# Errors, False Opinions and Defective Knowledge in Early Modern Europe

edited by Marco Faini Marco Sgarbi

M. Faini, M. Sgarbi

**FUP**

Errors, False Opinions and Defective Knowledge in Early Modern Europe

#### KNOWLEDGE AND ITS HISTORIES

– 2 –

#### KNOWLEDGE AND ITS HISTORIES

#### *Editor-in-Chief*

Valentina Lepri, Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland Marco Sgarbi, Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Italy

#### *Scientific Board*

Alexandra Baneu, Babeș-Bolyai University, Romania Giancarlo Casale, European University Institute, Italy Danilo Facca, Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland Silvia Ferrara, University of Bologna, Italy Emanuela Ferretti, University of Florence, Italy Anja-Silvia Goeing, Harvard University, United States Andrew Hui, Yale-NUS College, Singapore Eugenio Menegon, Boston University, United States Maarten Van Dyck, Sarton Centre for History of Science, Belgium

## Errors, False Opinions and Defective Knowledge in Early Modern Europe

edited by Marco Faini Marco Sgarbi

FIRENZE UNIVERSITY PRESS 2023

Errors, False Opinions and Defective Knowledge in Early Modern Europe / edited by Marco Faini, Marco Sgarbi. – Firenze : Firenze University Press, 2023. (Knowledge and its Histories ; 2)

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## Table of contents

FUP Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (DOI 10.36253/fup\_best\_practice)

Marco Faini, Marco Sgarbi (edited by), *Errors, False Opinions and Defective Knowledge in Early Modern Europe*, © 2023 Author(s), CC BY 4.0, published by Firenze University Press, ISBN 979-12-215-0266-4, DOI 10.36253/979-12-215-0266-4

## Introduction1

Marco Faini

In his *Iconologia*, Cesare Ripa described "Error" as a blindfolded wayfarer who tries to find his way with the help of a stick. "Blind error"—such as we see it portrayed in an allegorical drawing by Antoine Coypel (1661-1722)—is always accompanied by ignorance. Error means losing one's way, straying from the straight line; it is a condition that affects, in Ripa's words, both our intellect and our body during our pilgrimage to happiness. Ripa plays on the ambiguity of the word "error," which signifies both making a (moral) mistake and losing one's way, or wandering without a direction, just as the characters of chivalric novels—the errant knights—who in their wandering often stray from the path of virtue. The epistemic and moral dimensions of error are, in Ripa's words, clearly interdependent, as evident in his explanation of being blindfolded in symbolic terms: "when the light of intellect is darkened by the veil of worldly interest, one easily falls into error."2 For Ripa, the stick represents the senses, a lower form of

1 The editors would like to thank Luigi Perissinotto for generously funding this publication. This collection of essays stems from Marco Faini's project *Standing at the Crossroads: Doubt in Early Modern italy (1500-1560)*, which has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No 792225. It reflects only the author's view; the Agency is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.

2 "Quando è oscurato il lume dell'intelletto con il velo de gl'interessi mondani, facilmente s'incorre negli errori." Ripa 2012, 165.

Marco Faini, University at Buffalo, United States<EMAIL_ADDRESS>0000-0003-3258-1308 Referee List (DOI 10.36253/fup\_referee\_list)

FUP Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (DOI 10.36253/fup\_best\_practice)

Marco Faini, *Introduction*, © Author(s), CC BY 4.0, DOI 10.36253/979-12-215-0266-4.02, in Marco Faini, Marco Sgarbi (edited by), *Errors, False Opinions and Defective Knowledge in Early Modern Europe*, pp. 7-16, 2023, published by Firenze University Press, ISBN 979-12-215-0266-4, DOI 10.36253/979-12-215- 0266-4

knowledge than that of the intellect (symbolized by the eyes). Those who rely on the senses miss "the true causes of all things," hence the author's explicit connection between error and ignorance.3 In fact, Ripa's depiction of "Ignorance" in the *Iconologia* depicts her as a blind woman walking barefoot through brambles, alongside the trodden path. Bypassing the many details of Ripa's rich allegory of ignorance, it suffices here to remember that the author is not just describing the lack of knowledge, but also "the vice of ignorance," which "is born out of contempt for knowledge."4 A further, less explicit, but no less intriguing connection, can be made between error and doubt. In fact, "Doubt" is personified in the *Iconologia* as a young man walking in the dark carrying a stick and a lantern, objects that symbolize experience and reason respectively. These tools help the young and inexperienced man make his way through the darkness and overcome doubt, an "ambiguity of the mind concerning knowledge and, as a consequence, of the body concerning works."5 While there are certainly multiple connections linking doubt, ignorance, and error, it is the lack of clear vision—an allusion to a want of clear intellect—that seems to be the common thread among these conditions.

If the connection between error and ignorance is so straightforward that it seems almost platitudinous to articulate, the interrelation between error and doubt is perhaps less self-evident, but no less crucial. Doubt, or the inability to decide between two equivalent options due to the lack of recognizing the right choice, easily leads to error. Such a connection is made explicit in the title page of the Italian translation of one of the staples of the early modern European genre of "popular errors:" Thomas Browne's *Pseudodoxia epidemica* (first published in 1646, lastly in 1672: see Paolo Cherchi's essay in this volume). The full title reads *Pseudodoxia epidemica, or enquiries into very many received tenents and commonly presumed truths*. 6 The Italian translation by Selvaggio Canturani (the Venetian Carmelite Arcangelo Agostini, 1660-1746), published in Venice in 1737, reads instead: *Saggio sopra gli errori popolareschi ovvero esame di molte opinioni ricevute come vere, che sono false o dubbiose*. Here error extends its realm from falsehood to doubt: everything that does not fall within the field of clear truth, in other words, appears to be potentially tainted by error. Yet it is also true that doubt and ignorance can correct an excess of dogmatic certainty, so that, as Montaigne writes in his essay *On the Lame* (*Essays*, 3, 11)—itself a veritable genealogy of error—"there is a sort of ignorance, strong and generous, that yields nothing in honour and courage to knowledge; an ignorance which to conceive requires no less knowledge than to conceive knowledge itself."7

3 "Chi procede per la via del senso facilmente può ad ogni passo errare." Ripa 2012, 165.

François Rigolot has spoken of the "Renaissance fascination with error," noting how "most Renaissance humanists enjoyed themselves immensely in tracking down the incredible diversity of human and textual errors, before the seventeenth-century rationalist discourse clearly established the philosophical status of truth and falsehood." In Rigolot's view, "during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation theologians, philosophers, physicians, artists, and poets spent much of their time collecting, evaluating, denouncing, and celebrating various forms of misguided behaviour" (Rigolot 2004, 1221). Certainly the Middle Ages also recognized the ubiquitous presence of error in the various fields of learning and human behavior (Speer-Mauriège 2018). Undeniably, however, from the fifteenth century onwards one sees an explosion of philological *castigationes*, as well as lists of errors: religious, antiquarian, historiographical, and scientific. Examples include Giovanni Andrea Gilio's published dialogue (1564) on the errors and "abuses" of painters (although the conversation recorded in the text allegedly took place in 1561), and two years later, a text devoted to "military deeds, inventions, and errors" by Bernardino Rocca (1515-1587).8

The impact of the printing press on the perception of error can be hardly overestimated. There is virtually no early modern book that does not invoke the reader's cooperation in the correction of the many mistakes produced during the printing process, which served to heighten the perception of the diffusion of error. On the other hand, the press was a formidable instrument for the correction of mistakes. Such editorial power led Benedetto Altavilla to write in his *Breve discorso intorno gli errori de calculi astronomici* (A Brief Discourse on Errors in Astronomical Calculations, 1580) that the divine Majesty should be praised for granting authors countless privileges. Among them,

Most great was the one he gave to Giovanni Lutemberg [*sic*] from Mainz in the year 1470, [that is] the art of the printing press, thanks to which all the deeds and ideas of men can be easily seen and understood by everyone […]. And now, thanks to this instrument, the inventors of the arts and the professors of sciences can share [their knowledge] with everyone. And those who read others' works can, with equal ease, discover the errors they contain so that, contrasting them with their virtue and resorting to reason one gets to know the truth.9

#### Marco Faini

Along with the printing press, global exploration also contributed to shape the early modern perception of "error," as Ian Smith suggests in observing how error intersected with discourses on race, eloquence, and grammar. "Barbarous" or "savage" people, in their barbaric utterances—thus situating themselves outside the male-centered world of grammar and eloquence—reveal their inherent proclivity to moral error and vice (see Smith 2009). From the perspective of religion, moreover, it is hard to overestimate the consequences of the European encounter with new beliefs and religions utterly at odds with Christian teachings. Such beliefs were considered "abuses" and "errors," and correcting them became imperative. From this vantage point, the letters or "avvisi" sent by Jesuit missionaries from the Americas or Asia that catalogued the "errors" of non-European people represent an invaluable source of these foreign practices, beliefs, and doctrines. We would be wrong, however, to think of this process as merely a missionary effort and ethnocentric projection of European values onto different cultures. Error becomes instead a propulsive force that prompts new knowledge; the correction of "errors" goes beyond the realm of faith and extends to philosophy, habits, and forms of civilization. Consider, for example, the case of the Benedictine Clemente Tosi and his *L'India orientale. Descrittione geografica, & historica* (Eastern India. A Geographical and Historical Description, 1676). In the printer's address to the reader, we read that providing geographical descriptions was not the author's main purpose in writing the book; it was, rather, a means to achieve a "most noble purpose," that is, the "conversion of people." This, argues the printer, speaking on behalf of the author (who had deceased before the time of publication),

Cannot be achieved without first knowing their errors; nor would have we been able to spy on them hadn't we gone among those people discovering their ways of life; and therefore it was necessary, first of all, to research their countries, habits, religion, and other features to be able to discover their errors.10

Since the "errors" of non-European people are seen to fall under different categories, they require a treatment that accounts for this division within the larger work. Tosi's book is thus articulated in three main sections: scholastic theology (concerning "metaphysical" errors); moral theology (concerning practical behaviour), and finally, natural philosophy. Interestingly, the printer remarks that "these errors are not the same of those of the ancient Heathens."11 We see here, in other words, a clear awareness of the historical and geographical nature of

10 "Le descrittioni geografiche portate sul principio del volume non sono state lo scopo principale del nostro autore ma solamente un mezzo per giungere ad un fine nobilissimo, che è la conversione delle genti; che non si può fare senza prima conoscere i loro errori; né questi si potevano spiare se non si andava fra quei popoli rintracciando il loro modo di vivere: che perciò è stato necessario di ricercare avanti ogn'altra cosa i loro paesi, costumi, religione, e altre qualità per poter venire al conoscimento de' loro errori," Tosi 1676, p.n.n.

11 "Sappi però, o lettore, che questi errori non sono i medesimi della gentilità antica," Tosi 1676, p.n.n.

Introduction

error: Tosi's is not a work of antiquarianism, but is rather the result of careful ethnographic inquiry into the customs of Asian populations. As such, despite its ethnocentric gaze, it accumulates and makes available to Western Europeans a wealth of knowledge about its subjects.

Errors and abuses, however, were not specific to non-European people. In a confessional age marked by lacerating religious division, errors multiplied, with each confession accusing its competing "sects" (as different religious strands frequently labelled each other) of innumerable mistakes. "Errors" came to designate the beliefs of either the Catholic or the Reformed churches, and the books and treatises that named them were often printed (see Neveu 1993). This provides the subject for Giorgio Caravale's essay *Error of the Heretic, Error of the Controversialist. Error and Deception in Sixteenth-Century Religious Polemics*, devoted to Ambrogio Catarino Politi, the author of a *Compendio d'errori luterani*. As Caravale aptly summarizes, Politi's

entire existence revolved around the concept of error: errors of which he accused Luther and his Italian followers in some of the most effective pamphlets of the time; errors of which he himself was repeatedly accused by his Dominican adversaries before and during the Council of Trent; but also errors of which Politi accused himself in some revealing and at time merciless autobiographical reconstructions.

Caravale points to the 1520 *Apologia pro veritate catholicae et apostolicae fides* (An Apology for the Truth of the Catholic and Apostolic Faith) against Luther, in which Politi equates the idea of error with that of deception. He then moves to Politi's *Speculum hereticorum* (The Mirror of Heretics) of 1540, wherein the author attacked Italian *spirituali* and their ideas concerning salvation through faith. Politi also found himself, at times, in conflict with members of his own order, such as Bartolomeo Spina; their debate encompassed among other crucial themes the Immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary. At the same time, Politi turned the category of error against himself, analyzing his youthful fascination with Savonarolan ideas. Through Politi's work we can see the semantic richness of error, whose meaning ranged "from presumption to credulity, from delusion to deception."

