6 Bembo giureconsulto?

Michael H. Crawford

When Antonio Agustin arrived in Rome in the autumn of 1544, followed in the spring by his friend and collaborator Jean Matal, he had already formulated the amazing project of a corpus of the sources of civil and canon law; he was already the author of the Emendationum et Opinionum Libri IV and the Ad Modestinum, the fruit of his work on the Florentine manuscript of the Digest; and he had begun work on the De Legibus et Senatus Consultis) Central to the activity of the two in Rome was a continued search for manuscript copies of imperial constitutions and novels; but they also devoted a great deal of time and energy to an attempt to collect and arrange in order reliable copies of the inscriptions of the Roman world, which could furnish evidence for the Roman institutions which had produced the legal texts on which they worked.

Much of the material which they collected survives to reveal their methods of work, which attached high importance to the verification of copies against stone or bronze and to the assembly of parallels from juristic and literary texts:² an annotated copy of Epigrammata Antiquae Urbis (Rome, 1521), now in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat.Lat.

Petri Bembi Cardinalis

Quod Curtius Fregepanius, Tiberius Marganius, Jo. Petrus Draco, Consules³ de Q. Fabio et Theophrasto Rullis Lupi filiis posterisque eorum civitate donandis verba fecerunt, D(e) E(a) R(e) V(niversi) I(ta) C(ensuerunt).

¹      See J.-L. Ferrary, Correspondance de Lelio Torelli avec Antonio Agustin et Jean Matal 1542-1553 (Como, 1992), introduction; J.-L. Ferrary, ‘La Genese du De Legibus et Senatus Consultis', in M. H. Crawford (ed.), Antonio Agustin between Renaissance and Counter­Reform (London, 1993).

²       R. C. Cooper, ‘Epigraphical Research in Rome in the Mid-Sixteenth Century: The Papers of Antonio Agustin and Jean Matal’, in Crawford (ed.), Antonio Agustin.

³       Here and at the end Matal has wrongly expanded cons as consules instead of conservatores. potentiae cedendum sibi esse potius decreverit quam propter civium dissensionem Rempub(licam) in discrimen adducere, ac Lupiam antiquissimam et nobilissimum (sic) magnae Graeciae oppidum se contulerit, ibique splendide semper ac honori­ficentissime vixerit, cum postremo Q. Fabius et Theophrastus, optimae indolis magnaeque spei adolescentes, ut civitati longo intervallo restituerentur mag­nopere petierint: His de rebus senatum existimare Rullae genti civitatis ius quod illius nobilitati splendori egregiaeque in Rempub(licam) voluntati debeatur quasi postliminio reddendum restituendumque esse, atque etiam si res ita postulet de integro condonandum; senatuique placere uti Q. Fabius et Theophrastus fratres posterique eorum Romanae civitatis immunitatibus, privilegiis, beneficiis, honori­bus frui ac fungi omnibus possint utique cives patritiique Romani eodem iure sint perpetuoque futuri sint, quo sunt qui cives patritiique iure optimo esse censentur. Qui impedierit, senatum existimaturum eum contra Rempub(licam) fecisse.

The fact that the grant of citizenship is not to be found in the list of grants drawn up by F. Gregorovius on the basis of the archives is not in itself significant.⁴ The same is true of numerous other grants attested by other sources: Montaigne, mentioned by Gregorovius; but also Mariano de Blanchellis de Leonardi of Palestrina, about 1510;⁵ Giovanbattista Paladino, by 1538;⁶ Jacopo Strada; Camillo Capranica, by 1547;⁷ Carlo Gualteruzzi, in 1564 (see below). The list could no doubt be much lengthened.

There is nothing mysterious about the proposers, Curzio Frangipane, Tiberio Margani and Giovanni Pietro del Drago. The first came from one of the oldest families of the Roman nobility, even if we decline to follow Onofrio Panvinio in tracing it back to the Anicii of the Late Empire; the family was closely tied to the Farnese; Curzio and his twin brother Mario were together responsible for the funerary monument of their father Antonio in 1546;⁸ he himself held the office of Urbis cancellarius in 1545 and died in 1554;⁹ and his brother Mario was his coadiutor and was then the holder of that office himself, when Panvinio dedicated De Gente

⁴        ‘Alcuni cenni storici sulla cittadinanza romana’, Memorie dell’Accademia dei Lincei, Serie Terza, Cl.Sc.Mor. 1 (1876-7), 314-46 =‘Römische Bürgerbriefe seit dem Mittelalter’, Kleine Schriften zur Geschichte und Cultur, vol. I (Leipzig, 1887), 265-323.

