The Accademia Fiorentina and the question of the language. The politics of theory in ducal Florence *.

Upon assuming power in 1537, Cosimo I de' Medici (1519-74) embarked on a program with three principal goals: to secure his own position as duke of Florence, to restore tranquillity to a city wearied by domestic political turmoil, and to expand his dominion across Tuscany. (1) Key to all of these efforts was a strategy aimed at creating a seamless identity between Florence and the Medici. If family and city were inseparable in the Florentine mind, then the people could no longer entertain ideas of expelling their leader, for to do so would be an act of civic suicide. Following a path already trod by his forefathers, Cosimo eschewed a revolutionary politics in favor of a gradual revisionary strategy, reshaping existing institutions--governmental, cultural, even architectural--to endow them with a Medici identity. (2) This effort sent an important message about the historic place of the Medici, namely that they represented continuity with the Florentine past, including its republicanism. All of Florentine hi story thus could be made to converge in Cosimo; he was the logical endpoint of a process whose true direction had been hidden for generations but was now revealed. (3)

One group that helped promote this strategy came from the Accademia Fiorentina, whose history reflects the duke's disposition to reshape Florentine institutions to suit his purposes. Founded in late 1540 as the Accademia degli Umidi, it offered a polemical response to the Paduan Accademia degli Infiammati and the latter's support of the linguistic proposals of Pietro Bembo (1470-1547), who exalted the Trecento Tuscan of Boccaccio and Petrarch as a model for a contemporary literary language. By their very name the Umidi signaled a desire to put out the fire set by their northern rivals, (4) and their initial plan, to offer readings of Petrarch's sonnets, marked an intention to reclaim the Florentine cultural legacy--and Bembo's most important poet--from northern pretenders. (5) Within three months of its foundation Cosimo had taken control of the academy and gave it the less reactionary, more civic-minded name of Accademia Fiorentina. The original Umidi found themselves marginalized as the ranks of new aca demics, mostly clients of Cosimo, increased dramatically. As Michel Plaisance points out, Cosimo had found a place to "calm and occupy spirits quick to inflame." (6) The academy continued to promote Florentine language and letters through readings of both Dante and Petratch, among others, and through translations of Latin and Greek classics into Florentine. (7) The translations affirmed the equal status of contemporary Florentine alongside ancient languages while simultaneously eliminating the need to learn the latter, since readers could now gain access to major texts in their native tongue. (8) Indeed, many of the academy's projects focused on the establishment of a canon. In their often spirited defense of a Dante denigrated by Bembo the academics sought to reinstate Dante, and the translated Latin and Greek classics shaped a reading list for intellectually ambitious Florentines.

Cosimo leavened his rather heavy-handed incursion into the academy with some palliatives. The Umidi initially met in the home of one of their founders, Francesco Campana, but once the duke took over he provided space in the Medici Palace on Via Larga, and later a room at the Studio Fiorentino. When this space proved too small, public events, including the production of at least one comedy, were moved to the Sala del Papa in the cloister of Santa Maria Novella. (9) In 1550, after that room passed to the convent of the Monache della Concezione then under construction, the academy took up permanent housing in the Salone dei Dugento in the Palazzo della Signoria, by then the Ducal Palace. (10) The movement from private to public spaces not only reflected the duke's support of the institution but also reminded his subjects of what could be lost with the removal of his patronage. Finally, Cosimo also offered two concrete benefits: honoraria for the consul and porters and, more important, the publishing services of Lorenzo Torrentino, once the ducal press had been established in 1547. (11)

In their work of Florentine cultural promotion members of the academy engaged the decades-old question of the language. The language debate had quickened early in the sixteenth century, driven primarily by a perceived need to give order to a linguistically varied peninsula. Most of the early theories focused on the problem of the written language, a reflection no doubt, as Pietro Trifone has argued, of the rise of printing and the consequent spread of written culture. The most famous and successful contribution, Bembo's Prose della volgar lingua (1525), located the solution in the Tuscan of Petrarch for poetry and Boccaccio for prose. Two other theorists, Giovan Giorgio Trissino (1478-15 50) and Baldesar Castiglione (1478-1529), both advocated alternatives that likewise addressed questions of written language. Trissino's Epistola de le lettere nuovamente aggiunte ne la lingua italiana (1524) is a brief treatise about spelling, and in his dialogue Il castellano (1529), concerning nomenclature, he identifies a common language to the peninsula, which he calls Italian, and of which Tuscan is but one of many local variants. Castiglione, in The Book of the Courtier (1528), argued against the sort of artificial solution advocated by Bembo, asserting that the best written language is the one that comes from one's native spoken language.

One other important entry in the early debate comes from Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), in his Discorso o dialogo intorno alla nostra lingua (ca. 1520), unknown in the sixteenth century and not published until 1730. (12) Machiavelli reaches the same conclusion as Castiglione, but he also rakes aim at Trissino via an imagined Dante whose De vulgari eloquentia, discovered by Trissino, had inspired the latter's linguistic theory. In the De vulgari eloquentia Dante had claimed to write not in Florentine but in what he called the vulgare illustre, or illustrious vernacular, a courtly hybrid not unlike the language described by Trissino in his own treatises. Machiavelli concocts a dialogue with Dante in which he proves the poet wrong, on the terrain of the Divina commedia itself. The dialogue is significant in the present context, even if apparently unknown to members of the Florentine Academy, for two reasons. First, it addresses the question of nomenclature that will reappear under Cosimo: brisling at Dante's a nd Trissino's evasions, Machiavelli wants that which is Florentine to be called Florentine. Second, his is the only text of this early generation in which there appears the campanilismo, or civic patriotism, that will characterize the academicians' texts. Indeed, what distinguishes Florentine from non-Florentine voices in this debate, beginning with Machiavelli, is a sense of the importance of place, and specifically of Florence, in the history of the language, and an understanding that the debate is essentially geo-political in nature. The Venetian Bembo, a promoter of Tuscan, had tried to separate the language from its place of origin by historicizing it and rejecting its contemporary counterpart; Trissino had deployed a similarly alienating strategy by nationalizing the language as Italian. Like Machiavelli before them, the theorists of the Accademia Fiorentina would object to these operations. In addition, they would focus less on written language than on how best to acquire spoken Florentine, as part of a program aimed at establishing Florentine as a language of government and diplomacy.

At its busiest moment, in the decade running from 1545 to 1555, the revived debate converged on three figures: Pierfrancesco Giambullari (1495-1555), Giovambattista Gelli (1498-1563), and Carlo Lenzoni (1501-5 1), all of whom penned treatises of language theory. (13) The three had gained election to the academy as part of Cosimo's reform of the institution: Giambullari on 25 December 1540, when Cosimo first intervened, and Gelli and Lenzoni the following month. (14) The circumstances of their arrival, as Cosimo sought to pack the academy with allies, would appear to support a theory that turns them into ducal sycophants. Certainly Giambullari projects this image, but in fact the texts in which Gelli and Lenzoni address the language question disclose a far subtler dialogue with ducal power. On the one hand, they wholeheartedly endorse Cosimo's goal of Tuscan unification under Florentine rule, an aim realized in 1570 with his coronation as grand duke of Tuscany, and their language programs support that goal. Bu t they also seem less comfortable with the duke's domestic reforms, particularly as they affect class privilege. From their discussions emerges a more conservative idea of class structures, and in their staging of the dialogues they strike a subtle blow for an intellectual freedom which the reformed academy had limited. (15) This essay retraces how they balanced their debt to the duke with their own political concerns. Plaisance has observed that the academy becomes "a sort of shadow theater in which the tensions coming from the political field were transferred to the cultural field," (16) but the very act of shifting and its implicit marginalization of the cultural legates is by no means unidirectional. Indeed, it produces a dynamic in which politics and culture reflect back upon one another, generating an overt rhetoric of acclaim and a subtler politics of dissent, both due in no small part to Cosimo's own program and to the historic role of the Medici family in the question of the language.

THE RHETORIC OF ACCLAIM: COSIMO, FLORENCE, FLORENTINE

Giambullari, Gelli, and Lenzoni all defend contemporary Florentine in opposition to other proposals for a "national" language, and in advocacy of Cosimo's broader program of Florentine cultural promotion. The chronology of their publications, some first published by Anton Francesco Doni and then reissued by the Torrentino press, suggests how their theories evolved over the decade. (17) Giambullari made an early entry with his Origine della lingua fiorentina, altrimenti il Gello, first published in 1546 by Doni and again in 1549 by Torrentino in a revised edition. Gelli's I capricci del bottaio appeared in two 1546 editions with Doni and again with Torrentino in 1548, and the Ragionamento infra M Cosimo Bartoli e Giovan Batista Gelli sopra le difficulta del mettere in regole la nostra lingua, today known as the Ragionamento sulla lingua, issued from the Torrentino press in 1551 in the same volume as Giambullari's Della lingua che si parla e scrive in Firenze. Giambullari edited Lenzoni's Difesa della lingua fi orentina e di Dante after the latter's death; Cosimo Bartoli, who also delivered Lenzoni's eulogy before the Accademia Fiorentina, published it with Torrentino in 1556, following Giambullari's death. (18) The texts all affirm the close friendships that bind their authors; in particular the men enjoy writing one another into their dialogues. Giambullari not only names the Cello for Gelli but makes him its protagonist, explaining in his dedicatory letter that the treatise expands upon Gelli's arguments in the Origine di Firenze. (19) Gelli dedicates to Giambullari his Ragionamento sulla lingua, which stages a conversation between Gelli and Bartoli. Finally, Gelli and Giambullari both appear in Lenzoni's Difesa della lingua fiorentina. Indeed, if there is a key figure here, it appears to be Gelli, although his own musings are arguably more transitional than definitive. (20)