Philology was often instrumental in dismantling theological errors, as they often stemmed from inaccurate interpretations of the Scripture, a topic that has generated significant scholarly attention in recent times (see the essays in Cao-Grafton-Kraye 2019). In his contribution *Errors of Interpretation: Vincenzo Maggi and Sperone Speroni, Readers of Francesco Robortello*, Marco Sgarbi offers an insightful interpretation of how philological discussions of errors (whether true or perceived) had a crucial bearing on the development of fundamental categories of Western thought. Sgarbi focuses on Vincenzo Maggi's and Sperone Speroni's criticism of Francesco Robortello's interpretation of Aristotle's *Poetics*. In these discussions we do not find the desire for an improvement of society through the correction of errors; instead, we witness the keen desire to understand a crucial text of Western thought. Robortello published his *In Aristotelis*

*poeticam explicationes* in 1548, the first "critical edition" to include commentary on Aristotle's text. Although it provided a significant moment in the reception history of the *Poetics*, Robortello's edition was nonetheless flawed by errors in both the translation and the interpretation of the text. The way in which Maggi and Speroni scrutinize Robortello's translation of Aristotle's text, however, varies: while Maggi is more focused "on the philological restitution" of the text, Speroni appraises Robortello's translation and commentary with the eye of a playwright (Speroni was the author of a famous and controversial tragedy, *Canace*). For Speroni, at stake is the defining components of poetics, such as catharsis—the goal of tragedy—and the relationship between invention and truth. Not surprisingly, as Sgarbi point out, Robortello's commentary raised the interest of Torquato Tasso, who also reflected at length on similar issues, namely the fundamental connection between poetry and truth. Sgarbi considers the extent to which Robortello's "errors" stem from Maggi's and Speroni's loose interpretations of the *Poetics*, which reflect their own understanding of the text. In his conclusion Sgarbi suggests that "working on errors of interpretation rather than similarities, especially in textual criticism, can be extremely useful for reconstructing the reception of a text," for "errors are often very precise and circumscribed, and they allow for genealogical reconstructions, whereas similarities and loans, which are for the most part very vague, do not." As in Lachmannian philology, errors can thus put us in touch with the authentic meaning of a work.

Sgarbi's essay explores the world of high culture, providing a sample of the refined discussions that took place within the Italian academies (on this topic see Everson-Reidy-Sampson 2016 and, for a later period, Muir 2007). Such discussions were hardly accessible to most of the populace, who shared a different knowledge base often rooted in traditional beliefs, sometimes blended with badly digested or consciously manipulated morsels of knowledge imported from "high" culture—an ideal breeding ground for error, at least in the eyes of many haughty "learned" authors. A number of these beliefs, practices, and commonly held ideas sat at the crossroads between religion and medicine. These beliefs, which mixed elements of traditional or folkloric culture with notions derived from formal medical discourse, were increasingly discussed, debunked, and rebuked in print all over Europe starting in the second half of the sixteenth century. Paolo Cherchi, in his essay on *"Errori popolari:" How a Medical Notion Became an Aesthetic One*, explores the European diffusion of literature on "popular errors" from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries. Although this micro-genre covered topics in medicine, religion, history, and physics (among other diverse subjects), its roots lay in attempts to eradicate false beliefs in the field of medicine. The rise of the Paracelsian tradition, in opposition to Galenic and classical medicine—based on notions such as "sympathy," "antipathy," and on quasi-alchemical and magical practices—gave rise to numerous reactions against "popular errors." As Cherchi suggests, however, the main issue was not that of making distinctions between "high" and "low" culture, since learned authors could also commit "popular errors." Instead, methodological and empirical questions were at stake. Commenting on Laurent Joubert's *Erreurs pop-* *ulaires*, Cherchi suggests that "the notion of 'popular' defines not the beliefs of the lowest classes but a type of culture which is in sharp contrast with the 'university' learning which is based on the authority of the ancient scholars." Popular errors have to do with mentalities and can be spread over space and time, as well as across social classes. From medicine they can easily travel to religion, since the boundaries between magical or folkloric healing, medicine, and religion are porous and permeable throughout the early modern era. Cherchi traces the European circulation of these works, highlighting some key moments, such as Bacon's attempt at approaching popular errors from a new methodological viewpoint based on induction (the aforementioned Thomas Browne took full advantage of Bacon's perspective in his *Pseudodoxia epidemica*.) In the eighteenth century, authors increasingly traced the origins of popular errors to Antiquity, which lost much of its prestige as a result. We see this attitude at work in Giacomo Leopardi's *Saggio sopra gli errori popolari degli antichi* (An Essay on the Popular Errors of the Ancients, 1815, but posthumously published in 1846). In the *Saggio*, however, the relationship between the errors of the Ancients and those of his contemporary lower classes is complex. We see something new emerging from the pages of young Leopardi: an alliance between error and imagination that gives life to "beautiful fables." As Cherchi remarks, "in that atmosphere [i.e. of Romanticism], the popular errors lost much of the stigma placed on them by centuries of rationalism and scientific experimentation," thus reimagining them to comprise a positive aesthetic category.

Vera Keller (*Lost in the Woods: Francis Bacon's Errant Pathways in Knowledge***)** further expands on Bacon's view of error, engaging current scholarship and showing how error and erring are, for Bacon, "valorized epistemic tool[s]." In fact error allows Bacon to liberate scientific investigation from the "imperatives to produce useful, timely, and certain results." Error is instrumental in building a form of science that consists of something beyond mere mechanical experimentation and the exploitation of nature. Instead, error allows for an immersive experience in the labyrinthine and metamorphic aspects of nature and natural creation. Error and erring in the labyrinths of nature, the delayed exit from its maze of possibilities—the outcomes of which the investigator can merely anticipate—enable "a greater degree of knowledge to be accessed." In linking the myth of Proteus to a particular state of nature—that of "erring nature"—Bacon offers meaningful insight into the processes by which we acquire knowledge: "counterintuitively, nature in error served greater epistemic ends; such error could either occur naturally, through matter running into the violence and 'impediments' on its own, or through the human vexing of nature;" the latter of which could engender metamorphoses and transformations that "reveal otherwise hidden 'passages and variations'." Thus, contrary to what many have argued, Bacon cherishes the productive nature of error. Bacon's error pushes knowledge toward the boundaries of possibility, argues Keller, resisting "the pressure to exit the labyrinth and to produce useful knowledge." The result consists less in "certain tabulations of knowledge" than in "provisional, fragmentary, and moveable forms of inscription." Error is thus perceived as a positive force behind our acquisition of knowledge, and one that allows for a less violent relationship between man and nature.

Cherchi's and Keller's essays, while written from very different points of view, ultimately concur in providing a more nuanced view of error: one in which error does not deviate from or lacks true knowledge, and neither is it a force to be tamed. Error is instead an alternative approach to nature, an epistemic alternative to the constraints of reason, truth, and utility. In other words, error may be seen as a useful category that offers an escape from the excesses of mechanicism, experimental science, and the objectification of nature.

If the aforementioned Benedetto Altavilla is almost forgotten today, despite his best effort at correcting astronomical ephemerides, Galileo Galilei, by contrast, is a celebrated and well-known universal figure. While much of his fame can be attributed to the errors he corrected, Galileo, as presented in Viktor Blåsjö's essay on *Galileo's Mathematical Errors*, was no less prone to error than many of his fellow scientists, especially when it came to mathematical and geometrical demonstrations. Blåsjö reviews the many phenomena, including cycloids, planetary spheres, centrifugal force, projectile motion, and comets, in which Galileo's hypotheses and "demonstrations" proved erroneous. Moreover, as Blåsjö argues, several of Galileo's contemporaries, including some of his own followers and associates, were successful in correcting him while demonstrating their superiority over Galileo as mathematicians. Thus we are faced, according to Blåsjö, with the fact that "Galileo's celebrated use of experiments in science is not a brilliant methodological innovation but a reluctant recourse necessitated by his shortcomings in mathematical ability." Yet Galileo's reputation has somehow concealed such shortcomings, perhaps due in part to the famous astronomer's own rhetorical language, which has contributed to the shaping of his "mythology." In Blåsjö's words, "his accounts of his correct discoveries may sound very convincing and emphatic, but knowing that he was equally sure of a long list of errors gives us reason to suspect that some of the things he got right are to some extent guesswork propped up with overconfident rhetoric in the hope that readers will mistakenly think his case is stronger than it is."

The example of Galileo introduces us to the intricate overlapping of the freedom of conscience, intellectual freedom, and error (i.e. theological error). As already suggested, error was a crucial category that shaped European spirituality well beyond the realm of religious disputes between supporters of "orthodoxy" whether Catholic or Protestant—and "heretics" or "Papists." The notion of "erroneous conscience" played a fundamental role in spiritual dialectics as early as Thomas Aquinas. Authors of confessors' manuals revived this notion, which found its place alongside other similar but competing categories, such as "doubtful" or "scrupulous" conscience. Each of these definitions referred to a particular condition of individual conscience, and each of them implied a number of consequences for one's moral choices. Jean-Pierre Cavaillé, in his chapter on *The Notion of Erroneous Conscience in Pierre Bayle*, shows how reflection on erroneous conscience was instrumental in overcoming confessional struggles and even shaping religious toleration. Cavaillé points to Bayle's assertion that error is nearly inevitable; even orthodoxy may retain beliefs that are—or have been at some point in history—"heretical" or erroneous. This is illustrated by the impossibility of imagining the true nature of Jesus Christ, which is often reduced to Christ's mere humanity even by the most pious and orthodox devotees of the Christian faith. Bayle concludes, therefore, that in matters of religious belief there are seemingly no criteria for distinguishing between truth and error. What is troubling for Bayle is not the committing of religious error (and the potential to correct such beliefs), but rather the practical consequences of orthodoxy, which had the power to coerce people to commit morally wrong actions in the name of "truth." The notion of erroneous conscience finds its importance precisely within this theoretical frame. According to Thomistic thought, one should always follow what their conscience dictates, since acting against one's conscience is the gravest of sins. "Heretics," whose consciences tell them that what they believe is true, do not commit a sin, thereby advocating for the toleration and dispelling of doubt and scepticism about "heretical" belief. In a paradoxical twist, the traditional Catholic category of sin is thus used to undermine not only "orthodoxy," but also the very idea of religion. Bayle carries this line of thought to its logical end, arguing that since we lack an objective criterion to distinguish between competing truths, all opinions and beliefs should be accepted for the sake of civic harmony.

As mentioned, the printing press had a significant impact on the perception of error, and, accordingly, almost all the contributions in this volume deal with the printed word. The rise of the print market did not erase, however, oral and manuscript communication (see, for example, Richardson 2009). As Martin Mulsow's essay *Positive and Negative Error. A Debate in the Illuminati Order* demonstrates, error also served as a subject for discussion that circulated in manuscript form within academic circles well into the eighteenth century. Mulsow explores the cultural production of the Illuminati, a German secret society founded in 1776 by Adam Weishaupt, thus bringing us back to the world of academies, institutions so instrumental in shaping early modern European learning. Within the lodges and chapters of the society, members read and discussed essays on different topics, giving rise to discourses "shaped by personal acquaintance and benevolence," which allowed for "the creation of protected discussion spaces." Among these discussions was one that took place in 1785 on the nature of error, prompted by Prince August of Saxe-Gotha. Mulsow carefully reconstructs the thesis expounded by the Prince as well as the objections raised by other Illuminati members. Pivoting from Fontenelle's view of "myth-making as a compensation for ignorance," August attempts to define error according to an amalgamation of two conceptually unrelated frameworks. One is Voltaire's distinction between active and passive imagination, while the other comes from contemporary theories of electricity and the distinction between positive and negative charges. Negative (or repellent) errors are produced by a lack of knowledge, while positive (or attractive) errors result from attempts to fill gaps of knowledge with irrational explanations and other "epistemic vices." Other Illuminati built on August's thesis; but it was Rudolph Zacharias Becker who realized that all errors are, in fact, negative. He therefore reformulated August's thesis by suggesting that "some errors keep the mind in its imperfect, undeveloped state: but others push it in developing and working on its store of materials, deeper back into the state of obscure and confused concepts." Despite the competing views on error within the Illuminati, their attempt to build a taxonomy of error cannot be underestimated, nor can their underlying purpose for engaging with error, which was to eradicate "prejudice, ignorance, and credulity."

This volume dialogues with the rich corpus of scholarship on early modern error, offering a selection of essays that reflect on the intermingling of religion, science, and learning in early modern Europe. Spanning geographically from Italy to France, England, and Germany, the essays gathered here encompass a timeframe between the mid-sixteenth and mid-eighteenth centuries. While the aim of this volume is not to offer a systematic overview of error, it provides, nonetheless, a stimulating glimpse into one of the most fascinating, multifaceted, and controversial aspects of early modern culture.