⁵        P.

⁶        J. Wardrop, ‘Civis Romanus sum. Giovanbattista Paladino and his Circle’, Signature, n.s. 14(1952), 3-39.

⁷        Bodleian Library, MS Auct.S. 10.25, fol. XVI^r; see Μ. H. Crawford, ‘Benedetto Egio and the Development of Greek Epigraphy’, in Crawford (ed.), Antonio Agustin.

⁸        V. Forcella, Inscrizioni delle chiese e d’ altri edificii di Roma dal secolo XI fino ai giorni nostri (2 vols., Rome, 1869, 1873), vol. II, p. 306, no. 945; O. Moroni, Corrispondenza Giovanni della Casa Carlo Gualteruzi (1525-1549) (Vatican City, 1986), no. 196, p. 322, for the news of the death of Antonio; cf. p. 76 n. 5.

⁹        Moroni, no. 50, p. 110; Forcella, vol. II, p. 535, no. 1610.

Fregepania Libri Quatuor to him on 1 May 1556.^[207] The second came from a less distinguished, but none the less notable, family.^[208] The last is himself attested in 1558 and 1559, and his son (presumably) is attested as conser­vator in 1584.^[209] I know of no independent attestation of the three as conservatori in 1542;^[210] but it is surely easier to suppose that the three were conservatori and that the decree was passed in their names in 1542 than that they were all parties to an elaborate joke. For their names would surely not have been invoked without their knowledge and consent.

Comparison of our decree with those for Giovanni Vitelleschi of 1436, Cardinal Otto Truchsess of 1560 and Carlo Gualteruzzi of 1564 makes a number of things clear.

In nomine etc....

Privilegium Ro(manae) Civitatis obtentum per R(everendissimum) card(inalem) Augustanum. Quod Pyrrhus Tharus, Pamphilus Pamphilius, Jo. Bapt. Cicchinus Conservatores de Ill(ustrissi)mo et R(everendissi)mo Cardinali Othone Truchses Civitate donando ad senatum retulerunt, SPQR de ea re ita fieri censuit. Cum veteri more et instituto in Civitate Ro(mana) cupide illi semper studioseque suscepti sint, qui... Quam quid(em) S. C. auctoritatem iidem Conservatores per SPQR scribam perscribendam curarunt. Ann(o)... Julius Horologius scriba

SPQR. (F. Gregorovius (n.4))

Referentibus ad Senatum, Pamphylo Pamphylio, Gabriele Vallato, Octavio Graccho Cons, De donando Civitate Romana Deq(ue) in Senatum legendo Carlo Gualterutio cive Fanensi, Qui per annos quattuor et viginti urbem incoluerit, complures in ea liberos susceperit, bonam existimationem quesierit, rem pararit, Senatui placuit, hominem excellentis in civilib(us) reb(us) industriae, spectatae integritatis atq(ue) virtutis, in civitatem atque in hunc ordinem asciscere. Itaq(ue) censuit, uti is eo iure civis Romanus sit, quo qui optimo sunt, Bona habeat immunia, Magistratus gerat, Omnia alia Civium Romanor(um) commoda ac iura potiatur ipse liberiq(ue) eius ac posteri, Utiq(ue) ei in Senatum veniundi, senten­tiae dicundae ius sit, Eosq(ue) honores, eaq(ue) emolumenta capiundi, quae caeteri Senatores, Utiq(ue) liberi eius ac posteri, patritii sint, gentemq(ue) habeant.