Like any wise client, these authors all find ways to make encomiastic gestures toward Cosimo. in a sense the treatises themselves, with their defense of the primacy of Florentine, all indirectly praise the duke, for he is the leader of the city that offers a linguistic paradigm to the rest of Italy. At the same time there are direct offerings as well. Cosimo Bartoli dedicates Lenzoni's Difesa della lingua fiorentina to Cosimo, and Giambullari likewise dedicates the Gello to the duke. In his 1546 dedication of the Gello to Cosimo, Giambullari expresses the hope that the book will inspire others "to try with every effort, to rediscover alive, and to bring back to light, the antiquities and histories of his most noble land: in honor of this city and in service to Your Excellency." (21) He elaborates on the relationship between Cosimo and Florence in the dedicatory letter to the 1549 second edition, explaining that he wrote the text "primarily to serve you and to honor this city, which certainly cannot, nor must it, be valued today any less for being your daughter and mother, most excellent sir." (22) As a canon of San Lorenzo with long-time connections to the Medici, (23) Giambullari has some immediate concerns that may inspire his ingratiating tone: twice in the course of the dialogue, for example, he complains that his room is small and poorly furnished. But he also develops here a curious genealogy that bears attention. Florence is both mother and daughter to Cosimo, which means that the duke is both son of and father to the city, a Florentine under whose leadership the city is reborn. The trinitarian subtext of such an assertion, with the city taking the place of the Holy Spirit, appears undeniable, and while one may dismiss such claims as so much bilious obsequiousness, Giambullari nevertheless promotes the very idea of Medici-Florence identity that will be crucial to Cosimo's endurance as duke.

Gelli goes about praising Cosimo by less overt means. In the Ragionamento sulla lingua he borrows from the Aristotelian principle of a universe divisible into things eternal and things transitory to posit two types of language, invariable--Hebrew, for example--and variable ones, with Florentine belonging to the latter category. According to Gelli, variable languages evolve parabolically, moving from a period of development to perfection before falling into decline. Gelli likens the language cycle to human life, mentioning Dante's musings on the topic of the ages of man in the Convivio, where he likewise describes human life parabolically. (24) The period of perfection Gelli calls to stato, or stasis: "which time is called by the philosophers stasis, and is something observed much by doctors (da' medici) in human illnesses." (25) The remark, clearly a pun on Medici rule, here advances the common wordplay about how the Medici--literally doctors--had healed a sick Florence, by suggesting a desire for lon gevity in the equilibrium of stasis. (26) Gelli argues that it is quite nearly impossible to determine when a language has reached its moment of perfection, lo stato, until after the moment has passed, though he does believe that the Florentine moment is near. He rejects any claim that Florentine had reached its apex with Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, because to do so would be to admit that Florentine is now in decline, and such an admission would be inconsistent with a program aimed at extolling ducal Florence.

This praise of Cosimo and of Florence accompanies a detailed defense of Florentine against all attackers. Like Machiavelli's Discorso, these texts disclose a sense of embattlement, as their authors seek to reclaim something they perceive as lost, namely the consensus about the centrality of their language. It is an accord that they must undertake somewhat convolutedly to reconstruct, given the fact that superficially the historical record indicates no such agreement. The objects of their counterattack are several, reflecting a perception that Florence has been denied linguistic authority in a variety of ways.

Giambullari writes Il Cello in answer to those who call Florentine "a corruption of the Latin language, and ... the dregs of it." (27) He is referring to Sperone Speroni, who in his Dialogo delle lingue had Lazzaro Bonamico say that Tuscan was to Latin as the dregs are to wine. (28) Giambullari answers his adversaries not by asserting the pristine Latinity of Florentine, but by denying its Latin roots altogether. In his analysis Florentine descends not from Latin but from Etruscan, which Giambullari fancifully reconstructs from Aramaic and Hebrew. Since Etruscan predates Aeneas' arrival on the peninsula, it becomes chronologically impossible for Tuscan to have descended from Latin. (29)

Giambullari seems less concerned about the impurity of Florentine--by his account it could just as easily be a corruption of Etruscan as its accusers hold it to be of Latin, since it integrates elements of Greek, Latin, French, and German--than about the very assertion of its Latinity. His animus extends to the Greeks as well, "who always want to have been the quintessence [literally, the fifth element], and that everything comes from them .... And it is true that the Latins, following in the footsteps of the Greeks, make the same point." (30) The Etruscan alternative affirms the authority of the ancients, that same authority he finds so repellent in claims about Greek and Latin, but with a twist, because the authority of Etruscan is local, not imported.

Beyond defending the centrality of Florentine, Giambullari also lends implicit support to Cosimo's pan-Tuscan political ambitions. Giambullari identifies Tuscany with the territory occupied by the twelve cities of the ancient Etruscan league, extending its dominion as far as Viterbo and Perugia, though he acknowledges that these areas now lie in the hands of the Church, and he records the loss of the Garfagnana as well. He observes that great differences, particularly in pronunciation, mark the Tuscan spoken in various cities:

the pronunciation (is) so different, and so various the ending[s] of those same words, which are understood in all that (area]. But because I do not want to offend anyone by cutting anybody out of Tuscany, even though juridically I could cut out a large part of it, because of that very obvious difference between their speech and the language of the writers, let me just say this: that among the cities of Tuscany, one sees a certain variation, which not every man recognizes, but we ourselves recognize it. (31)

Here lies the heart of the matter, as Giambullari establishes an explicit relationship between Tuscan pronunciation and the legal borders of Tuscany. The passage suggests that language similarities may furnish a rationale for Cosimo's political dominion, a way of expanding the legal borders of Tuscany to recapture lost territories. Florence must be the capital of this historic Tuscany because it furnishes the language against which the Tuscan spoken elsewhere may be measured. The implications of Giambullari's early declaration that identifying the origins of Florentine will be "to the common benefit of all Tuscans, and particularly of the Florentines," (32) now become clear, as linguistic theory compels a political solution involving Cosimo's dominance, which can only be to everyone's benefit.

Unlike Giambullari, Gelli and Lenzoni locate the loss of Florentine linguistic authority in the debate over nomenclature. In I capricci del bottaio Gelli takes aim at Trissino, whom he accuses of thievery: "it seems so beautiful to him, that he would like to steal it from us; and where it is truly Florentine, as Boccaccio says, in order to lay claim to it he wants to make it Italian, or courtly as he says." (33) In the Ragionamento sulla lingua he attacks all those, including Trissino, who want to "strip Tuscany of this glory;" i.e., the glory of the name. (34) Gelli begins his refutation by citing Ludovico Martelli's 1524 Risposta all' epistola del Trissino, which includes a proof that Trissino's courtly language is none other than Florentine. He also challenges Trissino's attribution of the De vulgari eloquentia to Dante, referring to conversations that took place in the Rucellai Gardens, a gathering place for Florentine intellectuals, during the papacy of Leo X (15 13-21). (35) Debunking claims of Dante's authorship of this treatise is necessary because, as mentioned above, Dante asserts therein that he wrote the Divine Comedy not in Florentine but in the courtly vernacular. To cede the nomenclature issue on such a capital text of the Florentine tradition, and among partisans of Dante, would thus weaken Gelli's position significantly. Finally, Gelli doubts the quality of the Infiammati's knowledge of Florentine, there being no true Florentines in their group. These non-Tuscans, thinking they know Tuscan, have in fact corrupted it and, worse, have disseminated in their publications a language they call Tuscan but that really is the ruin of it. Even more egregiously, Florentines themselves have accepted and used these corruptions in their own writings, so the language has come to resemble a woman who disguises her natural beauty with make-up and jewelry: "and by exposing the artifice, they take away her grace much more than increase it: a thing being always more beautiful, even if artificial, when the art is les s exposed." (36) In other words, only native speakers can be true authorities on the language, because they understand how to avoid such artifice.

In the Difesa della lingua fiorentina Lenzoni follows a similar path. Dwelling at length on the nomenclature issue, he explains that the so-called Italian vernacular is really Florentine, given national status "because of all the Italian languages, this is not only the most beautiful, most graceful, richest, most varied in pronunciation, sweetest in words; but more understood than any other, and more learnable." He continues: It is also called the Italian vernacular, perhaps par excellence, as if no other language of Italy deserves to be learned, or read, like this one....But that it is proper to Florentines is clearly demonstrated by the fact that what we learn in our diapers and in the cradle, outsiders [learn] from authors, once their bones have hardened. And this speech is native to us, which other Italian men follow by choice, and it is foreign to them. (37)

Thus there exists no national language other than Florentine. Lenzoni also has Gelli refer obliquely to "some Italians, born and raised outside of Tuscany," who "want first to make known, and arrogantly teach others, the properties of this language, rather than learn it as one should."38 Given that Gelli's interlocutor here is a signor Licenziado, recently arrived from Padua, Gelli is likely referring to Bembo and the Infiammati. Indeed, Lenzoni has Gelli argue, the time has come to codify Florentine "so that our children not fall into the error, inspired by the wrongful convictions of some, of introducing strange and perverse words and ways. And if we Florentines sleep on it in the future, as was done in the past, it will become ruined in such a way that justly we will no longer be able to call it Florentine, but... Bergamasque." (39) The unnamed destroyers of Florentine are clearly northerners, likely of the same ilk as Bembo himself.