#### References

## Error of the Heretic, Error of the Controversialist. Heresy and Deception in Sixteenth-Century Religious Polemics

Giorgio Caravale

**Abstract**: In a confessional age in which Catholics and Protestants accused each other (and for a long time) of misinterpreting the Holy Scriptures and deceiving the faithful, some churchmen made religious controversy their life's mission. One of the most famous among them was Ambrogio Catarino Politi, a Dominican polemist from Siena who lived in the first half of the sixteenth century. His entire existence revolved around the concept of error: errors of which he accused Luther and his Italian followers in some of the most effective pamphlets of the time; errors of which he himself was repeatedly accused by his Dominican adversaries before and during the Council of Trent; but also errors of which Politi accused himself in some revealing and at time merciless autobiographical reconstructions. Through the figure of the Sienese controversialist, this essay highlights all the semantic nuances assumed by the idea of error in sixteenth-century confessional controversy: from presumption to credulity, from delusion to deception.

**Keywords**: Ambrogio Catarino Politi, Lutheranism, justification by faith, religious controversy, immaculate conception.

In a confessional age in which Catholics and Protestants accused each other (and for a long time) of misinterpreting the Holy Scriptures and deceiving the faithful, some churchmen made religious controversy their life's mission. One of the most famous among them was Ambrogio Catarino Politi (1484-1553), also known with his latinized name Catharinus, a Dominican polemist from Siena who lived in the first half of the sixteenth century.1 His entire existence revolved around the concept of error: errors of which he accused Luther and his Italian followers in some of the most effective pamphlets of the time; errors of which he himself was repeatedly accused by his Dominican adversaries before and during the Council of Trent; but also errors of which Politi accused himself in some revealing and at time merciless autobiographical reconstructions. Catharinus' first test as a controversialist was the writing, between the late summer and December of 1520, of his *Apologia pro veritate catholicae et apostolicae fidei ac*

1 For an intellectual biography of Catharinus, in addition to Schweizer 1910 see Caravale 2017.

Giorgio Caravale, Roma Tre University, Italy<EMAIL_ADDRESS>0000-0002-6016-7545 Referee List (DOI 10.36253/fup\_referee\_list)

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Giorgio Caravale, *Error of the Heretic, Error of the Controversialist. Heresy and Deception in Sixteenth-Century Religious Polemics*, © Author(s), CC BY 4.0, DOI 10.36253/979-12-215-0266-4.03, in Marco Faini, Marco Sgarbi (edited by), *Errors, False Opinions and Defective Knowledge in Early Modern Europe*, pp. 17-26, 2023, published by Firenze University Press, ISBN 979-12-215-0266-4, DOI 10.36253/979-12- 215-0266-4

*doctrinae*, directed against Martin Luther (Politus 1956). It was the occasion for him to sharpen the rhetorical and polemical arguments that he would then use extensively in the following decades, in particular the theme of the deception and the artifices with which the monster of Saxony, as he was called in Rome, had tried to deceive the unwitting faithful. The concept of doctrinal error appears from the outset to be closely intertwined in his polemic with that of deception. According to Catharinus, the Saxon reformer had lied to conceal his persistent error in his recent letter to Leo X (Politus 1956, 11 et seq.). Luther had invoked "a council of diabolic vanity," implicitly eulogizing Christian schism (Politus 1956, 16–7) not hesitating to use the moral weakness of church leaders in order to cast disdain upon them for having introduced doctrinal errors (Politus 1956, 26 et seq.) spreading dispute everywhere and with everyone without even discussing the principal issues at stake (Politus 1956, 31 et seq.).  This was a semantic artifice to hide his intention of introducing new heretical blasphemies (Politus 1956, 40 et seq.; see also Preston 2003, 371–2). He continually referred to Saint Augustine, distorting his doctrine to defend his own errors,2 or exaggerating divergences between interpretations furnished by the ancient doctors and by some of the more recent, such as Thomas Aquinas (Politi 1956, 51 et seq.), thus betraying the profoundest teaching of the church. Luther chose a passage from one of the Fathers to set against another, in this way obliging the faithful to choose one church father rather than another, disrupting the consensus that Rome had created among their interpretations of the sacred scriptures.3

Several years later, in 1540, in his *Speculum hereticorum*, he resumed the thread of that anti-Lutheran polemic by directing his attacks against Italian *spirituali* (on Italian spirituali, it is suffice here to refer to Firpo 2015). It was very easy, he wrote, to fall into error. The "ignorant crowd" is easily deceived by the many pseudo-prophets who usurp the duty of leading their faith and who are totally "vacuous" (Politi 1540, 44). The "learned men" (among whom it is easy to imagine that Politi included himself) should have guided them, teaching them how to make good judgments (Politi 1540, 35). The grossest error committed by "these heretics," he wrote in *De perfecta iustificatione* (1541), is their belief that after this first justification by faith nothing else is required of man to reach salvation—as if this first "grace" does not soon become "vain and vacuous" without the constant nourishment of good works (Politi 1541, 197). He traced the origin of this con-

2 To this end, Ralph Keen emphasized that, like other controversialists at the time, Politi "saw a distortion of the catholic tradition in the exclusive use of one Father," that is, Luther's exclusive reference to Saint Augustine. Keen 2001, esp. 710.

3 Keen 2001, 100–19. To this end, see also the considerations by Keen 2001, 721, underlining the centrality of the Petrine authority of the papacy in Roman ecclesiology.

fusion to an error committed by Luther. Wishing to demonstrate that the sinner can be redeemed with faith in Christ alone, without any works, Luther invented an "unheard-of distinction between gospel and law" (Politi 1541, 208–9).

The error originated in an invention or, as we have said, in a deception artificially constructed to confuse the minds of simple people. Just as the Catholic controversialist used the category of error to refute the doctrine of his religious opponents, the latter returned the accusation to sender. In the anonymous *Apologia del Beneficio di* Christo attributed to Marcantonio Flaminio and written in response to Politi's *Compendio degli errori et inganni lutherani* (1544), we read that Politi was the real deceiver, an ignorant one who had fallen into error even before ensnaring his readers in the same mistakes (Flaminio 1996, 84). Politi had centered the accusation of deception and mystification of the truth that he flung at the Viterbo group on the question of faith and works. To such a defamatory accusation it was necessary to respond, beginning with returning to the sender an updated list of accusations. "The origin of his error," emphasized Flaminio, "is that he doesn't understand what justification by faith means" (Flaminio 1996). The term "to justify," Flaminio continued provocatively, "is judicial language and signifies to absolve and to judge someone just and innocent and to oppose his condemnation" (Flaminio 1996, 85). But Politi,"having regard to the composition of the Latin word," was unable to imagine that this word might "signify other than having been made just and good, as if to say from intemperate to temperate, from miserly to generous." In other words, he thought "that to be justified by faith meant only having been made good and just by the gift of charity God infused in our hearts by means of the disposition of faith" (Flaminio 1996, 86). Instead, faith cannot grow "by means of the frequent exercise of good works" until a "perfection" such that "man with his innocence and saintliness can expose himself to and satisfy God's judgment,"4 and this for the simple reason that "the infirmity and imperfection of our flesh" does not allow it (Flaminio 1996, 86). To be "justified by faith" thus means only that "if not by the means of faith, which receives the justice and merits of Christ freely offered to us by the preaching of the gospel, we are absolved in God's judgment for all our iniquities," and consequently "we are accepted as just and innocent and made heirs of the eternal life." All this, Flaminio emphasized, notwithstanding the fact that "in ourselves we are worthy of punishment, not rewards" (Flaminio 1996, 85). Thus, it is "imputed justice," that is, that justice "imputed to all the faithful by God's misericordia," not the "inherent justice" Politi defended in his writings, that guarantees eternal salvation (Flaminio 1996, 92, 95). Flaminio returned to the sender the accusation of deception, as well as the one of error.

The religious history of the early modern age is full of internal controversies between members of different religious orders, usually competing with each other to win the favor of the pope and the most influential cardinals. Even within

4 The reference here is to the second level of justification identified by Politi, on which see Caravale, 2017, 112.

single religious orders there were often heated disputes. Usually, the recommendation that came from the echelons of the order was to not let the controversy come out of the convent walls: the risk to damage the reputation of the order was too high. In the case of Catharinus, however, this unwritten rule was not respected. In the summer of 1542 Politi left France precipitously to return to Italy. During the Dominicans' last chapter meeting, held at the Church of the Minerva on May 27, 1542, after the death of Dominican General Agostino Recuperato of Faenza, Bartolomeo Spina had unleashed a harsh attack against him, constraining Politi to return to Italy to defend himself (Mortier 1911, 372–4) Some years later he recalled those difficulties in a letter to Cardinal Carafa.5 Spina's hostility to Politi was traceable to their profound divergence of opinion on the Immaculate Conception. Where Politi had strongly attacked Cajetan for not taking an explicit position in favor of that doctrine, Bartolomeo Spina had written two tracts accusing Cajetan of exactly the opposite, insinuating an excessive acquiescence to those Immaculist theses.6 In the early months of 1542, Politi had sent to the press a new *Disputatio pro immaculate divae Virginis conceptione*, 7 forcefully reaffirming his ideas on the subject, and Spina decided at that point to open a broad offensive to expose the doctrinal deviations with which Politi had stained Thomist orthodoxy. Fifteen "principal errors of the books of Ambrosio Catarino on prescience, providence and predestination of God and the predestination of Christ" were set down in black and white by Spina and most likely presented to the general chapter of the order.8 In the accused work, the *De praescientia, providentia, et praedestinatione Dei*, published in Paris in 1541, Politi had set forth the theory that God has predestined few to salvation. The Virgin, Christ, and some of the apostles are among the elect and for them salvation is certain. God has not predestined any of the rest, although he has foreseen their future. God wishes all to be saved, Politi had written, but everyone will be saved. Some will reach eternal salvation; others will be saved or damned to the extent that they are able to receive divine grace and increase it with their good works. Bartolomeo Spina, claiming also to be a tutor of Thomist orthodoxy, fundamentally contested the basis and the thesis of Politi's writing (Caravale 2017, 97).

We do not know if the clash between Spina and Politi had more profound repercussions within the order, if Politi's "heretical" theses had met with support from some of the chapter, in sum, whether the personal polemic between Spina and Politi had developed into a broader encounter. The question, it seems, was

5 Politi's letter of 1549 was published by Schweizer 1908: 8–9.

6 This was the *De universali corruptione generis humani ab Adam seminaliter propagati* (1525) and the *Tractatus contra opusculum Caietani de conceptione Beatae Virginis* (1533); both were republished in Spina 1535, on cc. 58v–88v.

7 The complete title is *Disputationis pro immaculata divae Virginis conceptione libri tres, similiter hac nova editione recogniti ab illo ac reconcinnati*, published in Spina 1535; see Schweizer 1910, 294.

8 The fifteen "errores" were published by Politi in his *Enarrationes* as part of a list that also included the errors added by Spina in 1546 and subsequently republished by Schweizer in an appendix of his monograph.

filed away. The rendering of accounts, however, was only put off for a few years. Four years later, in the midst of the council of Trent, when the promotion to bishop for Politi was in process, Bartolomeo Spina returned to his task, lengthening his list of Politi's "errors" in an effort to block the nomination of Politi to bishop (Caravale 2017, 142). What better occasion than the likelihood of the episcopal promotion of his bitter adversary and from what better position than the censor, the master of the sacred palace, official provost for the doctrinal control of writings published in the city of Rome? He consigned into the hands of the pope a long list of fifty "errors" taken from the works published by Politi in recent years.9 Spina's hostility, as already indicated, was rooted in the question of the Immaculate Conception. One of the criteria used by Spina in 1542 in the selection of "errors" was how congruent Politi's texts were with those of Thomist fundamentals. He now continued in the same way. This time, however, Spina increased the range of errors: on his list he specified Politi's theses that identified in the Virgin, in Christ, and in a few other apostles the members of that very restricted circle who were certain of predestination to salvation (Conclusio 18; Schweizer 1910, 276); and also Politi's original theory of a covenant according to which the transmission of Adam's sin to all humanity was to be traced back to Adam's transgression of the strict covenant between God and Adam; and further, Politi's affirmation on the transmission of the sin (Conclusio 37, Schweizer 1910, 280–1; see also Conclusio 26; Schweizer 1910, 278).

Catharinus indignantly rejected all of Spina's insinuations. According to Politi, the errors that Spina accused him of were not such. On the contrary, Politi went even further, those who embraced the point of view of his accuser were easily chargeable of Pelagianism or of falling into the "error of the Jews:" "I have been sent the errors noted by Your Reverence and presented to the pope. I have considered them and don't recognize a single one of them, seeing that some of them have been imputed to me and some I do not consider errors; whoever wishes to maintain the opposite I think is either a Pelagian or a Jew."10

The accusations made against him by Bartolomeo Spina were not the only ones Politi received while he was in Trent. Spina's implicit accusations of Lutheranism against the Sienese controversialist were in the same register used by the theologian Domingo de Soto. "This opinion," Paolo Sarpi would recount, referring to the doctrine of the absence of merit in works preceding justification that Politi defended before the council, "was impugned by Soto with much acrimony. He went on to cry heresy because it inferred that man was not free

9 The list of the "errores" published by Politi in his *Defensio doctrinae auctoris in quondam magistrum falso et calumniose deferentem ad S.D.N. Paulum III pontificem maximum* [1546], in Politi, *Enarrationes*, 353–64, was republished by Schweizer in the appendix of his book (1910), 271 et seq., without the text of Politi's defensive comments. There is a manuscript copy of the same list in BNFi (Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale), Conv. Soppr. I.IV.14, unnumbered pages; and another in AAV (Vatican City, Archivio Apostolico Vaticano), Cart. Farn. Est. 14, fols. 95r–105r.

