Schmitt C.B. (ed.) The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy
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4
THE
SCOPE
OF PHILOSOPHICAL
TRANSLATION
Between
Roberto Rossi's translation of the Posterior Analytics in 1406 and
Niccolo
Leonico Tomeo's rendering of the Paw
a
naturalia in
1522—5,
eighteen Italian and Byzantine scholars produced nearly
fifty
different Latin
versions
of
half
as many
of
Aristotle's
works —including spurious works and
counting the Parva naturalia as one work. In the sixteenth century more
than
fifty
scholars from various
parts
of Europe produced nearly 200 Latin
translations
of
over
forty texts ascribed to Aristotle. The most productive of
the fifteenth-century translators were the Byzantines George
of
Trebizond
and Johannes Argyropulos, who each completed ten texts, but in the
sixteenth century the Frenchman Joachim Perion challenged even the
prolific
William of Moerbeke by turning more
than
twenty works into
Ciceronian
Latin.
1
These
three
scholars took very different approaches to
philosophical translation. George
of
Trebizond stayed as close to the verbal
structure of the text as comprehensible Latin would permit, while
Argyropulos
translated so loosely
that
he was often condemned as a
paraphraser. George believed
that
transliteration was sometimes justified by
an untranslatable word or phrase in Greek, but Perion wanted to find a
Ciceronian
equivalent for everything the Stagirite had said — unlike
Argyropulos,
who was content with some of the unclassical Latin
that
medieval
translators had introduced.
2
Variations in translation served
varieties
of
audience, and the audience changed with time as it was educated
by
new accomplishments in translation. Before the 1520s, most works of
Aristotle
that
were printed were medieval Latin translations; only after
that
time did readers of Aristotle see more humanist Latin in
print
or much
Greek
at all.
3
1.
Garin
1951;
Cranz and Schmitt 1984, pp.
225-41;
Schmitt 1983a, p. 73; George
of
Trebizond 1984,
pp. 698-709, 758.
2.
Monfasani 1976, pp. 76-7; George
of
Trebizond 1984, p. 299; Hankins 1983, p. i$i;Platonet Aristote
1976,
pp. 362-3 (Cranz); Schmitt 1983a, pp. 72-7. I am particularly indebted to Dr Hankins for
permission to cite his thesis. 3. Cranz and Schmitt 1984, pp.
xii-xiv.
77
TRANSLATION,
TERMINOLOGY
AND
STYLE
IN PHILOSOPHICAL
DISCOURSE
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
78
Translation, terminology and style
The
Nicomachean Ethics, which Leonardo Bruni translated early in the
1400s,
continued to
attract
humanist
translators
through the sixteenth
century, but no one published its Greek text outside the collected editions
until
1523.
After
this date, at least twenty-five editions containing the Greek
appeared by the end of the century, many of them motivated by the
philological
interests of the humanists. During the same period, the Greek
De
anima,
which was less interesting to humanists, was separately edited
only
four times, and none of these editions was philological. Yet Latin
translations of De
anima
appeared frequently because it was a crucial
philosophical
text.
4
Evidently, the readership for translations of Aristotle
was
not unitary. Its division into humanist and philosophical segments -
though these were not
well
defined or always separated
—
is also borne out
by
the lapse of a century between the Aldine Opera omnia (1495-8) of the
Greek
Aristotle and Isaac Casaubon's Greek—Latin edition (1590) of the
complete works. The whole corpus as it was known before the nineteenth
century had appeared in humanist Latin by the early sixteenth century.
Benedictus
Fontana attempted a humanist collected works as early as 1496,
but he had to
fill
many gaps with medieval translations. The Basle Opera
omnia in translation prepared by Simon Grynaeus in 1538, however, was
solidly
humanist. New translating and the polemic stimulated by it
continued through the century, and bilingual editions multiplied after 1550,
but the late
date
of the Casaubon edition suggests
that
there
was no single,
large
group of scholars pressing to read all of Aristotle in a translation
that
also
referred systematically to the original.
