Utopia Through Italian Eyes Thomas More PDF

Utopia through Italian Eyes:
Thomas More and the Critics of

Civic Humanism*
by E R I C N E L S O N
Thomas More’s Utopia has long been regarded as the great Northern European expression of
Italian civic humanist ideals. This article argues, in contrast, that More’s treatise constitutes an
emphatic rejection of those values. In support of this claim, the article chronicles the reception of
Utopia in Italy; it demonstrates that More’s text was taken up, not by the civic humanists, but
by their fiercest critics. These early Italian readers recognized in Utopia a repudiation of active
citizenship, an assault on private property, a rejection of the Roman cult of glory, and a polemic
against Ciceronian humanism. As a result, the reception of Utopia is shown to have opened
up a fissure in the republican tradition which would have profound consequences for the
subsequent development of European political discourse.
1. I N T R O D U C T I O N
T he most striking sixteenth-century reading of Thomas More’s (1478–

1535) Utopia appears in an improbable place: Jean Bodin’s (1529/
30–96) Six Livres de la République, published in 1576. In book 5 of this
work Bodin turns to a discussion of sedition and revolution within states,
and comes up against the specter of economic inequality. It cannot be denied,
he writes, that “of all the causes of seditions and changes in the Republic,
there is none greater than the excessive wealth of a few subjects, and the
extreme poverty of the majority.”1 Indeed, he continues, history is full of
*
A preliminary version of this article was presented to the 2003 annual meeting of
The Renaissance Society of America in Toronto. I am grateful to that initial audience, and
to my copanelists Richard Serjeantson, Andrew Taylor, and Alfred Hiatt, for many helpful
suggestions. I am also grateful to Anthony Grafton, who generously agreed to chair our
discussion. My chief thanks are due to Bernard Bailyn, James Hankins, Noel Malcolm,
Quentin Skinner, Richard Tuck, and the anonymous reader for Renaissance Quarterly, each
of whom read earlier drafts of this essay and offered crucial advice and encouragement. I am,
lastly, indebted to excellent audiences at Harvard, Columbia, and Yale Universities, and to
my colleagues in the Harvard Government Department and Harvard Society of Fellows, for
many stimulating exchanges. All translations are my own unless otherwise noted: my
translations from Bodin’s French are based somewhat on M. J. Tooley’s (Bodin, 1955),
although I depart from his text significantly.
1
Bodin, 1986, 5:59: “De toutes les causes des seditions, et changements de
Republiques, il n’y en a point de plus grande que les richesses excessives de peu de sujects,
et la povreté extreme de la pluspart.”
Renaissance Quarterly 59 (2006): 1029–57 [ 1029 ]
This content downloaded from 140.247.0.131 on Fri, 03 Nov 2017 19:12:41 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
1030 R E N A IS S A N CE Q U A R T E RLY
episodes in which those “who have given many reasons for their discontent
about their status, have always taken the first opportunity that presents
itself to despoil the rich of their possessions.”2 Bodin, in his usual in
utramque partem style, proceeds to delineate two reputable positions on this
redistribution of wealth in a section entitled “Les deux pestes de toutes
Republiques.” On the one hand, he writes, Plato “called wealth and poverty
the ancient plagues of Republics,” and, in order to redeem the state from
these diseases, “it has been suggested that we should seek an equality, such
as many have greatly praised, calling it the nursing mother of peace and
friendship between subjects.”3 Conversely, these same thinkers have con-
sidered “inequality to be the source of all enmities, factions, hatreds, and
partialities,” because “he who has more than another, and who realizes that
he is richer in goods, wishes also to be higher in honor, in delights, in
pleasures, in food, and clothing. He wishes to be revered by those same
poor people whom he disdains and treads underfoot.”4 In the Latin version,
Bodin adds that the rich man, in seeking superiority over his fellows solely
on the basis of wealth, “has no regard, or only very little, for virtue.”5 The
poor, on the other hand, “develop an envy and an extreme jealousy, born
of the realization that they are as worthy, or even more worthy than the
wealthy, and are nonetheless afflicted with poverty, hunger, misery, and
contempt.”6 Accordingly, many ancient legislators, such as Lycurgus, Agis,
and Plato himself, “divided goods equally among all subjects,” and “in our
own memory Thomas More, Chancellor of England, in his Republic, said
2
Ibid.: “qui ont pretendu plusieurs causes du mescontentement qu’ils avoyent de
l’estat, ont tousjours empoigné le premiere occasion qui s’est presentee, pour despouiller les
riches de leurs biens.”
3
Ibid., 60: “Platon appelloit les richesses, et la povreté, les anciennes pestes des
Republiques . . . on cerchoit une equalité, que plusieurs ont fort louëe, l’appellant mere
nourrice de paix et amitié entre les sujects.”
4
Ibid.: “l’inequalité source de toutes inimitiez, factions, haines, partialitez . . . celuy qui
a plus qu’un autre, et qui se void plus riche en biens, il veut aussi estre plus haut en honneur,
en delices, en plaisirs, en vivres, en habits: il veut estre reveré des povres qu’il mesprise et
foule au pied.”
5
Bodin, 1586, 525: “Nam quo quisque alios opibus superat, honoribus etiam, volup-
tatibus ac deliciis superior esse, de virtute nihil aut parum admodum solicitus.” Richard
Knolles included this phrase in his 1606 English translation (Bodin, 1606, 569): “for he that
hath more than another, and sees himselfe to have greater wealth, he will also be higher in
honor, in delights, in pleasures, in diet and in apparell, having no great regard of virtue.”
6
Bodin, 1986, 5:60: “conçoyvent une envie et jalousie extreme, de se voir autant ou
plus dignes que les riches, et neantmoins estre accablez de povreté, de faim, de misere, de
contumelie.”
U T O P IA T H R O U G H IT A LIA N EY ES 1031
that the only path to public wellbeing is if men live in a community of

goods, which can never be where there is private property.”7
This first position on the redistribution of wealth can, in short, be
described as the “Greek” view. Bodin traces it to the legislators of Greek
antiquity, and to their contemporary acolyte, Sir Thomas More, whose
Utopia is revealingly rechristened.8 This position justifies the confiscation
and redistribution of private property (or, indeed, its outright abolition) on
the grounds that disproportionate wealth gives its possessors a false and
invidious claim on political authority and public goods, and convulses the
state with envy and mutual recrimination. But Bodin then introduces a
second, favored position on the redistribution of wealth — one derived
instead from Roman writers, who, as Bodin has it, understood “la Justice.”9
Compelling as the Greek case may be, he observes that “on the other hand
one could argue that the equality of goods is very pernicious for Republics,
which have no support or foundation more sound than mutual trust,
without which neither justice nor any kind of society can prove durable.
And confidence abides where promises are honored.”10 He continues, say-
ing that “if then obligations are cancelled, contracts annulled, debts
abolished, what else should one expect other than the complete undermin-
ing of the state? For no one would trust anyone else.”11 Bodin exclaims
that, when it comes to redistributionary proposals, “one can say that such
sharing out of the goods of others is theft under the banner of equality.”12
Here Bodin is simply paraphrasing Cicero’s De officiis, and he ends on an
unambiguous note: “Let us then leave behind the opinion of those who
seek to bring about equality in preexisting Republics by appropriating the
7
Ibid., 61: “divisoyent les biens egalement à chacun des sujects . . . de nostre memoire
Thomas le More Chancelier d’Angleterre, en sa Republique, dit, que la seule voye de salut
public est, si les hommes vivent en communauté de biens: ce qui ne peut estre faict où il
y a proprieté.”
8
Bodin, 1586, 525, retains the title Utopia in the Latin version.
9
Bodin, 1986, 5:61.
10
Ibid., 62: “d’autre part on peut dire, que l’equalité de biens est tres-pernicieuse aux
Republiques, lesquelles n’ont appuy ni fondement plus assuré que la foy, sans laquelle ni la
justice, ni societé quelconque ne peut estre durable: or la foy gist aux promesses de con-
ventions legitimes.”
11
Ibid.: “si donc les obligations sont cassees, les contracts annullez, les debtes abolies,
que doit-on attendre autre chose que l’entiere eversion d’un estat? car il n’y aura fiance
quelconque de l’un à l’autre.”
12
Ibid.: “on peut dire que tel partage du bien d’autruy est une volerie sous le voile
d’equalité.”
1032 R E N A IS S A N CE Q U A R T ERLY
goods of others, when they should be preserving for each man what belongs
to him, in order to establish natural justice.”13
Thus, in Bodin the Roman theory of justice stands vindicated. But the
interesting fact is that Bodin meticulously and self-consciously reconstructs
the opposing viewpoint, faithfully representing its organizing principles
and fully conscious of its pedigree. My analysis begins from the assumption
that this insight is worth taking extremely seriously. It seems clear that
there were indeed two distinct and incommensurable accounts of repub-
lican government available in the early modern period, one drawn from the
Latin sources of Roman antiquity, and the other drawn from the principal
texts of Greek moral and political philosophy. The Roman account,
sketched out most completely by Quentin Skinner, defines liberty as a
status of independence, of being under the guidance of one’s own sovereign
will (as opposed to being a slave), and exalts it as the source of civic virtue.
It understands virtue, in turn, as a disinterested commitment to the public
good, together with the will and agency necessary to act on behalf of this
commitment.14 This tradition further insists that virtue encourages justice,
a quality defined in the Digest of Roman Law as the “constant and per-
petual aim of giving each person his own [ius suum]” and interpreted as an
imperative to respect private property.15 For neo-Roman theorists, dedica-
tion to justice allows the cultivation of the common good, which produces
concord and peace and enables the state to seek its highest goals of glory
and greatness.16 Implicit in all of this is that individuals should reject the
contemplative life and embrace the active life of civic engagement (vita
activa), performing their officia to their friends and family, promoting the
glory of their patria, and securing honor and fame for themselves.
