Angelo Sabino
Encyclopedia
Angelo Sabino or in Latin
Angelus Sabinus (fl. 1460s–1470s) was an Italian Renaissance
humanist
, poet laureate
, classical philologist
, Ovid
ian impersonator, and putative rogue.
Sabino's real name was probably Angelo Sani di Cure, with the toponymic indicating that he was from Cure or Curi (ancient Cures
), in formerly Sabine
territory, hence his Latin appellation Sabinus
. He wrote under a multitude of pen name
s, including Aulus Sabinus when he impersonated the Sabinus
who was Ovid
's friend, and Angelus Gnaeus Quirinus Sabinus, an allusion to Quirinus as an originally Sabine god of war in ancient Rome.
on the title pages of his editions of ancient texts
. It is unclear in whose court he held the position, or in what year, though one scholar conjectured 1469. At any rate, he was identified as such in the period 1469–1474, following the composition of his historical epic
De excidio civitatis Leodiensis ("The Fall of the City of Liège
"). Written in Latin hexameter
s and structured in six books, this 6,000-line poem gives historical background and narrates the siege, capture and destruction of Liège, in present-day Belgium
, by Louis XI of France
and Charles the Bold of Burgundy
. Its subject matter was more expansive than the title might indicate, as the De excidio also includes a description of Charles' wedding to Margaret of York
.
Sabino composed the poem at the request of Onofrio de Santa Croce
, the papal legate
who traveled to Liège in 1467 in an effort to negotiate a peace settlement. Onofrio failed in his embassy, and Sabino's poem was meant to provide an emotive and narrative context for understanding the conflict; or, as Onofrio himself acknowledged in his memoirs, the De excidio was an effort to justify his own conduct in the matter. Jozef IJsewijn
thinks that Onofrio had taken Sabino with him to Liège and Maastricht
, but elsewhere it is assumed that Onofrio commissioned the poem after his return. Whether or not the poet had firsthand knowledge, the De excidio is considered a significant historical source on the siege, and was used as such by the early 20th-century historian Godefroid Kurth
throughout his classic La Cité de Liège au Moyen-Age. Sabino's epic was never published in his lifetime, as it soon lost its patrons and immediate purpose. Pope Paul II
, for whom it was originally intended, died in 1471; Onofrio himself died without having returned to good standing in the papal court.
When Onofrio had traveled back to Rome from the Low Countries
, he brought along the young Matthaeus Herbenus of Maastricht, a future historian, grammarian, and musician. Herbenus became a student of Niccolò Perotti
, a friend of Sabino with whose name he was to become most closely associated. It was Herbenus who first brought the De excidio into wider circulation upon returning to his northern home, where its subject matter held more direct interest. He sent copies to Henry of Bergen, bishop of Cambrai, for whom Erasmus later served as secretary, and Lambert d'Oupeye, chancellor of the prince-bishop of Liège. The network through which Sabino's poem circulated is an example, if minor, of how Renaissance humanism
proliferated.
Herbenus added a short poem and a prose prologue of his own. The manuscript for d'Oupeye ends with short argumenta or summaries of each book, composed by Paschacius Berselius (d. 1535), a Benedictine monk of St. Laurent's abbey near Liège.
The literary critic and poet Henri Bebel (d. ca. 1516), who advised readers to avoid stories that lack beauty and charm, listed Sabino among notable recent writers who ought to be taken seriously. Sabino called himself a vates, the Latin word meaning both "poet" and "prophet," divinely inspired to speak. Poets of the Augustan era
sometimes assumed the persona of the vates, for instance Ovid
in his Fasti. "Unfortunately," noted an early 20th-century historian who drew on Sabino's poem, "miraculous intervention, borrowed from paganism, long speeches and long poetic descriptions make it an exhausting read."
at an annual salary of 100 ducat
s, but he declined. He was a professor of rhetoric sometime in the early 1470s at the Studium Urbi. The English classical scholar William Lilye
attended Sabino's lectures on grammar and rhetoric, as well as those of Sulpitius Verulanus and Pomponio Leto
. By September 1474, for reasons that are unclear, Sabino was no longer a university professor.
on the ancient Roman satirist Juvenal
(Paradoxa in Iuvenalem), which he dedicated to his friend Niccolò Perotti
. About the Paradoxa a 19th-century editor remarked "these commentaries are not lacking in insight and wit, but one looks for critical judgment and taste in vain. Consequently he [Sabino] strikes us as having fairly limited value for understanding the author."