5
Differences
of audience were reflected in the commentary
literature
as
well.
The publication of choice for philosophers was, at first, a Latin
translation explicated by a Latin commentary; later in the sixteenth century,
a Greek original might join the two Latin texts. The selection of
commentaries also widened. In the late fifteenth century, Ermolao Barbaro
began
the process
of
translating those Hellenistic commentaries on Aristotle
that
were unknown to the Middle
Ages,
while Jewish scholars encouraged
by
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and others revised familiar commentaries
of
Averroes and presented new ones in Latin versions based on Hebrew
intermediaries. Some humanists, like Bruni, saw Aristotle not simply as a
philosopher but also as one of the
summi
auctores, the admired giants of
antiquity. Interested as much in eloquence as in philosophy, they produced
their own, independent commentaries in the form of philological
4.
Platon et Aristote 1976, pp. 359—61 (Cranz).
5.
Philosophy and
Humanism
1976, pp. 117, 124 (Cranz).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
Translation, terminology and style 79
adnotationes
that
concentrated on grammar, literature and history.
6
But
philological
erudition failed to interest many philosophers, who continued,
like
Pietro Pomponazzi, to write commentaries in the older, philosophical
style
and also to consult medieval commentaries, especially those of
Thomas Aquinas, which naturally depended on medieval translations.
Because
the versions of Bruni and his colleagues threatened a breach of
terminological continuity with scholastic philosophy, Alonso de Cartagena
and other critics of humanist translation recommended using the Vulgate
versions,
partially in order to sustain a commentary tradition whose
unawareness of the Greek texts or indifference to them appalled the
humanists. Some were content, however, to read Thomas as
if
he had read
Bruni. 'Even if Thomas explained the old version', wrote Ludovicus de
Valentia,
'he seems to interpret the new', and Ludovicus arranged an
alliance between saint and chancellor by expunging offensive translitera-
tions from Thomas' commentary. Lefevre d'Etaples devised another, very
popular solution by printing the Argyropulos 'paraphrase' of the
Nicomachean Ethics along with Bruni's translation and the rival medieval
version defended by
Alonso.
The strongest marriage between the accom-
plishments of humanist translation and the needs of the philosophical
community came in 1562 with the second of the great Giunta editions of
Aristotle—Averroes,
originally published in
1550—2.
7
Aristotle
was fundamental to the university curriculum, but Plato was
not. Only four
of
his dialogues had been translated, partially or completely,
in antiquity or the Middle
Ages.
Not surprisingly, early modern translation
of
Plato was smaller in scope
than
the Latinising of Aristotle; it involved
fewer
scholars and depended far more on the work of one great translator,
Marsilio
Ficino, who published his Latin Opera omnia in 1484. Not counting
Ficino,
there
were thirteen fifteenth-century translators — attracted by
Plato's eloquence, his compatibility with Christianity, his justification of a
tyrannical politics
—
who produced two dozen different versions
of
eighteen
genuine and spurious dialogues and letters. In the whole period between
Manuel Chrysoloras' initial attempt at the Republic around 1400 and the
6. Platon et Aristote 1976, p. 364 (Cranz); Philosophy and
Humanism
1976, pp. 119, 125 (Cranz);
Dictionary
of
Scientific Biography 1970-80,1, p. 274 ('Aristotle'); Schmitt 1983a, pp. 16, 49 and 1984,
§vm,
pp. 129,
132-3,
137; Soudek 1968, p. 67; Kristeller 1965b, pp.
166-7;
in George
of
Trebizond
1984,
p. 640, see his scholium on Aristotle, Problems
1.1
(859
a
2) for a fifteenth-century example
of
the
form of an adnotatio to a philosophical text.
7.
Ludovicus to Francesco Piccolomini in the Rome 1492 edition
of
the Politics, cited in Cranz 1978, p.