The Greek view, in contrast, does not particularly emphasize freedom
as “non-domination” — living without dependence on the will of other
human beings.17 The sort of freedom it values is the condition of living
according to our rational nature, and it assumes that most men can be free
in this sense only if they are ruled by their moral superiors: if someone ruled
13
Ibid., 64: “Laissant donc en arriere l’opinion de ceux qui cerchent l’equalité és
Republiques ja formees, prenans le bien d’autruy, au lieu qu’ils devoyent conserver à chacun
ce qui luy appartient, pour establir la justice naturelle.” For the original, see Cicero, 260
(De officiis 2.84).
14
See Skinner, 1998 and 2001; see also Pettit.
15
Justinian, 1:2 (Digest, 1.1.10): “Iustitia est constans et perpetua voluntas ius suum
cuique tribuendi.”
16
On the centrality of glory in Roman thought, see Baron; Burckhardt, 104; Brunt;
Long; Skinner, 1988 and 1990.
17
The following discussion relies on Nelson, 2004, 10–18.
U T O PIA T HR O U G H IT A LIA N EY ES 1033
by his passions is left to rule himself, then he is enslaved. The Greek

tradition also assumes that the purpose of civic life is not glory, which it
dismisses as the irrelevant approval of nonexperts, but rather happiness
(eudaimonia), the fulfillment of our rational nature through contemplation.
Most important of all, the Greek account exhibits a sharply contrasting
theory of justice. The virtue of justice is not seen as a matter of giving each
person ius suum in the Roman sense, but is rather an arrangement of
elements that accords with nature. In the case of the state, justice is secured
by the rule of reason in the persons of the most excellent men: it results in
a social existence which teaches citizens virtue. This view of justice as a
natural balance among elements in turn leads to a completely anti-Roman
endorsement of property regulations and the redistribution of wealth. Both
Plato and Aristotle reason that if property is allowed to flow freely among
citizens, extremes of wealth and poverty will inevitably develop. The rich
and poor will both be corrupted by their condition as a result: the rich will
become effeminate, luxurious, and slothful, while the poor will lose their
public spirit. Neither group will defer to the rule of the best men, and, as
a result, justice will be lost. Accordingly, the Greek view recommends
either the outright abolition of private property, as among the guardians in
Plato’s Republic, or, at the very least, some mechanism designed to secure
its egalitarian distribution, as in Plato’s Laws and Aristotle’s Politics. Both
these proposals are deeply incompatible with the neo-Roman view, which
rejects any political interference in property distribution as a violation of
the principle of justice.
If Bodin’s insight is worth taking seriously, and More’s Utopia does
indeed fall on the Greek side of this divide, then we are forced to con-
front an important question about the relationship between the Italian
humanist tradition and Erasmian political theory. That such a relationship
existed has always seemed obvious (although, in truth, it has more often
been asserted than demonstrated). Virtually every member of More’s
circle — John Colet, William Grocyn, Thomas Linacre, William Lily, and,
of course, Erasmus (ca. 1466–1536) himself — spent considerable periods
of time in Italy, and even a cursory look through Erasmus’s correspondence
shows him to be familiar with virtually every major Italian author of the
Quattrocento: Leonardo Bruni, Poggio Bracciolini, Giovanni Pontano,
Angelo Poliziano, Lorenzo Valla, and Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, to name
just a few.18 And although More himself never traveled to Italy, he had
numerous Italian friends and correspondents, and explicitly engaged Italian
18
For the Italian sojourns of More’s circle, see Bietenholz and Deutscher.
theorists on the full range of humanist concerns. But the precise nature
of this engagement has been the subject of extensive dispute. Several
recent studies of Utopia — arguably the signal achievement of Erasmian
humanism — have made the case that More’s dialogue essentially consti-
tutes an Erasmian defense of the “traditional humanist,” or “neo-Stoic,”
program, by which is meant the values informing the political ideology
of the Italian city states. This is certainly the view of George Logan in his
magisterial study The Meaning of More’s Utopia, and it is shared by
the majority of scholars who have written on Utopia over the last two
decades.19
But if we place this claim alongside Skinner’s thoroughly convincing
demonstration that the ideology of mainstream Italian civic humanism is
best described as “neo-Roman,” we are left at something of an impasse. We
must either conclude that Bodin was incorrect to place Utopia in the Greek
tradition, or we must part with the conviction that Erasmian political
theory embraced the neo-Roman case. I would like to argue for the second
option: that Bodin had it right, and that Erasmian political theory did not
endorse the neo-Roman scale of values which organized Quattrocento
Italian political theory. On the contrary, it seems clear that the Erasmians
meant to launch an explicit attack on those values.
The immediate context for this attack was the early sixteenth-century
culture war over Greek studies.20 Faced with charges of heresy and obscu-
rantism for their immersion in Greek language and literature (and most
particularly for using the Greek New Testament to correct the Vulgate
Latin), the Erasmians responded with their own polemical attacks on
Roman thought, accompanied by extravagant praise of Greek philosophy.
In the 1517 treatise De fructu qui ex doctrina percipitur (On the Benefit of
a Liberal Education), Richard Pace (ca. 1482–1536) provides a represen-
tative statement of the Erasmian position: “Whatever seems to have
originated with the Romans, for example, in rhetoric and history, was all
taken from the Greeks as if it were a loan . . . but philosophy among the
Romans was so feeble that nothing could seem more stupid to learned ears
than to compare Roman philosophers to the Greeks. And I include Cicero
in this group, if he’ll forgive me for saying so.”21 More shared Pace’s
19
Logan, 111, argues that Utopia musters “Greek city-state theory” to the task of
defending the neo-Stoic position. This view is also to be found in Skinner, 1987, and in
numerous studies influenced by this classic essay, such as Baker-Smith; Bradshaw; Parrish.
20
The following discussion relies on material found in Nelson, 2001 and 2004, 19–48.
21
Pace, 128: “Apud Latinos vero, quicquid apparet proprium, ut in arte dicendi, & in
historia, hoc totum quasi mutuo sumptum est ex Graecis. Nam Ciceronem, quantus est in
arte Oratoria (Quintiliano id confitente) fecit Demosthenes & Isocrates. In Philosophia
vero, Plato & Aristoteles, quorum alterum divinum, alterum sapientissimum, ut doctissimos
sentiments and polemical style. In his 1519 letter to the monk John
Batmanson, he declares that the superiority of Greek culture is clear from
“those arts they call liberal, along with philosophy, in which subjects the
Romans wrote next to nothing.”22 He offers similar observations in his
1518 “Letter to Oxford” — which he wrote in response to a wave of
anti-Hellenic violence that struck the university, during which students
dressed as “Trojans” rampaged through the streets assaulting any classmates
who studied Greek — and in his 1515 reply to Maarten van Dorp, the first
prominent critic of Erasmus’s Greek New Testament.23 In short, for More
and his circle an impassioned defense of the Erasmian project and the new
Greek learning carried with it a corresponding attack on Rome in general,
and on Roman philosophy in particular.
This attack on Romanitas addressed itself in particular to two of the
central values of the neo-Roman tradition: the Roman theory of justice
(cuique tribuere ius suum), and the Roman preoccupation with honor and
glory. In both of these respects, Erasmus’s writings strikingly prefigure
More’s own. Erasmus’s Folly, for example, makes the case that those who
leave Plato’s cave and embrace the sublime truth of Greek philosophy will
be scorned and laughed at by the deluded masses. Another way of saying
the same thing, she continues, is that philosophers are not foolish enough
to be able to perform the essential officia of Roman ethics: “[A philosopher]
is not at all able to be of any use to himself, to his country, or to his own
family, because he is ignorant of public business, and entirely out of touch
with popular opinion and the practices of the masses. From which cause he
unavoidably incurs hatred, without question due to the great gulf between
normal life and minds like his. For what happens among mortals that is not
full of folly, done by fools, among fools?”24 Philosophy, in short, is incom-
patible with popularis opinio. (Recall that, in Utopia, the character Morus
Graecos saepe appellat. Sed Philosophia adeo apud Latinos manca est, ut nihil possit esse
eruditis auribus stultius, quam Latinos Philosophos cum Graecis comparare. Quo in genere,
nec Ciceronem ipsum (quod eius venia dictum sit) excipio.” For an excellent discussion of
Pace’s broader orientation, see Curtis.
22
More, 1986b, 220: “vel denique propter artes, quas liberales vocant, ac philosophiam,
quibus de rebus Latini scripsere propemodum nihil.”
23
More, 1986a, 99; More, 1986c, 143. Richard Croke offered a similar statement of
the Erasmian case in his July 1519 lecture at Cambridge, “De graecorum disciplinarium
laudibus oratio.” On the Oxford riots and the broader battle over Greek studies, see
Goldhill, 14–59; Nelson, 2004, 19–48; Saladin.