In the course of their rebuttal of both the Bembists and Trissino, Gelli and Lenzoni also articulate programs for promoting Florentine. Indeed, if one can understand the targeting of Bembo due to the centrality of his theories in the language debate, the attack on a bygone Trissino, whose theories had never gained much traction, makes sense because Trissino, unlike Bembo, had advanced a theory that would codify a spoken language. To be sure, his Epistola delle lettere concerns spelling, but the Castellano addresses the question of spoken language in governmental and diplomatic circles, the same fields in which the accademici want to install Florentine. Gelli makes this explicit in the Ragionamento sulla lingua, arguing that Florentine will become richer and more beautiful when "princes, and great and qualified men, begin to write in this language the very important things of the government of states, the conduct of wars, and the other serious dealings of matters which not long ago were all written in Latin." (40) That process has already begun, Gelli argues, because people spontaneously desire to learn Florentine, thanks to its beauty: "It is true that what force accomplished in the age of the Romans, the goodness and beauty of this language does today." (41) Lenzoni likewise observes that "by study [Florentine] is becoming common to the gentlemen and heads of the cities of Italy."(42) Both understand that the true means to conquest lies in Florentine taking root in circles of power. But before it can move from Florence into the seats of government across the peninsula, the language must return to Florence, and to a specific class of Florentine speakers.

In I capricci del bottaio Gelli proposes an aesthetic defense of Florentine that grounds his argument: "The beauty and the grace of our language comes not only from words, but from the way of weaving and arranging them." (43) In other words, the beauty of Florentine lies not in its component parts but the eloquence of its expression. This leads Gelli to argue that the proper linguistic model for Florentine is the language of the city, not its surrounds: "And you can be sure of this: that if you pay close attention, you will recognize whether one is born or raised in Florence or in the countryside, because those raised in the latter commonly retain a certain harshness in their pronunciation, and they cannot abandon it without some difficulties."(44) At the same time, foreigners will confront limits in their ability to learn the language: "And know that he who is not born or raised in Florence, never learns it [Florentine] perfectly, and because of this it so happens that many who despair of speaking or writing it well have thrown themselves upon speaking ill of it and reviling it." (45) Gelli thus suggests that there will always be a linguistic hierarchy in Italy, that no matter how far Florentine spreads across the peninsula Florence will remain the linguistic capital, the place of spontaneous generation and conservation of true Florentine.

Gelli elaborates upon these claims in the Ragionamento sulla lingua. A dialogue between Gelli and Bartoli, the Ragionamento takes as its starting point the former's decision not to seek reappointment to the Accademia Fiorentina committee charged by Duke Cosimo with writing a Florentine grammar. Appearing as it does in a volume with Giambullari's Della lingua che si parla e scrive in Firenze, itself a first attempt at a Florentine grammar, (46) the dialogue stands in ironic counterpoint to Giambullari's work, for it presents a Gelli who has concluded that the time, while approaching, is still not right to undertake the task. The Florentine linguistic star has been in the ascendant since the time of conversations in the Rucellai Gardens early in the sixteenth century, when those in attendance began to pay attention to the language after decades of neglect. But even that neglect, Gelli argues, could be excused, for Florentines had been busy instead developing commerce, "and perhaps mote out of need than nature, with respect to the leanness of the countryside." (47) Florentines were thus reading Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, but more for their content than their form, while elsewhere in Tuscany, where a more solid agricultural economy had not compelled the development of mercantilism, readers were able to appreciate the three crowns for the beauty of their language. In other words, Florence may have failed to appreciate its own writers, but it did so while becoming the economic powerhouse that eclipses other Tuscan cities and qualifies it for leadership.

While great artists have emerged in other fields, Gelli argues, great Florentine writers who would serve as models for the new grammar have yet to take the stage. He cautions against a wholesale embrace of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, whom he defends as Florentine--not Tuscan--writers, because their works are uneven: some would be acceptable, others not. Boccaccio presents a particular problem for a theorist concerned with prose, since he wrote in the high, middle, and low styles. The solution, Gelli argues, is to take the best of each, nor to form a grammar but a rhetoric of Florentine:

Therefore, as to forming these rules, I would not get very bogged down in the first part; but having explained the parts of speech, and shown the variable and the invariable words, and the examples of verbs, especially with that difference between our usage and that of our so-called ancients, I would go straight to the construction. Since, as I said, all the importance of this language lies in this, I would certainly use great diligence, raking from the three above-named men [Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio] everything that was said well by them. This would be, in my judgment, only what today's usage has kept, our ear being naturally inclined always to leave aside the harsh, hard, and difficult things, and follow the sweet and easy ones. (48)

This remarkable passage constitutes a brilliant finesse of Bembo and the Infiammati. It crystallizes Gelli's complaint against Bembo--that by focusing on grammar he missed the true beauty of the language--while keeping the Tuscan tradition in play, a tradition that now includes Dante as well as Petrarch and Boccaccio at their "best." Gelli locates what is best in elements that have withstood the rigorous test of the Florentine ear, which over time has purified Trecento Tuscan of its coarser nature. Florence thus recaptures its rightful place because only through the active intervention of the Florentine people, specifically the "noble and qualified men of our city,"49 has the proper refinement of the language taken place.

Like Giambullari before him, Gelli mixes his linguistic theory with political concerns. He argues for Florentine political dominance of Tuscany as a way of ordering the hierarchy of Tuscan dialects:

But assuming it is true that everyone tries to speak in Tuscan and wants rules for it to be written, whence would one then derive them, since no one city rules all of Tuscany? Because the Luccans, the Pisans, the Sienese, the Aretines, and every other city of this province, would always say that the true Tuscan language and pronunciation was in fact their own; and to derive one part of the rules from one city and another from another, choosing, as some say, the best, in order to make a composite of all of them, would be a very difficult thing, and then perhaps not approved and not obeyed, since no one would be in charge. (50)

The solution to the language problem, in other words, is finally political, because only the authority imposed by a Florentine conquest of Tuscany will clear up the confusion about which Tuscan language to imitate.

For all that, however, Gelli fails to explain how, if non-Florentines cannot learn the language perfectly, it will truly become a national language. Outside of Florence the Florentine model will doubtless be subject to manipulations and corruptions, just as the Tuscan model had been at the hands of northerners. Gelli's need to control the linguistic agenda becomes most apparent when one understands how little he truly can control. For Florentine--and Gelli himself acknowledges this--will never have the advantage of Latin under the Romans, who could impose it as the language of government as they spread their conquest through new territories. Florence will never conquer Italy, so Florentines will never run local governments. But Lenzoni articulates a solution to this problem.

Lenzoni takes up Gelli's call that Florentine become the language of government and diplomacy, explaining how that can be accomplished. Simply put, non-Florentines should come to Florence to learn the language, because only then will they acquire that most amorphous of Florentine qualities, urbanita:

our urbanity...(as one can derive from Cicero and others) consists primarily in the true, pure, and sweet Florentine pronunciation: and secondarily in a certain sincere, particular, and natural appropriateness of words, constructions, figures of speech, proverbs, sayings, and a certain rhythm used by us, which is properly ours and that of many other Tuscans: things that you can never acquire outside of Florence and those places where the language is natural, and is spoken with milk in the mouth. (51)

While his final clause broadens the geography of Florentine beyond the city; Lenzoni's word urbanita, by its very etymology, actually signals a narrowing of linguistic range to the city itself.

Indeed, in adopting the word urbanita Lenzoni draws on Cicero's urbanitas, introduced in the Brutus, where it is a Roman characteristic. Cicero provides subtexts for Lenzoni's argument.

"What characteristics," inquired Brutus at this point, "do you assign to these orators, who are in a sense foreigners?" "Why, no others," I replied, "than those we have ascribed to our city orators; except in one respect, that their oratory lacks what I venture to call a certain urban coloring." (52)

In reply to Brutus' request for a definition of urbanitas, Cicero answers "Nescio," I do not know, and he continues:

I only know that it exists. You will understand presently what I mean, Brutus, when you come to Gaul. There you will hear some words which are not current at Rome, but these could be unlearned and exchanged for Roman words. It is much more significant that in the words and pronunciation of our orators there is a certain intonation and quality that is characteristic of the city, and this is recognizable not in orators only but in others."

Cicero sets the city, Rome, in opposition to a much larger and less sophisticated exurban territory, Gaul. Lenzoni, who unlike Cicero manages to define urbanita, will likewise put Florence in opposition to the nonFlorentine territories. Florence thus becomes the new Rome, the urbs. It is no surprise that this sort of argument, which implicitly denies a Roman claim to linguistic primacy such as that asserted by Trissino for a vernacular associated with the papal court, appears at a time when the Medici, now allied with the Habsburg Empire, do not control the papacy and find themselves instead competing with the papal capital for political and cultural recognition.