172:
'Nam etsi Divus Thomas veterem exposuerit, novam tamen
interpretari
videtur'; ibid., pp.
158-62,
172-6;
Cranz and Schmitt 1984, p.
xiii;
1976a, pp.
125-7;
Schmitt 1983a, pp. 16, 20, 47;
Soudek 1968, pp. 85-90, 95-6; Lefevre d'Etaples 1972, pp. 41-5, 548.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
8o
Translation, terminology and style
1602
reissue of the revised Ficino Opera, more
than
forty scholars
turned
more
than
forty Platonic texts into Latin in nearly ninety different versions.
However,
about half of these were translated only in the Opera omnia of
Ficino
or by his two lone competitors,
Janus
Cornarius and
Jean
de Serres,
whose
collections saw only a single printing each. Next to Ficino, the most
active
of the fifteenth-century translators was Bruni, who rendered seven
works
early in the century. A notable habit of these early Renaissance
Platonists was a readiness to bowdlerise their translations and adapt the
meaning of the Greek to various ideological ends. Even Ficino, a
fastidiously faithful translator, once or twice tried to improve on Plato.
Sixteenth-century translators concentrated largely on spurious works
—
the
Axiochus was remarkably popular
—
or on revising older translations to
match them with commentaries or making literal translations for
pedagogical
use.
8
Plato and Aristotle dominated philosophical translation as they domi-
nated philosophy, but Renaissance scholars also made other important
thinkers more familiar to the West. Ficino's versions of Plotinus,
Iamblichus, Proclus, Porphyry, Synesius, Hermes Trismegistus, Pseudo-
Dionysius
and lesser figures are
well
known. It is likely
that
Ambrogio
Traversari also translated
parts
of the Platonic Theology of Proclus, but he
made his most important contribution to philosophy between 1424 and
1433
by Latinising Diogenes Laertius, whose Lives became the basis
of
early
modern knowledge of the Presocratics and the Hellenistic schools,
especially
Epicureanism. In 1479
Angelo
Poliziano translated the Problems
then ascribed to Alexander of Aphrodisias and the Enchiridion
of
Epictetus,
apparently without realising
that
Niccolo Perotti had already translated the
latter in 1450. The Enchiridion was important as one of the few non-
fragmentary Greek sources on Stoicism. Another was the Meditations of
Marcus Aurelius, which despite the fame
of
its author remained little more
than
an empty title until William Xylander brought out his De seipso seu vita
sua in 1559 along with the Greek editioprinceps. For the sceptics, Traversari's
Diogenes
was also indispensable, especially since useful translations of
Sextus
Empiricus came only in 1562 (Henri Estienne's Outlines of
Pyrrhonism) and 1569 (Gentian Hervet's Adversus mathematicos). Another
significant doxographic collection was the Placita of Aetius, attributed to
Plutarch when Guillaume Bude translated it in
1503-5.
9
8. Hankins 1983, pp. 2,
8-13,16,38,88,98,152,157-65,180,
208,211-12,224, 204^-215*; Medioevoe
Rinascimento
1955,1,
PP-
314-72
(Garin); Festugiere
1941,
pp.
146-9;
Ficino
1981,
pp. 40-2; Platon et
Aristote 1976, p. 66 (Kristeller).
9. Stinger
1977,
pp. 44,70-7; Garin
1961,
pp.
75,78;
I. Maier 1966, pp. 374-86; Epictetus 1954, PP- 17-
19,28-9,
32; Schmitt 1983c; McNeil
1975,
pp.