24
Erasmus, 1979, 100: “Usqueadeo neque sibi neque patriae neque suis usquam usui
esse potest, propterea quod communium rerum sit imperitus et a populari opinione vul-
garibusque institutis longe lateque discrepet. Qua quidem ex re odium quoque consequatur
necesse est, nimirum ob tantam vitae atque animorum dissimilitudinem. Quid enim
omnino geritur inter mortales non stulticiae plenum idque a stultis et apud stultos?”
condemns Hythloday’s advice because it is contrary to publica opinio.)25

Indeed, Folly proceeds to ask “what state ever adopted the laws of Plato or
Aristotle, or the teachings of Socrates?”26 None, she replies, because they are
all too busy chasing Roman gloria. She proceeds to identify two sets of
martyrs to the Roman patria as her disciples, and launches into a brutal
satire of the Roman vita activa, claiming it as an instance of folly. Cicero’s
dictum in book 2 of the De officiis that “the highest and most perfect glory”
depends on “the affection, the confidence, and the mingled esteem of the
people” is surely Erasmus’s target:
Besides, what was it that prevailed upon the Decii, so that they offered
themselves of their own free will to the gods of the underworld? What dragged
Q. Curtius into the chasm, if not vain glory, the sweetest Siren, but one
denounced passionately by those wise men of yours? What could be more
foolish, they ask, than for a man seeking office to flatter the mob, to purchase
support with gifts, to pursue the applause of all the fools, to be pleased with
their acclamations, to be carried about in triumph as if he were some image
to be gazed at by the people, and to stand in the forum cast in bronze. Add
divine honors bestowed on little men, and even the most wicked tyrants being
transformed into gods in public ceremonies. . . . This is the folly which
spawns states; dominions are established by it, as are magistracies, civil reli-
gion, councils, and law courts. Nor is human life anything other than some
game of folly.27
Folly could hardly be more clear: in case we were unsure which kind of
inanis gloria we were talking about, Folly makes sure we know it is the sort
of gloria for which men organize civitates and imperia, consilia, and mag-
istratus — that is, the institutions of the Roman republic.
In the Erasmian framework, Platonic philosophy is thought ridiculous
by those living amid the ethical categories of Roman theory. Nor does
25
More, 1995, 246.
26
Erasmus, 1979, 102: “quae civitas unquam Platonis aut Aristotelis leges aut Socratis
dogmata recepit?”
27
Cicero, 198 (De officiis 2.31); Erasmus, 1979, 102: “Tum autem quae res Deciis
persuasit, ut ultro sese diis manibus devoverent? Quid Q. Curtium in specum traxit nisi
inanis gloria, dulcissima quaedam Siren, sed mirum quam a sapientibus istis damnata? Quid
enim stultius, inquiunt, quam supplicem candidatum blandiri populo, congiariis favorem
emere, venari tot stultorum applausus, acclamationibus sibi placere, in triumpho veluti
signum aliquod populo spectandum circumferri, aeneum in foro stare? Adde his nominum
et cognominum adoptiones, adde divinos honores homuncioni exhibitos, adde publicis
ceremoniis in deos relatos etiam sceleratissimos tyrannos. . . . Haec stulticia parit civitates,
hac constat imperia, magistratus, religio, consilia, iudicia, nec aliud omnino est vita humana
quam stulticiae lusus quidam.” A similar passage appears in Erasmus, 1988, 27; the Decii
and Curtius are discussed in identical terms in Erasmus, 1986, 385.
Erasmus hesitate to identify the social and political implications of his

Platonism. In the 1508 Aldine edition of the Adagia he explains Plato’s use
of the proverb “friends have everything in common” (␶␣` ␶␻ ˜ ␯ ␸␫␭␻˜␯
␬␱␫␯␣´ ) by stating that “through this passage [Plato] tries to demonstrate
that the happiest state of a commonwealth consists in the common own-
ership of all things.”28 “If it were only possible for mortals to be persuaded
of this,” Erasmus muses, “in that very instant war, envy and fraud would
depart from their midst.”29 However, Erasmus was under no illusions. In
the 1515 Froben edition of the Adagia he writes: “But it is exceedingly
strange that this community of possessions advocated by Plato should so
displease Christians that they attack it with stones, since nothing ever said
by a pagan philosopher is more similar to the judgment of Christ.”30
Later in the 1515 edition, under the adage Dulce bellum inexpertis
(“War is only sweet to those who do not know it”), Erasmus blames several
phenomena for the slow degeneration of Christian Platonism. One is,
predictably, the reintroduction of Aristotle, who taught “that there cannot
be perfect human happiness unless there are goods of the body and of
fortune.”31 But Erasmus seems to assign the preponderance of blame to his
second culprit: the Roman law. Christians, he explains, came to embrace
28
Erasmus, 1993, 84: “Quo loco conatur demonstrare felicissimum reipublicae statum
rerum omnium communitate constare.” Wootton, 1998 and 1999, 8, adduces this passage
in his excellent discussion of Erasmus’s “proto-Utopianism.” See also Olin; Eden; Baker,
22–47.
29
Erasmus, 1993, 61: “Quae si mortalibus persuaderi queat, ilico facessant e medio
bellum; invidia, fraus, breviter universum malorum agmen semel e vita demigret.” This
discussion bears a striking resemblance to a passage from Pace’s De fructu (Pace, 58; indeed,
Pace mentions the Adagia several times in his work): “Apud homines vero, ubi abest
aequalitas, ibi adest magna confusio, innumeras ingenerans pestes, ut avaritiam, dolum,
fraudem, & id genus alias, quas longum esset recensere. . . . Porro communitas illa quam
Pythagoras in amicitia postulavit, non nisi aequabilitas intelligenda est, astipulante ipso
Platone, sic scribente in sexto de legibus, ␫ ␴␱´ ␶␩␵ ␸␫␭␫´␣␯ ␣
␲␧␳␥␣´ ␨␧␶␣␫, id est, aequalitas
amicitiam facit.”
30
Erasmus, 1993, 84: “Sed dictu mirum quam non placeat, imo quam lapidetur a
Christianis Platonis illa communitas, cum nihil umquam ab ethnico philosopho dictum sit
magis ex Christi sententia.” Recall Hythloday’s observation that Jesus’ doctrines would seem
strange (aliena) among contemporary Christians (More, 1995, 98), and his comment that
“neque mihi quidem dubitare subit quin vel sui cuiusque commodi ratio vel CHRISTI
servatoris auctoritas . . . totum orbem facile in huius reipublicae leges iamdudum traxisset”
(ibid., 245).
31
Erasmus, 1517: “Ab hoc didicimus non esse perfectam hominis felicitatem, nisi
corporis & fortunae bonae accesserint.” From this principle, he tells us, “we learn that it is
not possible for a republic in which all things are held in common to flourish” (ibid.: “Ab
hoc didicimus non posse florere rempublicam in qua sint omnia comminia”).
the “leges Caesaris” because of their reputation for “equity,” and then, in
order to reconcile these precepts with Christian civilization, distorted the
message of the Gospel. Erasmus goes on to list the several sins of Justinian’s
Codex: “The Roman law permits men to repel force with force; it permits
each person to pursue what is his [ius suum]; it approves of commerce; it
allows usury, so long as it is in moderation, just as it extols war as a glorious
thing, so long as it is undertaken for the sake of ius.”32 As a result, Erasmus
explains, Europe has inherited two Roman pathologies: the love of glory
and the love of wealth. The first issues straightforwardly in wars, while the
second ensures that in Europe “he is thought to be the best who is the
richest.”33 In short, because of Roman gloria we have lost eudaimonia, and
because of Roman ius we have lost justice. If we are to recover what has
been lost, we must return to Platonic and Apostolic principles.
In 1519, three years after the initial publication of Utopia, More would
offer an extended discussion of precisely this theme: “God showed great
foresight when he instituted that all things should be held in common;
Christ showed as much when he tried to recall mortals again to what is
common from what is private. For he perceived that the corrupt nature of
mortals cannot cherish what is private without injury to the community, as
experience shows in all aspects of life. For not only does everyone love his
own plot of land or his own money, not only does everyone cherish his
own family or his own set of colleagues, but to the extent that we call
anything our own it absorbs our affections and diverts them from the
service of the common good.”34 More’s solution to this problem, like
Plato’s, was Utopia — the Hellenic land without private property where
the entire community was one large family, and where gloria had been
replaced by felicitas as the organizing goal of social life.35 In composing
32
Ibid.: “Recepimus nonnihil & a Caesaris legibus, propter aequitatem, quam prae se
ferunt, & quo magis convenirent, Evangelium doctrinam ad eas quo ad licuit destorsimus.
At hae permittunt vim vi repellere, suum quemque ius persequi, probant negociationem.
recipiunt usuram modo moderatam, bellum ceu rem praeclaram efferunt modo iustum.”
33
Ibid.: “His gradibus paulatim eo ventum est, ut is optimus habeatur, qui sit locu-
pletissimus.”
34
More, 1986b, 279: “Multum providit deus cum omnia institueret communia, mul-
tum Christus cum in commune conatus est rursus a privato revocare mortales. Sensit
nimirum corruptam mortalibus naturam non sine communitatis damno deamare privatum,
id quod res, omnibus in rebus docet. Nec enim tantum suum praedium amat, aut suam
quisque pecuniam, nec suo duntaxat generi studet, aut suo quisque collegio, sed ut quicque
est quod aliquo modo vocemus nostrum ita in se illud affectus nostros a communium cultu
rerum sevocat.” I have modified Kinney’s translation here.
35
Note that Plato’s Republic eliminates private property only among the guardians,
U T O PIA T H R O U G H IT A LIA N EY ES 1039
a Greek account of the felicissimus reipublicae status (the happiest state

of a republic) which could stand up to the neo-Roman tradition of
Quattrocento Italy, More was in every sense taking up the Erasmian
banner.