According to Gyraldus
and others, Sabino and Perotti were assailed by the irascible Domizio Calderini, who produced an edition of Juvenal the same year. Although Sabino's Paradoxa had been written long before they were published, Calderini attacked their editor as "Fidentinus", after the plagiarist in Martial
's epigrams, and Perotti as "Brotheus", the son of Vulcan
who threw himself into the fire because his imperfections exposed him to ridicule. Some sources identify Sabino as Brotheus, and Calderini may have used the nickname for both. Calderini had published an edition of Martial, to which he appended an annotated text of Ovid
's gruesomely erudite curse poem Ibis
, the source for the obscure figure Brotheus.
In the course of this literary feud, Calderini came to regard Sabino as one of his most bitter enemies, though hardly his only one. He accused Sabino of stealing the work of his students, admittedly not an unheard-of practice, while professor at the Studium Urbi. In his Defensio adversus Brotheum, which he attached to his own commentary on Juvenal, Calderini implies more than poor pedagogy when he says that Sabino (sub nomine Fidentinus) "teaches boys in the wrong way every day." The feud is also referred to in the Dialogue of Learned Men by Paul Cortese.
of the historian Ammianus Marcellinus
, working from the manuscript
Vaticanus Regiensis 1994. Sabino preserved the copyists' mistakes and the lacunae
in the manuscript, a philosophy the text's subsequent editor did not share, instead favoring often baseless emendations. It was published 7 June 1474, by Sachsel and Golsh, under the name Angelus Eneus Sabinus. Sabino also edited the 2nd-century BC playwright Terence
(1472), whose verse comedies he arranged as prose, and the early Christian theologian Lactantius
(1474).
's Heroïdes
, a collection of verse epistles each written in the person of a legendary woman to her absent male lover, include three poems attributed to A. Sabinus or "Aulus Sabinus, a celebrated Roman knight (eques) and poet." Ovid refers twice in his poetry to his friend Sabinus
. He says that Sabinus wrote answers to six of the Heroïdes, which he enumerates as Ulysses
to Penelope
, in response to Heroïdes 1; Hippolytus
to Phaedra
(H. 4); Aeneas
to Dido (H. 7); Demophoon
to Phyllis
(H. 2); Jason
to Hypsipyle
(H. 6); and Phaon
to Sappho
(H. 15). In his last letter from exile
, Ovid refers again to Sabinus and mentions the letter from Ulysses.
Sabino took two of his imitations from this list, the letters from Ulysses and Demophoon, and added a third from Paris
to Oenone
, corresponding to Heroïdes 5. The three epistles continued to be published in editions of the Heroïdes as the authentic work of Ovid's friend until the era of post-Enlightenment
literary studies, and can be found in some collections into the 1800s, long after Sabino had been revealed as the author.
Thomas Salusbury translated Sabino's three imitations of the Heroïdes into English, which can be found in a 1795 anthology of Ovid's verse epistles. Salusbury accepts the praenomen Aulus as the correct form of the ancient Sabinus's name and the poems as authentic, asserting that they express "a true poetic genius." He also says that they are included in "all the late and best editions. A separate epistle from Ulysses, also attributed to a Sabinus, appears in another humanist manuscript, and may be an earlier work by Sabino, or an effort by another imitator.
Sabino's authorship of the poems was detected, though not definitively proven, by the 18th-century literary historian Girolamo Tiraboschi
. But the three poems were in fact not intended to be "forgeries," as Sabino presented his authorship as a tease rather than a hoax. A collection Sabini poetae opera ("Works of Sabinus the poet") was appended to his 1474 edition of Ammianus, and he had even identified himself as the author of Heroides imitations in his introduction to the Paradoxa. Dangling another clue, Sabino departed from Ovid's original list of poems by Sabinus and substituted a letter from the Trojan prince Paris.
The assumption of Latin or Greek identities by Renaissance men of letters was common, and adopting an Ovidian persona in writing neo-Latin poetry had been a literary pose since the Middle Ages
. As Peter E. Knox notes in A Companion to Ovid:
A few scholars have attempted to argue that the problematic letter from Sappho to Phaon in the Heroïdes, the authenticity of which as a work by Ovid has often been doubted, was another of Sabino's efforts.
Sabino had been one of the few poets inclined to question Penelope's utter chastity during her husband's two-decade absence, albeit through the voice of Ulysses himself, who must have wondered. The popularity of the Heroides edition containing Sabino's impersonations contributed to later portrayals that raise the question.