10,14;
Cammelli
1941-54,1,
pp. 85-8; Aurelius 1968,
pp.
xx—xxix.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
Translation, terminology and style
81
Guarino da Verona, Poggio Bracciolini, Rinuccio d'Arezzo, Giovanni
Aurispa
and other fifteenth-century
translators
contributed Latin versions
of
Lucian's Dialogues, which prepared the way for Nicolo da Lonigo's
volgare
treatments
and Leon Battista Alberti's Lucianic imitations in the
Intercoenales and related works. These earlier humanists read the newly
accessible
Latin Lucian as if his parodies were serious descriptions of the
Hellenistic schools of philosophy. But Lucian's motivations were literary,
not historical. When he depicted Socrates as (in Christopher Robinson's
words)
'a bald, snub-nosed, hypocritical, pederastic lecher, who swore by
dogs
and plane-trees [and] held a dotty theory of ideas', he gave scant
attention
to Socratic doctrine, depending instead on the sure-fire comic
contrast between the pretensions of the
(j>i\ooo<f)os
(philosopher) and the
peccadilloes
of
the
aAa£co*>
(charlatan). In their passion for the antique
—
and
perhaps because the compulsive moralising of the Hellenistic schools, even
when
caricatured, rang
true
to their kindred sensibilities - the humanists
sometimes mistook Lucian's comedy for a history
of
ideas.
Introducing his
translation of Philosophers for Sale, Rinuccio d'Arezzo recognised
that
Lucian
wrote 'playfully', but Luca d'Antonio Bernardi da San Gimignano
treated
the same work as a textbook survey of the schools. On it he based a
school
play, De venditione et emptione philosophorum, for his grammar
students, at least one
of
whom,
Marsilio Ficino, was eventually to acquire a
more refined understanding of the philosophies of late antiquity.
10
In the
next century, Erasmus and Thomas More could read,
translate
and imitate
Lucian
with greater sensitivity to his fundamentally comic impulse, yet for
his own campaign against philosophical theology Erasmus picked blunt
weapons
from Lucian's anti-philosophical armory. 'He is especially hostile
to philosophers', wrote Erasmus on Lucian's
Cock,
'Pythagoreans and
Platonists because
of
their magical tricks, and . . . Stoics on account
of
their
.
. . arrogance. And quite right too.' Erasmus, whose pedagogic authority
was
paramount, recommended Lucian as an ideal
author
for beginners in
Greek,
and after 1506 he gave Greekless readers an extraordinarily popular
selection
of translations
of
Lucian.
Despite the
thin,
sporadic and repetitive
philosophical
content of the Dialogues, it is
hard
to underestimate the
influence
of the Latin Lucian (printed in a complete edition along with the
Greek
by 1538) on the reputation of philosophy in the early modern
period.
11
Petrarch and
Boccaccio
tried to learn Lucian's language from the Italian
Greeks
Barlaam and Leonzio Pilato, while
Coluccio
Salutati and his friends
10.
C. Robinson 1979, pp.
14-15,
27-31,
40, 50-1,
81-95,
99-100; Marcel 1958, pp.
171-2.
11.
The introduction by Erasmus to Lucian's
Somnium
sivegallus is
translated
in C. Robinson 1979, pp.
166-7,
195-
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
82
Translation, terminology and style
revised medieval translations of Greek
authors
without knowing their
language at all. But Salutati also helped bring to Florence the Byzantine
scholar who
effectively
inaugurated the age of humanist translation,
Manuel Chrysoloras. Chrysoloras, who arrived in 1397, doubtless subor-
dinated translation to his more fundamental obligations as a teacher.
Nonetheless, he soon prepared a rough, literal version of the Republic
which
rather
contradicted in practice his famous theoretical declaration
against ad
verbum
translation. It was revised by Uberto Decembrio and
revised again after four decades by Uberto's son, Pier Candido, in 1440.
12
Meanwhile,
another
Byzantine scholar, George of Trebizond, had come
from Crete to Venice in
1416.