10 The letter is published in Schweizer 1910, 254–6. There is also a copy of the letter in BNFi, Conv. Soppr. I.IV.14, fols. not numbered (but 1r–2r).

to do good and could not follow his natural objective, [and] thus, with the Lutherans, denied free will" (Sarpi 1974, vol. I, 332). By a kind of historical retribution, the most noted Catholic controversialist, the most praised adversary of the "Lutheran plague," found himself for the second time the object of the same accusations that for decades he had hurled from the pulpits. The paradox was only apparent. In the "inexorable logic of the final encounter" (the expression is used by Prosperi 2000, 65) that soon would be imposed at Trent, anyone who pronounced the word faith too emphatically would be silenced for conniving with the enemy. Anyone carrying a doctrinal patrimony diverging from that of the traditional theological schools, anyone who had ever employed a vocabulary dissonant from scholastic language, risked being accused at the criminal bench. In the course of that first phase of the Tridentine debates the accusation of Lutheranism had fallen on the heads of prelates close to reformed ideas, such as Tommaso Sanfelice, bishop of Cava, but also on religious who had nothing in common with the reform vision, the Benedictine Luciano degli Ottoni above all. In fact, what brought Politi into harmony with the Benedictines was a common, profound aversion to rigid schemes of scholasticism and a common attitude of freedom in the study of theological questions, as well as strong admiration for the works of the theologian Duns Scotus, and, not least, a sincere aversion to Lutheran doctrine (Caravale 2013). In various times and ways these attitudes drew the censure of such strenuous defenders of scholastic theology and Thomist language as Bartolomeo Spina against Politi, and Domingo de Soto against the representatives of the Benedictine order at Trent and against Politi as well. The charges shifted in character. Sometimes their writings and remarks were taxed with Pelagian error; other times, with Lutheran deviations. This is because the object of the censors was not to comprehend the coherence and the complexity of their doctrinal thought in order to criticize its theological basis or dominant register. The censors instead chose single instances, sentences, or affirmations to determine their dissonance from Thomist orthodoxy.

What makes the figure of Catharinus particularly suitable for studying the different semantic uses of the category of error within the religious disputes of the early modern age is that in his intellectual biography error does not appear only in the form of an accusation made against his lifelong adversaries (Luther and the Italian *spirituali*) or as an accusation (of heresy) made against him by his adversary Dominican brethren. The centrality of the category of error emerges also and above all from the fact that Catharinus uses it to accuse himself. On 5 April 1517, he entered the Dominican convent of San Marco, where he took the habit at the hands of fra Filippo Strozzi, choosing the name of Ambrogio Catarino in honor of the blessed Ambrogio Sansedoni of Siena and of St. Catherine.11 A

11 Florence, Archivio del convento di S. Marco, *Liber vestitionum conventus Sancti Marci de Florentia*, fol. 9r: «Fratrus Ambrosius Bernardini de Politis de Senis, prius Dominus Lancilottus in seculo dictus, accepit habitum clericorum a reverendo priore fratre Philippo Stroza, nostro generali, 5 aprilis circa horam vigesimam quartam»; Cf. also Faldi 1994, 562, note 51. On fra Filippo Strozzi cfr. Verde 1983, 181; Ughelli 1720, VI, 620–1.

few years later, in a letter dated 5 May 1520 and addressed to the young Marcello Cervini, the future Pope Marcellus II, Catharinus gave a first account of his momentous decision. He had been disgusted by the moral corruption, the pride and vainglory he had frequently observed in the world of the Curia, and this had encouraged him to abjure his previous worldly life and to seek out the spiritual and contemplative dimension that he felt his profession lacked and that would guarantee his eternal salvation.12 The works of Savonarola he had chanced upon gave voice to a sense of unease and dissatisfaction that he had long felt to be growing within him (Politi 1548, fol. 8v). Over twenty years had gone by since the zenith of Savonarola's influence in Florence and over twenty-five since the Ferrarese friar had first preached the need for a spiritual rebirth of Christianity, but the revolutionary charge of his message remained intact, capable of attracting those restless spirits who remained intolerant of corrupt times: nothing, or hardly anything, had changed in the corruption and abuses that Savonarola had so vehemently denounced.

But there was more. Alongside these feelings and behind his sudden and belated religious conversion lay another layer of motivations, one less easily ascribable to the sphere of spirituality or to his inner struggle, but nonetheless equally decisive in orienting his decisions. To enter the order of St. Dominic through the influence of Savonarola's message meant for Catharinus that he could participate in the project of reforming the Church from a privileged position. Catharinus was irresistibly attracted by Savonarola's presumption of possessing the truth, by his certainty of belonging to the community of the elect. Savonarola's "teaching of the articles and dogmas of the faith" appeared to him "good, holy and without error;" also, there was "the opinion and fame of his good and holy life," that is, the moral example of his life to which everyone who had known him could confidently give witness (Politi 1548, fols. 3v, 5v). In particular, the "intrinsic belief that Savonarola had in his own innocence," that "serenity of conscience" and "that great certainty of his prophecies," in other words "that testimony he gave of his own self," had appeared to Catharinus "excessive," but they had also made him timorous and "credulously willing to receive them" (Politi 1548, fol. 3v). An ambitious man like him, dominated by "an innate curiosity about human pride," so bold as to wish "to know the things of the future, usurping what is proper only to God," could not fail to be almost hypnotically attracted by the allure of that "little man" from Ferrara, by the force—and, as we shall see, the illusion—of his prophecy (Politi 1548, fol. 6v).

That doctrine, which initially appeared to be "without error," seemed to him with the passing of the years to be increasingly illusory and deceptive. About thirty years after he entered the Dominican Order, Politi gave an account of the long and troubled journey that led him to rethink his youthful choices, an account in which error once again played a central role. In fact, the *Discorso contro*

12 Politi's letter to Marcello Cervini, Firenze 5 maggio 1520, in ASF, *Carte Cervini* 49, cc. 32r sgg., in Schweizer 1910, 245–8: 247.

*la dottrina di fra Girolamo Savonarola*, published in 1548, was not only one of the most famous manifestos of sixteenth-century anti-Savonarolism, but also a strongly autobiographical text, one that marked the culmination of a long personal travail. "In the first [part]," Politi began, "I will give all the reasons that persuaded me to believe, and for a long time nourished me in that faith" (Politi 1548, fol. A2r). The first fifty pages were entirely devoted to reconstructing the motives that had brought him to commit what in retrospect he considered the greatest mistake of his life, that is, his decision to enter the lists on the side of the friar of Ferrara (Politi 1548, fols. 1r–25v). "I am not so indignant toward him as toward myself.  (Politi 1548, fol. 24r). In conclusion he added, "Everything I have written I have written against myself because I don't forgive myself anything, and I want to imitate the just man of whom it has been written 'The just man is the first to accuse himself '" (Politi 1548, fol. 25r). It was an act of personal liberation rather than an exercise of controversial polemic that as the pages unfolded became an increasingly tormented discourse on self-knowledge and self-purification before God's severe tribunal (Politi 1548, fol. 25r). That same "foolish credulity" that had convinced him that he had earned "the light of grace and … our salvation," Politi confessed, was also the greatest obstacle to be removed on the road to recovering reason (Politi 1548, fol. 19r). The fear of losing that ardently desired "salvation" had "held him bound" for "a long time": "I believed that he who freed himself from that faith would fall back into darkness, would lose the Grace of God, would be reprobate, ruined, publicly indicted and left to perish in the flood far from the safety and the shelter of the arc" (Politi 1548, fol. 23r; cf. also Politi 1548, fols. 17v–18r).

The process of emancipating himself from the Ferrarese friar's yoke, then, was a long and difficult one, necessitating a gradual demystification of Savonarola's character and prophecies, a task that claimed every moment of his thought and activity. The memory of, or rather, we might say, the obsession with what he soon identified as a strong delusion would shape his mental universe. The exposure of this early mistake would become, in the years that followed, his daily mission, as his personal experience soon overlapped with the spread of heretical doctrines in Italy. Just as he himself had been deceived by Savonarola when he was yet "simple and ignorant" (Politi 1548, fol. 7v), so many other "idiots and simpletons" now ran the risk of being deceived by the new Lutheran word. Politi therefore set himself a dual agenda. If on the one hand he pursued his emancipation from the illusory nature of the Savonarolan prophecies that had tricked him in the past, on the other he aimed to prevent other believers from getting entangled in the Lutheran deceit. The category of deceit, in other words, became for him the interpretative key with which he came to read not only his own biography but also the danger represented by the emerging heresies.

What most alarmed Politi was the power of suggestion that Savonarola and the Lutherans held, their ability to captivate the masses of the simple and the unlettered—just as had happened to him when he first entered the Dominican order. Politi saw this as a characteristic of Bernardino Ochino, the great Capuchin preacher who was also the other true protagonist of his *Discorso*,shared with Savonarola (on Bernardino Ochino, see now Camaioni 2018). In 1542, Ochino, the esteemed general of the newly-founded Capuchin order, had shocked both friends and enemies by dropping the mask he had worn up to then, fleeing beyond the Alps and revealing to everyone his supposedly true religious beliefs. Ochino had repeatedly referred to a "new light," an inner brightness to which he appealed to lend strength and forcefulness to his doctrines. This same light, Politi was convinced, animated those passages in which Savonarola boasted of possessing "a celestial doctrine, a new light descending from Heaven" (Politi 1548, fols. 27v and 39v). Savonarola, Politi maintained, attributed to himself "the power to give new articles of faith," which he did not hesitate to "consider equal to the Sacred Books and the Catholic faith" (Politi 1548, fol. 39v). So Politi was able to trace in Savonarola's writings the same arrogance and presumption that Ochino was currently displaying in affirming the validity of his own doctrines. Like the Capuchin general, Savonarola had "exalted his doctrine above that of the Church," affirming that "true spiritual salvation laid in the belief in this doctrine:" "As if the Christian doctrine were not in itself sufficient to produce every Christian effect, he wished to prove that his axioms were indeed superior to those of the Church" (Politi 1548, fols. 27r–v). It was, in other words, that very "haughtiness and pride, common to all heretics and schismatics" (Politi 1548, fol. 4r), that in his eyes rendered the doctrines of Ochino (and of the Lutherans) as dangerous as those of Savonarola. Furthermore, Politi underscored, it was nothing other than "his presumption" that inspired "brother Girolamo" to "mock the Canons of the popes, and it was for this reason that Luther later dared to burn them publicly" (Politi 1548, fols. 18r–v).

In the central years of the religious crisis of the sixteenth century, these two aspects of Politi's spirit—anti-Lutheranism and anti-Savonarolism—grew in parallel until they found a unitary interpretative key in the *Discorso* of 1548. It was only then, therefore, that the many different meanings in which the category of error had been declined in the course of his biographical story—from presumption to credulity, from delusion to deception—found an unprecedented convergence.

#### References

## Errors of Interpretation: Vincenzo Maggi and Sperone Speroni, Readers of Francesco Robortello

Marco Sgarbi

**Abstract**: This paper considers errors of interpretation in textual criticism in Renaissance Italy. It focuses on the reading of Francesco Robortello's *In Aristotelis poeticam explicationes*, published in Florence by Lorenzo Torrentino in 1548, and the readers in question were Vincenzo Maggi and Sperone Speroni. The paper shows how errors of interpretation can relate either to a misunderstanding of the original text or of its translation. It is a significant case because it concerns the first "critical edition" with commentary of one of Aristotle's most neglected works, the *Poetica*.

**Keywords**: errors, interpretation, Aristotle, *Poetics*, Renaissance.

#### 1. Reading Aristotle's *Poetics* in the Renaissance

This paper considers errors of interpretation in textual criticism in Renaissance Italy. A very specific case is featured: the reading of Francesco Robortello's *In Aristotelis poeticam explicationes*, published in Florence by Lorenzo Torrentino in 1548, and the readers in question were Vincenzo Maggi and Sperone Speroni (on Robortello see Sgarbi 2020). The paper shows how errors of interpretation can relate either to a misunderstanding of the original text or of its translation. It is a significant case because it concerns the first "critical edition" with commentary of one of Aristotle's most neglected works, the *Poetica*.

The history of the reception of Aristotle's *Poetics* is well-known (Kappl 2006). The work was transmitted through a partial translation in Averroes' *Middle Commentary* (see Minio-Paluello 1968; Butterworth 1986). In 1278, the *Poetics* was translated into Latin by William of Moerbeke, but the translation remained lost until 1895, and thus had no bearing on the subsequent Aristotelian tradition. The history of the *Poetics*' reception thus really begins in 1498 with Giorgio Valla's Latin translation. Aldo Manuzio's edition of the Greek text was published in 1508, not in the Aldine edition but in the first volume of the *Rhetores graeci*. The first great impulse in the study of the *Poetics* came with the posthumous 1536 publication of Alessandro de' Pazzi's edition and translation, which had the effect of making the Aristotelian text more intelligible than the Valla edition.

