Roman and German Humanism: 1450-1550.

The twelve articles that make up this book provide an overview of D'Amico's research and insights into Roman humanism, the major schools of Latin prose in late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy, humanists Paolo Cortesi and Raffaele Maffei, humanist theology in the pre-reformation era, and German humanism.

The pieces on Roman humanism summarize concepts D'Amico had earlier treated with the exception of an article that comprises an important edited text by Sigismondo de Conti on the attributes and role of the apostolic secretary at the papal court. Although D'Amico's reconstruction of Roman humanism is solid and illuminating, there is one aspect of this reconstruction that needs elaboration. D'Amico argues that, especially in the early Quattrocento, the humanists felt extraneous to Rome - a statement which may be applied to the Tuscans but not to the majority of humanists who joined the papal court and did develop a strong allegiance to Rome. The allegiance of these humanists, however, was directed not to contemporary Rome, which they saw as a pale image of its ancient counterpart, but to classical Rome. A result of this allegiance was the ambitious program of renovatio Romae which they sought to realize through the papal court. Weak at first, this renovatio achieved full force in the second half of the Quattrocento and early Cinquecento when it led to socio-theological turmoil.

D'Amico's objective in the piece on schools of Latin prose in the Renaissance is to uncover the reasons behind a humanist's selection of one school over another. This piece is of value to the student of Renaissance prose, for it treats not only the better known schools of eclecticism and Ciceronianism, but also the less known and often overlooked archaizing school, or Apuleianism.

Studies on the humanist Paolo Cortesi are somewhat limited in scope, dealing with Cortesi's rehabilitation of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and with his attack on astrology; however, the three articles discussing the humanist Raffaele Maffei are, on the whole, far-reaching and comprehensive. These articles deal with Maffei's Breuis Historia of Julius II and Leo X (including an edited text of the Historia deduced from Vatican Library, Ottob. Lat. 2377), with the construction of his monument in Volterra, and with his Apologeticus, one of humanism's first responses to Martin Luther. The study of Maffei's Apologeticus provides a forceful and perceptive analysis of a highly valuable but almost unknown document. This piece by D'Amico captures the anxiety and frustration that bedeviled the Roman Curia and the curialists at the outset of the Reformation.

The thesis expounded in the article on Maffei's Apologeticus is complemented and reinforced by the piece on the humanists' approach to theology in the pre-Reformation era. Here D'Amico provides an effective overview of the humanists' treatment of theology from Petrarch to Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, and to the northern humanists Erasmus and Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples.

German humanism encompasses the last three articles of the book. The first two of these articles deal respectively with Beatus Rhenanus' interaction with Italian humanism and with "the annotations Beatus provided for his three editions of Tertullian" (XI, 38). The last of these articles, possibly the most important in the collection, explores Ulrich von Hutten and Beatus Rhenanus' propagandist policies in the early Reformation. D'Amico notes that Beatus' annotations of Tertullian, together with his editing of Marsilius of Padua's Defensor Pacis, made it possible for him to partake in the religious controversies raging in Germany at the time: the denial of Christian tradition, the papacy's exploitation of Germany, and the questionable origin and use of private penance. According to D'Amico, Beatus at first "responded positively to Luther's patriotic call against the Italian papacy's exploitation of Germany" (XI, 57). But as the Reformation became more radical, Beatus moved further away from Luther. Such was not the case with Hutten, however, who went on to become one of the major challengers of papal primacy and one of the key proponents of German nationalism.

As one reads D'Amico's study on Maffei's Apologeticus and the three pieces on German humanism, it becomes clear that the Reformation was instigated by both German theology and a political mode of thinking that had European resonances. In fact, I would argue that Hutten and Luther's challenge to the temporal/political power of the papacy, a challenge fueled largely by the humanists' renovatio Romae, as noted above, was shared by all the major European powers, including Spain, the bulwark of European Catholicism. This challenge led to the calamity of the Sack of Rome of 1527 and to the eventual demise of the renovatio Romae in Rome.

As expected in a collection of this nature, the work suffers from some repetitions (the recurring sketch of Maffei, for example) and from some technical remisses (references to pagination of volumes where the articles were first published). On the whole, however, the collection does provide an insight into D'Amico's professional interests and scholarly activities, as Paul Grendler maintains in his introduction. As such, it is a worthy tribute to a highly competent young scholar whose career was cut short by an untimely death.

ANGELO MAZZOCCO Mount Holyoke College