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
Angelus Sabinus (fl. 1460s–1470s) was an Italian Renaissance
Italian Renaissance
The Italian Renaissance began the opening phase of the Renaissance, a period of great cultural change and achievement in Europe that spanned the period from the end of the 13th century to about 1600, marking the transition between Medieval and Early Modern Europe...
humanist
Renaissance humanism
Renaissance humanism was an activity of cultural and educational reform engaged by scholars, writers, and civic leaders who are today known as Renaissance humanists. It developed during the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries, and was a response to the challenge of Mediæval...
, poet laureate
Poet Laureate
A poet laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for state occasions and other government events...
, classical philologist
Classical philology
Classical philology is the study of ancient Greek and classical Latin. Classical philology has been defined as "the careful study of the literary and philosophical texts of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds." Greek and Latin literature and civilization have traditionally been considered...
, Ovid
Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
ian impersonator, and putative rogue.
Sabino's real name was probably Angelo Sani di Cure, with the toponymic indicating that he was from Cure or Curi (ancient Cures
Cures
Cures, a Sabine town between the left bank of the Tiber and the Via Salaria, about 26 km. from Rome. According to legend, it was from Cures that Titus Tatius led to the Quirinal the Sabine settlers, from whom, after their union with the settlers on the Palatine, the whole Roman people took the...
), in formerly Sabine
Sabine
The Sabines were an Italic tribe that lived in the central Appennines of ancient Italy, also inhabiting Latium north of the Anio before the founding of Rome...
territory, hence his Latin appellation Sabinus
Sabinus (cognomen)
Sabinus is an ancient Roman cognomen originally meaning "Sabine"; that is, it indicated origin among the Sabines, an ancient people of Latium. It was used by a branch of the gens Flavia, of the gens Calvisia, and several others, and is by far the most common of the cognomina indicating ethnic...
. He wrote under a multitude of pen name
Pen name
A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author. A pen name may be used to make the author's name more distinctive, to disguise his or her gender, to distance an author from some or all of his or her works, to protect the author from retribution for his or her...
s, including Aulus Sabinus when he impersonated the Sabinus
Sabinus (Ovid)
Sabinus was a Latin poet and friend of Ovid. He is known only from two passages of Ovid's works.At Amores 2.18.27—34, Ovid says that Sabinus has written responses to six of Ovid's Heroïdes, the collection of elegiac epistles each written in the person of a legendary woman to her absent male lover...
who was Ovid
Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
's friend, and Angelus Gnaeus Quirinus Sabinus, an allusion to Quirinus as an originally Sabine god of war in ancient Rome.
As poet
Sabino advertised himself as a poet laureatePoet Laureate
A poet laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for state occasions and other government events...
on the title pages of his editions of ancient texts
Textual criticism
Textual criticism is a branch of literary criticism that is concerned with the identification and removal of transcription errors in the texts of manuscripts...
. It is unclear in whose court he held the position, or in what year, though one scholar conjectured 1469. At any rate, he was identified as such in the period 1469–1474, following the composition of his historical epic
Epic poetry
An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...
De excidio civitatis Leodiensis ("The Fall of the City of Liège
Liège
Liège is a major city and municipality of Belgium located in the province of Liège, of which it is the economic capital, in Wallonia, the French-speaking region of Belgium....
"). Written in Latin hexameter
Hexameter
Hexameter is a metrical line of verse consisting of six feet. It was the standard epic metre in classical Greek and Latin literature, such as in the Iliad and Aeneid. Its use in other genres of composition include Horace's satires, and Ovid's Metamorphoses. According to Greek mythology, hexameter...
s and structured in six books, this 6,000-line poem gives historical background and narrates the siege, capture and destruction of Liège, in present-day Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
, by Louis XI of France
Louis XI of France
Louis XI , called the Prudent , was the King of France from 1461 to 1483. He was the son of Charles VII of France and Mary of Anjou, a member of the House of Valois....
and Charles the Bold of Burgundy
Duke of Burgundy
Duke of Burgundy was a title borne by the rulers of the Duchy of Burgundy, a small portion of traditional lands of Burgundians west of river Saône which in 843 was allotted to Charles the Bald's kingdom of West Franks...
. Its subject matter was more expansive than the title might indicate, as the De excidio also includes a description of Charles' wedding to Margaret of York
Margaret of York
Margaret of York – also by marriage known as Margaret of Burgundy – was Duchess of Burgundy as the third wife of Charles the Bold and acted as a protector of the Duchy after his death. She was a daughter of Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York, and Cecily Neville, and the sister of...