Marco Sgarbi, Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Italy<EMAIL_ADDRESS>0000-0002-6346-8167 Referee List (DOI 10.36253/fup\_referee\_list)

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Marco Sgarbi, *Errors of Interpretation: Vincenzo Maggi and Sperone Speroni, Readers of Francesco Robortello*, © Author(s), CC BY 4.0, DOI 10.36253/979-12-215-0266-4.04, in Marco Faini, Marco Sgarbi (edited by), *Errors, False Opinions and Defective Knowledge in Early Modern Europe*, pp. 27-40, 2023, published by Firenze University Press, ISBN 979-12-215-0266-4, DOI 10.36253/979-12-215-0266-4

Robortello himself narrates the story of his epic enterprise to edit, translate and comment Aristotle's work:

The book has remained unknown until our times, and no one, among either the Latins or the Greeks, has had the strength to clarify it with interpretations. Firstly, Averroes captured some of what he [Aristotle] wrote, but I cannot praise his as a great work, nor can I criticize it, because [the texts] are badly translated into Latin and obscure passages of the original have not been clarified. Secondly, the book was translated into Latin by Giorgio Valla, an erudite man who is well-versed in all things ancient. But, as usually happens to those who walk on ice, he slipped frequently while trying to render even the simplest terms. There was great relief when Alessandro de' Pazzi retranslated the book. […] He too slipped, but he must not only be pardoned but also heaped with praise, because it is always dangerous to attempt to interpret such difficult matters […] I, too, cannot promise to have avoided making mistakes.1

In his edition, Robortello promises to correct the many mistakes of previous editors, especially with "the lesson on manuscript books and the utterances of the most erudite authors" (Robortello 1548). He uses four books, three of which are manuscripts. Two of these were available in the Biblioteca Medicea. One, *Laurentianus* 60.14, claims to have been described by Angelo Poliziano, whereas the other, an apograph, "multo vetustior," could be the *Laurentianus gr.*  60.21, written by Francesco Filelfo on the basis of *Parisinus gr.* 1741. Similarly difficult to identify is the third manuscript, which Robortello appears to have obtained with the help of Paolo Bevilacqua, who was summoned to teach Latin in Lucca around 1541 by Peter Martyr Vermigli. It might have been *Riccardianus gr.* 46, used once previously by Alessandro de' Pazzi. The Greek edition of the printed book, on the other hand, was most certainly by Vittore Trincavelli, and was published along with the Latin translation of Alessandro de' Pazzi. Even Robortello, therefore, represents a splendid case of the identification and correction of errors, especially those committed by de' Pazzi. Nonetheless, these errors were confined to the philological and codicological level, of the kind that the reading of a new manuscript tends to generate.

It would be wrong, however, to believe that Robortello was the first Renaissance scholar to seriously engage with Aristotle's text. Indeed, between 1535 and 1536 Vincenzo Maggi and Bartolomeo Lombardo began their own exegetical work, criticizing Gian Giorgio Trissino's *Poetica* (1529), perhaps using a manuscript version of de' Pazzi's translation before its publication, as Guglielmo de' Pazzi seems to testify.2 In 1541, at Alessandro Piccolomini's invitation,

1 Robortello 1548, letter to readers. I quote from Speroni's own copy of Robortello's *Explicationes*, which was the very first edition.

2 The testimony does not make clear in any definitive way whether Maggi was teaching Aristotle's *Poetics* at the university before 1536 or using Pazzi's manuscript translation. See Morsolin 1882-1883, 244–6.

Bartolomeo Lombardo—with some reluctance on account of bad health—gave the first public lecture on the *Poetics* at the Accademia degli Infiammati. Vincenzo Maggi was scheduled to teach the text at the Accademia too, but the death of his nephew obliged him to leave Padua (Vianello 1988, 52). Lombardo and Maggi's project to translate and comment on Aristotle's *Poetics* as a joint venture was realized only in 1550 with the *In Aristotelis librum De Poetica communes explanationes*, and so following the publication of Robortello's masterpiece. In the Accademia degli Infiammati, therefore, a new interest in Aristotle's *Poetics* arose, but Robortello was the first to publish a new edition of the text, causing resentment in Maggi, who in the meantime, after Lombardo's death, was continuing the hard work of the commentary on his own. Not by chance were both the authors considered in this paper—Maggi and Speroni—notable members of the Accademia degli Infiammati, and Speroni probably its last *principe*.

The errors of interpretation that this essay considers were those made by Robortello in reading Aristotle's words and flagged up by Maggi and Speroni. Of course, the "errors" in questions are mistakes dependent on their own interpretations of Aristotle's text and expose their disagreement with Robortello's reading. Scholarship has paid scarce attention to Maggi and Speroni's annotations to Robortello's edition. Indeed, Enrico Bisanti published an Italian translation of Maggi's *Obiectiones quaedam adversus Robortelli explicationem in primum Aristotelis contextum*, but with no further investigation. Déborah Blocker, in contrast, has the merit of having discovered Speroni's personal edition of Robortello's text containing his marginal notes, and outlines his general attitude as a reader (see Bisanti 1991; Blocker 2020). Among these notes, on the first two pages of this personal copy, Speroni lists a detailed series of errors committed by Robortello.

#### 2. Vincenzo Maggi's *Obiectiones*

The *Obiectiones quaedam adversus Robortelli explicationem in primum Aristotelis contextum* was published in 1550 as a para-textual element of Maggi's *Explanationes*. 3 It documented the fact that Maggi had carefully read Robortello's work and had intended to compose a much larger confutation of Robortello's every last word. However, he had abandoned this extensive task because so many mistakes needed correcting, and limited himself to reviewing Robortello's commentary on Aristotle's *Poetics* 1447 a 8-11:

περὶ ποιητικῆς αὐτῆς τε καὶ τῶν εἰδῶν αὐτῆς, ἥν τινα δύναμιν ἕκαστον ἔχει, καὶ πῶς δεῖ συνίστασθαι τοὺς μύθους [10] εἰ μέλλει καλῶς ἕξειν ἡ ποίησις, ἔτι δὲ ἐκ πόσων καὶ ποίων ἐστὶ μορίων, ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ περὶ τῶν ἄλλων ὅσα τῆς αὐτῆς ἐστι μεθόδου, λέγωμεν.

3 The *Obiectiones* are published along with Lombardo's lecture at the Accademia degli Infiammati, with an announcement to experts of poetic art, and also three letters from Maggi to Madrucci, from Gugliemo de' Pazzi to Francesco Campano, and from Alessandro de' Pazzi to Nicolò Leonico.

In the standard English translation, the passage is rendered as follows:

Let us here deal with poetry, its essence and its several species, with the characteristic function of each species and the way in which plots must be constructed if the poem is to be a success; and also with the number and character of the constituent parts of a poem, and similarly with all other matters proper to this same inquiry.

Robortello's commentary on Aristotle's words can be summarized as follows:

According to Maggi, Robortello commits several kinds of errors, ranging from mistakes of interpretation to crucial omissions. First of all, Maggi disagrees with the idea that Aristotle's *Poetics* has no proem or introduction on the spurious basis that his authentic works lacked these (Maggi-Lombardi 1550, 17). Indeed, many important commentators such as Alexander of Aphrodisias, Simplicius, Philoponus, and Averroes believed in the existence of proems in Aristotle's writings like the *Physics* or *On the Soul*. Maggi points out that Aristotle himself explains the scope and importance of proems, which is to make clear the goal of the composition. Since Aristotle at the beginning of the *Poetics* explains the scope of his writing, it is an error, therefore, to maintain that there is no proem. Furthermore, if one compares the beginning of the *Poetics* with that of the *Physics*, which is clearly a proem, there are many similarities. Finally, Robortello would seem to be contradicting himself in stating that at the beginning of the *Poetics* Aristotle deals with the essence of poetics, its parts, etc., because these are exactly the sort of elements that constitute a proem. Maggi and Robortello evidently have two different conceptions of proem. Robortello had in mind the long initial letter written to Alexander in the pseudo-Aristotelian *Rhetorics*, in which the author of the work—perhaps Anaximenes of Lampsacus—does not immediately deal with rhetorical topics. Maggi's essential criticism is that Robortello is applying non-Aristotelian expectations to Aristotle.

Another mistake made by Robortello in Maggi's view concerns the division of the work, leading to many sub-errors and mis-interpretations (Maggi-Lombardi 1550, 18–9). Maggi contests Robortello's view that after providing a definition of poetics that is useful for determining the various distinctions that constitute the parts of a work, Aristotle deals directly with one of its forms, tragedy. Indeed, after the definition of poetics Aristotle would have considered its origin, which according to Robortello is part of the investigation of the definition itself and not a separate section. Maggi also criticizes Robortello's idea that the definition of poetics is discovered by division, namely through examining genus and specific differences. This is not the case according to Maggi, because Aristotle provides different criteria for classification of the various types of poetical works—epic, tragedy, comedy, etc.—and these categorizations refer to the medium, the subject, and the manner or mode of imitation. These aspects are not specific differences, and therefore Robortello's interpretation does not stand up. Yet Robortello never claims that definition is discovered by division. He simply states that Aristotle "seeks and provides the definition of poetics after having found the genus and after having distinguished it through differences to that extent that the definition may be applied to every part of poetics" (Robortello 1548, 5). Every definition is composed of a genus and a specific difference, but this does not mean that the definition is discovered through division.

Maggi criticizes Robortello's statement that "Aristotle deals with tragedy and with its parts and then with plot" as if plot were a subdivision of poetics like tragedy, comedy, and epic, etc. Indeed, it is quite clear that plot is one of the key elements in assessing individual poetic works, and thus it cannot in itself be a specific type. However, Robortello does not say that plot is a kind of poetic work, but rather that Aristotle deals with plot after the definition of tragedy (Maggi-Lombardi 1550, 19).

Maggi then objects to Robortello's claim that for Aristotle, after presenting the subject of investigation, it is necessary to examine "the constitution of the plot and of its parts, etc." (Maggi-Lombardi 1550, 20). Maggi sees "of its parts" in Robortello's text as clearly referring to plot, whereas his own view is that Aristotle's intention was to deal with the constitution of the plot and the parts of poetics. This leads Robortello to err in maintaining that the characters, the language, the thought, the spectacle, and the music are parts of the plot, yet for Maggi they were parts of every poetic work and among these parts plot should be included too. In Latin, Robortello's sentence reads: "sibi esse dicendum etiam de fabulae constitutione, & eius partibus." (Robortello 1548, 5). Maggi's interpretation is correct, but Robortello's explanation is that the plot is the essential element—the soul—of every poetic composition, and therefore all the other parts refer to it. This error led Robortello to consider the prologue, episode, exodus, and chorus as inherent in every plot, while Aristotle attributed them only to tragedy. Indeed, these parts are not characteristic of epic, according to Maggi. Philologically speaking, Maggi's observation is correct, and Robortello is providing a very personal interpretation of Aristotle, which is not close to the text.

Maggi goes on with his objections, passing from errors of interpretation to omissions. The first omission is the lack of a proper explanation of what the subject of the *Poetics* actually was—namely whether by "poetics" Aristotle meant "poetry" (*poesi*) or "poetical art" (*arte poetica*), the art of composing poetical work. Then there are several omissions in the translation. For instance, Robortello does not translate "αὐτῆς τε," which in Maggi's view should have been translated for Maggi

with "*ipsaque*." Robortello does not explain the real meaning of "δύναμις," which he translates with "*facultate*," that is whether it means the "nature" of poetics or something different that belongs to nature, so at a secondary level of investigation (Maggi-Lombardi 1550, 21). Maggi finds this objection particularly relevant considering that Robortello had written in the preface of his *Explanationes* that "the poet applies his true force in making meaningful and describing the characters of human beings" (Robortello 1548, 3). If this is the true faculty of the poet, then Maggi finds it to be in contradiction with the purpose of poetics that Robortello has established, that "poetics applies its force for delight" (Maggi-Lombardi 1550, 22). But here Maggi is confusing method with purpose, which for Robortello is delight and utility (though Maggi conveniently omits to mention utility). The real point for Maggi is that Robortello is contradicting what Aristotle says:

But most important of all is the structure of the incidents. For Tragedy is an imitation, not of men, but of action and of life, and life consists in action, and its end is a mode of action, not a quality. Now character determines men's qualities, but it is by their actions that they are happy or the reverse. Dramatic action, therefore, is not with a view to the representation of character: character comes in as subsidiary to the actions (Maggi-Lombardi 1550, 23).

According to Aristotle's words, therefore, poetics should imitate actions and not characters, and Robortello is wrong in stating otherwise.