By arguing that Florentine can in fact be learned, but only in Florence, Lenzoni finds a way to achieve cultural dominion in the political sphere, the best solution one can hope for when political dominion is impossible. His reasoning involves a play of centripetal and centrifugal forces. Non-Florentines will come to the city to learn not just its language but its mannerisms, in effect becoming Florentine by absorbing its urbanitia. Having completed their education, they will then leave, taking with them what they have learned and becoming ambassadors of Florentine culture wherever they go. Others, following their lead, will take the same course, with the eventual result that Florentine will triumph as the national language. The plan has the same goal of creating a linguistic unity for the professions that informed Guarino Guarini's (1374-1460) teaching of Latin in the fifteenth century. There is as well an identical strategy of urban reference: just as Guarino's Latin lessons meant to affirm the cultural pri macy of ancient Rome and its educational systems, so too would linguistic education under Lenzoni's plan affirm the cultural primacy of the city that offers the new language model. (54)

Gelli and Lenzoni thus write in response to an urge not merely to assert the primacy of Florentine but to protect its purity and ensure its spread. Their portrait of Florence is that of a linguistically superior, sophisticated, dynamic, economically advanced city. No wonder Lenzoni wants non-Florentines to come: they will not just learn a language, they will discover a place that far outpaces any city they know, thanks no doubt to Cosimo's leadership. And yet, just as they paint this bright portrait of Florence, they expose local social and political tensions that blur its colors. Those tensions too would appear to lie at Cosimo's feet.

THE POLITICS OF DISSENT

Cosimo's embrace of the Accademia Fiorentina, and the efforts of its members to promote Florentine, involved a larger strategy aimed at solidifying the identity between court and city. This plan, essentially centrifugal in nature, focused not on the hub of power, the Palazzo della Signoria transformed into a ducal palace, but on the city itself as the center of activity that generates glory. Cosimo's early outreach contrasts with the far more self-interested courtliness described by Castiglione in The Book of the Courtier: "[Federico], among the other praiseworthy things he did, on the harsh site of Urbino built a palace, according to the opinion of many the most beautiful to be found in Italy; and he furnished it so well with every necessary thing that it did not seem to be a palace, but a city in the form of a palace." (55) By contrast, Cosimo's Florence is a palace in the form of a city, a place so bursting with energy that no four walls could contain it.

That same dynamism informs Cicero's representation of Rome in the Brutus, and while Cicero struggles to define urbanitas, he has no trouble seeing it as a uniformly Roman trait, "a certain intonation and quality which is characteristic of the city." Such is not the case in Florence, as Gelli reveals:

all or most outsiders confess and agree tacitly that the language they seek and hold to be good is Florentine alone; I mean the one spoken by the noble and true citizens of Florence, who have some knowledge of either language or science; and not the one used by the plebs and the men who have knowledge of few other things than those they require as animals. (56)

The remark reflects Gelli's own ambitions, as a member of the middle class--he was by profession a hosier--to be identified with the Florentine aristocracy. (57) The issue of class, which recurs in these texts, takes two forms: First, questions about the proper role of subaltern groups in Florentine society, and second, concerns about the role of intellectuals.

Gelli's remark echoes one that Carlo Bembo, speaking for his brother Pietro, makes in the first book of the Prose della volgar lingua:

It is not the masses, Giuliano, that give authority to the writings of any century, but a few men of each century, because they are held to be more learned than others, whose judgment the people and the masses trust, and because they do not know how to judge correctly, and they lean with their voices toward that party toward whom they hear those few men lean. (58)

Unlike Bembo, however, Gelli more trenchantly excludes the Florentine underclass from any access to linguistic authority. Bembo's remark partakes of a tradition that marginalizes the lower classes in the linguistic hierarchy while gazing at them somewhat abstractly. Gelli's aversion is more immediate, fueled perhaps in part by the widespread attendance at the academy's Sunday public sessions, which opened intellectual life to the masses and gave them a sense of ownership of Florentine and of the city's cultural heritage. In addition, Cosimo's reform of the academy had given an egalitarian quality to its membership, which included representatives of the mercantile and professional classes, artists and shopkeepers. The academy itself, in other words, had become a microcosm of Cosimo's social experiment, limiting the power traditionally enjoyed by the moneyed aristocracy while simultaneously embracing the historically disenfranchised lower classes. (59) Within this context a Gelli, who is the product of the oppo rtunity society that Florence represented from the fourteenth century on, (60) and who sought to overcome his more humble origins and join an intellectual oligarchy, had to see the danger that his own goals might be frustrated.

Lenzoni displays similar concerns that the wrong Florentine will become the model. He points out that while non-Florentines seek to learn the language, "to our [people] it is so natural, that everyone, even farmers and women, speak it." (61) Moreover, he offers a far more detailed description of the classes and spaces of Florence than Gelli had: "I say to you, have no doubt that the hearing and speaking that you will do continually with the Florentine gentleman, with the soldier, with the merchant, and with the craftsman, in the piazzas, in the markets, and in the courts, will be of inestimable utility and benefit to you." (62) Language learning in Florence will be borderless.

Here the trouble begins. Lenzoni criticizes ambitious linguists who "desire to appear superior to others" by "looking for letters in the countryside and among the rural estates rather than in the midst of the nobility and the most sensible and judicious men." (63) He then offers a telling definition: "And here I call public that usage which is of the majority, meaning by majority not the low plebs of the city; however much they may be infinite, but that of the citizens and intellectuals, since the habit of living is taken from the consensus and usage of the good." (64) The old Florentine definition of citizenship, based not on residency but on a history of wealth, appears to be at work here. All Florentines may speak Florentine, but there is an elite that speaks it better, a majority not of numbers but of quality. Outsiders must come to Florence to learn the language "by long practice, from qualified persons, and even if one were to need to learn it outside, since not everyone can come to stay in Florence, th ey must learn it from Florentines; but either noblemen or scholars, and who are well practiced in it: because from the commoners, you could learn bad ways, false endings, and perhaps words that are not good."(65) Earlier Lenzoni had argued that all Florentines, without distinction, learn this wonderful language at birth. Now it turns out that not all Florentines speak the same language. It is not clear how he will protect foreigners who come to Florence, who will no doubt visit the piazzas and markets as well as the courts while in town, just as Cicero's Theophrastus had done before them. (66) Indeed, he cannot shelter them, which is part of the problem, the lonely paradox of the theoretician whose prescriptions will lead his subjects beyond the controls he wishes to impose.

The strategies proposed by Gelli and Lenzoni thus suggest some dissent from the model of Florence envisioned, and at times imposed, by Cosimo himself. While they cannot express this disapproval openly, there are ways in which they encode their dissent. That encoding comes in how they exploit the space of Florence, giving their dialogues private settings that put the interlocutors at a remove from the new society Cosimo is creating. On the one hand, these dialogues take place in carefully described Florentine spaces that further conjure a city-wide intellectual ferment not concentrated in the court. At the same time, however, they all also record insistently private conversations. Giambullari sets his dialogue in the garden of San Lorenzo, a second choice because his room there is too small to hold all his guests. His visitors had retreated to San Lorenzo after beginning their conversation in Piazza San Giovanni and realizing that the public space threatened too many interruptions for serious talk. But in Gell i and Lenzoni the practical motives for seclusion disappear, leaving the simple act of cloistering. In I capricci del bottaio, set in Giusto's bedroom in his home in the parish of San Pier Maggiore, (67) no one else is present since the "conversations," as Gelli explains in his preface, are in fact instances of Giusto talking to himself--a dialogue of one, modeled perhaps on Petrarch's Secretum--as recorded by his nephew Bindo, a notary, who eavesdrops through the thin wall. Giusto is lucky--or not, depending on how one chooses to look at these things--to have a notary as a relative, since being illiterate himself he could not have recorded these conversations even if he wanted to.

Gelli chooses another secluded domain, Cosimo Bartoli's study, as the setting for the Ragionamento, carefully describing the room as a private space within a private space: "we entered the house, and next the study." (68) Lenzoni sets his dialogue in the "Capitolo de' Frati," most likely the Dominican chapter house at either San Marco or Santa Maria Novella. Like Gelli, Lenzoni insists upon the group's seclusion: "where, almost isolated from the others, we could entertain ourselves, either by studying the old pictures that are seen there, or with those friendly conversations that would please our souls." (69) Moreover, in two of these texts, Gelli's Ragionamento and Lenzoni's Difesa, the chats begin immediately after two or more of the interlocutors have departed the academy, further suggesting that what follows are private discussions not for public consumption. Key here would be Lenzoni's remark that they represent ragionamenti familiari, intimate talks among friends. (70) But what remains less apparent her e is why Gelli and Lenzoni would choose to represent conversations about a very public issue--the choice of a national language, absent a nation--as being so private.

Compounding the paradox is the fact that there is ample precedent for casting these conversations as public. The earlier generation of dialogues about the question of the language, if not set in public spaces, often included an audience attached to power, giving the imprimatur of patronly approval. The conversations of Bembo's Prose take place in Carlo Bembo's dining room in Venice, with Giuliano de' Medici, cousin of Giulio, the future Pope Clement VII and dedicatee of Bembo's work, participating as a family representative. In Castiglione, the setting for the game of describing a perfect courtier is the ducal palace itself, with the duchess present as her husband's representative and official censor. Giuliano de' Medici again appears here but speaks much more briefly, arguing that Tuscan is the most beautiful Italian language while questioning the durability of the Tuscan model represented by Petratch and Boccaccio. (71) The dialogue in Trissino's Il castellano takes place in Rome, in the papal fortress of C astel Sant'Angelo, with Giovanni Rucellai, Clement's castellan, appearing as one of the interlocutors. Even Pierio Valeriano's Dialogo sopra le lingue volgari, written around 1516 but not published until 1620, records a conversation witnessed by the future Clement. (72) So not only do all these works represent people in power or legates of the powerful, they all also recognize, implicitly or explicitly, the role of the Medici in the language debate, no doubt because of the family's importance to Florence. (73) Certainly much had changed in the 20 years that separate the publication of the Prose and the Courtier from the linguistic debates centered in the Accademia Fiorenrina. But one thing had not changed: the importance of the Medici in Florentine politics. While the family lost the "national" stage following Clement's death, when Cosimo moved into the Palazzo della Signoria he abandoned the wry humility of previous generations and asserted his family's centrality to city governance. And yet Cosimo or a repr esentative of his does not appear in texts written by his accademici.