.
Sabino composed the poem at the request of Onofrio de Santa Croce
Onofrio de Santa Croce
Onofrio de Santa Croce was a cardinal and bishop of Tricarico within the Kingdom of Naples. He was born at Rome, and died there. In 1467, he was sent as papal legate by Pope Paul II to mediate between the Duchy of Burgundy and the province of Liège in an escalating conflict over the desire of the...
, the papal legate
Papal legate
A papal legate – from the Latin, authentic Roman title Legatus – is a personal representative of the pope to foreign nations, or to some part of the Catholic Church. He is empowered on matters of Catholic Faith and for the settlement of ecclesiastical matters....
who traveled to Liège in 1467 in an effort to negotiate a peace settlement. Onofrio failed in his embassy, and Sabino's poem was meant to provide an emotive and narrative context for understanding the conflict; or, as Onofrio himself acknowledged in his memoirs, the De excidio was an effort to justify his own conduct in the matter. Jozef IJsewijn
Jozef IJsewijn
Jozef A.M.K. IJsewijn . He studied classical philology at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, where he became a professor in 1967. He was an authority on Neo-Latin literature . In 1980, he was awarded the Francqui Prize on Human Sciences.-References:...
thinks that Onofrio had taken Sabino with him to Liège and Maastricht
Maastricht
Maastricht is situated on both sides of the Meuse river in the south-eastern part of the Netherlands, on the Belgian border and near the German border...
, but elsewhere it is assumed that Onofrio commissioned the poem after his return. Whether or not the poet had firsthand knowledge, the De excidio is considered a significant historical source on the siege, and was used as such by the early 20th-century historian Godefroid Kurth
Godefroid Kurth
Godefroid Kurth was a celebrated Belgian historian. He is known for his histories of the city of Liège in the Middle Ages and of Belgium, of his Catholic account in Les Origines de la civilisation moderne of the formation of modern Europe, and for his defence of the medieval guild system.Kurth was...
throughout his classic La Cité de Liège au Moyen-Age. Sabino's epic was never published in his lifetime, as it soon lost its patrons and immediate purpose. Pope Paul II
Pope Paul II
Pope Paul II , born Pietro Barbo, was pope from 1464 until his death in 1471.- Early life :He was born in Venice, and was a nephew of Pope Eugene IV , through his mother. His adoption of the spiritual career, after having been trained as a merchant, was prompted by his uncle's election as pope...
, for whom it was originally intended, died in 1471; Onofrio himself died without having returned to good standing in the papal court.
When Onofrio had traveled back to Rome from the Low Countries
Low Countries
The Low Countries are the historical lands around the low-lying delta of the Rhine, Scheldt, and Meuse rivers, including the modern countries of Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and parts of northern France and western Germany....
, he brought along the young Matthaeus Herbenus of Maastricht, a future historian, grammarian, and musician. Herbenus became a student of Niccolò Perotti
Niccolò Perotti
Niccolò Perotti, also Perotto or Nicolaus Perottus was an Italian humanist and author of one of the first modern Latin school grammars.-Biography:...
, a friend of Sabino with whose name he was to become most closely associated. It was Herbenus who first brought the De excidio into wider circulation upon returning to his northern home, where its subject matter held more direct interest. He sent copies to Henry of Bergen, bishop of Cambrai, for whom Erasmus later served as secretary, and Lambert d'Oupeye, chancellor of the prince-bishop of Liège. The network through which Sabino's poem circulated is an example, if minor, of how Renaissance humanism
Renaissance humanism
Renaissance humanism was an activity of cultural and educational reform engaged by scholars, writers, and civic leaders who are today known as Renaissance humanists. It developed during the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries, and was a response to the challenge of Mediæval...
proliferated.
Herbenus added a short poem and a prose prologue of his own. The manuscript for d'Oupeye ends with short argumenta or summaries of each book, composed by Paschacius Berselius (d. 1535), a Benedictine monk of St. Laurent's abbey near Liège.
The literary critic and poet Henri Bebel (d. ca. 1516), who advised readers to avoid stories that lack beauty and charm, listed Sabino among notable recent writers who ought to be taken seriously. Sabino called himself a vates, the Latin word meaning both "poet" and "prophet," divinely inspired to speak. Poets of the Augustan era
Augustus
Augustus ;23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14) is considered the first emperor of the Roman Empire, which he ruled alone from 27 BC until his death in 14 AD.The dates of his rule are contemporary dates; Augustus lived under two calendars, the Roman Republican until 45 BC, and the Julian...
sometimes assumed the persona of the vates, for instance Ovid
Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
in his Fasti. "Unfortunately," noted an early 20th-century historian who drew on Sabino's poem, "miraculous intervention, borrowed from paganism, long speeches and long poetic descriptions make it an exhausting read."
