 L'huomo di lettere difeso ed emendato, Venice: Giunti e Baba, 1651 | |
| Author | Daniello Bartoli |
|---|---|
| Language | Italian |
| Subject | Man of letters |
| Publisher | Eredi di Francesco Corbelletti, Rome |
Publication date | 1645 |
| Publication place | Italy |
| Media type | |
L'huomo di lettere difeso ed emendato (Rome, 1645) by the Ferrarese Jesuit Daniello Bartoli (1608-1685) is a two-part treatise on the man of letters bringing together material he had assembled over twenty years since his entry in 1623 into the Society of Jesus as a brilliant student, a successful teacher of rhetoric and a celebrated preacher. His international literary success with this work led to his appointment in Rome as the official historiographer of the Society of Jesus and his monumental Istoria della Compagnia di Gesu (1650-1673).
The entire patrimony of classical rhetoric was centered around the figure of the Ciceronian Orator, the vir bonus dicendi peritus of Quintilian as the ideal combination of moral values and eloquence. In Jesuit terms this dual ideal becomes santità e lettere for membership in the emerging Republic of Letters. Bartoli confidently asserts the validity of this model represented in his huomo di lettere. In his introduction Bartoli constructs his two part presentation out of a maxim of oratory, that recalls Quintilian, but is of his fashioning: "Si qua obscuritas litterarum, nisi quia sed obtrectationibus imperitorum vel abutentium vitio" And he effectively dramatizes a tableau of the archetypical Anaxagoras enlightening the ignorant by demystifying the cause of a solar eclipse through his scientific understanding. This is a prelude to the cohort of ancient philosophers he employs as part of his rhetorical agenda to characterize the Senecan literatus as the model for his philosopher hero, the man of letters. Part I defends the man of letters against the neglect of rulers and fortune and make him a conduit of an intellectual beatitude, il gusto dell'intendere, that is the basis of his moral and social Ataraxia. He develops his theme of Stoic superiority under two headings, La Sapienza felice anche nelle Miserie and L'Ignoranza misera anche nelle Felicità with regular reference to the Epistulae morales ad Lucilium of Seneca, and exempla taken from Diogenes Laërtius, Plutarch, Pliny, Aelian, with frequent quotations, often unsourced, from Virgil and the poets, and headed by Augustine and Tertullian and Synesius among the Christian writers. Part II seeks to emend the faults of the present day writer in 9 chapters under the headings, Ladroneccio, Lascivia, Maldicenza, Alterezza, Dapoccaggine, Imprudenza, Ambitione, Avarizia, Oscurita. He calls on more modern authors in these chapters, such as Oviedo, Erasmus and Cardanus. The final chapter takes particular aim at excesses of the precious baroque style then in vogue and encourages the beginner to profit from the ars rhetorica expounded by Cicero in style and composition. His paraenesis combines a stream of classical exempla with modern instances of the great Italian explorers, such as his heroes in geography, Columbus, and astronomy, Galileo, and lively references to the modern tradition of Italian letters from Dante, his favorite, to Ariosto and Tasso.