Other important omitted explanations are those concerning the words "πῶς" and "μύθους," which are fundamental and which according to Maggi deserve detailed examination. But the most striking omission and error concerns Aristotle's method. What Robortello writes in the introduction is not sufficient for Maggi:

Aristotle needed to deal methodically (*ordinatim*), that is μεθοδικῶς with poetics, but he could not do so if, having given the definition, he had not explained the τὸ τί ἐστι. But the definition was not known […] First the genus must be investigated, then the difference; indeed, without them definition cannot be constituted. The genus cannot be investigated other than with an ἀναλυτικῶυ method (Robortello 1548, 5).

Thus for Maggi there was no other way for Aristotle to deal with poetics if not methodically, but he never explained its τὸ τί ἐστι once the definition was given, since no hint of a real definition is found in his work. Furthermore, Maggi observes, the analytic method is inappropriate for this kind of enquiry and not even the method adopted by Aristotle's himself in his *Posterior Analytics*. Robortello's sentence is therefore meaningless (Maggi-Lombardi 1550, 23).

These then are the scattering of errors and omissions that Maggi found in Robortello's edition. By his own account, his aim in highlighting Robortello's failings was not to "calumny" his adversary, but rather to reveal truth in such a way that young scholars would not be deceived in reading Robortello's book, and not consider it gospel. Furthermore, he maintained, Robortello himself would have accepted the criticism for the sake of the advancement of knowledge.

In general, Maggi's reading of Robortello is by no means as neutral as the author says. While he correctly points out a number of omissions in the translation, he intentionally stretches aspects of interpretation, putting into Robortello's mouth and pen what the intellectual from Udine had never uttered or written.

#### 3. Sperone Speroni's Marginal Notes

Speroni's reading of Robortello is heavily influenced by Maggi's, as frequent reference to the 1550 *In Aristotelis librum De Poetica communes explanationes* makes clear. However, Speroni is not always in agreement with Maggi, and in amending Robortello presents his personal interpretation of Aristotle's *Poetica*. Speroni's list of errors shows also that either he read Robortello's text starting at the back—that is, from the short treatises in the appendix of the 1548 edition—or that he read and commented at least twice on Robortello's edition, going back and forth with cross-references. It is impossible to ascertain when and how often Speroni read this book, but a series of marginal notes show that at least one reading of Robortello's work took place after the publication of Pier Vettori's edition of Aristotle's *Poetics* (1560).

Speroni's list of errors is meticulously annotated at the beginning of the book with an exact note of the page number.4 The errors he identifies in Robortello are mainly in connection with the interpretation of Aristotle's text, and more generally about the task of poetics. They are strongly influenced by Speroni's very personal conception of tragedy, and by the debate provoked by the publication of the *Canace.*

Speroni finds the first error at the very beginning of Robortello's proem, where poetics is categorized among the various language arts according to their relation or closeness to the truth. Herewith Robortello constitutes the hierarchy of the language arts:

Speroni contests Robortello's idea that "as far as the more the oration departs from the truth, the nearer it gets to the point that it is false" (Robortello 1548, 1). He emphasizes how Robortello is wrong in this classification because there is no medium point between what is true and what is false. Therefore, the difference between the various language arts should be unrelated to truth and pertain to the function of language. In the *Dialogo della istoria* Speroni writes

Poetry does not narrate the fact; it is an imitation and semblance of the fact, like the mirror for the one reflected; rhetoric is no ambassador for senators or judges, but it persuades of the truth. The truth is tested in a higher way by dialectics; and this is proved by the sciences, which treat the general, where the feelings go not (Speroni 1740, vol. 2, 314).

4 In this paper I will consider only the major errors identified by Speroni.

It falls to dialectics and demonstration to show the truth by abstracting it from all those particular feelings which are aroused by poetry and rhetoric. In other words, one can say that poetics invents facts, while rhetoric persuades that something is true, even though it may be false. Their goal, therefore, is not the truth, but respectively delight and persuasion. About truth, Speroni says that "poetry paints it, rhetoric uses examples and enthymeme to substantiate it; syllogism and induction giving general proofs yield uncertain knowledge, but demonstration makes it certain" (Speroni 1740, vol. 2, 314).

Speroni contests the idea of a direct relationship with the truth and finds qualitative differences between the various kinds of oration. Hence, even if Speroni shares with Robortello this classification of language arts—coming traditionally from Averroes—the principle according to which they are grouped is different. For Speroni, it is not their relationship with the truth that distinguishes them, but rather the instruments that they employ. In reading Robortello, Speroni likely had in mind his fierce opponent Giambattista Giraldi Cinzio, who made of truth and verisimilitude the cornerstone of tragedy and who in his *Giudizio* charged the *Canace* with inverisimilitude.

Speroni then attacks one of the cardinal ideas of Robortello's interpretation of Aristotle's poetics, namely catharsis. Indeed, according to Speroni, Robortello supported the conception that tragedy purges the audience of pity and fear by means of pity and fear. The criticism against Robortello is based on a simple reading of the following Latin passage: "Quod si quis roget, qualis sit Aristotelis sententia de tragoedia. Respondeo, existimare illum; eius recitatione, & inspectione purgari perturbationes has duas, commiserationem, & metum" (Robortello 1548, 53).

Robortello is clearly referring to the famous passage "δι᾽ ἐλέου καὶ φόβου τεραίνουσα τὴν τῶν τοιούτων παθημάτων κάθαρσιν," which is translated in the standard English edition as "arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions" (Aristotle, Poetica, 1449 b 27-28). In identifying this error, Speroni explicitly endorses Maggi's criticism of Robortello. Maggi writes:

A spectator at a tragedy undergoes feelings of pity and of fear: of pity, due to his recognition that the evil events that have happened to the individuals in the tragedy have come about because of some ignorance or misjudgment on their part, not because of their malevolence; of fear, due to his recognition that the same sort of thing could happen to himself, no matter how good his intentions. The goal of this experience is the purification of emotions; the aim is not that of liberating the spectator's soul from pity and fear. If the spectators witness tragic actions on stage (which are in fact crimes that originate in ignorance), they will find themselves moved by compassion and fear, the fear that the same could happen to them. […] If tragedy were to free this dictator from fear, the fear of themselves committing the same kind of crime, then tragedy would make human beings all too ready to commit heinous crimes. And this is clearly absurd (Robortello 1548, 97).

In contrast to Robortello, therefore, for Maggi and Speroni, tragedy purges all other perturbations, emotions and passions of the soul by means of pity and fear. Speroni is quite explicit on this in a manuscript passage of a preliminary draft of his *Apologia* of 1554. He openly confesses that tragedy "with fear (*terrore*) and pity (*misericordia*) delighting purges the chest of the listener" (Biblioteca Capitolare, Padova, Ms. Speroniani, VIII, c. 203v). The word "delighting" plays a crucial part in Speroni's conception.

A much clearer exposition of Speroni's criticism of Robortello can be found in a letter to Alvise Mocenigo, dated 26 February 1565. Here he opposes two possible interpretations of *Poetics* 1449 b 27-28, one truly Aristotelian and the other labeled "Stoic." The passage, which in some texts reads "*ut purgemur*," and in others "*ut liberemur*," or "*ab hujuscemodi*," or "*ab hujusmodi affectibus*" can be understood in two very different ways. One is completely false, taking the text to read "*ut purgemur ab hujusmodi affectibus*:" through pity and fear, tragedy purges negative affects, among which are pity and fear. The second and more correct interpretation reads the passage as "*ut liberemur ab hujuscemodi fascinoribus*"—in other words, that through pity and fear tragedy purges the passions represented on the stage.

Speroni focuses on the incorrect way of reading Aristotle, the stronger interpretation that sees tragedy as purging fear and pity through exposure to fear and pity ("*ut purgemur ab iis affectibus*"). This seemingly contradictory position is characterized as Stoic and not Aristotelian in Speroni's eyes and it is clearly the position that he and Maggi attributed to Robortello. In the context of this letter, Speroni seems particularly to criticize the ethical and political importance of catharsis for Robortello, a position endorsed also by his great archenemy Giambattista Giraldi Cinzio. He saw the position of both as being that catharsis was a means of strengthening the moral virtues of justice (*giustizia*) and fortitude (*fortezza*) and, though a positive outcome, this was not Aristotle's true and original thought. Indeed, "the poet because of his nature aims at nothing other than delight" (Speroni 1740, vol. 5, 178). There was no directly ethical objective in tragedy, whose final purpose was to deliver delight or pleasure, rather than moral edification. The latter pertained not to the poet, or to tragedy, but to political government, whose final goal was to educate its citizens.

According to Speroni, therefore, Aristotle's opinion is that catharsis does not purge pity and fear, but the passions represented on stage. Interpreting him otherwise, Speroni says, would make of "Aristotle a Stoic rather than a Peripatetic." But it is clear that "Aristotle does not want to free [the human soul] from the affects, but that we rule them, because in themselves are not free" (Speroni 1740, vol. 5, 178). According to Speroni, Robortello would have rendered the passage more aptly with "*ut eos purgemus*." Speroni's criticism of Robortello is, however, tendentious, since Robortello himself explains that

when people see stage productions […] they become accustomed to suffering (*dolore*), being afraid (*timere*) and feeling pity (*commiserari*), and so, should it come about that they have the same experience, they would suffer and fear less (*minus doleant, & timeant*) (Robortello 1548, 53).

For Robortello, catharsis does purge pity and fear but it limits all excessive passions of the soul. Indeed, in another passage, which was annotated and underlined by Speroni, Robortello explains that

Aristotle did not agree with Plato, who did not wish the passions and perturbations of the soul to abound in poems; for Aristotle thought of an imitation in entirely different terms than did Plato. Such passions do not at all corrupt the characters of human beings or become more abundant in their souls, but rather purge them of all kinds of perturbations (Robortello 1548, 166, translated by Weinberg).

Pity and fear do not purge pity and fear, but rather all the other perturbations which produced excessive emotions and passions in the soul. In doing this, catharsis leads to delight (ἡδονή). Robortello clearly distinguishes ἔλεος and φόβος from παθήματα. The former are generated in the soul, the latter are put on the stage during tragedy. The generation of pity and fear in the soul limits the excesses of all passions.

Catharsis was not alone in being at the center of Speroni's criticism of Robortello's interpretation of Aristotle, but also the goal of tragedy. Indeed, on page 58, Robortello wrote that "the primary goal of tragedy is the imitation of the habits of the soul and the characters of human beings" (Robortello 1548, 58). In contrast, Speroni correctly emphasizes how for Aristotle the goal of tragedy was first and foremost the imitation of human actions. Speroni is perhaps too severe with Robortello, who, on many occasions, says precisely this. However, not all human actions must be imitated according to Robortello, but only those pertinent to a moral education, and for this reason the imitation of habit and character is so crucial for him.

On page 65 Speroni identifies an error of precision made by Robortello in characterizing the faculty of *dianoia*. Indeed, according to Robortello *dianoia*  or the faculty of thinking "composes, divides, ratiocinates, contemplates, simply apprehends, affirms, denies, argues, demonstrates" (Robortello 1548, 65). Among these actions, for Robortello, simple apprehension pertains to the intellect and not to *dianoia*, which is a discursive faculty. In this respect Robortello is therefore in error.

Page 87 is particularly dense in marginal annotations. Indeed, after noticing that it is false that "all that is possible is probable" because what is possible may appear very seldomly and therefore not be at all likely, Speroni criticizes Robortello's idea that the poet cannot invent because imitation must relate to true action. Robortello's thesis seems to be in contradiction with poetical tradition, but Speroni counters this by saying that there are two modes of invention, one beyond nature (*praeter naturam*) and the other according to nature (*secundum naturam*). In the first instance we are faced with a lie, which for Robortello must be expunged from poetics. In the second, poetics follows what is either probable or necessary, which in other words is something in relation to what is true, and which can convey an ethical message. Since Speroni does not conceive of poetics in relation to truth, then in imitating the poet is free to invent whatever is able to evoke pity and fear, even unbelievable and preternatural things (Robortello 1548, 87).

The problem of the relationship between invention and truth in poetics returns on page 93 where Robortello comments as to why according to Aristotle one should retain true names in tragedy. According to Speroni, who does not accept Robortello's idea that poetics has a strict relationship with the truth, in the commentary no real explanation or reason is given for why tragedians do not and cannot invent names, while comedians create names at will. Robortello here emphasizes once again that tragedy must imitate the truth in order to move an audience to pity and fear, and for this reason its capacity to evoke these two emotions is more effective if the names used are real or verisimilar.

Speroni, then, shows how Robortello overinterprets Aristotle in saying that in tragedy it is better to imitate the actions of famous or important persons because their characters, deeds and mistakes are so extraordinary that they arouse the various passions with greater intensity. Furthermore, only illustrious and noble men can achieve the highest happiness as well as the deepest sorrow. Imitation of plebeians, according to Robortello's interpretation of Aristotle, should be avoided in tragedy. For Speroni, however, all kinds of actions befit imitation, not only those of noble and illustrious men, because—following what Aristotle says in his *Ethics*—every human being, according to their own nature, can be happy. Once again, Speroni tends to go beyond Robortello's thesis or make it stronger. And indeed in this case too, Robortello simply states that the imitation of such men and women arouses the various passions more forcefully, but he does not exclude the representation of common people's actions. Nonetheless, Speroni believes that Robortello's conception is methodologically flawed, and this is particularly clear in the *Lettioni in difesa della Canace del medesimo*. Here, Speroni maintains that tragedy should imitate common people, because the spectators at the theatre were plebeians, and in imitating them their feeling of pity and fear would be much stronger.