This consistent earlier association with the Medici family in part explains Cosimo's absent presence. The Accademia degli Umidi-Accademia degli Infiammati opposition would appear to suggest a debate between Florenrines and non-Florentines, with Cosimo consistently removed from it. And yet this is indeed a Florentine debate, because the two positions now under consideration are both rooted in Florence, with other earlier solutions--Latin, the courtly vernacular--effectively marginalized. Hard upon a century that had rediscovered Latin and restored it as a language for humanist prose, Bembo could not even begin his argument about the vernacular, set in 1505, without first addressing the place of Latin, and his enactment of Ercole Strozzi's transformation from Latinist to Italianist marks a generational shift.

The Accademia Fiorentina would further the effort to dismiss Latin with its translation program. In like manner, the accademici certainly found Trissino irritating, but the events in Padua were clearly much more troubling, since they represented an attempt by non-Florentines to define the Florentine cultural legacy. The gravity of that threat would seem to justify invoking strong support--representing Cosimo as approving the proposals of the accademici--but to do so would violate the historical Medici neutrality on this issue. Toward the end of book one of Bembo's Prose, Giuliano first expresses this position: "whether either the new Florentine language or the old one is more greatly praised, the honor in any event goes to my patria." (74) He is quite right, and these words could come just as easily from his distant cousin Cosimo.

Lest anyone think that Cosimo would not find value in the promotion of Florentine linguistic and literary culture that Bembo's work represents, there is one further proof. The third edition of the Prose, the basis for modern editions, issued posthumously in 1549 in Florence in a handsome though compromised quarto volume, and the publisher was none other than Cosimo's own, Lorenzo Torrentino. The editor, Benedetto Varchi, formerly c)f the Infiammati and now a leader of the Accademia Fiorentina, (75) dedicated the new edition to none other than Cosimo himself. The volume's pararexrs structure a dense network of references to the duke and his family. The title page bears Cosimo's coat of arms, and the full title makes reference to its dedication to Giulio de' Medici, "who then was made Supreme Pontiff and called Pope Clement VII." (76)

Varchi organizes his dedicatory letter around the theme of arms and letters, praising Florence for both and attributing her greatness in these fields to the Medici. He offers up the example of Giovanni delle Bande Nere, Cosimo's father, as proof of Florentine prowess in arms, and he credits Medici patronage for the Florentine humanist tradition, specifically mentioning the work of Lorenzo il Magnifico, who "was the first after many years to recognize and appreciate nor only the sweetness and pleasantness of the Florentine language, but also its gravity and majesty." (77) His reference to the Florentine language, which he implicitly retraces to Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, telegraphs a grim signal to his fellow accademici, who are laboring to distinguish between the language of the Trecento masters and the Florentine of their own time. For Varchi the restoration of Florentine, which according to Gelli began in the Rucellai Gardens, has no relevance; it is instead another line that matters:

And if his many and very great occupations had allowed it, he [Lorenzo] would have restored them again to their pristine purity and splendor. But what he could not do, our most excellent monsignor Pietro Bembo did, not long after him, moved perhaps by the example of such a man, or perhaps induced by the encouragement of Giuliano de' Medici, his son, at that time called by everyone the Magnifico, who is one of the speakers in the present dialogue, with whom messer Pietro lived, as in a family, for many years. (78)

In other words, the idea for the Prose was nor Bembo's after all, but may instead be traced to Lorenzo's patronage of letters and, perhaps, to Giuliano himself. For Varchi the Prose thus enjoy a Medici genealogy; indeed, as Varchi himself avers, the language of Florence is today what it is thanks to Bembo's efforts, he "having nor only purged their language [of the Florentines] of the rust of the past, but having cleaned it up and decorated it so much that it has become what we see today." (79) This rhetoric would make it difficult for Cosimo to renounce Bembo, which is of course Varchi's intention in whatever internal polemic has erupted between him and the other accademici. (80)

So the barbarians are not only at the gates, they are having scholarly debates in the fortress. The Florentine Varchi does not limit his sympathy for Bembo to the dedicatory letter of the Prose; it appears as well in the oration he delivers upon appointment as console of the Accademia Fiorentina. (81) His fierce pro-Bembo partisanship not only threatens to undermine the claim of the other accademici that they speak for Florence, but his ambitions for the Prose could only leave his colleagues feeling beleaguered and edgy. Varchi's Bembo edition carries a rare privilege for a Torrentino imprint: "Con privilegio di Papa Paolo III. & Carlo V. Imp. & del Duca di Fiorenza" on the frontispiece, "Con Privilegio di Papa Paolo Terzo, et di tutti gli altri Prencipi Rep. Stati & Signori, nelle cui terre libri si stampano" on the colophon. The securing of privileges from the pope and the emperor signals a plan for a national distribution of this imprint, as part of an ongoing effort by Bembo's advocates to establish his l inguistic rules throughout the peninsula. By contrast the ruminations of Giambullari, Gelli, and Lenzoni appear parochial, as if they were already a footnote to linguistic history rather than the avant garde they aspired to be. It follows, then, that the accademici leave the confines of their academy because, given Varchi's membership, they can no longer claim that their position, while faithful to the original intentions of the Umidi, represents the unanimous linguistic policy of the Accademia Fiorentina. Nor, given the way in which Varchi exploits Medici genealogy to bolster Bembo's position locally, can they even expect that Cosimo would favor their arguments over those of their rivals.

Finally, however, there is yet another reason for the posture assumed by the three accademici. As De Gaetano points out, Cosimo reorganized the Accademia degli Umidi to include public meetings because he distrusted private ones. (82) These texts all in fact demonstrate to the duke what private conversations sound like: far from seditious in nature, they are unerringly loyal to the interests of the city, which of course coincide with the duke's own.

The interlocutors might even argue that they show greater loyalty to Florence than does Cosimo himself, since they insist upon a traditional arrangement of class power that protects privilege and appropriately marginalizes the masses. Their efforts echo with the words attributed to Cosimo's cousin in the Prose: "the honor in any event goes to my patria." Convinced that the contemporary Florentine linguistic paradigm, and not that of the Trecento masters, most closely resonates with the ideology of Florentine cultural promotion that will secure Cosimo's place in history, they put forth their arguments. But at the same time they find multiple ways to record their dissent from Cosimo, from a domestic policy that, in its renunciation of privacy, eschews intellectual freedom while according greater recognition to subaltern groups. Their story is finally a Florentine one, inseparable as it is from the local politics that inform it.

Antonio Gramsci's observation, that the resurgence of the question of the language always marks a moment of political tension, (83) certainly finds affirmation in Cosimo's Florence, where the rearrangement of class and cultural power under the new absolutism drives intellectuals into a struggle for control not just of the linguistic agenda, but of their own place as arbiters of Florentine destiny. The debate over language veils a more fundamental one about the very definition of Florence, as the renewed, ambitious city confronted the imposing specter of its monumental past. In the Accademia Fiorentina Cosimo found allies in his efforts to absorb and master that past, but he also found dissenters who recognized that the duke's interests did not necessarily coincide with their own, and who understood that his patronage came at a price. The uncomfortable quid pro quo complicated their efforts to serve him, producing texts that, in their multiple agendas, reveal much about the difficult status of the intellectual in ducal Florence.

* My thanks to Joseph Loewenstein, Lynne Tatlock, Bonner Mitchell, and the anonymous RQ reviewer for their careful readings and helpful suggestions for the development of this essay.

(1.) See Cochrane, 3-87; Diaz, 73-83; and Von Albertini, 201-11 and 280-89.

(2.) This strategy can be traced as far back as Cosimo pater patriae, as Brown details. Cochrane observes that "Cosimo, as a patriotic Florentine, was determined to develop and elaborate what was peculiar to Florence, even at the cost of limiting his own freedom of choice rather than replace it with something entirely new" (53). In governance, "[t]he best the new regime could think of doing was simply to do more efficiently and thoroughly what had been done by its predecessors" (55). Diaz details the reforms, 85-109. Such a strategy also involved plans for redesigning the Palazzo della Signoria and surrounds, some of which were realized while others were not; see Morolli. All of this is consistent with Machiavelli's counsel in the Discourses, 1993, 192: "He who desires or wants to reform the political order of a city, in order to be accepted, and in order to hold on to it with everyone's satisfaction, must keep at least the shadow of the ancient ways, so that it does not appear to the people that he has chang ed the order." (Colui che desidera o che vuole riformare uno stato d'una citta, a volere che sia accetto, e poterlo con satisfazione di ciascuno mantenere, e necessitato a ritenere l'ombra almanco de modi antichi, accio che a popoli non paia avere mutato ordine.) Here as throughout all translations are mine, unless otherwise noted.