The dichotomy between Greece and Rome is made explicit from the
very outset of More’s text. More places his description of Utopia in the
mouth of Raphael Hythloday, a mysterious mariner who, we are told, is
not ignorant of Latin, but is extremely learned in Greek.36 His main
interest is in philosophy, and “he recognized that, on that subject, nothing
very valuable exists in Latin except certain works of Seneca and Cicero.”37
But when Hythloday later recommends books to the Utopians, his rejec-
tion of Roman philosophy extends even further. Echoing More himself,
Hythloday observes that “except for the historians and poets, there was
nothing in Latin that they would value.”38 Accordingly, Hythloday gives
the Utopians most of Plato’s works, and some of Aristotle’s — none of
Cicero’s or Seneca’s — and continues by noting that the Utopian language
is related to Greek. More amplifies this commitment throughout the
text with his skillful use of Greek nomenclature. Utopia itself is a Greek
coinage, meaning “no place,” and the island’s cities, rivers, and govern-
ment officials are all given Greek names connoting either “nonsense” or
“non-existence.”39 That the entire description is put in the mouth of
Hythloday — whose name in Greek means “purveyor of nonsense” — is
a testament to Erasmus’s influence. The idea, once again, is that the truth
will seem like nonsense to the corrupt Europeans trapped in Plato’s cave.
This conspicuous Hellenism provides a powerful backdrop for More’s
thoroughgoing subversion of the Roman republican tradition. The
Utopians, we are told, have abolished private property, thus avoiding the
great and pervasive injustice of European societies. Hythloday explains this
decision as follows: “Wherever you have private property, and money is the
whereas More generalizes this requirement. In the Laws, however, Plato endorses the claim
that, in the best city, all things would be held in common: see Plato, 1989, 1324 (Laws 739c
[V]).
36
More, 1995, 45.
37
Ibid.: “qua in re [philosophia] nihil quod alicuius momenti sit, praeter Senecae
quaedam ac Ciceronis, exstare Latine cognovit.” I have altered the translation here.
38
Ibid., 181: “nam in Latinis praeter historias ac poetas nihil erat quod videbantur
magnopere probaturi.”
39
The Polylerites, for example, are literally people of “much” (␲␱␭␷` ) “nonsense”
(␭␩˜ ␳␱␵); the Achorians are people “without a country” (␣␹␻ ´ ␳␫␱␫); the title of Utopia’s
governor is Ademus, an official “without people” (␣´ ␦␩µ␱␵); and the river Anyder is
“without water” (␣␯␷´ ␦␻␳).
measure of all things, it is hardly ever possible for a commonwealth to be

just or prosperous — unless you think justice can exist where all the best
things are held by the worst citizens.”40 In such states, the rich become
“rapacious, wicked, and useless,” the poor “look out for themselves, rather
than for the people,” and justice is lost.41 The Utopians, on the other hand,
have abolished private property and find it shocking that “a dunderhead
who has no more brains than a post, and who is as vicious as he is foolish,
should command a great many wise and good men, simply because he
happens to have a big pile of gold coins.”42 Accordingly, the Utopians enjoy
the rule of the wise, and government is reserved exclusively for those who
“from childhood have given evidence of excellent character, unusual intel-
ligence, and a mind inclined to the liberal arts.”43 This elite rules over the
commonwealth, we are told, like parents over children — an image no
Roman writer would ever use to describe citizens, because children are not
considered to be sui iuris (under the guidance of their own sovereign will).
The goal of Utopian life is not glory, which the Utopians disdain, but
rather “happiness” (felicitas) — life is organized so that “as far as public
needs permit, all citizens should be free to devote themselves to the freedom
and culture of the mind. For in that, they think, lies the happiness of life.”44
Again, the absence of wealth and poverty makes possible the rule of the
wise and promotes eudaimonia.
40
More, 1995, 101: “Quamquam profecto, mi More (ut eta vere dicam quae meus
animus fert), mihi videtur ubicumque privatae sunt possessiones, ubi omnes omnia pecuniis
metiuntur, ibi vix umquam posse fieri ut cum republica aut iuste agatur aut prospere, nisi
vel ibi sentias agi iuste ubi optima quaeque perveniunt ad pessimos.”
41
Ibid., 103: “rapaces, improbi, atque inutiles”; 241: “eoque necessitas urget ut sui
potius quam populi, id est aliorum, habendam sibi rationem censeat.”
42
Ibid., 155: “usqueadeo ut plumbeus quispiam et cui non plus ingenii sit quam stipiti
nec minus etiam improbus quam stultus, multos tamen et sapientes et bonos viros in
servitute habeat, ob id dumtaxat quod ei magnus contigit aureorum numismatum cumu-
lus.”
43
Ibid.: “hi videlicet in quibus a pueritia egregiam indolem, eximium ingenium, atque
animum ad bonas artes propensum deprehendere.” I have altered the translation here.
44
Ibid., 135: “ut quoad per publicas necessitates licet, quam plurimum temporis ab
servitio corporis ad animi libertatem cultumque civibus universis asseratur. In eo enim sitam
vitae felicitatem putant.” I have replaced Adams’s translation of the first sentence. For the
Utopian rejection of glory, see ibid., 202. More had been concerned with this theme for
quite some time before he wrote Utopia. In 1510 he translated a letter from Pico della
Mirandola to Andrea Corneo, in which he had Pico announce his preference for “the rest
and peace of my mynde” over “all your kingis palaces, all your commune besines, all your
glory.” The phrase all your glory was More’s own addition: see More, 1977, 86.
2. M O R E I N I T A L Y
All of this is strong evidence that there was a constitutive relationship
between the ideology of the Greek revival in England and More’s Utopia,
and that the ideology in question was characterized by a thoroughgoing
hostility to the neo-Roman worldview. But these claims can and should be
tested further. In particular, if the interpretation of Utopia truly turns to
such a remarkable degree on our understanding of its relationship to Italian
civic humanism, then the obvious question to ask is, How was this text
received in Italy? Was it in fact taken up enthusiastically by the humanists
as an endorsement of their principal neo-Roman convictions, or was it
understood in some other way? Such an exercise cannot in itself, of course,
tell us what More meant to do in writing Utopia; but it is reasonable to
assume that if More had explicitly designed Utopia to read as an affirmation
of civic humanist ideology — which is the dominant view of the text
among contemporary scholars — then surely some of the humanists would
have recognized an ally, and some of their opponents a target. Did they?
The story of More’s reception in Italy has rarely been investigated at all,
and never in order to answer this central question about the character of
Utopia.45 The remainder of this essay will try to remedy that situation: it
will explore what Utopia’s reception in Cinquecento Italy can tell us about
the sort of intervention More was making in 1516. The striking fact about
that reception is that Utopia was not taken up by the humanists at all; it
was, on the contrary, taken up by their fiercest critics. It was not trumpeted
as an expression of civic humanist commitments to the active life (the vivere
civile), liberty, property, and the Roman studia humanitatis; it was em-
braced, rather, for its repudiation of active citizenship, its abolition of
private property, its dismantling of the Roman cult of glory, and its fierce
assault on Ciceronian humanism. In short, the Italian reception of Utopia
makes Bodin’s reading of More seem substantially less surprising, and it is
to that story that I now want to turn.
The first thing to note in this connection is that Thomas More himself
had a significant hand in the formation of his Italian legacy. One of his
closest friends and correspondents was the Italian banker and merchant
Antonio Buonvisi of Lucca. Buonvisi visited More in the Tower, and was
the addressee of one of his final and most moving letters.46 Returning to
Italy from England, Buonvisi brought with him several of More’s papers
45
The literature on More’s reception in Italy includes Firpo, 1970 and 1977; Grendler,
1969; Rebora; Scrivano; Wheeler. Much of this material concerns Italian discussions of
More’s martyrdom, or summarizes various Italian utopias of the Cinquecento.
46
More, 1947, 559–63, no. 217.
and, in all probability, a copy of Utopia.47 The text had been published
once in Florence more than fifteen years earlier by the printer Filippo
Giunta, at the back of a compilation containing More’s translations of
Lucian and several works by other Erasmians.48 But it seems to have made
no impact at all on the Italian scene until Buonvisi’s younger brother
Vincenzo showed it to a young, disenfranchised writer from Milan named
Ortensio Lando in 1535, the year of More’s death.49 Lando (ca. 1512–ca.
1555) was part of a group of men whom Italian literary historians have
nicknamed poligrafi, literary busybodies who did not enjoy court patronage
in the style of the humanists, and who instead wrote freelance books and
pamphlets — everything from commentaries and literary editions to travel
literature and burlesques — for the Venetian presses. As Paul Grendler
explains in his excellent 1969 monograph on the poligrafi, these tended to
be lowborn men whose lives were characterized by uncertain finances,
frequent travel, and a pervasive sense of being on the outside of the
mainstream culture.50
The other important thing to say about this group is that they were
all strident anti-Ciceronians. The culture war in which they participated
had its formal origin in 1528, the year in which Erasmus published his
dialogue Ciceronianus.51 This text was directed against a large subset of
Italian humanists — including such eminences as Pietro Bembo and
Jacopo Sadoleto — whose enthusiasm for Cicero had reached such hyper-
bolic dimensions that they now insisted that all Latin writing should be
based on Ciceronian models, and even that no word could properly be used
in Latin prose if Cicero had not used it in his writings.52 Erasmus made
clear that he detected something sinister in all of this, something lurking,
as he put it, “under the veil of [Cicero’s] name.”53 For him, the fetish for
Cicero amounted to a wholesale endorsement of the Roman scale of values
to which he so gravely objected; it smacked, in his account, of the sort of
paganism which assimilated Jesus himself to the mold of a Roman hero
47
On this, see Grendler, 1969, 33; Firpo, 1977, 52.
48
More et al.
49
However, see Menchi, 1994, for the controversial claim that Lando and another
heterodox author, Giorgio Filalete (“Turchetto”), were actually one and the same person.
50
See, in particular, Grendler, 1969, 3–19. I should say at the outset that I am deeply
indebted to Grendler’s analysis: his painstaking research into the poligrafi has made it
possible to answer the question with which I am concerned.
51
The conflict had Quattrocento roots in the quarrels between Lorenzo Valla and
Poggio Bracciolini and between Angelo Poliziano and Bartolomeo Scala: see Scott, 10–23.
