Translating Impiety: Girolamo Frachetta and the First Vernacular Commentary on Lucretius

Abstract

This essay sheds light on an important but largely overlooked chapter in the story of the early modern reception of Lucretius’ De rerum natura: the publication, in 1589, of Girolamo Frachetta’s Breve spositione di tutta l’opera di Lucretio, the first publication to systematically explicate the philosophical content of Lucretius’ poem in a vernacular language. Published more than half a century before the first vernacular translation of the poem, Frachetta’s commentary was a groundbreaking effort to make Lucretius’ version of Epicurean philosophy accessible not only to the Latin-educated elite, but to a broader vernacular readership – a potentially dangerous enterprise at a time when professing belief in the more controversial tenets of Epicurean philosophy could provoke investigation for heresy by the Inquisition. This essay shows how Frachetta crafted a commentary capable of effectively explicating Lucretius’ philosophy to a vernacular readership, while taking measures to proactively defend himself from possible accusations of heresy and his text from the threat of suppression.