Poggio Bracciolini’s International Reputation and the Significance of Bryn Mawr, ms. 48

Poggius Florentinus delighted in his local identity but he also, famously, had an international career, being in attendance at the Council of Constance, being resident in England for four years (1419-1422) and seeking employment at the imperial court. What is less recognized is how he sought for his literary works audiences far beyond his home-city and how some non-Italians were willingly collaborators in this creation of an international reputation. It has not been noticed before how a remarkable witness to this process is now housed in the Special Collections of Bryn Mawr. It, like other manuscripts in the library, reached its present location because of that twenty-century friend of Poggio and alumna of the college, Phyllis Goodhart Gordan. It now has the shelfmark ms. 48 and is a collection of Poggio’s dialogues. What has not been recognized is that we can identify both its scribe and its illuminator and, by doing so, shed new light on Poggio’s fortuna on the far side of Europe, in his one-time home of England.

Poggio Bracciolini, Phyllis Goodhart Gordan, and the Formation of the Goodhart Collection of Fifteenth-Century Books at Bryn Mawr College

The Poggio Bracciolini conference was dedicated to Bryn Mawr alumna Phyllis Goodhart Gordan (1913-1994) one of the leading Poggio scholars of her generation and the editor of the only major collection of Poggio’s letters in English, Two Renaissance Book Hunters (Columbia University Press, 1974). Gordan and her father, Howard Lehman Goodhart (1887-1951) were also responsible for building one of the great collections of 15th century printed books in America, most of which is now at Bryn Mawr College. This paper draws upon Goodhart’s correspondence with rare book dealers and the extensive notes on his books to survey the strengths of the collection and to examine the process by which he built the collection and worked with rare book dealers in the difficult Depression and World War II years, the period when he acquired most of his books. The paper also considers Goodhart’s growing connections with scholars of early printing as his collection and interests grew, in particular the work of Margaret Bingham Stillwell, the editor of Incunabula in American Libraries (1940).

Poggio Bracciolini, an Inscription in Terranuova, and the Monument to Carlo Marsuppini: A Theory

The strangest Renaissance inscription is the dedication plaque of Poggio Bracciolini in the church of S. Maria in Terranuova Bracciolini. Over the course of eighteen lines, its letters morph from Florentine sans serif capitals to Imperial Roman capitals. The author theorizes that the gradual change was the result of Poggio Bracciolini coaching an untutored lettercutter in the subtle differences between the two styles of letters. Furthermore, there is a visual link between the letters of the Terranuova inscription and those of the inscription on the monument to Carlo Marsuppini in S. Croce that suggests Poggio played a role in its design.

Script as Image: Visual Acuity in the Script of Poggio Bracciolini

The fact that the graphic substance of writing oscillates between text and image is a potential which writing carries in itself from the very beginning. Every graphic trace on the manuscript page relates to the conventions of time in a way that is determined by the scribe. This becomes particularly tangible when the conventions are deliberately and systematically broken and replaced by new ones on the basis of a concrete concept. By introducing the humanistic minuscule, a script developed on the basis of the historical model of the Carolingian minuscule, Poggio Bracciolini and his mentors and friends Coluccio Salutati and Niccolò Niccoli, created philologically revised copies of the texts of classical authors in what they called littera antiqua, the new old script. This paper wants to show how the conscious incorporation of elements of historical manuscripts and their transformation into a specifically humanistic product makes use of the graphical potential of script and mise-en-page in order to translate a humanistic discourse into SchriftBild.