His
thirteen
translations
of
Aristotle
and Plato
were rigorous and literal, but the
latter
quality won him the scorn of
Theodore Gaza and others. Cardinal Bessarion, originally attracted like
other Greek emigres to the Council of Ferrara and Florence in 1438—9,
contributed a version of Aristotle's Metaphysics
that
closely followed the
Vulgate,
which is perhaps why it was Lefevre d'Etaples who chose to publish
its first edition in
1515. Of all
the Byzantines, however, the most influential
translator
was Argyropulos, whose freer renderings of Aristotle ruled the
arena
of
new translation in the fifteenth century and remained
well
known
in the next.
13
The
most productive
student
of
the Byzantines was Leonardo Bruni. His
first round
of
Plato translations between 1400 and 1415 grew out
of
literary
and religious motives, which were later dampened by his dislike
of
Socratic
scepticism and
of
Plato's teachings on community of women and goods.
14
Turning to Aristotle, he next decided in 1416 to revise Robert Grosseteste's
widely
used version of the Nicomachean Ethics. He was not aware of
Grosseteste's authorship, but his intentions toward the medieval version
were consciously hostile, as his introduction makes clear. The tone of these
prefatory remarks as much as the unaccustomed style of his translation
provoked reactions from Ugo
Benzi,
Alonso de Cartagena and others
which
involved him in a long exchange
of
polemics.
One
of
his apologies,
De
interpretatione recta (c. 1424-6), was the first substantial theoretical
statement on translation since
St
Jerome's letter to Pammachius.
15
It lit the
12.
Voigt
1893,11,
pp.
101-12;
Geanakoplos 1962, pp. 20-2;
Seigel
1968, pp.
116-18;
Cammelli 1941-
54,
1, pp. 85-8, 91, 123; Hankins 1983, pp. 67-9, 96-7.
13.
Minio-Paluello
1972,
p. 265; Monfasani
1976,
pp. 8, 54-77; George
of
Trebizond 1984, pp. 698-709,
744-8,
758; Garin 1951, pp. 59, 75-83, 86; Hankins 1983, pp.
150-1;
Schmitt 1983a, pp. 70-2.
14.
Hankins 1983, pp. 33-7.
15.
Birkenmajer 1922, pp. 130,
144-6,
164-6;
Medioevo e Rinascimento 1955, 1, pp.
301-5,
310-11;
Grabmann
1926-56,1,
pp.
440-8;
Lockwood
1951,
p.
185;
Bruni 1928, pp. 81-3; Baron 1966, p. 554;
Garin
1951,
p- 72; Hankins 1983, p. 28; Schmitt 1983a, p. 67; Steiner 1975, pp. 236-69; Bartelink
1980,
pp. 1-7, 46-7.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
Translation, terminology and style
83
way
for many other controversialists and theoreticians over the next two
centuries; the most important were Perion, speaking for Ciceronian
translation in De optimo genere interpretandi (1540), and Etienne Dolet,
setting guidelines for vernacular translators in La Maniere de bien traduire
(1540).
16
In
1419—20
Bruni set out to replace another piece
of
the medieval
Aristotle,
the Recensio Durandi
of
the Oeconomics. Judging by the number of
manuscripts, this was a very successful work, but his most fortunate effort
was
his last in philosophical translation, the Politics (1438). 'My reason for
translating it', he wrote, 'was the same
that
led me to do the Ethics . . . the
very
refined style
of
the Greek . . . reduced by the sins
of
a bad translator to
.
. . laughable stupidity.' Bruni had compared his fate in his battles over
translation to
that
of St Stephen stoned by the Judaisers, but in more
than
twenty years not much had changed. Recovering from his martyrdom, he
had even returned to Plato, in 1423—7 and 1437; the influence of Bruni's
Platonic translations was enormous until Ficino published his in 1484.
17
Italians and Byzantines nearly monopolised philosophical translation in
the 1400s and also left their mark on progress made in the next century,
when
the French established a healthy tradition in Latin and the vernacular.
The
first texts translated from Greek by a Frenchman were the works of
Plutarch Latinised in 1503—5 by Bude, who also rendered the pseudo-
Aristotelian
De
mundo
in 1526 and served other translators invaluably with
his philological work.