As educator
In the fall of 1472, Sabino was offered a three-year appointment as master of the grammar school of ViterboViterbo
See also Viterbo, Texas and Viterbo UniversityViterbo is an ancient city and comune in the Lazio region of central Italy, the capital of the province of Viterbo. It is approximately 80 driving / 80 walking kilometers north of GRA on the Via Cassia, and it is surrounded by the Monti Cimini and...
at an annual salary of 100 ducat
Ducat
The ducat is a gold coin that was used as a trade coin throughout Europe before World War I. Its weight is 3.4909 grams of .986 gold, which is 0.1107 troy ounce, actual gold weight...
s, but he declined. He was a professor of rhetoric sometime in the early 1470s at the Studium Urbi. The English classical scholar William Lilye
William Lilye
William Lily was an English classical grammarian and scholar. He was an author of the most widely used Latin grammar textbook in England and was the first headmaster of St Paul's School, London.-Life:...
attended Sabino's lectures on grammar and rhetoric, as well as those of Sulpitius Verulanus and Pomponio Leto
Julius Pomponius Laetus
Julius Pomponius Laetus , also known as Giulio Pomponio Leto, was an Italian humanist.-Background:Laetus was born at Teggiano, near Salerno, the illegitimate scion of the princely house of Sanseverino, the German historian Ludwig von Pastor reported...
. By September 1474, for reasons that are unclear, Sabino was no longer a university professor.
Literary feud
On 9 August 1474, Georg Sachsel and Bartholomæus Golsh published Sabino's commentaryCommentary (philology)
In philology, a commentary is a line-by-line or even word-by-word explication usually attached to an edition of a text in the same or an accompanying volume. It may draw on methodologies of close reading and literary criticism, but its primary purpose is to elucidate the language of the text and...
on the ancient Roman satirist Juvenal
Juvenal
The Satires are a collection of satirical poems by the Latin author Juvenal written in the late 1st and early 2nd centuries AD.Juvenal is credited with sixteen known poems divided among five books; all are in the Roman genre of satire, which, at its most basic in the time of the author, comprised a...
(Paradoxa in Iuvenalem), which he dedicated to his friend Niccolò Perotti
Niccolò Perotti
Niccolò Perotti, also Perotto or Nicolaus Perottus was an Italian humanist and author of one of the first modern Latin school grammars.-Biography:...
. About the Paradoxa a 19th-century editor remarked "these commentaries are not lacking in insight and wit, but one looks for critical judgment and taste in vain. Consequently he [Sabino] strikes us as having fairly limited value for understanding the author."
According to Gyraldus
Giglio Gregorio Giraldi
Giglio Gregorio Giraldi was an Italian scholar and poet.He was born at Ferrara, where he early distinguished himself by his talents and acquirements....
and others, Sabino and Perotti were assailed by the irascible Domizio Calderini, who produced an edition of Juvenal the same year. Although Sabino's Paradoxa had been written long before they were published, Calderini attacked their editor as "Fidentinus", after the plagiarist in Martial
Martial
Marcus Valerius Martialis , was a Latin poet from Hispania best known for his twelve books of Epigrams, published in Rome between AD 86 and 103, during the reigns of the emperors Domitian, Nerva and Trajan...
's epigrams, and Perotti as "Brotheus", the son of Vulcan
Vulcan (mythology)
Vulcan , aka Mulciber, is the god of beneficial and hindering fire, including the fire of volcanoes in ancient Roman religion and Roman Neopaganism. Vulcan is usually depicted with a thunderbolt. He is known as Sethlans in Etruscan mythology...
who threw himself into the fire because his imperfections exposed him to ridicule. Some sources identify Sabino as Brotheus, and Calderini may have used the nickname for both. Calderini had published an edition of Martial, to which he appended an annotated text of Ovid
Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
's gruesomely erudite curse poem Ibis
Ibis (Ovid)
Ibis is a curse poem by the Latin poet Ovid, written during his years in exile across the Black Sea for an offense against Augustus. It is "a stream of violent but extremely learned abuse," modeled on a poem of the same title by the Alexandrian poet Callimachus.The object of this verbal assault is...
