The Roma instaurata of Biondo Flavio (1392-1463). A critical edition and commentary.
Final Report Abstract
This research project has provided the scientific community with (1) a reliable text of the Roma instaurata, which has been established after an accurate scrutiny of the manuscript and printed tradition (51 manuscripts and 7 printed editions); (2) a new commentary, which does not focus only on topographical issues but rather aims to explain Biondo’s text, sources, methodology, and intellectual framework against the background of fifteenth-century humanism, particularly in Rome; (3) a better understanding of Biondo’s approach to philological, historical, and antiquarian scholarship and the fundamental complementarity of the various facets of his research throughout his scholarly career. Indeed, previous studies deemed Biondo to be the forerunner of modern archeological science; they also emphasized the importance of epigraphy and archeological field work in his methodology, aligning Biondo with other antiquarians like Ciriaco d’Ancona and Poggio Bracciolini. Our research, by contrast, shows that Biondo’s approach is in fact essentially philological, as it is almost entirely based on the interpretation of literary sources from classical antiquity. In addition (4), the political-ideological dimension of the Roma instaurata has been thoroughly investigated as well; for the treatise is closely connected with papal politics after the end of the council of Ferrara-Firenze (1439) and the return of Pope Eugenius IV to Rome. This investigation has refined our understanding of the double nature of the Roma instaurata: on the one hand an early modern topographical account of ancient Rome, on the other hand a manifesto of the renovatio Romae, i.e. the cultural and political project through which Eugenius IV aimed at restoring his primacy in the Christian world. Biondo scholars have been convinced for decades that the Vaticanus Ottob. lat. 1279 preserves the text of the Roma instaurata in its final version, corrected by the author. Our investigation has proved this view to be false. This fundamental error in earlier scholarship came to us as a surprise and compelled us to reconsider our methodological strategy. Even though this discovery has caused a delay in the time schedule of our project, nevertheless the more comprehensive examination of the textual tradition and its reception, which imposed itself, yielded several valuable results far beyond the mere repositioning of what was once thought to be the lead manuscript of the Roma instaurata. It allowed us to determine with certainty, e.g., that the Roma instaurata never went through multiple redactions, as opposed to other works of Biondo, such as the Italia illustrata and the Decades. The text that Biondo published in 1446 was at once definitive. Agata Pincelli has established that the Roma triumphans was published in a similar manner. How this difference in the genesis of Biondo’s major writings is to be explained, is just one of the questions that will only be solved when all on-going modern editions of Biondo will have been completed.
Publications
- Review of „Blondus Flavius, Italia illustrata, I, a c. di P. Pontari, Roma 2009 (Edizione Nazionale delle Opere di Biondo Flavio, 4/1)“, in Aevum, 86/3 (2012), pp. 1222–1223
Fabio Della Schiava
- „La Roma instaurata di Biondo Flavio: censimento dei manoscritti“, in Aevum, 87 (2013), pp. 643–665
Fabio Della Schiava – Marc Laureys
- „Biondo Flavio, il Digesto e il "De verborum significatione" di Maffeo Vegio“, in Studi e problemi di critica testuale, 88 (2014), pp. 163–184
Fabio Della Schiava
- „La Roma instaurata di Biondo Flavio nella Biblioteca Vaticana“, in Miscellanea Bibliothecae Apostolicae Vaticanae XXI, Città del Vaticano, 2015, pp. 41-84
Fabio Della Schiava
- „Johannes Hinderbach's notes on Biondo Flavio's Roma instaurata“, in Angelo Mazzocco / Marc Laureys (edd.), A New Sense of the Past: The Scholarship of Biondo Flavio (1392–1463), Supplementa Humanistica Lovaniensia 39, Leuven, 2016, pp. 133-149
Marc LaureysMarc Laureys
- „Per l'Edizione Nazionale della Roma instaurata di Biondo Flavio: indagini preliminari“, in Angelo Mazzocco / Marc Laureys (edd.), A New Sense of the Past: The Scholarship of Biondo Flavio (1392–1463), Supplementa Humanistica Lovaniensia 39, Leuven, 2016, pp. 105-131
Fabio Della Schiava
