Blondus Flavius, Roma Instaurata 1 ed. by Fabio Della Schiava (review)

Chaos of ruins! who shall trace the void, […] And say, 'here was, or is', where all is doubly night?

(Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, iv.80)

In 1445–46 the humanist Biondo Flavio quickly put together the work that has earned him the title 'the father of archaeology'. Honouring the repossession of the city of Rome by Pope Eugenius IV after his Florentine exile, Roma instaurata is famous for being the first systematic study of the city's aedificia et loca (§72), impelled by a desire for historical accuracy. Biondo had probably been collecting material for it for years and draws on an impressively wide range of ancient and medieval sources, sifted for their trustworthiness.

In Book 1 Biondo introduces the work with two topics which enable him to survey the city as a whole: the gates (§§1–27) and the seven hills (§§65–104). In the large central part (§§28–64) he takes us 'wandering' (§64) outside the ancient city walls to the eighth hill, the Gianicolo, and the Vatican. This part culminates in brief notes on the history of Old St Peter's, with Eugenius IV's embellishments and very necessary renovations highlighted (§§49–60), an emphasis in keeping with the redefinition of the city effected by the popes (see pp. xxxii–xxxiii).

The appearance of the first volume of this new edition of Roma instaurata is an event and there is no doubt that this edition will be the standard one for years to come. Though since the 1950s there have been three full or partial editions of Roma instaurata, most recently the French edition by Anne Raffarin (Les Belles Lettres, Paris, 2005–12) (see pp. cii–ciii), Della Schiava's is the first to be based on a thorough study of the manuscript tradition and changes the picture completely. Accordingly, the book's substantial introduction is largely devoted to the extensive Nota al testo (pp. lxvii–cxxxvii). In this the author catalogues all of the fifty-one extant manuscripts, and the printed editions, and presents the evidence which has enabled him to divide them into four families and to construct a stemma.

This section tells two stories. One is the overt one of the steps taken in constituting the text—the journey back to what is most likely to be the stage closest to Biondo's own version. Much of this is highly technical, but it is essential for understanding the apparatus criticus, which has an unusual aspect: readings are recorded in two distinct bands. The first contains variants either belonging to a family or to an important manuscript; the second variants from manuscript D (Sächsische Landesbibliothek, Dresden, MS F 66, Rome, 1461–73) alone. Manuscript D was put together by one of Biondo's sons and contains readings that may derive from Biondo himself (pp. cxxvi–cxxvii). This brings me to the second story, which is one of complex plural authorship, discussed by Della Schiava under the rubric 'fortuna' too (p. lx). Biondo's sons Girolamo and Gaspare worked to improve the text of Roma instaurata, both in manuscript and print. They did not mind diverging from the original text if they could produce a more correct one, an attitude shared by most editors of early modern printed texts. As scholarship advanced, Biondo's lapses, whatever caused them (see pp. xlvi–xlvii, cx), became more evident.

The briefer Introduzione (pp. xxv–lxvi), like the Nota al testo, pertains to the whole work. It economically presents balanced information on the circumstances in which the work arose, Biondo's method, his sources, and the work's fortuna up to the early sixteenth century. There is much that is new in these pages, the fruit of Della Schiava's preparatory researches; for example, the pages on Biondo's use of works by his humanist contemporaries Maffeo Vegio and Giovanni Tortelli (pp. xliii...