Finally, in commenting on *Poetics* 60 a 19-26, Robortello explains Aristotle's statement that Homer is a master of paralogism by making the point that this kind of argumentation is employed by rhetoricians. Thus Robortello is arguing for an affinity between poetics and rhetoric, both of which would use the same type of inference. Speroni, who differentiates the language arts according to the mode of inference they employ, cannot accept this kind of connection or affinity, and he adds, considering in this instance the two disciplines in relation to truth, that in any case rhetoric cannot be considered akin to poetics because the former deals with the verisimilar, and the latter with the false. In this respect, Robortello was right and Speroni wrong, since Aristotle himself establishes this connection when speaking of pity in *Rhetorics* II.8 and fear in *Rhetorics* II.5.

#### 4. Conclusion

Maggi and Speroni identify different kinds of errors in Robortello's commentary on Aristotle's *Poetics*. While Maggi has more of a focus on the philological restitution of Aristotle's text and thought, Speroni is driven more by a personal interest in tragedy. Their criticisms testify to the relevance and significance of Robortello's enterprise and show how personal readings of Aristotelian texts could lead to divergent interpretations and be the origin of different exegetical traditions.

Interestingly enough, coming from a totally different conception of poetics, a close family friend of Speroni—Torquato Tasso—read and commented on Robortello's text, signalling the same errors, but reaching totally different interpretative conclusions (see Bettinelli 2001). When Tasso was a student in Padua between 1561 and 1566, he had the opportunity of frequenting Speroni's house: a long-lasting friendship had created a strong bond between his father Bernardo and the Paduan Intellectual. Tasso probably had recourse to a manuscript copy of the *Lezioni sui personaggi*, itself published posthumously only in 1597, but in Speroni's possession at the Accademia degli Elevati in Padua in 1558, and which would have inspired the young scholar in composing the *Rinaldo*. Looking at Tasso's marginal annotations to Robortello's commentary—the subject of a detailed study by Andrea Bettinelli—it is evident how the same passages that caused problems for Speroni also piqued Tasso's interest.

In the pages in which Robortello explains the ethical value of imitation but at the same time emphasizes that poetics is concerned with falsehood, Tasso notes "si recitatio et imitatio virtutum fit etc.: sibi contradicit" (Bettinelli 2001, 294). In Tasso's mind either the subject is falsity or imitation generates virtue, but the two together are impossible. And it is quite clear which Tasso himself would opt for. Indeed, he writes that it is "Robortello's error that the false is the subject-matter of poetry" (Bettinelli 2001, 309). Tasso was probably convinced by Speroni's reading of Robortello that the Pisan intellectual was defending the idea that the false was central to poetics, while, as we have seen, this is a misinterpretation. But while for Speroni falsehood was part of the remit of poetics—thus detaching it from a direct relationship with truth—for Tasso poetics should constantly engage with the truth, unwittingly following the footsteps of Giraldi Cinzio and Robortello. That Tasso endorsed Speroni's misinterpretation of Robortello is evident in the *Discorsi dell'arte poetica e in particolare sopra il poema eroico* (1594), where he writes that

Robortello is wrong in assigning the false to the poem as its subject matter. Indeed, according to Plato and Aristotle's opinion, the false is the subject matter of the sophist, who struggles around what is not. But the poet bases himself on some true action and considers it as verisimile. Therefore, his subject matter is the verisimile, which can be either true or false, but is more often true (Tasso 1594, 26).

But Tasso's conception echoes Robortello's, and the fact that he believed himself to be at odds with him suggests that he is following Speroni's view.

In relation to the false, Tasso makes a marginal note where Robortello speaks of the possibility of including subjects that are *praeter naturam* in poetics. Whereas, as we have seen, for Robortello this option is not to be considered common, according to Speroni it was a central feature of poetics. Like Speroni, Tasso believes that this is a negative aspect of Robortello's interpretation of Aristotle. However, unlike Speroni, he corrects Robortello explaining better how even beyond nature subjects may still serve poetry in relation to the truth. Indeed, some of these subjects can be the logical consequences of a story, without which it would be understood as mere fantasy.

These are only two instances of particular passages that were commented on and annotated in different directions by Speroni and Tasso, both of them signalling errors in Robortello's reading, but many more could be cited. For instance, both criticize Robortello's interpretation of the passage in which Aristotle states that Homer taught that a poetical lie is a paralogism, and likewise the reading of Aristotle's distinction between a simple and complex plot. A further, much more detailed investigation is clearly needed.

Working on errors of interpretation rather than similarities, especially in textual criticism, can be extremely useful for reconstructing the reception of a text. By juxtaposing the annotations of Maggi, Speroni, and Tasso against Robortello's commentary, and drawing out a comparison helps us to understand better, not only how a critical text was read, but also how Aristotelian ideas were received—much more informatively, in fact, than concentrating solely on similarities and points in common. Indeed, errors are often very precise and circumscribed, and they allow for genealogical reconstructions, whereas similarities and loans, which are for the most part very vague, do not. Histories of error in textual criticism could thus lead to a new way of interpreting the incremental rise of a specific literary and philosophical tradition.

#### References

Robortello, Francesco. 1548. *In librum Aristotelis de arte poetica explicationes: qui ab eodem ex manuscriptis libris, multis in locis emendatus fuit, ut iam difficillimus, ac obscurissimus liber a nullo ante declaratus, facile ab omnibus possit intelligi. Cum Indice rerum et uerborum locupletissimo. Francisci Robortelli Vtinensis Paraphrasis in librum Horatii, qui uulgo De Arte poetica ad Pisones inscribitur. Eiusdem explicationes de satyra, de epigrammata, de comoedia, de salibus, de elegia. Quae omnia addita ab authore fuerunt, ut nihil quod ad poeticam spectaret desiderari posset: Nam in iis scribendis Aristotelis methodum seruauit: et ex ipsius libello de Arte poetica principia sumpsit omnium suarum explicationum*. Firenze: Torrentino.

Speroni, Sperone. 1740. *Opere.* Venezia: Occhi.

Tasso, Torquato. 1594. *Discorsi del poema heroico*. Napoli: Venturini.

Vianello, Valerio. 1988. *Il letterato, l'accademia, il libro. Contributi sulla cultura veneta del Cinquecento*. Padova: Antenore.

## "Errori popolari:" How a Medical Notion Became an Aesthetic One

Paolo Cherchi

**Abstract**: The notion and the linguistic coinage of "errore popolare" is not as old as it is commonly believed, but comes from the history of medicine when in the late 16th Century, the Sorbonne's professors labelled as "erreur populaire" the paracelsian therapies. The definition became common in Italy and England. Another area where the idea of "errore popolare" was widespread is that of religion, where the notion of "error" borders with that of heresy, superstition and magic. However, the "scientific revolution" did not identify the mistakes with a social class or discipline but in the way knowledge was acquired: only the criteria of proof and evidence dispelled erroneous notions. Thus the "scientific knowledge" discredited the beliefs of the ancients, considered to be their major source, and confined them the sphere of imagination which was to be highly appreciated in the Romantic age. Such a change in perception and evaluation was favored by the new vision of the popular culture, folklore, seen as an autonomous cultural system.

**Keywords**: vulgus, paracelsian medicine, ciarlatani, secrets, popular errors.

The notion of "error" is quite problematic if even ancient Sophists, countering all common experience, denied its existence, and still today thinkers like Gilbert Ryle try repeatedly to find a "category of mistake." Its difficulties grow if we combine it with the notion of *popolare*, an attribute quite ambiguous and covering a vast range of meanings and nuances.1 Yet the topic of our study will be precisely the combination of these two terms tinged both by a varying degree of ambiguity. But readers can rest assured that we are not creating a problem just to show our daring, but we are merely studying a combination created in the culture of premodern history. The formula "errori popolari" or "erreurs populaires" far from being of our making, pops up with remarkable frequency in many titles of works regarding different disciplines, particularly in books of medicine, religion, and even in other disciplines, such as physics and history. Its frequency is confined to the period that spans approximately between the late sixteenth and the end of the eighteenth centuries. Thus, taking into account these two factors of the repeated documentation and timing, it is clear that the

1 The notion of "popolare" has generated a real debate in modern days, especially in the light of Gramsci's theories on the "nazional popolare" culture, which is not the one that interest us in this study. On the debate see at least Benigno 2013.

Paolo Cherchi, University of Chicago, United States<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
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Paolo Cherchi, *"Errori popolari:" How a Medical Notion Became an Aesthetic One*, © Author(s), CC BY 4.0, DOI 10.36253/979-12-215-0266-4.05, in Marco Faini, Marco Sgarbi (edited by), *Errors, False Opinions and Defective Knowledge in Early Modern Europe*, pp. 41-65, 2023, published by Firenze University Press, ISBN 979-12-215-0266-4, DOI 10.36253/979-12-215-0266-4

formula "errori popolari" is based on history and it should be studied in historical terms, that is with an approach that requires concrete data rather than abstract reasoning. So our readers will be spared from disquisitions on Logic and Science and should expect a more accessible but not less interesting survey of a historical debate.

Nonetheless, both terms require some qualification, if not a precise definition, to maintain our research within clear limits and to specify its goals. "Errore" in the most empirical sense is any action that departs from the truth, yet its quality and level of gravity are not stated by a dictionary but rather by its impact or effects. A grammatic mistake is different if made by a child or by a writer, and a wrong understanding of a sacred text is different if it is made by a simple person or by the creator of heresy or a schism. We will take into consideration only errors of cultural relevance, and whose "correction" implies major scientific changes or even switches in mentality. It is important to remember that the evaluation of what must be considered a mistake is also a historical one in the sense that expresses the judgment of those who see the wrong and suggest ways of correcting it. In most cases, any belief or statement that lacks proof or evidence will be considered a mistake. This criterium already tells that the difference between right and wrong must be decided by a "method" of research.

As to their "popular" nature, the question is somewhat more complicated given the wide range of meanings of the adjective, positive at times, debasing at others, and neutral in most instances. In English, the primary sense of "popular" is that of "broadly liked," or "admired by the people." In Italian, as well as in French and Spanish, this meaning is only a secondary one, whereas the primary one remains that of "belonging to the folkish sphere," something "of a simple or lower quality:" essentially the *vulgus prophanum* hated by Horace and, a millennium and a half later, by writers like the Spanish Cosme Aldana, author of a *Discorso contro il volgo.*2 Neither of these well-established meanings will match precisely the one used by the authors who created the formula of "errori popolari" because the errors of their concerns were indeed widespread among common people but they were also found among learned persons and in a bookish tradition. Perhaps the best English equivalent of Italian "errori popolari" is found in the title *Pseudodoxia epidemica or Vulgar Errors* of the book by Thomas Browne. In that learned title is implied the notion of *doxa* which means "common opinion or knowledge," which happens to be also *pseudo* or "fake" because it appears "learned" but is all wrong; moreover its notions are *epidemica* which indicates that this type of pseudo-knowledge is contagious and spreads like a pandemic. Browne's title seems to allude not so to many single mistakes as to a set of general beliefs amply held by the folk or the *vulgus.* This latitude proves, once more, that the problem lies in the way of knowing things rather than in the knowledge of single things: so it would seem once again that there is a problem of method.

2 Aldana 1578, and then in Spanish, *Invectiva contra el vulgo*, Madrid 1591, and later in *Biblioteca de Autores Españoles*, Madrid, Ribadeneyra, vol. XXXVI, 1886, 495–514.

In modern times, in the post-Romantic period, the meaning of "popolare" will undergo a profound change and in the most recent decades, it defines the culture of the "subaltern" classes. We will return to this latest concept.

From what we just said it should be clear that only the "historical research" will clarify the meaning of "errori popolari," a meaning that cannot be extrapolated from the context in which it was born. Indeed if we remove the dyadic formula from its original context the meaning of each term will change: "popolo" takes the meaning of "folk," and consequently "popular mistakes" may enter in a sphere akin to that of "myths," of the unquestioned imaginary truths. The earliest signs of this change occur at the waning of the period encompassed by our study when the concerns on the problems of "methods" begin losing their dominance and urgency. At that point, *popolare* acquires the connotation of "belonging to the vulgus," and the *vulgus* begins to acquire the sacred aura of "nation." For the time being, we concentrate on the period that coined the formula "errori popolari" by which it indicates mistakes that have an impact on the culture of the moment. The idea that special "errors" could mark in negative ways entire generations or even ages is not new, as proven by expressions like that by Thomas Aquinas who speaks of the "errores gentium," faulting the entire pre-Christian civilization; and where Dante speaks of "le genti antiche nell'antico errore" (*Par*. VIII, 6), he means the whole civilization that preceded the Revelation. However, such isolated instances do not represent a cultural trend similar to the one we are going to study when some entrenched "errori popolari" became the target of the attack that a new age and a new culture were ready to carry out to dismantle a whole system of beliefs, and to impose a new method of pursuing knowledge.

