III.3. Manuscripts of the Classics

The first exposure to the classics came generally in the very first phases of elementary education, and indeed, the textbooks in which most students would be exposed to the language for the first time were themselves late antique works, the Ars of Donatus and the Institutiones of Priscian. After mastering the basics of the language, students would move on to poetry, including the Distichs ascribed to Cato and the Eclogues of Virgil. Afterward, they would advance to longer poetic texts, such as Virgil’s Aeneid, and to prose texts, such as Sallust’s historical monographs on Catiline and Jugurtha (cat. no. 210). Students who advanced further still would come to read a number of other texts, like the poetry of Ovid (cat. no. 209, see opposite) and Horace, the satirists Juvenal (cat. no. 208) and Persius, and the rhetorical works of Cicero.

This body of material—along with the curriculum of biblical and patristic texts in Latin—formed the common heritage of most people who received a standard literary education throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance. Together—and along with the more technical treatises from late antiquity such as Macrobius (cat. no. 193) —they provided a comprehensive introduction to the liberal arts.

As private patrons and noble families began replacing monasteries and religious institutions as the primary collectors and commissioners of books in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, it was this core group of texts that was most highly sought after, and often sumptuously produced. In the earlier Middle Ages, costly decoration and luxurious production were primarily reserved for biblical, and sometimes liturgical, texts (though there are exceptions). Manuscripts of the classics from this period tended to be spare and practical, often heavily overlaid with paratexts and pedagogical aids. With the rise of humanism, however, manuscripts of classical authors were often heavily illuminated (e.g., cat. no. 212) and sometimes illustrated (cat. no. 209).

A few authors whose importance was marginal in the earlier Middle Ages did assume central importance in the Renaissance, including Livy (cat. nos. 188-89) and Lucretius. The more substantial transformation, however, was the introduction of the Greek classics into the West. Greek studies had a continuous, if extremely marginal, history during the Middle Ages. The first texts to be translated were theological; technical texts, especially on astrology and medicine, were added later, in the eleventh and twelfth century; finally, in the later twelfth and thirteenth century, philosophical texts were translated, most notably the whole Aristotelian corpus. The Renaissance expanded the focus of Western Hellenism from just these sorts of works to include Greek literature, and by the year 1500 there was a substantial body of the Greek Literary classics available in Latin translation (e.g., cat. no. 212) as well as a Western market for books written or printed in Greek (cat. no. 213). A substantial private library in the Renaissance, the Bibilioteca Corviniana (to which cat. no. 211 might have belonged) and the Medicean library (to which cat. no. 213 might have belonged) being extreme examples, would have included three classes of classical texts: first, most of the extant ancient Latin literature (cat. nos. 208-10); second, a large selection of Greek authors in contemporary Latin translation, such as Plato in Bruni’s translation (cat. no. 212) and Aelian, in the translation ofTheodore Gaza (cat. no. 211); and finally a good selection of Greek authors in Greek, such as here the Orphic Argonautica (cat. no. 213).

The Middle Ages and the Renaissance were firmly possessed of the idea that the classics taken as a whole provided a sufficient guide to what human reason unaided by divine revelation could achieve, and that reading the classics was ethically formative for students. Ancient practical works, such as Aelian’s work on military science, were treasured for their continuing practical relevance. Historical works, such as Sallust and Livy, and political works, like Onosander on the best ruler (cat. no. 211), provided models of civic and political engagement, as well as a ready store of positive and negative examples. Literary works, suitably interpreted to be sure, like Ovid’s Heroides (cat. no. 209) or Juvenal’s Satires (cat. no. 208), taught lessons in ethical behavior while charming the reader with their elegance; docere et delectare, “to teach and to delight” was a common Renaissance slogan adapted from Horace. Finally, ancient philosophers Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, and others offered those willing to undertake the formidable challenge of mastering them the heights of what human reason could achieve. Whether these lofty ideals were realized is quite another matter; the fact that they existed was enough to ensure the importance of the classics and to give them the prestige we can see reflected in the manuscripts that survive.