Being Savage # 58 Poggio Bracciolini; Medieval Fraudster?

[Anonymous]

http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/vatican.exh ... arch03.jpg

In the papal curia in the 1420s and after, some papal secretaries became expert archaeologists. This splendid miniature of Poggio represents one of the most adventurous of all the fifteenth- century explorers of the classical past. Poggio Bracciolini walked the streets and inspected the stones of Rome, intent on preserving and recording every detail and "stupefied" by the continuing destruction of important ancient buildings. In this book he makes the theme of fortune's power to destroy the pretext for a detailed firsthand survey of Rome's ruins. It begins dramatically, with Poggio and a friend surveying the scene visible from the top of the Capitoline, and includes detailed study of such technical matters as the composition of the city's walls.

http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/vatican.exh ... igins.html



http://www.christianism.com/html/add36c.html

In Florence it was Coluccio Salutati, a collector and humanist in Petrarch's sense, who passed on the master's ideal to a younger generation, of whom the papal secretary POGGIO BRACCIOLINI [1380 - 1459] was most prominent as THE MOST SUCCESSFUL DISCOVERER OF UNKNOWN CLASSICAL TEXTS. A participant in the council of Constance, he brought a rich booty home from the monasteries of the surrounding region, as well as from his extensive journeys in Germany and France."

from: Tacitus, The Man and His Work, Clarence W. Mendell, Yale, 1957.

"11. Credibility of Tacitus' [see 1991] History" [219]

"Since 1875 there have been at least five major attempts to discredit the [? (some?)] works of Tacitus [c. 56 - c. 120] as either forgeries or fiction. Voltaire [1694 - 1778] had perhaps been the first in modern day seriously to revive Tertullian's [c. 160 - 220] charge of mendacity, and his claims were elaborated by a lawyer named Linguet. Only with Napoleon [1769 - 1821], however, was this position given serious consideration. The leaders of the [French] revolution had found tremendous comfort in Tacitus' anti-imperialism. For the modern successor to the Caesars it was important politically to discredit the historian and discount his popularity, but any effect which Napoleon's attacks may have had largely disappeared with the collapse of the emperor.

Two curious attempts were made toward the end of the nineteenth century to prove not that Tacitus was a liar but that what purported to be his writings were fifteenth-century forgeries. W.R. Ross [see 1991] published anonymously in 1878 a book entitled Tacitus and Bracciolini, intended to prove that Poggio Bracciolini [see 1989] was the author of what had come down from antiquity under the name of Tacitus. Twelve years later P. Hochart [see 1990] (De l'Authenticité des Annales et des Histoires de Tacite) maintained the same thesis with a much greater show of learning, following up by a supplementary volume. These two attempts gave ample assurance that the attack on these lines was futile, and only one further attempt of this sort has been made. That was in 1920 when LEO WIENER (Tacitus' Germania and Other Forgeries [see 1959 - 1967]) sought in vain ["sought in vain"! This is how dismissal is done. Just pronounce! More, "Bluff and Bullshit"!] to prove by a bewildering display of linguistic fireworks that the Germania and, by implication, other works of Tacitus were forgeries made after Arabic influence had extended into Europe.