtherinto Egypt, neither of which Petrarch had visited, very general information is provided, drawn from the Gospels and fromclassical texts like Flavius Josephus, and St Jerome's Pilgrimage of the Holy Paula. Petrarch does not rely on recent pilgrims' accounts and does not attempt to provide a real guide. It seems that in the end the political situation prevented Mandelli fromcarrying out his pilgrimage, so, rather appropriately, the literary,personal exercise on Petrarch's part remained a purely virtual account also for his dedicatee. This volume is an important contribution to medieval travel literature and a very welcome addition to Petrarch's corpus in English. University College London Laura Lepschy Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester (i3go-i44j) and the ltalian Humanists. By Susanne Saygin. (Brill's Studies in Intellectual History, 105) Leiden: Brill. 2002. xiv + 307 pp. ?83. ISBN 90-04-12015-7. Do not be misled by the title: this monograph has significance for many scholars be? yond the happy few who are historians of the studia humanitatis in fifteenth-century England. Certainly, the longest section reinterprets the career, political and literary, of the posthumously 'Good Duke' (spelling his name not?as any Oxford doctor should?Humfrey, as in Library, but instead Humphrey, as in Bogart). In the two sections that follow, however, Susanne Saygin develops, through the use of case stu? dies, lines of argument which deserve a wide audience in humanist studies. On the one hand, she develops a model of literary patronage which places novel emphasis on the role of brokerage, that is of middlemen attempting to enhance their own position by monopolizing authors' access to a potential patron. On the other, she sheds new light on some early Quattrocento authors themselves, by studying their patterns of employment and appreciating the links between their professional and their literary careers. Moreover, her analysis tends to a general conclusion that has been stated before but which merits greater recognition: in terms of patronage of the humanists, the ltalian Renaissance was an international event. The similarity in Saygin's chosen title with that of Alfonso Sammut's Unfredo duca di Gloucester e gli umanisti italiani (Padua: Antenore, 1980) lets the reader know 800 Reviews that this is a work of reinterpretation, employing English-related examples which are already familiar to scholars. However, as Saygin wishes to read more nuanced messages into these case studies than did Sammut or Roberto Weiss earlier, so she requires increased precision from her sources. Unfortunately, the evidence is rarely so helpful, and in some cases it is downright awkward. To give one example, Saygin's analysis of one...