18
Lefevre had begun to edit translations of other
scholars earlier, with the popular Tres convex siones (1497)
of
the Nicomachean
Ethics.
His editing generally included the sort
of
revising
he described in his
Metaphysics of
1515:
'I have compared Bessarion's translation . . . with the
Greek
and have called it back to its senses wherever it strayed . . . To his
version
I have added the Argyropulos, which smacks more of paraphrase,
while
Bessarion better plays the
part
of a translator.' He revised medieval
versions
of the Topics and Sophistici elenchi more thoroughly and encour-
aged
his students to translate as
well.
19
Francois Vatable, for example,
published the first Renaissance Latin version of the Parva naturalia in 1518
16.
Platon et Aristote 1976, p. 377 (Stegmann); Schmitt 1983a, p. 74; Critical Prefaces 1950, pp. 77-83;
Kalwies
1978, pp. 599-600.
17.
Bruni 1928, pp. 73-4: 'Convertendi autem interpretandique mihi causa fuit eadem ilia, quae ... ad
conversionem Ethicorum induxit. Nam cum viderem hos Aristotelis libros, qui apud Graecos
elegantissimo stilo perscripti
sunt,
vitio mali interpretis ad ridiculam quamdam ineptitudinem esse
redactos. . .'; Birkenmajer 1922, p. 180; Goldbrunner 1968, p. 224; Garin
1951,
pp. 62, 67; Soudek
1968,
p. 65; Hankins 1983, pp. 38, 45-7.
18.
McNeil
1975,
PP-
10,14,
86; Wilamowitz-Moellendorf
1982,
pp. 47-8; R. Pfeiffer
1976,
pp.
101-2.
19.
Lefevre d'Etaples 1972, p. 356: '. . . Bessarionis interpretationem . . . cum Graeco contuli et ad
intelligentiam sicubi in devium flectebatur iter revocavi . . . Cui adieci Argyropylum, qui magis
sapit paraphrasten; Bessario vero potius partes interpretis agit. . .'; ibid., pp.
41—5,
49, 86-9, 150—4,
442,
548, 552—4, 560;
Humanism
in France 1970, pp. 133-5 (Rice).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
8
4
Translation, terminology and style
along
with De generatione and the Meteorology. Other
important
French
scholars who followed in the tradition of Budé and Lefevre were Gerard
Roussel,
Adrien Turnebus, Denys Lambin, Jacques Charpentier, Henri
Estienne, Gentian Hervet and Isaac Casaubon, but the grand champion was
Périon. His many translations of Aristotle succeeded in the sense
that
they
were
frequently
reprinted,
but they also provoked severe criticism. Even
after Nicolas Grouchy revised them, they were not deemed fit to appear in
Casaubon's
bilingual Opera of
1590,
and they were
of
little use in university
teaching.
20
Périon's loyal readers must have had enough humanist
education to parse his Ciceronian periods but not enough philosophical
sophistication to worry over his abandonment of
standard
terminology.
Likewise,
although Latin was still the universal and very nearly the sole
language
of learned communication,
there
was a special and growing
audience for vernacular translation of philosophy and for original
philosophising in the vulgar tongues. In judging the depth of this activity,
one should recall
that
while Montaigne (who used vernacular translations)
said he knew no Greek, he surely understood enough
natural
theology to
write the Apologie de
Raymond
Sebond. His exceptional erudition and
Machiavelli's
troubling originality occupied one extreme of a spectrum of
vernacular philosophical discourse at whose other end one finds the more
predictable and superficial motives of the courtiers and princes who often
patronised translators. Under Francis I, enrichment
of
the French language
became national policy. Francis became as energetic a
patron
of
vernacular
translations of
Cicero,
Plutarch and Plato as Pope Nicholas V had been of
Latin.
