The Intellectual Interests Reflected in Libraries of the Fourteenth and ...

264 PEARL KIBRE
nacular translations.29 These were made for the most part by the
poets and prose writers to whom the house of Este extended hospitality
and patronage, among them Battista di S. Paolo better known
as Battista Panetti of Ferrara, theologian, orator, and poet; also
Matteo Maria Boiardo, the talented author of the chivalrous poem
Orlando Innamorato. The study and translation of Greek works
was at its height in Ferrara during and after the first half of the
fifteenth century with the meeting there of the council of Ferrara,
and the confluence of a number of humanist scholars of Greek,
namely Guarino of Verona, Giovanni Aurispa, Giorgio Valla, Battista
Guarini, Pier Candido Decembrio, Niccolo Leoniceno, Theodore
Gaza, and George of Trebizond.30
The private collection made by pope Julius II before his elevation
to the apostolic throne also had Greek works only in translation.
These included Herodotus, Thucydides, and Homer, in the
renditions into Latin by Lorenzo Valla; Strabo, probably in the
version by Guarino of Verona and Gregorio da Citta di Castello;
Polybius in the translation of Niccol6 Perotti; Maximus of Tyre in
the recent rendition of Cosimo de 'Pazzi, bishop of Arezzo and archbishop
of Florence (1508-1513); Appian's history, translated by
Pier Candido Decembrio; and Diogenes Laertius, translated probably
by Ambrogio Traversari. There were also Aristotle's Politics,
in the translation by Leonardo Bruni; and the Ethics, in the rendition
by Johannes Argyropulos.3' Julius II, whose library was
noteworthy for its classical works, was a good example of the typical
ecclesiastic of the so-called Renaissance, in his professed interest
alike in profane as well as sacred literature.32
Outside of Italy, Greek codices were rarely found in any great
numbers even in the second half of the fifteenth century, despite
the sporadic efforts that had been made during the thirteenth and
early fourteenth centuries by princes, popes, the council of Vienne,
and the earnest and eloquent pleas of Raymond Lull and Pierre du
29 G. Bertoni, La biblioteca Estense e la coltura Ferrarese (Torino, 1903), 128 ff.;
Theodor Gottlieb, Ueber mittelalterliche Bibliotheken, no. 547, p. 189; and the inventory
published by A. Cappelli, "La biblioteca estense nella prima meta del secolo xv,"
Giornale storico della lett. ital, XIV (1889), 12-30.
30 G. Bertoni, op. cit., 113 ff., 128 ff.
31 Leon Dorez, "La bibliothZeque privee du pape Jules II," Revue des bibliothe'ques,
VI (1896), 99-100. Dorez published the two inventories drawn up after
the pope's death.
32 Dorez, loc. cit., 98-99.
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