(3.) Cox-Rearick derails the deployment of this strategy in the visual arts under Cosimo, 229-83.

(4.) On the relationship between the Accademia degli Infiammati and the Accademia degli Umidi, see Bertelli. De Gaetano, 101, has a different theory of the original name for the academy, that the "Umidi" sought a connotation with fertility. He also downplays the rivalry with the Infiammati, though there can be little doubt that the Umidi modeled themselves after the Infiammati; see Samuels. On Cosimo's transformation of the Accademia degli Umidi into the Accademia Fiorentina see Bertelli; De Gaetano, 100-10; Bareggi, 1973; and above all Plaisance, 1973.

(5.) As De Gaetano, 114, points out, Petrarch enjoyed by fat the greatest popularity in the academy's early years. From December 1541 to December 1545 De Gaetano counts 61 readings of Pertrarch as opposed to 29 of Dante, a distant second.

(6.) Plaisance, 1973, 431: Ils'agissait de calmer et d'occuper des esprits prompts a se passioner.

(7.) See Plaisance, 1990, on the nature of the public readings, dedicated principally to lyric.

(8.) See De Gaetano, 100-36.

(9.) Ugolino Martelli's Il furto was performed in the Sala del Papa on 9 November 1544. Bryce, 80, wonders whether some reports of great crowds at public readings were exaggerated, but the transfer of these events to increasingly larger spaces does suggest a growing audience.

(10.) Rilli Orsini, xx.

(11.) See Ricci and Bareggi, 1974, for overviews of Torrentino's activities in Florence. De Gaetano, 108, argues that the stipends were "nominal rewards," but one cannot discount their importance as a reminder of where money could come from in ducal Florence.

(12.) The date of the Discorso has been the subject of considerable debate, with Dionisotti, 267-363, offering a lengthy analysis leading to the assignment of 1520. The proposals run from 1512 to 1525. While the Discorso was apparently unknown in the sixteenth century, Machiavelli himself did enjoy some fame as a linguistic theorist. Lenzoni recounts in the Difea della lingua fiorentina, 16-17, a brief dialogue between Machiavelli and a certain Messer Maffio from Venice, in which the former, in reference to Bembo, points out the audacityofany attempt by non-Florentines to dictate rules for a language not their own. Lenzoni's late testimony has played a role in the debate over the dare of the text, as Dionisotti points out.

(13.) For an overview of the theoretical "school" to which these three belonged, that of the proponents of the Florentine or Tuscan quality of the vernacular, see Vitale, 47-63.

(14.) Plaisance, 1973, 403, 406.

(15.) Ibid., 514-15, offers a compelling example of how the reform of the academy imposed limits on intellectual freedom in his account of how the censor's duties changed. The Umidi had envisioned the censor primarily as an editor; under the new rules, the censor had broader authority and could presumably intervene to make ideological emendations of texts. The unpublished "Annali dell' Accademia degli Umidi," 35v, record that Giambullari sought approval from the censors before publishing his Gello.

(16.) Plaisance, 1974, 149-50: une sorte de theatre d'ombres ou se dechargeraient dans le champ culturel les tensions provenant du champ politique.

(17.) For a list of Doni's imprints see Marsili-Libelli, 339-56.

(18.) The eulogy appears at the end of Lenzoni's In difesa della lingua fiorentina et di Dante. Unlike the rest of the text, the pages are unnumbered, but the signature letters (CC iii-Ee) suggest that it was intended for inclusion in the book and not sewn in later; an index to Lenzoni's text follows. Bartoli's principal contribution to the language question apparently comes in the pseudonymous Agli amatori della lingua fiorentina, published in Florence in 1544 in a volume containing Marsilio Ficino's Sopra lo amore. The author is one Neri Dortelata da Firenze who, according to Pirotti, 1971, 111, was Bartoli.

(19.) It is not clear that this work was ever published; Pozzi, 70, theorizes that it was not. It does not appear in Marsili-Libelli's list of works published by Doni, nor in Moreni. There is a manuscript of the treatise; see Barbi (my thanks to Antonio Ricci for alerting me to Barbi's essay).

(20.) Further evidence of the close friendships binding these four men comes from the fact that during his consulship in 1543 Lenzoni appointed Gelli, Giambullari, and Bartoli as his readers; Salvini, 24.

(21.) Giambullari, n.p.: di affaticarsi con ogni studio, per ritrovare al vivo, e ridurre a luce, le antichita e le istorie del nobilissimo suo paese: ad onore di questa citta e servizio di V.E.A copy of the 1546 dedicatory letter was pasted into a copy of the 1549 edition of the dialogue found in the Biblioteca Vallicelliana in Rome (VI.17.A.6). In citing from sixteenth-century editions I have modernized spelling and punctuation.

(22.) Ibid., 4: [a] servizio vostro primieramente, e ad onore di questa citta. La quale non puo certamente, ne debbe, oggi manco pregiarsi, de l'esservi figliuola e madre, illustriss. e eccellentiss. signor mio. (Here as throughout I quote from the 1549 edition.)

(23.) Giambillari had been a secretary to Alfonsina degli Orsini, widow of Piero de' Medici, Lorenzo il Magnifico's son, whose incompetent leadership contributed to the family's exile in 1494. He was the author of the Apparato et feste nelle nozze dell'Ill. Sig, Duca di Firenze, published in 1539 by the Giunta press.

(24.) See 4.23.6-10: "All earthly lives ... ascending and turning, must be similar almost to an arc .... Where there is the highest point of this arc ... in most people I believe between the thirtieth and the fortieth year, and I believe in those who perfectly follow nature it is in the thirty-fifth year. And this reason moves me: that our savior Christ followed nature perfectly, and wanted to die in the thirty-fourth year of his life, because it was not appropriate for the divinity to enter into decline, nor to believe that he did not want to live in this life of ours at the height, since he had been there in the low state of youth." Alighieri 2:292-98: Tutte le terrene vite .... montando e volgendo, convengono essere quasi ad imagine d'arco assimiglianti ... La dove sia lo punto sommo di questo arco ... ne li piu io credo tra il trentesimo e quarantesimo anno, e io credo ne li perfettamente naturati esso ne sia nel trentacinquesimo anno. E muovemi questa ragione: che ottimamente naturato fue lo nostro salvato re Cristo, lo quale volle morire nel trentaquattresimo anno de la sua etade: che non era convenevole la divinitade stare [in] cos[a] in discres[er]e, ne da credere ch'elli non volesse dimotare in questa nostra vita al sommo, poi che stato c'era nel basso stato de la puerizia.

(25.) Gelli, 301: il quale tempo chiamato da' filosofi lo stato e e cosa osservata molto da' medici nelle infermita umane.

(26.) On this topic see Butters, 1:46 and 55n. Punning on the Medici names was not unusual, as Butters points out, 1:99-111. One striking example of Medici-medicus punning in literature appears in Varchi, 1549, before the Accademia Fiorentina in 1546, in which he argues at length, 73, that "the Doctor ... is without any doubt the most noble of all artists." (il Medico ... senza alcun dubbio il piu nobile di tutti gl'artisti.)

(27.) Giambullari, 6: una corruzione della lingua latina, e... la feccia di quella.

(28.) Speroni, 289: "A me pare, quando vi guardo, che tale sia la volgar toscana per rispetto alla lingua latina quale la feccia al vino." The argument is not new, however. In the dedicatory letter to the Courtier, 10, Castiglione had observed that "many words are used in Tuscany that are clearly corrupted from Latin, which in Lombardy and in the other parts of Italy have remained whole and completely unchanged." (usansi in Toscana molti vocaboli chiaramente corrotti dal latino, li quali nella Lombardia e nelle altre patti d'Italia son rimasti integri e senza mutazione alcuna.)

(29.) See Pozzi, 1990, on the history and fortune of this argument in Tuscany.

(30.) Giambullari, 103: i quali vogliono essere stati sempre il quinto elemento, e che ogni cosa venga da loro .... Et vero e che i Latini seguitando le pedate de' Greci, affermano il medesimo appunto. Gelli, 50, likewise notes in Icapricci del bottaio that "our language is very capable of expressing any concept of philosophy or astrology or of any other science, and as well as Latin does, and perhaps even Greek." (ti dico io bene risoluto, che la nostra lingua e attissima a esprimere qual si voglia concetto di filosofia o astrologia o di qualunche altra scienzia, e cosi bene come si sia la latina, e forse anche la greca.)

(31.) Giambullari, 107-08: essendoci la pronunzia tanto diversa, e la terminazione cosi varia di quelli [sic] stesse voci, che si intendono in tutta quella [i.e., Tuscany]. Ma perche io non voglia offender persona, col cavare alcuno di Toscana, ancora che iuridicamenre potessi cavarne gran parte, per quella manifestissima differenza che tra la favella loro e la lingua degli scrittori. Basti solamenre dir questo, che tra le citta di Toscana, si vede una certa variazione, che non la conosce cosi ogn uomo, ma conosciamola noi medesimi.

(32.) Ibid., 7: a benefizio comune di tutti i Toscani, e particularmente de' Fiorentini.