Our decree is peculiar in its systematic use of the formulae of ancient decrees of the senate, uerba fecerunt, de ea re ita censuerunt, senatui placere uti, which do not appear in mediaeval and Renaissance decrees earlier than ours and appear only randomly later; in the use of legal terminology, promulgare, restituere, postliminium, indeed the whole of the end of the decree; in the high style adopted; and in the elaborate nature of the reasons given for the grant and for their historical and literary character, though there are elements of this in the decree of Carlo Gualteruzzi, notably the reference to gentem habere. This reasoning leads on to the observation of another oddity: Roman citizenship was granted in this period to those who had established residence in Rome, witness, the example of Carlo Gualteruzzi; to those who had conferred signal benefits on the city; and, increasingly, on major figures of the world of the arts. But this was an innovation as the sixteenth century advanced, as is shown by the uproar caused by the attempt to grant it to Christopher de Longueil in 1519.^[211]

It is very surprising that citizenship should be granted to two nonenti­ties with a spurious Roman ancestry, even if they could invoke a learned account of that ancestry evidently composed by Pietro Bembo: for the genitive of ‘Petri Bembi Cardinalis’ presumably indicates authorship rather than ownership, since Matal elsewhere uses ‘apud so-and-so’ to identify texts which belonged to others and which he copied. The connex­ion between Pietro Bembo and Donato Rullo, financial adviser to Ascanio and, above all, Vittoria Colonna, is straightforward enough. But who on earth were Quinto Fabio and Teofrasto Rullo, sons of Lupo?

The high style is in any case intelligible enough in the greatest Cicer­onian of the age. But a different problem lurks beneath the surface. The reasoning in the decree, with its sympathy for the author of the lex agraria of 63 BC which Cicero succeeded in blocking, is actually hostile to Cicero. And what is more, one only has to read the speeches of Cicero after his return from exile to see that his virtuous claim that he had preferred exile to provoking civil strife, is here transferred to P. Servilius Rullus.

It is, however, the interest in Roman legal formulae that reveals an unsuspected side to Pietro Bembo, though one may suspect that his sources in general were Frontinus and the famous letter of Caelius to Cicero of 51 BC, rather than any epigraphic or juristic source.¹⁵ Bembo was no doubt drawing on his earlier reading, directed at the acquisition of a mastery of Latin style, in the course of which he systematically noted and recorded formulae and turns of phrase suitable for the composition of Latin letters.¹⁶ In one case, indeed, both the source of a phrase in our decree and the edition used can be identified: the 1513 edition of Fronti­nus of Fra Giocondo, which has in ch. 106 the reading D.E.R.V.I.C., unsupported by the manuscript tradition and abandoned in modem editions, but also adopted by Agustin. On the other hand, the phrase ‘Hanc autem s(enatus) c(onsulti) auctoritatem iidem consules V Id. Januar, perscribendam curarunt... ’ is clearly drawn from the letter of Caelius. But such a literary pedigree would not have diminished the interest of the text to Agustin and Matal. They wished to learn about Roman institutions from one of the great figures of the distant days of Leo X, even if these institutions were mediated through a decree of the contemporary senate. For they were lawyers and it was as lawyers that they were in the process of transforming the antiquarian culture of mid-sixteenth-century Rome. And they not only remarked, of course, on the great treasures of Bembo, the manuscripts of Virgil and Terence, when they called on him.¹⁷ Agustin and Matal, ‘che annotarono ogni minima minutia’, together made a copy of the Terence, which was later

¹⁵       Frontinus, De Aquis 100-1, 104, 106, 108, 125, 127; (Cicero), Ad Fam. VIII. 8 = 84 Shackleton Bailey, 5-8.

¹⁶       Evidence of this reading survives in Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MSS Chigi L. VIII.304; and Barb. Lat. XXXI, 17; Vat.Gr. 1347 contains a classified list of place names. See V. Cian, ‘Contributi alia storia dell’enciclopedismo nell’ eta della Rinascita. Il Methodus Studiorum del Cardinale Pietro Bembo’, in Miscellanea Giovanni Sforza (Lucca, 1915), 289-330.

¹⁷       C. Flores Selles, Epistolario de Antonio Agustin (Salamanca, 1980), no. 149, pp. 213-15, L. Torelli to Agustin, 20 August 1546; J.-L. Ferrary, Correspondance (n. 1), nos. 52-3, 58-9.

available to Gabriele Faerno;^[212] and on 31 May 1545 Matal wrote to their jurist friend of their Bologna and Florence days, Lelio Torelli, ‘ego a paucis diebus utor Terentio et Virgilio Petri Bembi Cardinalis, in quibus expressa uideo non contemnenda uestigia nostrarum Pandectarum'. It would be hard to exemplify better the humanist jurisprudence of the sixteenth century.