From Byzantium to Italy: Greek Studies in the Italian Renaissance.

N. G. Wilson. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992 (recte, 1993). xii + 200 pp. $49-95.

Wilson traces the course of Greek classical scholarship from Petrarch and Boccaccio to Aldo Manuzio and Marcus Musurus, that is to say, from the fourteenth century, when Renaissance humanism became a self-conscious movement in Italy, to the early sixteenth, when Greek classical scholarship became a European-wide venture and could no longer be considered from a strictly Italian perspective. Given the obvious significance of his subject (recall how scholars once attributed the start of the Renaissance to the arrival of Byzantine scholars in Italy after the fall of Constantinople), it is surprising that no one before Wilson had attempted such a detailed study. Wilson, in any case, seems to have been destined to do so. The co-author of the best general introduction available on the transmission of classical texts (Scribes and Scholars), the author of a superb account of classical studies in Byzantium (Scholars of Byzantium), and the writer of numerous articles dealing with Greek manuscripts, scribes, and scholars in the Renaissance, Wilson has, in a sense, long prepared for this book. And he does not disappoint. For instance, where Wilson's book overlaps with the second volume of Rudolph Pfeiffer's History of Classical Scholarship, Wilson is better informed. Indeed, henceforth, no one can talk about Greek scholarship in the Italian Renaissance without taking Wilson's book into account. I can only hope that the volume quickly goes into paperback so that all interested teachers and graduate students can have their own personal copy.

Wilson's overarching theme is how Italy absorbed the Greek classical tradition from Byzantium and then gradually emancipated itself from Byzantine tutelage. As he says in his conclusion (160), "the age in which the Byzantine school programme was nearly synonymous with the Greek legacy was over" in the West by the mid-1540s. Wilson organizes his study into a series of micro-histories of individual scholars and scholarly centers. All the big names and a great many of the lesser ones pass under his scrutiny. But one should understand that Wilson did not intend a methodical, German-style Handbuch covering all possible figures, and even less did he aim for a comprehensive catalog of texts, manuscripts, and editions, as is the purpose of the Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum. Rather, Wilson's concern is to take the measure of Greek scholarship in the Italian Renaissance. Consequently, though he presents the reader with constant detail, all of it pertinent and much original with him, his purpose is not simply to inform, but also, and ultimately, to judge. With sovereign authority, he gives us his opinion not only of the achievement of various Renaissance scholars, but also of the texts they translated, studied, and edited. Not everyone will be pleased by his opinions. For instance, while unequivocally recognizing Lorenzo Valla's accomplishments, Wilson also makes clear Valla's weaknesses as a Greek scholar and casts doubts on some of his supposed achievements. But the only serious criticism one could make, it seems to me, is that paradoxically Wilson sticks to his knitting too closely, handing out merits and demerits in the progress of Greek studies, without taking adequately into account the wider social and cultural context. But this would be an unfair criticism since only by maintaining such a tight focus could Wilson have covered his subject in a wonderfully succinct 200 pages and, I might add, not fall into the trap of attempting to write a superficial history of Renaissance culture; but this tight focus -- the reason, I believe, why his best chapter is the last (and the longest by far), on the Aldine Academy and Marcus Musurus, where the subject best rewards a strict concentration on Greek scholarship.

No work is without minor blemishes, and since this work will surely be reprinted, I note here the few factual errors that caught my eye: there was no Duke of Ferrara in the fifteenth century (40); Niccolo Perotti is known to have referred to Bessarion's "Academy" as early as 1453-54 (66; see Supplementum Festivum: Studies in Honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller [Binghamton, NY, 1987], 193); Jacopo Cassiano criticized George of Trebizond's commentary on the Almagest, not his translation of the same (77; see my George of Trebizond [Leiden, 1976], 106-08); Heraclides Pontus was the pupil of Plato, not Aristotle (144); and the discussion of the successor of Musurus in the chair at Venice lacks the name of this successor (159). Also a bibliographical nicety that has nothing to do with the author: although the title page reports the date of publication as 1992, a publisher's notice that came with the book reports the publication date as 5 January 1993.

In sum, Wilson has filled in grand fashion a long-standing lacuna in the history of the Renaissance and classical scholarship. One will read this book, learn from it, and then keep it nearby for ready reference. Since Greek learning impinges on so many aspect of Renaissance intellectual culture, it will be a much used reference.