(33.) Gelli, 51: gli pare tanto bella, ch' ei ce la vorrebbe rubare; e dove ella e fiorentina propria, come dice il Boccaccio, per avervi parte la vuol fare italiana, o cortigiana che egli si dica. The remark recalls Giambillari's glancing reference to this issue in his 1546 dedicatory letter to Cosimo, in which he explains somewhat defensively that his research is centered on "the origin and the basis of that language, which Boccaccio calls Florentine" (l'origine e il fondamento di quella lingua, che Fiorentina chiama il Boccaccio).

(34.) Ibid., 310: per ispogliare la Toscana di questa gloria.

(35.) Gilbert remains a fundamental source on the history of the Rucellai Gardens.

(36.) Gelli, 308: e scoprendo lo artifiziale, le tolgono molto piu grazia che gliela accreschino: essendo sempre tanto piu bella una cosa, ancora che artifiziata, quando vi si scuopre men l'arte. The argument tracks Castiglione's theory of sprezzatura as presented in the Courtier.

(37.) Lenzoni, 18-19: ella si chiama volgare Italiano:...perche di tutte le lingue Italiane, questa non e solamente la piu bella, piu graziosa, piu ricca, phi varia di pronunzia, phi dolce di parole, ma phi intesa che nessuna altra; e piu atta ad essere imparata....Chiamasi ancora volgare Italiano, forse per eccellenza, quasi che nessuna altra lingua d'Italia meriti di essere imparata, o letta come questa....Ma che ella sia propria de' Fiorentini, chiaramente ve lo dimostra, che dalle fasce e dalla culla impariamo noi quello, che gli strani dagli autori, con I'ossa dure. Ed ecci nativo quel parlare, che gli altri uomini Italiani seguono per elezione, ed loro strano.

(38.) Ibid., 10: alcuni Italiani, nati pure e nutriti fuori di Toscana; vogliono prima saper conoscere, e superbamente insegnare altrui, le properieta di questa favella, che impararla come si converebbe.

(39.) Ibid., 8: per non lasciar cadere in errore i nostri figliuoli, che sollevati dalle false persuasioni di alcuni, ci introducono e parole e modi, strani e perversi: E se nol Fiorentini cc Ia dormiamo per l'avvenire, come si fatto peril passato, ella si andra guastando in maniera che giustamente non potra dirsi poi Fiorentina ma... Bergamasca. Bergamasque was often invoked as a stereotype for rustic, illiterate speech.

(40.) Gelli, 316: il cominciare i principi, e gli uomini grandi e qualificati, a scrivere in questa lingua le importantissime cose de' governi de gli stati, i maneggi delle guerre, e gli altri negozi gravi delle facende, che da non molto indietro si scrivevano tutti in lingua latina.

(41.) Ibid., 304: Egli vera che quello che nella eta de' Romani faceva Ia forza, lo fa oggi Ia bonta e Ia bellezza di questa lingua.

(42.) Lenzoni, 19: per lo studio vien comune a' gentilhuomini e capi delle citta d'Italia.

(43.) Gelli, 52: La bellezza e Ia grazia della lingua nostra non procede solamente dalle parole, ma dal modo di resserle e ordinarle insieme.

(44.) Ibid 52: E sia certo di questo ancora, che, se tu avvertirai bene, tu conoscerai s' uno nato o allevato in Firenze, a nel contado: perche' questi comunemente rirengono ancora un certo che di rozzo nel pronunciare, e non possan lasciarlo senza qualche difficulta.

(45.) Ibid., 53: E sappi che chi non e nato e allevato in Firenze, non la impara mai perfettamente; e per questo avviene che molti, disperati del parlar o scriverla bene, si son gettati a dirne male e a vituperarla. Offering Ludovico Ariosto's Suppositi as an example, Machiavelli had already made a similar argument about non-Tuscan writers of comedy who try to write in Tuscan, mixing the learned language with their own to create a "patchwork outfit" (una veste rattoppata, 23). But since no evidence exists of the circulation of Machiavelli's dialogue during the sixteenth century, one is left to conclude that this may have been a common Florentine argument about foreigners.

(46.) To be sure, there are other grammars prior to Giambullari's: Leon Battista Alberti's brief Grammmatichetta vaticana, unpublished until the twentieth century; Gian Francesco Fortunio's Regole grammaticali della volgar lingua (1516); and the third book of Bembo's Prose. Giambullari's, however, is the first explicit attempt at a Florentine grammar.

(47.) Gelli, 311: e forse piu per bisogno che per natura, respetto a la magrezza del paese.

(48.) Ibid., 318: Laonde, circa il formare questeregole, non mi affaticherei molto nella prima parte; ma dichiarate Ic parri della orazione, e dimostrate le declinabili e le indeclinabili, e gli esempli de' verbi, massimamente con quella diversita che e tra l'uso moderno e quello che e' dicono de' nostri antichi, me n'andrei tutto a la costruzione. Nella quale, consistendovi (come ho detto) tutta la importanzia di questa lingua, vorrei io certamente usare una diligenzia piu la che estrema, togliendo da' tre sopradetti tutto quel che fusse ben detto. II che, al giudizio mio, solamente sarebbe quello che l'uso di oggi si ha mantenuto; essendo I'orecchio nostro inclinato naturalmente a lasciar sempre le cose aspre, dure e difficili, e seguitare le dolci e le facili.

(49.) Ibid., 318: nobili e qualificati della nostra citta.

(50.) Ibid., 304: Ma dato che e' fusse il vero che ognuno cercasse di favellare in lingua toscana, e desiderasse che e' se ne facessi regole: donde si arebbe poi a cavarle, non ci essendo cittade alcuna che signoreggi tutta Toscana? Perche i Lucchesi, i Pisani, i Sanesi, gli Aretini, e qualunque altra citta di questa provincia, direbbe sempre che la vera lingua e pronunzia tosca fusse veramenre la sua; e il cavare una parte di esse regole da una citta e l'altra da un'altra, scegliendo, come dicono alcuni, ii meglio, per fare un composito di tutte quante, sarebbe cosa molto difflcile, e poi forse anche non approvata e non osservata, non ci essendo chi la comandi.

(51.) Lenzoni, 20: la nostra urbanita....(secondo che da Cicerone e dagli altri si puo ritrarre) consiste primieramente nella vera, pura e dolce pronunzia fiorentina: e secondariamente in una certa sincera particulare e naturale proprieta di parole, di costruzioni, di modi di dire, di proverbi, di motti, e di un certo andare usato da noi, come proprio nostro, e di molti altri Toscani: cose che voi non potete mai conseguirle, fuori di Firenze e di que' luoghi dove la lingua e naturale, e si parla col latte in bocca.

(52.) Cicero, 146-47: Quid censes, inquam, nisi idem quo urbanis? praeter unum, quod non est eorum urbanitate quadam quasi colorata oratio.

(53.) Ibid., 146-47: Nescio, inquam; tantum esse quendam scio. Id tu, Brute, iam intelleges, cum in Galliam veneris; audies tum quidem etiam verba quaedam non trita Romae, sed haec mutari dediscique possunt; illud est maius, quod in vocibus nostrorum oratorum retinnit quiddam et resonat urbanius. Nec hoc in oratoribus modo apparet sed etiamo in ceteris.

(54.) Grafton and Hardine, 17, 4.

(55.) Castiglione, 18: tra l'altre cose sue lodevoli, nell'aspero sito d'Urbino edifico un palazzo, secondo la opinione di molti, il piu bello che in tutta Italia si ritrovi; e d'ogni oportuna cosa si ben lo forni, che non un palazzo, ma una citta in forma di palazzo esser pareva.

(56.) Gelli, 306: tutti o la maggior parte de' forestieri confessano e acconsentono tacitamente che la lingua che e' cercano e tengon buona e solamente la fiorentina; io intendo di quella che favellano i nobili e veri cittadini fiorentini che hanno qualche cognizione o di lingue o di scienzie; e non di quella che usano i plebei e gli uomini che hanno cognizione di poche altre cose che di quelle che si convengono loro come animali.

(57.) De Gaetano, 9-35, offers excellent biographical material on Gelli.

(58.) Bembo, 1967, 40: Non e la moltitudine, Giuliano, quella che alle composizioni di alcun secolo dona grido e auttorita, ma sono pochissimi uomini di ciascun secolo, al giudicio de' quali, per cio che sono essi piu dotti degli altri reputati, danno poi le genti e la moltitudine fede, che per se sola giudicare non sa dirittamente, e a quella parte si piega con le sue voci, a cui ella que' pochi uomini, che io dico, sente piegare.

(59) In an effort to quell social unrest in the city, Cosimo had followed the model set forth by his cousin Alessandro, incorporating the concerns of the lower classes into political discourse while limiting the power traditionally held by the aristocracy; see Von Albertini, 202, 284-89. Much of the domestic problem hinged on a revised concept of justice leading to an idea of equality; Cochrane addresses this in detail, 63-65. On the new composition of the academy under Cosimo, see Bryce, 83.

(60) See Brucker, 96-97.

(61) Lenzoni, 19: a' nostri si naturale, che tutti fino a' contadini e le donne lo parlano.

(62) Ibid., 24: Tenete dico per fermo, che quello udire e quel parlare che voi farete continovamente col gentiluomo, col soldato, col mercante, e con lo artefice fiorentino, per le piazze, per i mercati, e perle corti, fia per recarvi una utilita e un giovamento inestimabile.