, the source for the obscure figure Brotheus.
In the course of this literary feud, Calderini came to regard Sabino as one of his most bitter enemies, though hardly his only one. He accused Sabino of stealing the work of his students, admittedly not an unheard-of practice, while professor at the Studium Urbi. In his Defensio adversus Brotheum, which he attached to his own commentary on Juvenal, Calderini implies more than poor pedagogy when he says that Sabino (sub nomine Fidentinus) "teaches boys in the wrong way every day." The feud is also referred to in the Dialogue of Learned Men by Paul Cortese.
Text critic
Sabino is credited with the editio princepsEditio princeps
In classical scholarship, editio princeps is a term of art. It means, roughly, the first printed edition of a work that previously had existed only in manuscripts, which could be circulated only after being copied by hand....
of the historian Ammianus Marcellinus
Ammianus Marcellinus
Ammianus Marcellinus was a fourth-century Roman historian. He wrote the penultimate major historical account surviving from Antiquity...
, working from the manuscript
Manuscript
A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...
Vaticanus Regiensis 1994. Sabino preserved the copyists' mistakes and the lacunae
Lacuna (manuscripts)
A lacunaPlural lacunae. From Latin lacūna , diminutive form of lacus . is a gap in a manuscript, inscription, text, painting, or a musical work...
in the manuscript, a philosophy the text's subsequent editor did not share, instead favoring often baseless emendations. It was published 7 June 1474, by Sachsel and Golsh, under the name Angelus Eneus Sabinus. Sabino also edited the 2nd-century BC playwright Terence
Terence
Publius Terentius Afer , better known in English as Terence, was a playwright of the Roman Republic, of North African descent. His comedies were performed for the first time around 170–160 BC. Terentius Lucanus, a Roman senator, brought Terence to Rome as a slave, educated him and later on,...
(1472), whose verse comedies he arranged as prose, and the early Christian theologian Lactantius
Lactantius
Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius was an early Christian author who became an advisor to the first Christian Roman emperor, Constantine I, guiding his religious policy as it developed, and tutor to his son.-Biography:...
(1474).
Ovidian impersonations
Sabino is most often noted for his Ovidian forgeries. Renaissance editions of OvidOvid
Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
's Heroïdes
Heroides
The Heroides , or Epistulae Heroidum , are a collection of fifteen epistolary poems composed by Ovid in Latin elegiac couplets, and presented as though written by a selection of aggrieved heroines of Greek and Roman mythology, in address to their heroic lovers who have in some way mistreated,...
, a collection of verse epistles each written in the person of a legendary woman to her absent male lover, include three poems attributed to A. Sabinus or "Aulus Sabinus, a celebrated Roman knight (eques) and poet." Ovid refers twice in his poetry to his friend Sabinus
Sabinus (Ovid)
Sabinus was a Latin poet and friend of Ovid. He is known only from two passages of Ovid's works.At Amores 2.18.27—34, Ovid says that Sabinus has written responses to six of Ovid's Heroïdes, the collection of elegiac epistles each written in the person of a legendary woman to her absent male lover...
. He says that Sabinus wrote answers to six of the Heroïdes, which he enumerates as Ulysses
Odysseus
Odysseus or Ulysses was a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey. Odysseus also plays a key role in Homer's Iliad and other works in the Epic Cycle....
to Penelope
Penelope
In Homer's Odyssey, Penelope is the faithful wife of Odysseus, who keeps her suitors at bay in his long absence and is eventually reunited with him....
, in response to Heroïdes 1; Hippolytus
Hippolytus (mythology)
thumb|260px|The Death of Hippolytus, by [[Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema]] .In Greek mythology, Hippolytus was a son of Theseus and either Antiope or Hippolyte...
to Phaedra
Phaedra (mythology)
In Greek mythology, Phaedra is the daughter of Minos and Pasiphaë, wife of Theseus and the mother of Demophon of Athens and Acamas. Phaedra's name derives from the Greek word φαιδρός , which meant "bright"....
(H. 4); Aeneas
Aeneas
Aeneas , in Greco-Roman mythology, was a Trojan hero, the son of the prince Anchises and the goddess Aphrodite. His father was the second cousin of King Priam of Troy, making Aeneas Priam's second cousin, once removed. The journey of Aeneas from Troy , which led to the founding a hamlet south of...
to Dido (H. 7); Demophoon
Demophon (King of Athens)
Demophon was a king of Athens, according to Pindar, son of Theseus and Phaedra, brother of Acamas. Some say that Demophon's mother was Iope, daughter of Iphicles. He fought in the Trojan War and was among those who entered the city in the Trojan Horse...
to Phyllis
Phyllis
Phyllis is a character in Greek mythology, daughter of a Thracian king . She married Demophon, King of Athens and son of Theseus, while he stopped in Thrace on his journey home from the Trojan War....