Medicine was the first and most industrious discipline in identifying and repelling "errori popolari." Such primacy should not be a surprise since medicine is a discipline that touches everyone regardless of class and age. Moreover, it is a very old one, perhaps the oldest, and has, therefore, a long tradition of notions and cures and preventions; it also constitutes a body of knowledge open to individual opinions and remedies. In its long history medicine underwent several epochal changes: the Hippocratic type of medicine—innovative in its becoming separated from religion and theology—was revolutionized by Galen's anatomy and humoral theories; then it was lost to the West together with the loss of Greek; then it was recovered through the Salerno School and the Arabic influence. By the end of the fifteenth century, it was to undergo a new major change, announced, as in most cases, by denouncing the mistakes made by a previous school. Niccolò Leoniceno can open our inquiry with a short work bearing a manifesto-sounding title: *De Plini et plurium aliorum medicorum in medicina erroribus* (1492). Leoniceno was a doctor from Ferrara,3 and his pamphlet corrects many botanical data found in Pliny's *Naturalis Historia*. Leoniceno spots Pliny's mistakes by checking his Greek sources (Theophrastus, Dioscorides, Galen,

3 Ferrara was a cradle of Humanistic medicine: see Nutton 1997.

etc.), often misunderstood by the Latin author. Leoniceno's work had an impact not foreseen or not fully intended. One of the consequences was a philological debate involving Politian, Ermolao Barbaro (with his *Castigationes plinianae*), Pandolfo Collenuccio and the likes, showing that philology could take an active role in establishing the authentic "science" of the ancient authors. Even more interesting was the confirmation of the importance of herbs and plants for "pharmacology," but their value was strictly guaranteed by texts scrupulously edited and representative of the real ancient medicine. This restrictive criterion established the superiority of the Greek authors, gave a secondary role to the Latin ones (Pliny, Celsus), and rejected completely the "erroneous" Arabic authors, including Avicenna who for centuries was held as one of the highest authorities. It was an innovation but not yet a revolution since it "returned" to the tradition deemed lost for a long time. Even so, the scrutiny of the ancient doctor was constant, and their mistakes were exposed, as we can infer from the title *De erroribus veterorum medicorum* (1553) by Giovanni Argentiero.

A real revolution took place a few decades later when Paracelsus, a student in Ferrara and later a professor of medicine in Basle, where, according to a legend, on his inaugural lesson he burned the books of Galen and Avicenna, the two pillars of Western medicine. Paracelsus abandoned the guide of all the *auctores*, both ancient and Arabic, and decided that the only way to practice medicine was to observe the patients rather than read the authoritative tomes of ancient doctors. But he did much more and with greater consequences. He rejected the Galenic view that the human body was regulated by four humors (blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm) and health depended on their perfect temperature and balance. Paracelsus substituted the galenic humors with three bodily elements, namely salt, sulfur, and mercury. Organic life and health were determined by the combinations and separation of these metallic elements, and all therapies would aim at assuring the stability of their vital combination. It was an alternative medicine that was based essentially on a "chemical" or "alchemic" understanding of the body. Consequently, its pharmacological counterpart had to abandon its herbal or vegetal basis in favor of a metallic one. That meant relying on completely new factors, and instead of using concoction and decoction of herbs and plants, medicines were prepared through processes of distillation, sublimation, and the grinding of minerals. Given that minerals were "sublunary" elements, that is natured by astral influences, medicine tied its contact with astrology. It was indeed an ancient notion that stars and constellation had an impact on medical and physiological matters, from the moment of conception to the hours of expiration; but Paracelsian medicine was innovative in that it specifically considered the astral influence on the metals that were chosen on this base to create *pharmaka* or "secrets" or pharmaceutical mixtures. This distinguishing feature represented a great innovation in the field of medicine. A powerful wave of occultism flooded the medical art, and notions like those of "sympathy" and "antipathy" among the elements took medicine close to magic. Understandably Paracelsian medicine became quite fashionable and at the same time, it aroused strong suspicions of magic and a vivid reaction in doctors traditionally trained. This is not the place to discuss that immense phenomenon called "Paracelsian medicine;" but what matters the most for us is that this new type of medicine favored the development of "spagyric," a process of extraction of "essences" and all sorts of chemical combination that gave life to the literature of the "secrets," which in turn nourished the phenomenon of charlatanism with its armies of practitioners of medicine who served kings as well as humble people.4

The clash between these two different schools of medicine created for the first time the notion of "errori popolari." The older one considered them utterly dangerous for private and public health and called for some official action to contain the practice of this "wrong" medicine; the new one alerted against the errors of the adversaries but did not call them popular. The alarm was sounded by a book, but the awareness of these mistakes and their danger had been felt for quite some time. The book in question is by André du Breil, which conveys the idea of the "political" nature and dimensions of containment of a kind of widespread mistake with strong cognitive and moral implications. The title betrays a sense of urgency: in 1578, the date or its appearance, a pest was raging in France and it was necessary to find a cure for the pest of "coqueluche," perhaps a kind of catarrh or some other respiratory disease. The high number of deaths demanded the intervention of all the science the university could provide, and emitted a *Consilium facultatis medicinae contra pestem*. 5 The title and subtitle of Du Breil's treatise is *La police de l'art et science de medicine, contenant la refutation des erreurs, et insignes abus qui s'y commettent pour le jourdhuy: très utile et necessaire à toute personnes, qui ont leur santé et vie en recommendation*. *Ou sont vivement confutez tous sectaires, sorciers, enchanteurs, magicians, deuins, pythoniciens, souffleurs, empuisonneurs, et tout racaille de theriacleurs, et cabalistes: lesquel en tous lieux et pays, sans aucun art ne science, approbation ou authorité, font et exercent impudemment, et malheuresement la medicine, au grand interest de la santé et vie des hommes, et detriment des Republiques.* Published in Paris (Cavallat, 1580) and dedicated to the King, this book has the modest dimensions of a polemical essay, but the intensity of outrage against the herd of fake doctors is unrestrained. Today's reader can identify just a few of them: certainly the magicians and the divines, but must look for help to identify the *theriacleurs* and the *pythoniciens*, because they are "specialists," we may say, who practiced a type of medicine who had an "official" literature that legitimatized their practice. The *theriaca*, for example, was an ancient concoction that had a homeopathic power, and was largely used against the pests (see Nockels Fabbri 2007); *pythociens* are

4 On Paracelsus see: Bianchi 1995, e Bianchi 1987; Meier 2000; Miotto 1971; Pagel 1989; Stahl 1995; Webster 1984.

5 The occasion for this book is a celebrated episode involving the school of medicine of the Sorbonne and a doctor from Ruen, Roch le Bailiff, who had published a book *Le demonstration … auquel sont contenue trois cens Aphorismes Latins et François. Sommaire veritable de la Médicine Paracelsique, extraict en la plus part, par le dict Bailiff,* Renne, Pierre Bret, 1578. This book prompted André du Breil to publish his book. On the all episode see Kahn 1998. On Paracelsism in general, see Debus 1991.

the bewitchers who cure patients with charm. As we can see, the lists of doctors who never set foot in the Sorbonne are varied and numerous. Du Breil is particularly hostile to the Paracelsians:

Quant aux Paracelsistes, ou autres plus subtils inventeurs de leur secte, ils ne me feront quiter les bons, et approuvez autheurs pour suivre leurs nouvelles inventions: par lesquelles ils pervertissent tout ordre divin, et humain, de tout temps, et ancienneté, et par toutes nations, iusques icy tenu, gardé, et observé en la Medecine, ny moins d'approuver leur nouveaux secrets ou entrent toute sortes de mortiferes poisons: l'experience desquels a faict mourir une infinité de peuple, comme ils continuent chacun iour. (*Epistre à Messieurs de Roven*, with no page signatures).

[As for the Paracelsians or others more subtle inventors of their sect, they would not cause me to abandon the good and approved authors in order to follow their inventions, by which they pervert all divine and human order of all times, their antiquity and in all nations which have been upheld, defended and observed in Medicine. Nor will they cause me to approve their new "secrets" where all kind of mortal poison are mixed, and whose use has caused death to an infinite number of people, and continues to do so today.]

The book begins by sketching a history of the schools or "sects" of medicine in antiquity and considers that the best one is that of the doctor called "dogmatic and rationalist," operating along the lines signed by Hippocrates and Galen. All that has come to subvert the teachings of this illustrious tradition is ill-conceived, poisonous, and nefarious. Du Breil excoriates the pretended doctors who never took the Hippocratic oath, who flood the market with products like "quintessences," "potable gold" and all sort of potions unknown to "dogmatic and rational" doctors. Just one excerpt suffices to give us the tone and the gist of the entire treatise:

Le faux medicins de nostre temps, desquels nous entendons icy parler, se peuvent aussi diviser ou rapporter à trois sects ou manières, lesquels tous se couvrent du manteau d'Empirique, qu'ils s'attribuent faulcement, ce que facilment croient ceux qui ne sont pas versez en l'art de Medicine, et qui n'y prennent pas assez de pres garde. Et non seulement le pauvre peuple ignorant, mais aussy plusiers des mieux apprins et advisez, par curiosité ou nouveté, s'y entremeslent. Et par licence, et faux donner à entendre au Prince, et à la Iustice, sans reprehension, ne punition aucune, leur est permis d'abuser et prendre tel accroissement qu'en fin ils seront cause de la totale ruine, non seulement de l'art et science de Medicine, mais de tuote la Republique: si en brief l'on n'y remedie, et si on n'y donne empechment. Car non seulement ils adulterent les metaux par leurs subtiles poisons et mixtion, mais aussy alterent par iceux, et font perir les corps, et bien de la terre, et qui pis est, comme harpyes diaboliques, infectent, et contaminent les autres choses de si pernicieuse consequence, qu'on ne sçavroit estimer. A raison dequoy sont plus à reprendre que vrays homicide, et assasinateurs; et doivent estre expulsez, et dechassez des pays, forbanis, et fuis comme une peste de la republique Chrestienne (Du Breil 1580, 27–8).

[The false doctors of our times, of whom we intend to speak here, can be divided or be assigned to three sects or ways which are all included under the common brand of "Empirics" which they falsely attribute to themselves and which is something easily believed by those who are not versed in the medical art, and who are not cautious at all.  And because of a license, and their fake "make believe" presented to the Prince and to the Authorities, they are allowed to operate without any reprehension or punishment, and to grow so wide that ultimately they will be a total ruin not only for the art of Medicine, but for the entire Republique, unless a fast remedy is found and they are impeded. They not only adulterate metals by their subtle poisons and mixtures, but with them they cause the human and earthly bodies to die, and even worse, as diabolical harpies, they infect and contaminate other things with such pernicious consequences that one would not be able to estimate. Therefore they deserve to be condemned as true murderers and assassins, and should be expelled and pushed out of the countries, banished and avoided like a pest of the Christian Republique].

Medical mistakes are in fact crimes that deserve severe punishments. This notion of "erreur" runs through the book and if one learns very little about the "correct" science defended by the Sorbonne professor, he learns plenty about the notion of "mistake" in a field where life and health were at stake. To give an idea of the flood of books and booklets circulating in the year before the publication of *La police de l'art*, that is in 1579, two very successful works were published in France, one was by the Italian Gerolamo Ruscelli (Lyon), *Les secrets*, and the other was by the Suisse Conrad Gessner, *Quatre livres des secrets de medicine et de la philosophie chymique* (Paris), works that had been running through endless numbers of editions. *La police de l'art* did not extinguish the genre, because other books of "secrets" (for ex., Etienne Ydely, *Des secrets souverains et vrais remedes contre la peste*, Lyon 1581; Nicolas Bonfon, *Le blazon des fleurs ou sont contenuz plusiers secrets de medicine*) kept appearing because they were obviously in great demand. Du Breil harps on this kind of medicine ("Agripistes [that is, the followers of Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim], Paracelsistes, Piedmontistes [the readers of Alessio Piemontese, *alias* Gerolamo Ruscelli], Margretistes, Acomistes et tels autres sectateures") that impresses on ignorant people who see in their potions and abstruse jargon some magic power (Du Breil 1580, 43). Indeed he blames the fake doctors but also finds the patient at fault (*Les fautes des malades*) for being so gullible (Du Breil 1580, 119–29).

The attention we paid to Du Breil's treatise sheds light on the context in which the "gravity" of the medical mistakes is evident, which are not limited to a single and isolated case, but to an entire way of understanding the human body and its diseases. Some false notions have penetrated vast areas of people with the endangerment of entire populations. Any "dogmatic and rational" doctor must be aware of the level of information of his patients to apply his cures at the best level. There is no question that a new kind of medicine is competing