Diana Maury Robin - Filelfo in Milan: Writings, 1451-1477

FILELFO IN MILAN

FILELFO IN MILAN

WRITINGS 14511477

Diana Robin

Princeton University Press
Princeton, New Jersey

Copyright 1991
by Princeton University Press

Published by Princeton University Press,
41 William Street,
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
in the United Kingdom:
Princeton University Press, Oxford

All Rights Reserved

library of congress cataloging-in-publication data
Robin, Diana Maury.
Filelfo in Milan: Writings 14511477 / by Diana Robin.
p. cm.
Includes Bibliographical References and Index.
isbn 0-691-03185-1 (cl)
1.Filelfo, Francesco, 1398-1481.2.Latin Poetry, Medieval and ModernItalyHistory and Criticism. 3.Authors, Latin (Medieval and Modern)ItalyCorrespondence.4.Milan (Italy)Court and CourtiersCorrespondence.5.Milan (Italy)Intellectual Life.6.HumanistsItalyCorrespondence.7.RenaissanceItalyMilan.I.TITLE.
PA8520.F5Z851991001.3092DC2091-6546CIP

This Book Has Been Composed in Linotron Galliard

Printed in the United States of America
by Princeton University Press,
Princeton, New Jersey

For my mother, Helen Kurtz, and
my children, Anne and
Robin Benning

Epistolae Familiares: 14511477

S phortias : 14531473

O dae : 14551456

P sychagogia : 14581464

D e morali disciplina : 14731475

texts and synopses

L etters to H is F riends

S forziad , B ook 3

S elected O des , B ooks 14

P sychagogia : S ynopses

D e morali disciplina , B ook 1

I llustrations

MAPS

ILLUSTRATIONS

I would like to express my appreciation and thanks to the friends, colleagues, and institutions whose support enabled me to write this book. Sponsoring four summer research trips to Italy, the Research Allocations Committee 'of the University of New Mexico provided me with seed money to initiate the project. An Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for study in the Vatican Film Archive at St. Louis first whetted my interest in the collections of humanist manuscripts I would later study in Rome. My residence as an Exxon Education Foundation Fellow at the Newberry Library in Chicago in 1985 was a turning point for me; there I met the late Eric Cochrane, Paul Gehl, Dale Kent, John Marino, Tom Mayer, Cynthia Truant, Albert Ascoli, and Florence Sandler, from whom I would learn so much. By the time I had written drafts for some of the chapters in this book, I was ready to benefit from the Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellowship I received in 1987 to spend the coming year at the American Academy in Rome. Indeed, without my studiesand unexpected discoveriesin the libraries and archives of Rome, Milan, and Florence, and minus the many conversations and consultations I enjoyed that year in the Vatican Library bar with Martha Baldwin, Concetta Bianca, the late John DAmico, Katherine Gill, Ken Gouwens, Greg Gouderian, and Ingrid Rowland, this book would have been a much poorer work. I also wish to thank the staffs of the Italian libraries and archives, who were as helpful to me as it is possible to imagine: at the Vatican Library, with special gratitude to the prefect Father Leonard Boyle; at the State Archives in Milan, the Trivulzian and Ambrosian Libraries in that city; and at the Laurentian and Riccardian Libraries, and also the National Library in Florence. At the University of New Mexico my thanks go also to Dorothy Wonsmos and her staff at Interlibrary Loan.

To Dale Kent, without whose guidance and encouragement this book would not have reached fruition, I owe the greatest debt. In addition, I am very much beholden to a few generous friends and colleagues who read parts of the manuscript in its various stages: Margaret King, Paul Gehl, Anthony Grafton, Jack Holtsmark, Roger Hornsby, Ira Jaffe, Craig Kallendorf, Natasha Kolchevska, Patricia Labalme, Tom Mayer, John Monfasani, Betty Rose Nagle, and Tina Nielson. And finally, I would like to thank Joanna Hitchcock and Lauren Oppenhcim at Princeton University Press for their elegant transformation of a manuscript as awkward as minebooby-trapped both with the idiosyncratic orthographies of a number of Renaissance Latin writers and with humanist Greekinto the volume you now see.

The Duchy of Milan and the Republic of Venice in the Mid-Fifteenth Century.