(H. 2); Jason
Jason
Jason was a late ancient Greek mythological hero from the late 10th Century BC, famous as the leader of the Argonauts and their quest for the Golden Fleece. He was the son of Aeson, the rightful king of Iolcus...
to Hypsipyle
Hypsipyle
In Greek mythology, Hypsipyle was the Queen of Lemnos, daughter of Thoas and Myrina.During her reign, Aphrodite cursed the women of the island for having neglected her shrines. All the women developed extreme body odor that made them repugnant to the men of the nation. The men took up with...
(H. 6); and Phaon
Phaon
Phaon in Greek mythology was a boatman of Mitylene in Lesbos. He was old and ugly when Aphrodite came to his boat. She put on the guise of a crone. Phaon ferried her over to Asia Minor and accepted no payment for doing so. In return, she gave him a box of ointment. When he rubbed it on himself, he...
to Sappho
Sappho
Sappho was an Ancient Greek poet, born on the island of Lesbos. Later Greeks included her in the list of nine lyric poets. Her birth was sometime between 630 and 612 BC, and it is said that she died around 570 BC, but little is known for certain about her life...
(H. 15). In his last letter from exile
Epistulae ex Ponto
Epistulae ex Ponto is a work of Ovid, in four books. It is especially important for our knowledge of Scythia Minor in his time....
, Ovid refers again to Sabinus and mentions the letter from Ulysses.
Sabino took two of his imitations from this list, the letters from Ulysses and Demophoon, and added a third from Paris
Paris (mythology)
Paris , the son of Priam, king of Troy, appears in a number of Greek legends. Probably the best-known was his elopement with Helen, queen of Sparta, this being one of the immediate causes of the Trojan War...
to Oenone
Oenone
In Greek mythology, Oenone was the first wife of Paris of Troy, whom he abandoned for the queen Helen of Sparta.Oenone was a mountain nymph on Mount Ida in Phrygia, a mountain associated with the Mother Goddess Cybele, alternatively Rhea. Her father was Cebren, a river-god...
, corresponding to Heroïdes 5. The three epistles continued to be published in editions of the Heroïdes as the authentic work of Ovid's friend until the era of post-Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
literary studies, and can be found in some collections into the 1800s, long after Sabino had been revealed as the author.
Thomas Salusbury translated Sabino's three imitations of the Heroïdes into English, which can be found in a 1795 anthology of Ovid's verse epistles. Salusbury accepts the praenomen Aulus as the correct form of the ancient Sabinus's name and the poems as authentic, asserting that they express "a true poetic genius." He also says that they are included in "all the late and best editions. A separate epistle from Ulysses, also attributed to a Sabinus, appears in another humanist manuscript, and may be an earlier work by Sabino, or an effort by another imitator.
Sabino's authorship of the poems was detected, though not definitively proven, by the 18th-century literary historian Girolamo Tiraboschi
Girolamo Tiraboschi
Girolamo Tiraboschi was an Italian literary critic, the first historian of Italian literature.-Biography:Born in Bergamo, he studied at the Jesuit college in Monza, entered the order, and was appointed in 1755 professor of eloquence in the University of Milan...
. But the three poems were in fact not intended to be "forgeries," as Sabino presented his authorship as a tease rather than a hoax. A collection Sabini poetae opera ("Works of Sabinus the poet") was appended to his 1474 edition of Ammianus, and he had even identified himself as the author of Heroides imitations in his introduction to the Paradoxa. Dangling another clue, Sabino departed from Ovid's original list of poems by Sabinus and substituted a letter from the Trojan prince Paris.
The assumption of Latin or Greek identities by Renaissance men of letters was common, and adopting an Ovidian persona in writing neo-Latin poetry had been a literary pose since the Middle Ages
Medieval literature
Medieval literature is a broad subject, encompassing essentially all written works available in Europe and beyond during the Middle Ages . The literature of this time was composed of religious writings as well as secular works...
. As Peter E. Knox notes in A Companion to Ovid:
A few scholars have attempted to argue that the problematic letter from Sappho to Phaon in the Heroïdes, the authenticity of which as a work by Ovid has often been doubted, was another of Sabino's efforts.
