Friday, July 24, 2020
To Wake the Dead
Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy, tr. S.G.C. Middlemore (1878; rpt. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1928), pp. 181-182:
Thanks very much to Kenneth Haynes for the following:
Newer› ‹Older
Nor was the enthusiasm for the classical past of Italy confined at this period to the capital. Boccaccio2 had already called the vast ruins of Baiae 'old walls, yet new for modern spirits;' and since this time they were held to be the most interesting sight near Naples. Collections of antiquities of all sorts now became common. Ciriaco of Ancona (d. 1457), who explained (1433) the Roman monuments to the Emperor Sigismund, travelled, not only through Italy, but through other countries of the old world, Hellas, and the islands of the Archipelago, and even parts of Asia and Africa, and brought back with him countless inscriptions and sketches. When asked why he took all this trouble, he replied, 'To wake the dead.'1John Edwin Sandys, A History of Classical Scholarship, Vol. II: From the Revival of Learning to the End of the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1908), p. 40 (on Ciriaco of Ancona):
2 Boccaccio, Fiammetta, cap. 5. Opere, ed. Montier, vi.91.
1 His work, Cyriaci Anconitani Itinerarium, ed. Mehus, Florence, 1742. Comp. Leandro Alberti, Descriz. di tutta l'Italia, fol. 285.
In his unwearied endeavour to resuscitate the memorials of the past, he was fully conscious that his mission in life was 'to awake the dead'. He took a special pleasure in recalling an incident that once occurred while he was looking for antiques in a church at Vercelli. An inquisitive priest, who, on seeing him prowling about the church, ventured to ask him on what business he was bent, was completely mystified by the solemn reply:—'It is sometimes my business to awaken the dead out of their graves; it is an art that I have learnt from the Pythian oracle of Apollo'4.Cf. Biondo Flavio, Italy Illuminated, Vol. I: Books I-IV, tr. Jeffrey A. White (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005 = I Tatti Renaissance Library, 20), pp. 260-261 (III.15):
4 Voigt, i 2843; cp. Jahn, 336.
Civibus ea civitas gravibus et honestis, in primis mercaturae deditis, sed maxime omnium servatae dudum libertatis gloria decoratur. Habetque nunc Franciscum Scalamontem et Nicolaum, iure consultos bonarum litterarum studiis ornatos, cum nuper amiserit Ciriacum, qui monumenta investigando vetustissima mortuos, ut dicere erat solitus, vivorum memoriae restituebat.
Ancona is notable for her serious and honest citizens, who are principally devoted to trade, but above all for her long-preserved liberty. Among the citizens nowadays are the jurisconsults Niccole and Francesco Scalamonti, distinguished for their literary attainments. But she has recently lost Cyriac of Ancona, who by his investigation of ancient monuments restored the dead to the memory of the living, as he used to put it.
Thanks very much to Kenneth Haynes for the following:
Worth quoting Cyriac's Latin?: "...mortuos quandoque ab Inferis suscitare Pythia illa inter vaticinia didici."Related posts:
Burckhardt gives the source (Itinerarium, 1742), just not the page (55). In context:
Sed enim inter Liguras nondum exacto biennio apud Vercellas antiquam ad Apenninos montes, & olim nobilem civitatem, & de qua Hieronymus senior ille noster suis epistolis in ea de septies percussa virgine particula mentionem habet, dum vetustis in sacris aedibus nostro de more aliquid verendae aeternitatis indagare coepissem, sacerdoti cuidam ignavo, quaenam mea ars esset interroganti ex tempore equidem respondi, mortuos quandoque ab Inferis suscitare Pythia illa inter vaticinia didici.
The Jerome is epist. 1.3. My guess about the "Pythia vaticinia" is that it refers to Cyriac's trip to Delphi.
If I've understood it ... :
Among the Ligurians about two years ago in the ancient town of Vercelli near the Apennines (both a once noble city and one which that elder Jerome of ours makes mention of in his letters in that section about the virgin struck seven times) while I was beginning to track, in my fashion, something within an old holy temple of awe-inspiring eternity, I replied at once to some ignorant priest, who was asking what my profession was: "I have learned among those Pythian prophecies to rouse the dead now and then from the underworld."
