Page - 160 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

Chapter 3160 the Codex Coburgensis, a volume of detailed, carefully drawn reproductions of ancient monument that has been hailed as ‘das erste wissenschaftliche Bild- kompendium zur antiken Mythologie’, or as the first archaeological handbook of the Renaissance.86 There were also a number of socio-political reasons why the humanists resi- dent in Rome were especially drawn to the study of Antiquity. In the first place, such study was considered an erudite, virtuous pastime that was particularly suitable for the learned and celibate clerics that made up the greater part of the Papal court. Antiquarian studies were explicitly recommended in Paolo Cor- tesi’s treatise De cardinalatu of 1510, in which Cortesi argued that in dispensing patronage, his ideal cardinal should ‘select for special consideration men who engaged in humanistic studies, and especially those who investigated the more recondite aspects of Antiquity and the Latin language. He also expected that the cardinal would be able to appreciate such erudition’.87 When Cortesi wrote his treatise, another important motive for turning to antiquarian studies had not yet manifested itself. This was the advent of the Reformation, which based its doctrines consistently on Holy Scripture and the authority of the early Church. Attempts to reconstruct the early history of the Church—either to prove where it had gone off the track, as the Protestants tried to do, or to demonstrate that the Roman Catholic Church was the true and uncorrupted successor of the Church of the Apostles, as the Counter-Ref- ormation attempted—often had to rely on antiquarian data (inscriptions in catacombs, Early-Christian sarcophagi, the mosaics in the Christian basilicas dating from the later Empire). The chief attempt from the Protestant side was the history of the Church known as the Magdeburg Centuries: edited by Mat- thias Flacius Illyricus, its first instalment appeared in 1559.88 It is no coincidence, I think, that the people involved in preparing the Roman Catholic response to the Centuries were often the same who are studied nowa- days for their contribution to the development of classical studies. The best example is Onofrio Panvinio [Fig. 3.90], a young and very industrious scholar who both prepared an edition of the Fasti Capitolini and a new augmented edition of Platina’s history of the Popes. His interest in the physical remain- ders of both pagan and Christian Rome is borne out by his correspondence 86 On the Codex Coburgensis, see Wrede/ Harprath 1986 and Harprath/ Wrede 1989. 87 D’amico 1983, p. 52. I am grateful to Gigliola Fragnito-Margiotta Broglio for having first drawn my attention to Cortesi (and for many suggestions and fruitful discussions). 88 The first volume of the Annales ecclesiasticae, the Catholic refutation of the Magdeburg Centuries edited by Cesare Baronio, appeared in 1588; some of the greatest classical schol- ars of the time, such as Onofrio Panvinio, Carlo Sigonio, Roberto Bellarmino and Alonso Chacón, were, with St Peter Canisius, engaged in its preparation. See Orella y Unzue 1976; Cochrane 1981, pp. 457–463.