Moreover, he had the advantage of precedent in the similar
patronage of his predecessor, Charles V, and in a history of French
trans-
lation of philosophy reaching back to
Jean
de Meung's Boethius (c. 1300)
and Nicole Oresme's Aristotle
(1370-7).
21
French
translators
became
quite active after 1530; some of the finest talents in the country, including
Etienne Dolet, Francois Hotman and Philipe Le Plessis, were enlisted in the
cause.
The most
important
were Jacques
Amyot
for his Plutarch
(1559,
1572)
and Louis Le Roy for his Plato
(1551-63).
Even in Aristotle
translations, which were less popular in the vernacular, France outstripped
England and Spain, though it
fell
far short
of
what such figures as Antonio
Brucioli
accomplished in Italy.
22
One theoretical problem
that
was more
20. Lefevre d'Étaples
1972,
p. 406; R.PfeifTer
1976,
pp.
111-12,120-2;
Wilamowitz-Moellendorf 1982,
PP-
55-6; Platón etAristote
1976,
p. 378 (Stegmann); Cranz and Schmitt 1984, p. xiv; Platónet Aristote
1976,
p. 364 (Cranz); Cranz 1978, p. 178; Schmitt 1983a, pp. 77-9.
21.
Pouilloux 1969, p. 60; Kalwies 1978, p. 597; Larwill 1934, pp.
7-13,
20, 57; Oresme 1968a, pp. 3-7,
10-15;
Vespasiano daBisticci 1963, p. 50;Voigt
1893,11,
pp.
71-3,
156-60, i8o-i;Garin
1951^.73.
22.
Larwill 1934, p. 36; R. Pfeiffer
1976,
p. 107; Pouilloux 1969, pp. 48, 60-3; Gundersheimer 1966, pp.
31-48;
Cranz and Schmitt 1984, ad indicem.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
Translation, terminology and style
85
pressing for vernacular
than
for Latin translators was
that
of propriety and
security. Was it a good idea, for example, to make the political or religious
ideas of the Republic available to a lay audience? Some vulgarisers feared
being blamed for profaning philosophy's secrets and for doing so in an
indecorous tongue.
John
Florio had a good answer, which was not entirely
in keeping with the spirit
of
his age: 'Learning cannot be too common, and
the commoner the better . . . Why but the vulgar should not knowe
all?'
23
Francois Sauvaige expressed the more typical
attitude
in the prologue to
his De Vami et duflatteur
(1520),
the first French vernacular rendering
of
any
of
Plutarch's Moralia to appear in
print:
this effort... is not thought so worthy
that
those who understand Greek or Latin
should lower themselves to look at this work . . . [which] I have endeavoured to
translate for the instruction of the common people; thus, if among my readers
anyone has ears more delicate, let him please be tolerant of the ignorance and
crudity of my style, waiting upon some other effort more carefully wrought
than
this.
24
The
ground for the vernacularisation
of
Plutarch's philosophically rich and
eclectic
treatises had been cultivated since the early fifteenth century, when
the Italian humanists
—
Guarino, Francesco
Filelfo,
Antonio Cassarino and
many others
—
first began to Latinise them,
thus
creating demand for the
Greek
editio princeps issued by Aldus in 1509 and the complete Latin
translation by William Xylander in 1570. The greatest spur to the diffusion
of
the Latin Moralia in the sixteenth century was the widely read selection
first published by Erasmus in 1514. There
followed
not only Froben's
revision
of the Greek text in 1542 and Henri Estienne's in 1572 but also
many collections
of
selected Latin treatises by a number
of
translators
—
sixty
of
them from Italy, France, Spain, Germany, England, Holland and
Hungary who rendered
sixty-five
of
Plutarch's essays by the time Xylander
had finished his complete Latin Moralia. Vernacular alternatives to the Latin
had entered the market before 1500, but even after the Greek text had been
printed almost all were based on earlier Latin or vernacular versions, the
notable exceptions being Willibald Pirckheimer's German, Thomas Elyot's
English
and
Diego
Gracian's Spanish. It was the French more
than
any
others to whom the broader, Latinless readership of the sixteenth century
owed
its philosophical (as
well
as its historical) Plutarch. By
1571,
twenty
23.