(63.) Ibid., 13: coloro che appetiscono di apparire da piu degli atri, hanno percosso nelle nostre parole antiche...cercando de le lettere, piu tosto per i contadi e per le castella, che nel mezzo della nobilta e degli uomini piu sensati e di piu giudizio.

(64.) Ibid., 14: Equi chiamo io publico quello uso che e della parte maggiore, intendendo per maggiore non la piu bassa plebe della citta, per infinita che ella sia, ma quella de' cittadini de' intelligenti: si come la consuetudine del vivere, si piglia dal consenso e uso de' buoni.

(65.) Ibid., 17: per lunga pratica, di persone qualificate; e se pur bisognasse impararla fuori, non potendo cosi ognuno venire a stare in Firenze, impararla da Fiorentini; ma o nobili o studiosi, e esercitati bene in quella: perche dat vulgo, potreste apprendere mala maniera, false terminazioni, e parole forse non buone.

(66.) In the Brutus passage on urbanitas Cicero cites the example of the Athenian Theophrastus, whom an old market vendor immediately called hospes, stranger, when he inquired about a price. The passage enjoyed some notoriety in the sixteenth century: in his dedicatory letter to the Courtier, 11, Castiglione says that he elects to write in his own Lombard arid not in Tuscan "in order not to do as Theophrastus, who, because he spoke Athenian too well, was recognized by an old lady as not being an Athenian" (per non fare come Teofrasto, it qual, per parlare troppo ateniese, fu da una simplice vecchiarella conosciuto per non ateniense).

(67.) The church of San Pier Maggiore was demolished in 1783 but Piazza San Pier Maggiore remains, just off Borgo degli Albizi. Via San Pier Maggiore runs from the piazza roughly east, ending in Via Verdi in front of the post office.

(68.) Gelli, 293: passammo in casa, e appresso nello scrittoio.

(69.) Lenzoni, 7: dove solitarii quasi dagli altri, potessimo da noi medesimi intrattenerci, o con la considerazione delle antiche pitture che ivi si veggono; o con que' ragionamenti familiari che all'animo ci aggradassero.

(70.) To be sure, the study elsewhere enjoys the status of intellectual space. In his famous letter to Francesco Vettori of 10 December 1513, in which he announces that he has written The Prince, Machiavelli offers the memorable description of his study as a place where he enters into a metaphoric dialogue with the ancients: "When evening arrives, I return home, and enter my study, and at the door I take off my daytime clothes, full of mud and filth, and I put on royal and curial robes. Having gotten dressed again appropriately, I enter the ancient courts of ancient men, where received lovingly by them, I feed on that food which alone is mine, and I was born for it; where I am not ashamed to speak with them, and ask them the reasons for their actions, and they, humanely, answer me." (1961, 304: Venura la sera, mi ritorno in casa, et entro nel mio scrittoio; et in su l'uscio mi spoglio quella veste cotidiana, piena di fango et di loto, et mi metto panni reali et curiali; et rivestito condecenremente entro nell e antique corti degli antiqui huomini, dove, da loro ricevuto amorevolmente, mi pasco di quel cibo, che solum e mio, et che io nacqui per lui; dove io non mi vergogno parlare con loro, et domandarli della ragione delle loro actioni; et quelli per loro humanita mi rispondono.)

(71.) Castiglione, 69: "The Magnifico said: 'I cannot, nor must I, reasonably contradict those who say that the Tuscan language is more beautiful than the others. It is quite true that many words are found in Petrarch and Boccaccio, which now have been abandoned by the customs of today, and these I, speaking for myself, would never use when either speaking or writing; and I believe that they too, if they had lived up until today, would not use them any more.'" (Disse il Magnifico: -- To non posso ne debbo ragionevolmente contradir a chi dice che la lingua toscana sia piu bella dell'altre. E ben vero che molte parole si ritrovano nel Petrarca e nel Boccaccio, che or son interlassate dalla consuetudine d'oggidf; e quesre io, per me, non usarei mai ne parlando ne scrivendo; e credo che essi ancor, se insin a qui vivuti fossero, non le usarebbono piu --.)

(72.) The structure of this dialogue is somewhat more complicated than others, since it involves a dialogue within a dialogue. The scholar Agnolo Colozio, substituting for Valeriani, recounts to two friends a dinner conversation about the language that took place the night before in the presence of the Medici cardinal. Among the interlocutors in the reported conversation is Trissino, and some of the dialogue centers on his proposal to introduce Greek letters into the Italian alphabet. The fact of there being no mention here of the De vulgari eloquentia has allowed scholars to date Valeriani's dialogue as anterior to Trissino's presentation of Dante's treatise.

(73.) That importance endures even in exile, the case of Giuliano de' Medici in Castiglione. Indeed, while in the Courtier Giuliano's role appears peripheral -- he is, after all, in exile, and his participation in the language debate is minimal -- as Dionisotti has observed, in preparing what would become the definitive version of the text Castiglione in fact subtly intensified Giuliano's presence, recognizing the possibility "di un'alleanza della moderna tradizione fiorentina con quella cortigiana e italiana contro la tesi del Bembo" (329). As far as his appearance in the Prose is concerned, Claudio Marazzini has observed, 242, that he represents "la continuita con il pensiero dell'umanesimo volgare fiorito alla corte medicea," an important early nexus of culture and power in Florence.

(74.) Bembo, 1967, 42: poscia che, o la nuova fiorentina lingua o l'antica che si lodi maggiormente, l'onore in ogni modo ne va alla patria mia.

(75.) Varchi had followed his Strozzi patrons into exile in 1537, returning to Florence in 1543 in what Plaisance, 1973, 365 calls "[l]e ralliement le plus specraculaire." While in Padua he joined the Accademia degli Infiammati and subsequently carried his ardent Bembism back to Florence. His linguistic treatise, L'Ercolano, published posthumously in 1570, contains a strong though not acritical defense of Bembo; see Pirotti, 1960, 529-35.

(76.) Bembo, 1549, Aiv: che poi fu creato a sommo ponrefice et detto papa Clemenre settimo. This phrase appears in a slightly different form in both the first edition (Venice, 1525) and the second (Venice, 1538).

(77.) Varchi, in Bembo, 1549, Aiiv: fu il primo dopo tanti anni a conoscere e gustare non pur la dolcezza e la piacevolezza della Fiorentina lingua, ma eziandio la gravita e la maesta di essa.

(78.) Ibid.: E se le molte e molto grandi sue occupazioni gliele avessero permesso, egli [Lorenzo) le arebbe ancora la pristina purita e splendor suo del tutto restituito. Ma quello che non pote fare esso, fece non guari dopo lui il nostro eccellentiss. mons. M. Pietro Bembo: mosso per avvencura dallo esempio di tanto uomo, o forse indotto da' conforri di Giuliano de Medici suo figliuolo, Magnifico per sopranome a quel tempo da turd chiamato, che I'uno de ragionatori e del presente Dialogo: cal qual Mag. esso M. Pietro mold anni domesticamente e famigliarmente visse.

(79.) Ibid.: avendo egli la loro lingua dalla ruggine de' passati secoli non pure purgata, ma in ranto iscaltrira e illustrata, che ella n'e divenuta tale chente la veggiamo.

(80.) Pirotti, 1960 and 1971, and Plaisance, 1973, both note the enmity among Varchi and Giambullari, Gelli, and Lenzoni. Certainly Varchi did not lack for ego. The unpublished "Annali dell'Accademia degli Umidi," 24r-26v, record that during his consulship in 1545 only Varchi gave lessons; this is a departure from normal practice. Salvini, 43, speculates amusingly: "Non so, se per riverenza, a per timore, a per qual'altra cagione, racquero nel suo Reggimento tuid quelli, che erano solid di leggere."

(81.) While arguing that Florentine, and all of Tuscan, has nor yet reached its apex, Varchi, 1859, 2:338, does observe that it is a language capable of quite wonderful expression, and he offers Bembo as proof: "to whose verses and singular and perfect prose, and rather more divine than human, according to the judgment of all the best men (because the others, almost as bars in the sunlight, move us rather to compassion and sorrow for them, than to wonderment and laughter), all the Tuscans, indeed all the nations, and most of all we Florentines, are very greatly held and very closely obligated." (a' cui versi e alle cui prose uniche e perfette, e piu tosto divine che umane, secondo il giudicio di rutt'i migliori [che degli altri, quasi pipistrelli alla luce del sole, ci devono piu tosto a compassione muovere ed increscimenro loro, che a maraviglia e a riso] tutt'i Toscani, anzi tutre le nazioni, e massimamente noi Fiorentini, semo grandissimamente tenuti e strettissimamente obbligati.)

(82.) De Gaetano, 107. Plaisance, 1973, also details how Cosimo stacked the membership of the Accademia Fiorentina with his allies as a way of intimidating dissenters.

(83.) Gramsci, 3:2346: "Every time that the question of the language comes up, in one way or the other, it means that a series of other problems is coming to the fore: the formation and the enlargement of the ruling class, the need to establish more intimate and secure relationships between the ruling groups and the popular-national masses, that is, to reorganize the national hegemony." (Ogni volta che affiora, in un modo o nell'altro, la quistione della lingua, significa che si sta imponendo una serie di altri problemi: la formazione e l'allargamento della classe dirigente, la necessita di stabilire rapporti piu intimi e sicuri tra i gruppi dirigenti e la massa popolare-nazionale, cioe di riorganizzare l'egemonia culturale.)

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