52
On the general phenomenon of Ciceronianism, see Tuck, 13–30; Scott. On the
papacy’s embrace of the movement, see Hankins, 501–05.
53
Erasmus, 1986, 337.
who faces death in the service of his respublica for the sake of honor, glory,
and a bronze statue in the forum.54 Indeed, perhaps no moment in the
dialogue is more powerful or poignant than the passage in which Erasmus’s
comical Ciceronian opponent, Nosoponus — whose name means “Mad
Busybody” in Greek — celebrates because a young Ciceronian has died
before he could “develop an enthusiasm for Greek literature” or lose his
willpower to “abstain totally from Christian authors.”55 Greece and the
Gospel were, for Erasmus, the sources of true philosophy, and in his view
Ciceronianism had significantly dimmed their light.
Lando intervened directly in this debate in 1529 with his Cicero
relegatus et revocatus (Cicero Banished and Recalled). In a formal sense, the
text is a presentation in utramque partem of the debate between the
Erasmians and the Ciceronians, with both sides of the case canvassed; but
the assault on Cicero was so ferocious and ad hominem that even Erasmus
himself, in a letter dated 1535, felt called upon to scold his overeager
disciple for “most odiously abusing” Cicero and only tepidly defending
him.56 Importantly, the central charge against Cicero in Lando’s text is that
he is obsessed with glory. Lando writes: “I will cite several passages from
Cicero, from which I conclude this: that no such lust for glory [as his] was
ever shown to exist, no such thirst for honors, no such ambition, no such
lustful courtship of the public’s ears, and I will show that he convicts
himself with his own account of himself, and finishes himself off with
his own testimonials. Take a look at the letter . . . which he wrote to
Dollobella, where he admits that he is overwhelmed with great joy, because
the opinion of the multitude designates him as an ally with its praises, that
no one doubts who is the foremost citizen in his precepts and counsel, and
that one by one they offer him the consulship. This passage could suffice
to show with what lust for glory he is inspired. But not being content with
this, I proceed to the rest.”57 And so he does. Later, in his 1550 comic work
54
Ibid., 385–86.
55
Ibid., 345.
56
Erasmus, 1906–58, 11:134, n. 3019 (Erasmus to Damian à Goes [21 May, 1535]):
“Prodiit et alius libellus cui titulus, Cicero relegatus, et Cicero ab exilio revocatus, qui tamen
me non magnopere petit. In eo Cicero odiosissime laceratur, frigide defenditur.”
57
Lando, 1534, 11–12: “Citabo aliquot Ciceronis loca, unde id colligo, ostendamque
neminem umquam fuisse gloriae tam cupidum, tam sitientem honorum, tam ambitiosum,
tam cupide populares auras captantem, efficiamque ut suo ipsius testimonio se iugelet,
suisque se conficiat decretis. Itaque legite epistolam . . . quam Dolobellae scribit, ubi se
magno fatetur cumulari gaudio, quod vulgo hominum opinio illum suis laudibus socium
adscriberet, neminemque dubitare quin eius praeceptis atque consiliis praestantissimum
civem, singularemque se preberet consulem. Satis esse posset hic locus ad ostendendum,
quanta gloriae cupiditate efferatur. Sed hoc non contentus, ad reliqua pergam.”
La Sferza de’ Scrittori (Scourge of the Writers), in which he playfully mocks

most ancient and modern authors, Lando’s treatment of Cicero is also
noticeably severe: the great orator was “bloated, too redundant, and too apt
to repeat the same things . . . and his books on philosophy, from not
having followed any good method, are very inconsistent and say many
things which are totally alien from the truth.”58 This assessment, so redo-
lent of the Erasmian defenses of Greek in the first two decades of the
century, situates Lando quite precisely in a coterie of radical, anti-
Ciceronian Erasmians.59 And it was in this group that Utopia first made its
presence felt on the Italian scene.
This fact becomes less surprising once we recognize that More himself
was regarded by contemporaries as an anti-Ciceronian. To take just one
example, he appears as Erasmus’s anti-Ciceronian spokesman in perhaps
the most bitter reply to the Ciceronianus, Etienne Dolet’s Dialogus de
imitatione Ciceroniana (1535). Dolet (1509–46), a Frenchman, had ac-
quired his strong Ciceronian sympathies during a three-year course of study
in Padua, and had come to idolize Christophe de Longueil, one of the chief
targets of Erasmus’s polemic. Dolet’s defense of his hero took the form of
a dialogue between More and Simon de Villeneuve, Longueil’s Ciceronian
successor in the Latin chair at Padua. The text leaves little doubt as to how
Dolet understood More’s place in the cultural politics of the age. He
includes the following disclaimer at the start of the dialogue: “you should
58
Lando, 1995, 51: “Tullio poi è troppo gonfio, troppo ridondante et troppo frequente
nel ripettere le medeme cose . . . Spiacciommi, i suoi libri della philosophia scritti, per non
havervi serbato alcun bel mettodo, per esser molto inconstante et per haver detto molte cose
del tutto aliene dalla verità.”
59
Scott, 85, is tempted to classify Lando as a Ciceronian based on the contents of a
1535 letter from Joannes Angelus Odonus to Erasmus’s secretary, Gilbert Cousin. Odonus
clearly disliked Lando, and refers to him as a “precious Ciceronian” and a “despiser of the
Greek language and studies.” As Grendler, 1969, 26, 148–49, notes, this comment is quite
mysterious, since Lando had just published the Cicero relegates et revocatus, which even
Erasmus found to be overly anti-Ciceronian. Lando was also shortly to defend Erasmus in
print, and his attacks on Cicero became, if anything, even more pronounced over time. One
possible explanation for Odonus’s confusion is that Lando was friendly with Etienne Dolet,
who had published a fierce Ciceronian response to Erasmus earlier the same year (Lando
introduced Dolet to Odonus, which is why he appears in the letter to Cousin). Lando
shared with Dolet a deep anticlericalism and many heterodox religious beliefs — Dolet was
eventually arrested for having Calvinist sympathies and for denying the immortality of the
soul — and Odonus may have mistakenly assumed that Lando also shared his friend’s
Ciceronian bent. In any event, it is instructive that, for Odonus, to be a Ciceronian and a
critic of Erasmus is primarily to be a “despiser of the Greek language and studies.”
know, reader, that almost everything that the character ‘More’ argues and
states is taken from Erasmus’s dialogue Ciceronianus.”60 Dolet is true to
his word: his More spends much of the dialogue ventriloquizing
Erasmus’s charge that Ciceronianism amounts to a kind of “paganism.”
The Ciceronians, he complains, would have us “acknowledge Jesus with
out lips, but carry Jupiter Optimus Maximus and Romulus in our
breasts.”61 Dolet’s beloved Longueil, he points out, “claimed that he wrote
five orations in praise of Rome. What wonderfully bestowed effort! How
much more appropriately would he have bestowed it if he had tried instead
to direct the spirit of that city, and especially those who pursue the liberal
arts there, to the Christian religion and the love of piety with a few such
orations?”62 Dolet’s More, in short, stands squarely behind Erasmus in his
attack on Romanitas.
It is therefore far from mysterious that Lando — who was well ac-
quainted with Dolet — should have become so immediately devoted to
More and his Utopia. Lando wrote a series of anonymous works in the late
1530s and 1540s, only signing them “Philalethes” — “lover of truth,” in
Greek — and “ex Utopia civis” — “a citizen of Utopia.”63 The most
famous of these was the Paradossi of 1543: Lando structured his discussion
around a set of paradoxes, shocking statements that ran counter to the grain
of popular opinion in the style of Erasmus’s Praise of Folly. Indeed, the
homage to Erasmus, whom Lando had defended against his critics in the
Erasmus Funus of 1540, was explicit: one of the first paradoxes in the
collection is the claim that it is better to be a fool (pazzo) than a wise man
(savio). Lando proceeds to play with this notion just as Erasmus and More
had; occasionally he argues ironically that one should be a genuine fool
because we live in a fool’s world, but, more importantly, he also insists that
in a world where anything wise will seem foolish, being thought of as a fool
is a great compliment to the savio. Once again, the model is that of Plato’s
cave. For Lando, as for Erasmus, the wise are considered fools because they
60
Dolet, 8: “Ne hoc nescias, Lector, omnia pene, quae Morus disputat, & loquitur, ex
Ciceroniano Erasmi dialogo assumpta sunt.”
61
Ibid., 181: “Iesum ore profitemur, sed Iovem optimum maximum & Romulum
gestamus in pectore.”
62
Ibid., 34: “Testatur se scripsisse etiam orations quinque in laudem urbis Romae. O
pulchre collocatam operam. Quanto rectius eam collacasset, si civitatem illam, atque eos
praecipue, qui bonas literas ibi profitentur, orationibus aliquot elaboratis, ad Christi cultum,
ac pietatis amorem inflammare studisset?”
63
Lando, 1535, 1540, 1541, and 1548a. Two additional examples from the following
decade are Lando 1550 and 1555, the latter published under the initials A. V., for
“Anonimo Utopiense.” On Lando’s pseudonyms, see Menchi, 1996.
“have no desire to rule states, to build cities, to form dynastic marriages, to

be a Guelf or a Ghibelline” as do those whom we falsely consider to be
wise.64 But the fools are right: Lando invokes More to argue that civic life
is pointless in the corrupt European world, and that the true wise man will
retire from it so it does not corrupt him in turn. Again, Lando writes that
the man whom we consider foolish “does not care about honors, he has
contempt for glory, and he refuses positions of power, while on the other
hand those whom we consider wise do nothing but seek preeminence over
others, and try to acquire political offices, suffering hot and cold, losing
sleep” and, often, their lives.65 Which one of them, Lando asks, is truly
obeying God’s will?