Sabino had been one of the few poets inclined to question Penelope's utter chastity during her husband's two-decade absence, albeit through the voice of Ulysses himself, who must have wondered. The popularity of the Heroides edition containing Sabino's impersonations contributed to later portrayals that raise the question.
Names
Following is a list, perhaps not comprehensive, of the many names under which Sabino can be found as author of his own work, in references by his contemporaries and historical sources, and in modern scholarship.- Angelo Sabino and Angelus Sabinus, the most common forms of his name, the former Italian and the latter Latin.
- Angelus de Curribus Sabinis, "Angelo of Sabine Cures," as author of the De excidio; also de Curibus.
- A. Sabinus or Aulus Sabinus, as author of the three Ovidian verse epistles.
- Fidentinus, the pseudonymPseudonymA pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
under which he was attacked by Calderini, and Brotheus, though the latter is used more often for Perotti. - Ange de Viterbe, a French form used for the author of the De excidio linked to his time spent in Viterbo, not to be confused with at least one other Ange de Viterbe from the 14th century, nor with Annio da Viterbo, a fabricator of ancient texts.
- Angiolo Sabino, as author of the De excidio in TiraboschiGirolamo TiraboschiGirolamo Tiraboschi was an Italian literary critic, the first historian of Italian literature.-Biography:Born in Bergamo, he studied at the Jesuit college in Monza, entered the order, and was appointed in 1755 professor of eloquence in the University of Milan...
's Storia della letteratura italiana and others. - Angelus Gnaeus Quirinus Sabinus or Cneus
- Angelus Eneus Sabinus, for his edition of Ammianus Marcellinus; it is unclear whether either Cneus or Eneus is an error for the other name, or whether each is a separate nom de plume.
- Angelus Croeus Sabinus, with Croeus possibly an error for Cnaeus, Cneus or Eneus.
Selected bibliography
- Bacha, Eugène. "Deux écrits de Mathieu Herbenus sur la destruction de Liège par Charles-le-Téméraire." Bulletin de la Commission Royale d'Histoire (de la Belgique) 75 (1907) 385–390. Full text (in French) online.
- IJsewijn, JozefJozef IJsewijnJozef A.M.K. IJsewijn . He studied classical philology at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, where he became a professor in 1967. He was an authority on Neo-Latin literature . In 1980, he was awarded the Francqui Prize on Human Sciences.-References:...
. "The Coming of Humanism to the Low Countries." In Itinerarium Italicum: The Profile of the Italian Renaissance in the Mirror of Its European Transformations. Leiden: Brill, 1975, pp. 193–304. Limited preview online. - Lancetti, Vincenzo. Memorie intorno ai poeti laureati d'ogni tempo e d'ogni nazione. Milan, 1839, pp. 170–172. Full text (in Italian) online.
- Lee, Egmont. Sixtus IV and Men of Letters. Rome 1978. Limited preview online.
- Meckelnberg, Christina, with Bernd Schneider. Odyssea Responsio Ulixis ad Penelopen: Die humanistische Odyssea decurtata der Berliner Handschrift Diez. B. Sant. 41. Leipzig, 2002. Presents the text of the separate Letter from Ulysses with introduction and commentary. Limited preview (in German) online.
External links
- Heroides epistolae Pub. Ovidii Nasonis et Auli Sabini responsiones (Lyon, 1539) is an early edition of the Heroïdes that includes Sabino's three epistles; downloadable.
- English translations of Angelo Sabino's three imitations of the Heroïdes by Thomas Salusbury, accepted as the work of Ovid's friend, appeared in Ovid's Epistles Translated by Eminent Persons, edited by Samuel GarthSamuel GarthSir Samuel Garth FRS was an English physician and poet.Garth was born in Bolam in County Durham and matriculated at Peterhouse, Cambridge in 1676, graduating B.A. in 1679 and...
(London, 1795), vol. 2, full text online. Composed in rhyming couplets, Salusbury's poems should perhaps be called adaptations; as translations they are rather loose, interpreting Sabino's work within English conventions of the time. - B. Geise, "Die Tres Epistulae A. Sabini — antik oder humanistisch?," Osnabrücker Online. Beiträge zu den Altertumswissenschaften 5 (2001), http://www.geschichte.uni-osnabrueck.de/projekt/documents/oob005.pdf. German article on the authorship of the three Ovidian epistles, with bibliography of primary and secondary sources in German, Italian, and Latin.