Ebel 1969, pp. 595-8; Fubini 1966, p. 347; cf. Hankins 1983, p. 44.
24. Sauvaige's 'Prologue', cited in Aulotte 1965, p. 87: 'ce labeur . . .
n'est
tenu
tel ne si vallable que
ceulx
qui ont intelligence de grec ou latin se humilient à veoir ceste lecture . . . Mon
estude
a esté
translater
ce livre pour l'enseignement du commun peuple; ainsi, si aulcun ayant les oreilles plus
délicates se mesle parmy, supporte, s'il luy plaist, l'ignorance et rudesse de mon stile,
attendant
quelque
aultre
labeur, plus curieusement compilé que cestuy.'
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
86
Translation, terminology and style
translators, including Estienne Pasquier, Geoffroy Tory and Estienne de la
Boetie,
completed twenty-three French Moralia, but only
five
of these
consulted the original. Scrupulous
attention
to the Greek, specifically
that
of
Aldus and of Froben, was the hallmark of Amyot's complete Oeuvres
morales et melees of
1572,
though he also used Xylander and other Latin and
French versions, especially those of Louis Le Roy. Amyot aimed for clear,
faithful
and stylistically varied language, but his notion of fidelity permitted
him compressions, expansions and variations in the interest of lucidity and
symmetry. His wish to avoid a Latinised or neologised French led
sometimes to oddly contemporary (gentilshommes for 01
KCLXOL
/caya#oi) or
Christian (peches for
aSi/oy/xara)
representations
of
Greek
ideas and at other
times
(attenter
aucune nouvellete for vecorepi^eiv) to careful periphrasis. The
success
of Amyot's efforts was such
that
his century saw only two other
French translations of any of the Moralia. Montaigne made use of
Amyot's
masterpiece, which along with the Greek also underlay Philemon Holland's
English
Morals of 1603.
25
BASES
OF PHILOSOPHICAL
TRANSLATION
Before
printing was invented, before a large vernacular readership for
philosophy was thinkable, the worries
that
Manuel Chrysoloras had to face
were
confined to a smaller group of people. The Byzantine scholar,
according
to his Florentine students, taught
that
'conversion into Latin ad
verbum
was worthless ... a complete perversion of the meaning of the
Greek.
He said it was necessary to
translate
ad
sententiam
. . . without
changing
the character of the Greek in any way.' Manuel's proclamation
that
the
appropriate
locus of correspondence between translation and
original
was meaning (sententia, which can also mean 'sentence')
rather
than
word
(verbum),
though it had been anticipated in practice by Salutati's circle
and in programmatic
statements
ofjerome,
Jean
de Meung and Oresme, has
been taken as the charter of Renaissance translation theory.
26
And in fact,
the philosophical translations of Leonardo Bruni and others who were
influenced
by Chrysoloras and Salutati differed from the medieval versions
of
James
of
Venice,
Robert Grosseteste and William of Moerbeke on just
this question of fidelity to the word. By inventing Latin equivalents for
25.
Aulotte 1965, pp.
12-16,
21-128,
141-6,
150-3,
167-9,
187, 191,
197-9,
225, 253, 259-60, 280-9.
26.
Bertalot
1975»
n, p.
133:
'ferebat Manuel. . . conversionem in latinum ad verbum minime valere.
Nam
non modo absurdum esse asseverebat, verum etiam interdum grecam sententiam omnino
pervertere.
Sed ad sententiam transferre opus esse aiebat . . . ut nullo modo proprietas greca
immutaretur . . .';
Seigel
1968, p. 120;
Larwill
1934, PP- 8, 29.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008