Lando answers his own question in unmistakably Morean terms. Con-
temporary states are rotten to the core, he insists; they are defined by the
inundation of riches, which, he argues, “cannot be possessed alongside
virtue” — a position he derives, like the Erasmians, from “Plato and other
wise philosophers” and from “the most holy mouth of Jesus.”66 Excessive
wealth corrupts its holders, rendering them luxurious and ambitious. They
are “insatiable”: “those who are called wise nowadays,” he writes, are not
contented with the fruits of “human industry” or those of “the bounty of
the Goddess Fortune,” but relentlessly seek ever more.67 They are fed by
false philosophers — and we know the ones he means — who encourage
an “infinite lust for ruling over others”: “wherever men who yearn to
dominate others rule, there we always find little justice, the rich lording it
over the poor, and nobles violating the lowborn.”68 In such states, as in
64
Lando, 1544, 25: “Io vego il pazzo non prendersi cura di posseder stati, di edificar
ville, di prender moglie, di esser ne guelfo, ne ghibellino, & quelli che noi riputiamo savi
diligentimente tutte le predette cose cercare.”
65
Ibid.: “Il pazzo non si cura de gli honori, sprezza le grandezza, & rifiuta i primi luoghi
& a quei che tenemo savi d’altro gia non cale, & per conseguir preminenze, per acquistare
prelature, soffrono caldo e gelo, perdono il sonno e anche spesse volte col sonno, la cara vita
hora per voi stessi giudicate chi meglio l’intenda & qual veramente alla voce d’Iddio piu
ubidisca.”
66
Ibid., 10: “pensando non potere & la virtù & le richezze insieme possedere, il
medesimo affermono Bione, platone, & altri savi filosofi, ma a che piu cittare bisogna
testimoni? quando la santissimo bocca di Giesu disse, che piu agevolmente entrerebbe nella
cruna d’un accora, una fune di nave, che il ricco ne reame de celi.” This passage is found
in Lando’s discussion of the paradox that it “is better to be poor than rich.” “Bione” is Bion,
one of the so-called “seven sages” of the sixth century BCE.
67
Ibid., 25: “quelli, che sono detti savi, mai rachettarsi, mai di cosa veruna contentarsi,
non po tutta l’industria humana, non po la Dea Copia, col suo corno, a lor insatiabili
desiderii sodisfare.”
68
Ibid., 30: “questa infinita cupidigia del regnere . . . ovunque signoreggiano gli huo-
mini de domini bramosi, sempre vi fi trova poca giustitia, e richi conculcano e poveri, &
More’s Europe, there are only “shadows of justice,” and rule is left to the
corrupt rich. Lando’s own preference is unsurprising: he would wish for
“the most worthy and wisest man” among the citizens to be “elected prince
by the will of the people” as a reflection of natural justice. But such a vision
is little more than a dream in a place where wealth disguises vice as virtue,
and virtue as vice.69
This is, in all respects, a reprise of the Erasmian assault on neo-Roman
ideology from the 1510s, and it echoes another tract written in a similar
style in 1541, La Pazzia (Folly). A meditation on the power of folly clearly
inspired by Erasmus’s own, this anonymous text has often (and, I think,
plausibly) been attributed to Lando; but even if it is not by him, then it is
certainly by another poligrafo in his circle, as both the style and substance
are unmistakably aligned with those of his other works from this period.70
The text begins with an unsubtle indication of the author’s general point
of view: “The poets (who can easily be trusted on this score, since they
know a thing or two about folly) tell us that the father of folly was Pluto,
the god of riches, who holds peace, war, rulers, empires, and all the things
of this world in the palm of his hand.”71 Again, it is wealth, in this account,
which produces the confusion of values that causes the pazzo to appear like
a savio, and vice versa. Those who seek honor by “governing states and
ruling republics” — those “pazzi publichi” — are in folly’s grip, as are those
who pursue the business of great lords.72 Without folly, “we would not tire
ourselves in seeking a great name, or any praise” and we would “live
without glory.”73 But “folly, wishing to urge us toward great deeds, makes
us in love with ourselves, and persuades us that our efforts far surpass those
e nobili ultraggiano gli ignobili.” This passage is found in Lando’s discussion of the paradox
that “it is not bad for a prince to lose his state.”
69
Ibid., where Lando admires an ancient practice of the island of Taprobane (Ceylon):
“ove il piu valoroso & piu studioso di commodi di soggetti principe si elegeva & il medemo
per arbitrio del popolo.”
70
Grendler, 1969, 253–54, includes an appendix that discusses the authorship of this
text. The primary reason for doubting Lando’s authorship is that the author of La Pazzia
indicates that he studied in Rome and lost relatives in the Sack of 1527: we have no evidence
suggesting that Lando did either. However, since the text was written anonymously, it
would not be terribly surprising for the author to have fictionalized his persona.
71
La Pazzia, sig. A3r: “Narrano i Poeti, à i quali si può dar facilmente creduto, perche con
essa Pazzia han sempre hauuto commertio, che’l padre di essa fu Pluto Dio delle ricchezze,
che le paci, le guerre, le signorie, gl’imperii, e tutte le cose del mondo hà in sua balia.” This is
a fairly close paraphrase of a passage in The Praise of Folly: see Erasmus, 1971, 69–70.
72
La Pazzia, sig. B1v: “al governare li Stati, al regnere Republiche.”
73
Ibid., sig. D3r: “non ci affaticariamo mai per acquistar nome, nè loda . . . viveriamo
senza gloria.”
of all others.”74 The author continues, noting that “all glorious and great
deeds issue from an infinite folly,” and mentions in particular “wars, and
deeds of arms” and the “the founding of great empires.”75 It is at this point
that the author does something quite revealing. He reproduces almost
verbatim an entire passage from Erasmus’s Praise of Folly which we have
already had occasion to discuss, the passage which mocks the suicides of
Curtius and the Decii, and ridicules the Roman pursuit of public offices
and honors through the courting of public opinion:
What do you think persuaded the Roman Curtius . . . and the Decii, and
infinite others, to run to a voluntary death for the wellbeing of their patria, if
not folly and the siren-song of vainglory, which is so greatly disdained by
those wise men of yours? They call it a vulgar wind [vento populare] and an
inflammation of the ears, afflicting those who throw away their riches and
their patrimonies on plays . . . tournaments, and other spectacles, in order to
please the people, and to acquire its favor and applause; seeking by these
means to make themselves great and to acquire honors, magistracies, and
triumphal parades, with titles, and statues that the people (insensate beasts
that they are) most often give without any judgment to tyrants and the most
wicked men. . . . And certainly it cannot be denied that it is . . . through such
foolishness that rulers of peoples are created, great empires are born, and
glorious and exalted deeds issue forth.76
All of the great republican institutions are again dismissed as instances of

folly, and, in case the savaging of Romanitas were not sufficiently explicit,
74
Ibid.: “Ma la Pazzia volendoci inanimare à fatti magnanimi, ci fa innamorare di noi
medesimi, persuadendoci che ne i nostri essercitii di gran lunga avanziamo tutti gli altri.”
75
Ibid., sig. D3r–v: “Tutti i gloriosi & gran fatti procedono da infinito di pazzia, et par
la maggior parte far si con l’aiuto di quella. A chi non è manifesto le guerre, & i fatti d’arme
esser le maggiori & la piu eccelse cose, che tra gli uomini si possano fare? procedendo da essi
i grandi Imperii.”
76
Ibid., sig. E4r: “Che cosa pensate voi inducesse Curtio Romano . . . e i Decii, &
infiniti altri à correre à voluntaria morte, per salute della patria, se non la Pazzia, & la
dolcezza della Vanagloria? la quale è tanto vituperate da questi savii, che la chiamano vento
populare, et inflatione d’orecchie, bessandosi di quelli che gettano le lor Ricchezze, e i
patrimonii in comedie, in conviti, in giostre, in tornamenti, & in altri simili spettacoli per
piacere al popolo, & per guadagnare il suo favore & plauso: cercando per tal vie farsi grandi,
et acquistar honori, magistrati, & triomphi, con titoli, & con statue che il popolo (come
insensata bestia) il più delle volte senza giuditio alcuno suol dare à Tirranni, & ad huomini
sceleratissimi. . . . Et certo che non si puo negare che non siano manifeste pazzie, & vanità
grandissime, mà pur per mezzo di tali sciocchezze si creano i principi de i popoli, nascono
i grandi Imperii, & procedono i gloriosi, & magnanimi fatti.” The remarkable character of
this passage becomes more evident once we reject the view — see, for example, Alberigo,
623 — that La Pazzia is simply a clumsy translation of Erasmus’s text. There are, in fact,
only a few large passages from The Praise of Folly which the author reproduces in full: this
is one of them.
the author adds that civic deeds bring “eternal fame and immortal glory,” to
those who are foolish enough to care about the approval of the ignorant.77
In the midst of such Roman folly, the author’s only recourse is to
dream — like Lando in the Paradossi, and More in Utopia — of another,
newer world. “How happy people would be without these so-called wise men
can easily be judged from the life and customs of the newly-discovered peoples
of the West Indies,” he writes.78 These men of the Occident, the author tells
us, “are happy without laws, without letters, without so-called wise men; they
don’t value gold or jewels; they don’t know avarice, or ambition . . . they are
nourished by what the ground produces without any cultivation.”79 And “as in
the Republic of Plato, everything is in common . . . they live in perpetual love
and grace, just as in that fortunate and truly golden age of Saturn in ancient
times.”80 Such an idyll, the author realizes, will seem foolish to the so-called
wise men. They will argue, as both Erasmus and More had warned, that the
pazzi “are useless even to themselves, and to their patria, and are hated by all
nations.”81 The truly wise will be mocked and scorned in the world of fools;
they should simply try to save themselves by leaving that world to its own
devices. No state structured around riches and glory — that is, no state built
in the image of Rome — leaves any place for the true savio.