The Historiae Florentini populi by Poggio Bracciolini. Genesis and Fortune of an Alternative History of Florence

During the last years of his life, Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1459), former Apostolic Secretary and Chancellor of Florence, was working on a long text that he characterized, in a letter written in 1458, as lacking a well-defined structure. This was most probably his history of the people of Florence (Historiae Florentini populi, the title given in Jacopo’s dedication copy to Frederick of Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino), revised and published posthumously by Poggio’s son, Jacopo Bracciolini (1442-1478). Contrary to what is often assumed, Poggio’s treatise was not a continuation, nor even a complement, to Leonardo Bruni’s (1370-1444) official history of Florence. It concentrates on the most recent history of Florence from the fourteenth-century conflicts between Florence and Milan through Florentine expansion in Tuscany and finally reaching the mid-fifteenth century. This article will study the genesis and fortune of the work in the context of Poggio’s literary output and the manuscript evidence from the mid-fifteenth century until the first printed edition of the Latin-language text by G.B. Recanati in 1715.

Florence 1438: The Encomium of the Florentina Libertas Sent by Poggio Bracciolini to Duke Filippo Maria Visconti

This article presents the critical editions of two texts: a letter by the Duke of Milan Filippo Maria Visconti (but written on his behalf by Pier Candido Decembrio) sent to Poggio Bracciolini on 28 July 1438; and the response written by Poggio on 15 September. Poggio’s letter contains a brief treatise in praise of Florence and of the Florentina libertas. The documents illuminate a crucial episode in the history of Italian Humanism. The article opens with the discussion of these two letters in their wider historical and intellectual context: on the one hand, the characteristically Florentine «civic humanism» which constitutes the background of Poggio’s positions; on the other, the political and cultural competition between Florence and Milan during the first half of the 15th century.

Poge the Florentyn: A Sketch of the Life of Poggio Bracciolini

Thanks to his part in the rediscovery of Lucretius in the Renaissance Poggio Bracciolini has been much in academic news recently. But he was always there as a part of the histories of that moment, in all its twists and turns, as an example of what it was to be a Renaissance humanist in the earlier part of the XVth century. He was born in 1380 and educated first in Arezzo. But he soon moved to Florence to become a notary and from his intellectual contacts there a little after 1403 he became a member of the entourage of Pope Benedict IX to remain all his life a member of the Papal court. But, in true humanist fashion, he was busy always with his writings, taking on a range of general subjects, nobility, the vicissitudes of Fortune and many others. Also, again in true humanist fashion, he was often involved in dispute with other scholars, most notably Lorenzo Valla. Yet, amidst all this activity, he had time to travel throughout Europe, scouring libraries to uncover, as with Lucretius, long neglected texts. But perhaps his most notable achievement was the design of a new script, moving away from the less legible texts of medieval copyists to provide one, far easier to read, that was to become the model in Italy for the first printed books – as it is a model still for publishers. Few scholars of that moment can claim to have had so profound and persistent an influence on the spread of culture in Europe and beyond.

Poggio Bracciolini and Coluccio Salutati: The Epitaph and the 1405-1406 Letters

Manuscript Magliabechiano VIII.1445 of the Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze seems to be the only witness of an epitaph that Poggio Bracciolini wrote for Coluccio Salutati. Using this concise yet sincere homage to the late chancellor, this essay discusses Poggio’s relationship both with him and the other major members of the Florentine humanist circle that started gathering around Salutati in the late fourteenth century. In doing so, it touches on such figures as – among others – Niccolò Niccoli and Leonardo Bruni. In particular, some early texts by Bruni (e.g., the Dialogi ad Petrum Paulum Histrum and his letters to fellow humanists dating from the early fifteenth century) are seen against the backdrop of his relationship with both Poggio and Salutati.

Shifting Times, Converging Futures: Technologies of Writing Beyond Poggio Bracciolini

Bracciolini’s contribution to visual materiality, graphical innovation, and the book trade is the driving force in the development of a new philological turn. This essay explores the textual consciousness that marked the passage to scrupulous criteria of editing and writing, which ultimately indicates and emphasizes the historical dimension of hermeneutical tradition. With a powerful impact on readership and authorship, Bracciolini stands behind this groundbreaking entanglement, as we rethink textual transmission and modern scholarship in this digital age.