The Censorship and Fortuna
of Platina's Lives of the Popes in the Sixteenth Century
When Bartolomeo Sacchi (‘Il Platina’, 1421-1481) wrote his Vitae pontificum (Lives of the Popes) and presented it to Pope Sixtus IV in 1475, he surely could not have imagined how influential it would become over the centuries. It proved to be ‘the most effective remodelling of papal history according to humanist ideals of language and values’ (H. Fuhrmann). The first papal history composed as a humanist Latin narrative was a distinct breakthrough in relation to the Liber pontificalis, the standard medieval chronicle. Although Platina might not have intended it, his book came to be regarded as the official history of the Roman pontiffs. After the editio princeps of Venice 1479, it went through 83 separate printings in 6 languages: the original Latin, and translations into Italian, German, English, French and Flemish. Updated and extended editions continued to be produced until late in the eighteenth century.
My work has focused
on the reception of Platina’s Lives of the Popes. The story of
this book and its fortuna remains virtually untold. Pre- and
Counter-Reformation religious sentiments in Italy, Germany, France,
England and Flanders played a prominent part in its reception. The Lives
were particularly popular because of Platina’s frank criticisms of the
popes wherever their behaviour did not live up to his humanist moral
values. He reminded the popes that they were mere human beings and urged
them not to indulge in luxury and nepotism. Pope Paul II, who imprisoned
Platina for his alleged participation in a conspiracy, is depicted by
him as a tyrant and the worst enemy of humanism. As late as 1889, when
the Catholic historian Ludwig von Pastor undertook his defence of Paul
II, he stated that Platina’s biography of him had ‘dominated the historical
perspective for centuries’.
Catholics, whether or not they
agreed with such criticisms, read the Lives eagerly, while Protestants
naturally valued Platina’s critical stance towards the papacy. In the
sixteenth century, the book was translated into vernacular languages
by both Catholics and Protestants. When the Roman Church reacted in
1592 with the first censored edition in Italian, censorship became part
of the reception of the book. I have been examining this edition and
the censorship process in detail, producing a critical edition of the
assessments and corrections by English and Italian censors, which I
have discovered. This is one of the first comprehensive studies of the
censorship of a particular author since the opening of the Archives
of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (Vatican City) in
1998.
Publications
«Nâch âventiure wâne.
Zur Integration von Minne- und Ritterwân in Hartmanns Erec»,
Poetica, xxix, 1997, pp. 75-93.
Polisbild und Demokratieverständnis in Jacob Burckhardts
«Griechischer Kulturgeschichte», Basel and Munich: Schwabe
and C.H. Beck 2001, 271 pp. For further information on this book please
see: www.polisbild.de
«Platina, Bartolomeo», in Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon , xxii, Herzberg 2003, cols 1098-1103. Click here for the online version.
Stefan Bauer
Stefan.Bauer42@epost.de
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