Given the pervasive influence of Erasmus and More on these writings, it
should come as little surprise that it was Lando who took it upon himself in
1548 to translate Utopia into Italian for the first time, thus producing, after the
German edition of 1524, only the second translation of More’s treatise into a
vernacular language.82 His edition was prefaced with a short essay by another
poligrafo, Anton Francesco Doni (1513–74), who assured the reader that “you
will find in this republic, which I present to you, the best customs, good orders,
wise regulations, holy teachings, sincere government, and regal men; the cities
are well established, as are the offices, justice, and mercy.”83 Doni too was an
77
La Pazzia, sig. E4r: “eterna fama, et immortal gloria.”
78
Ibid., sig. D4v: “Ma quanto fussero felici i popoli senza questi savii, si può facilmente
giudicare la vita, e i costumi del popoli nuovamente ritrovati nelle Indie occidentali.”
79
Ibid.: “i quali beati senza legge, senza lettere, senza savii, non apprezzavano ne oro, ne
gioe, non conoscevano nè avaritia, nè ambitione . . . si nutrivano de i frutti che la terra senza arte
produceva.”
80
Ibid.: “si come nella Republica di Platone, ogni cosa commune . . . vivevano in
perpetuo amore, & carità, si come nel secolo fortunato, et veramente d’oro del vecchio
Saturno.” Another poligrafo, Anton Francesco Doni, spoke of the Age of Saturn in these
terms: see Grendler, 1965, 486.
81
La Pazzia, sig. E2v: “questi savii inutile à se stessi, & alle lor patrie, et odiati da tutte le genti.”
82
See Gibson, 45, 48. For the translation, see Lando, 1548b.
83
Scrivano, 105–07 (epistle dedicatory, Doni to Gerolamo Fava): “Voi troverete in questa
reubblica, ch’io vi mando, ottimi costumi, ordini buoni, reggimenti savi, ammaestramenti santi,
governo sincero e uomini reali; poi ben composte le città, gli offici, la giustizia e la misericordia.”
The first explicit attribution of the translation to Lando appeared in Sansovino, 184.
anti-Ciceronian: indeed, he was if anything even more rabid than Lando.84

Also like Lando, he placed the notion of la pazzia at the very center of his
works. In 1552 he offered, in a text entitled I Mondi, his own utopia in the
form of a dialogue between the characters Pazzo and Savio; as in Lando’s
Paradossi and La Pazzia, we find in Doni’s idyll a fierce attack on private
property, a plea for withdrawal from the corruption of the European world,
and a repudiation of the Ciceronian curriculum.
The essence of his view is to be found in a vividly drawn vignette placed
at the beginning of the dialogue. Doni imagines a great flood that covers the
earth; after the waters recede, terrible fumes remain behind which drive the
people insane. The wise men emerge from their seclusion and attempt to
rescue their brethren from madness, only to find themselves overwhelmed.
Doni’s narrator describes what occurs: “Ha, ha, ha, ha! A desire to laugh comes
over me, because the matter turned out quite differently [from what they
expected]. The mad men were much, much, much greater in number than the
wise men, and saw that this group was not behaving like the rest of them, and
so they drove them around the bend with wicked words and worse deeds, until
the wise were forced to behave like the others and to become fools in spite of
themselves. In this way the wise men entered the ranks of the lunatics against
their wills.”85 It is difficult to suppress the belief that Doni found his inspira-
84
The degree to which anti-Ciceronianism functions as a predictor of political com-
mitments in this period is remarkable. In addition to other poligrafi such as Niccolò Franco,
we can point to the rather different figure of Francesco Patrizi da Cherso (1529–97). A
Platonist professor of philosophy at the universities of Ferrara and Rome, Patrizi’s profile
clearly distinguishes him from Lando and Doni; yet he too was an anti-Ciceronian, and he
too wrote a utopia, La Città Felice (1553). In this text — which, interestingly, constitutes
a close paraphrase of the final two books of Aristotle’s Politics — Patrizi too argues that an
inegalitarian distribution of wealth threatens the downfall (“la totale ruina”) of the com-
monwealth, recommends wise rulers who “can give themselves over entirely to the civil and
intellectual virtues,” and insists that “happiness” (“felicità”), not glory, is our highest good
(“sommo nostro bene”). Doni’s critique of contemporary Italian civilization extended, in a
manner Lando’s did not, to a wholesale rejection of learning. He preached instead what he
called “a good kind of ignorance” (“ignoranza da bene”), a retreat into one’s own concerns.
See Grendler, 1969, 146–48; Procaccioli.
85
Doni, 161: “Ah, ah, ah, ah! e mi vien voglia di rider, che la cosa succedé altrimenti,
perché i matti erano più, più, più assai che i savi, e veduto che costoro non facevano come
loro, se gli ficcarono a torno con le cattove parole e con i peggior fatti, onde furon forzati
a fare come loro e pazzaggiare a lor dispetto. Così i savi entrarono nel numero dei matti
contra la lor voglia.”
U T O P IA T HR O U G H IT A LIA N EY ES 1051
tion for this fable in More’s text.86 In Utopia, after all, Hythloday illustrates
his point about the dangers of active citizenship by taking a remarkably
similar image out of the Republic: “This is why Plato in a very fine analogy
declares that wise men are right in keeping away from public business.
They see the people swarming through the streets and getting soaked with
rain; they cannot persuade them to go indoors and get out of the wet. If
they go out themselves, they know they will do not good, but only get
drenched with the others. So they stay indoors and are content to keep at
least themselves dry, since they cannot remedy the folly of others.”87 The
analogy to which Hythloday refers comes at the end of a passage in book
6. Earlier in the same passage, Plato writes as follows: “[The enlightened
few realize] that no one can do anything sound, so to speak, concerning the
business of cities, nor is there an ally with whose aid the champion of
justice could escape destruction, but, rather, that he would be as a man who
has fallen among wild beasts, unwilling to share their misdeeds and unable
to hold out against the savagery of all, and that he would thus, before he
could in any way benefit his friends or the state, come to an untimely end,
useless to himself and others — for all these reasons I say the philosopher
remains quiet, minds his own affair.”88 Like Plato before him, More uses
86
The image of the “pioggia della follia” was not uncommon in the Cinquecento: see
Rivoletti, 19–24. More himself discusses the allegory in one of his final letters to his daughter
Margaret Roper in 1534. He recalls that Cardinal Wolsey used to employ the fable to dem-
onstrate that it was useless for the wise to stay out of the rain, because they would ultimately be
overcome by the fools in any event. (Wolsey’s moral was meant to refute arguments for England
to keep out of “foolish” European wars.) More, as we might well imagine, disagreed strongly
with this reading: see More, 1947, 518–19, n. 206. Doni was also influenced by another utopia,
the Relox de principes (written ca. 1518, printed in 1529) of the Spanish humanist Antonio de
Guevara. On this text and its significance for Doni, see Grendler, 1965, 480–82.
87
More, 1995, 101: “Quamobrem pulcherrima similitudine declarat Plato cur merito
sapientes abstineant a capessenda republica. Quippe quum populum videant in plateas effusum
assiduis imbribus perfundi, nec persuadere queant illis ut se subducant pluviae tectaque subeant:
gnari nihil profuturos sese so exeant quam ut una compluantur, semet intra tecta continent,
habentes satis quando alienae stultitiae non possunt mederi so ipsi saltem sint in tuto.”
88
Plato, 1963, 732 (Republic 496c [VI]): “␬␣␫` ␱´ ␶␫ ␱␷␦␧␫`␵ ␱␷␦␧` ␯ ␷ ␥␫␧` ␵ ␻␵ ␧´ ␲␱␵
␧␫ ␲␧␫˜␯ ␲␧␳␫` ␶␣` ␶␻
˜ ␯ ␲␱´ ␭␧␻␯ ␲␳␣´ ␶␶␧␫ ␱␷` ␦’ ␧␴␶␫ ´ ␴␷´ µµ␣␹␱␵ µ␧␽’ ␱␶␱␷´ ␶␫␵ ␫ ␻
` ␯ ␧ ␲␫` ␶␩` ␯
␶␻˜ ␦␫␬␣␫´␻ ␤␱␩´ ␽␧␫␣␯ ␴␻ ´ ␨␱␫␶’ ␣
´ ␯. ␣
␭␭’ ␻
´ ␴␲␧␳ ␧␫ ␵ ␽␩␳␫´␣ ␣␯␽␳␻␲␱␵
´ ␧ µ␲␧␴␻ ´ ␯. ␱␷´ ␶␧
␴␷␯␣␦␫␬␧␫˜␯ ␧ ␽␧´ ␭␻␯ ␱´ ␷ ␶␧ ␫ ␬␣␯␱` ␵ ␻␯ ` ␧˜␫␵ ␲␣˜ ␴␫␯ ␣␥␳␫
´␱␫␵ ␣␯␶␧ ´ ␹␧␫␯. ␲␳␫´␯ ␶␫ ␶␩` ␯
␲␱´ ␭␫␯ ␩ ` ␸␫´␭␱␷␵ ␱␯␩
˜ ␴␣␫ ␲␳␱␣␲␱␭␱´ µ␧␯␱␵ ␣´ ␯␻␸␧␭␩` ␵ ␣␷␶␻ ˜ ␶␧ ␬␣␫` ␶␱␫˜␵ ␣␭␭␱␫␵
´ ␣␯
`
␥␧´ ␯␱␫␶␱ — ␶␣␷˜ ␶␣ ␲␣´ ␯␶␣ ␭␱␥␫␴µ␻ ˜ ␭␣␤␻ ´ ␯. ␩␴␷␹␫
´␣␯ ␧␹␻␯
´ ␬␣␫` ␶␣` ␣␷␶␱␷
˜ ␲␳␣´ ␶␶␻␯.”
I have altered the translation. Consider also Hythloday’s claim (More, 1995, 101) that
“there is no way for you to do any good when you are thrown among colleagues who would
more readily corrupt the best of men than be reformed themselves. Either they will seduce
you by their evil ways, or, if you remain honest and innocent, you will be made a screen for
the knavery and folly of others.”
this analogy to underscore the point that the wise will be unable to help
their friends, themselves, or the state by entering public service in a corrupt
commonwealth. He thereby denies the appeal of the vita activa, and once
again pits Greece against Rome. In I Mondi Doni amplifies More’s original
message, and makes clear how he and his circle read this crucial text. The
consequences of this alignment for the subsequent history of Italian po-
litical theory were quite significant. One of Doni’s most enthusiastic young
readers was Antonio Persio (1542–1612), who became a close friend of
Tommaso Campanella (1568–1639), and probably introduced him to
Doni’s writings.89 That Campanella knew Doni’s parable of the pazzi and
savi is certain: he made it the subject of a sonnet, “Senno senza forza de’
savi delle genti antiche esser soggetto alla forza de’ pazzi” (“Good sense
without the power of the wise men of the ancient nations is subject to the
power of madmen”), which he composed barely a year before writing the
Città del Sole in 1602.90 As a result, the path from More’s Utopia to
Campanella’s own great utopia runs straight through the poligrafi.91
3. C O N C L U S I O N
More’s Italian enthusiasts understood only too well that his text constituted
an outright assault on the values of civic humanism. Utopia was carried to
Italy by the currents of anti-Ciceronianism passing from Northern Europe
89
Doni received an admiring letter from one A. Persio in April 1570. This figure was
either Antonio Persio or his younger brother, Ascanio (1554–ca. 1605), a professor of Greek
at Bologna. Given the elder Persio’s philosophical interests, and his relationship with
Campanella and Bernardino Telesio (1509–88), it seems far more likely that he was the
author of the letter: see Grendler, 1969, 196–97.
90
Campanella, 76: “Gli astrologi, antevista in un paese / costellazion che gli uomini
impazzire / far dovea, consigliarsi di fuggire, / per regger sani poi le genti offese. / Tornando
poscia a far le regie imprese, / consigliavan que’ pazzi con bel dire / il viver prisco, il buon
cibo e vestire. / Ma ognun con calci e pugni a lor contese. / Talché, sforzati i savi a viver
come / gli stolti usavan, per schifar la morte, / chè ’l piú gran pazzo avea le regie some, /
vissero sol col senno a chiuse porte, / il pubblico applaudendo in fatti e nome / all’altrui
voglie forsennate e torte.” For the dating of the sonnet, see Firpo, 1947, 255. Grendler,
1969, 197–98, translates the sonnet as follows: “The astrologers, having foreseen in land a
constellation that maddened men, took counsel to flee; then, having remained healthy, to
rule the injured people. Returning afterward to do their royal deeds, they advised these
madmen with well-chosen words to live the old way, with good food and dress. But
everyone attacked them with kicks and blows. So that the wise men were compelled to live
as fools, in order to avoid death, because the greatest madmen carried the royal burden.
They lived with good sense only behind closed doors, in public applauding in deed and
name the insane and wrong desires of others.”
91
Grendler, 1969, 196–201.
U T O P IA T H R O U G H IT A LIA N EY ES 1053
back to the Ciceronian centers, where the critics of the humanists recog-
nized a prodigious source of ammunition for their polemics against the
civic ideology of the Quattrocento. Indeed, the humanists themselves rec-
ognized these currents for what they were: the encyclopedic author
Tommaso Garzoni (1549–89), to take just one example, attacked Lando
and his colleagues in 1585 for inveighing “against wealth and liberty.”92
Garzoni was not wrong. He saw clearly the link in anti-Ciceronian thought
between the attack on riches and the rejection of the vivere civile. Only the
elimination of wealth and poverty would, in this account, allow for the rule
of the wise; politics in the corrupt European world consisted of nothing
more than the self-government of fools.
Why does all of this matter? From a historiographical point of view, it
calls into serious question the traditional picture of a diffusion of Italian
civic values to the Northern Renaissance. But in a broader sense it matters
because the dominant understanding of Utopia has prevented us from
recognizing that Bodin was right: that the culture war over Greek in the
early sixteenth century produced a fissure in the republican tradition that
would have profound consequences for the subsequent development of
European political discourse. On the one hand, there was the Roman
tradition, which valued independence, private property, and the glory
brought by empire; on the other there was the Greek, which valued the
rational ordering of the state made possible by the regulation of wealth.
The first of these ideologies was the model for all subsequent theories that
have preached the sovereignty of the individual in his own sphere; the
second was the foundational expression of the view that men must be
“forced to be free.”93 Or to put it another way: egalitarian politics and
egalitarian economics were not conjoined in the early modern period, but
were rather antagonists, facing each other from opposite ends of the re-
publican landscape. If the confrontation between these visions remains a
central feature of our political lives, then the story of More and the poligrafi
is very much a story about today.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
92
Garzoni, 288: “contra la ricchezza, la libertà.” Grendler, 1969, 192, alludes to this
passage, but does not relate it to the question we have been considering.
93
This famous phrase appears in chap. 7 of Rousseau’s Social Contract: see Rousseau,
141.
Bi bl i o g ra p h y
Alberigo, G. “Vianesio Albergati.” In Diz- Trans. S. G. C. Middlemore. Lon-
ionario biografico degli italiani, ed. don, 1990.
Alberto M. Ghisalbert, 1:621–24. Campanella, Tommaso. La Città del Sole e
Rome, 1960–. Poesie. 1623. Ed. Adriano Seroni.
Baker, David Weil. Divulging Utopia: Milan, 1962.
Radical Humanism in Sixteenth- Cicero. De officiis. Ed. and trans. Walter
Century England. Amherst, MA, Miller. London, 1913.
1999. Croke, Richard. Orationes Richardi Croci
Baker-Smith, Dominic. More’s Utopia. duae. Paris, 1520.
London, 1991. Curtis, Catherine M. Richard Pace on Peda-
Baron, Hans. The Crisis of the Early Italian gogy, Counsel, and Satire. PhD diss.,
Renaissance: Civic Humanism and Re- Cambridge University, 1996.
publican Liberty in an Age of Classicism Dolet, Etienne. Dialogus de imitatione
and Tyranny. 2 vols. Princeton, 1955. Ciceroniana adversus Erasmum Rot.
Bietenholz, Peter C., and Thomas B. pro C. Longolio. Lyons, 1535.
Deutscher, eds. Contemporaries of Doni, Anton Francesco. I Mondi e gli
Erasmus: A Biographical Register of the Inferni. Ed. Patrizia Pellizzari. Turin,
Renaissance and Reformation. 2 vols. 1994.
Toronto, 1986. Eden, Kathy. Friends Hold All Things In
Common: Tradition, Intellectual Prop-
Bodin, Jean. Io. Bodini Andegavensis, De
erty, and the Adages of Erasmus. New
republica libri sex, latine ab autore red-
Haven, 2001.
diti, multo quam antea locupletiores.
Erasmus, Desiderius. Dulce bellum inexper-
Paris, 1586.
tis. Louvain, 1517.
———. The Six Bookes of A Commonweale
———. Opus epistolarum Des. Erasmi
Written by I. Bodin a famous Lawyer,
Roterodami. Ed. P. S. Allen and H. M.
and a man of great Experience in mat-
Allen. 12 vols. Oxford, 1906–58.
ters of State. Trans. Richard Knolles.
———. The Praise of Folly. Trans. Betty
London, 1606.
Radice. Harmondsworth, 1971.
———. Six Books of the Commonwealth. ———. Moriae encomium. In Opera
Ed. and trans. M. J. Tooley. Oxford, omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami,
1955. ed. Clarence H. Miller, 9:83–153.
———. Les Six Livres de la République. Ed. Amsterdam, 1979.
Christiane Frémont, Marie-Dominique ———. Ciceronianus. Vol. 28 of The Col-
Couzinet, and Henri Rochais. 6 vols. lected Works of Erasmus, ed. and trans.
Paris, 1986. Betty I. Knott. Toronto, 1986.
Bradshaw, Brendan. “More on Utopia.” ———. Enchiridion militis christiani. In
The Historical Journal 24 (1981): The Collected Works of Erasmus, ed.
1–27. and trans. John W. O’Malley, 66:8–
Brunt, P. A. “Laus Imperii.” In Imperialism 127. Toronto, 1988.
in the Ancient World, ed. P. D. A. ———. Adagia. Vol. 20 of Opera omnia
Garnsey and C. R. Whittaker, 159– Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami, ed.
91. Cambridge, 1978. M. L. van Poll-van de Lisdonk, M.
Burckhardt, Jacob. The Civilization of the Mann Phillips, and Chr. Robinson.
Renaissance in Italy. Ed. Peter Murray. Amsterdam, 1993.
Firpo, Luigi. Ricerche campanelliane. di Filalete cittadino di Utopia. Venice,

Florence, 1947. 1541.
———. “Political Philosophy: Renaissance ———. Paradossi cioe, sententie fvori del
Utopianism.” In The Late Italian comun parere, nouellamente venute in
Renaissance: 1525–1630, ed. and trans. luce. Venice, 1544.
Eric Cochrane, 149–67. London, ———. Commentario delle più notabili e
1970. mostruose cose d’Italia . . . da M.
———. “Thomas More e la sua fortuna in Anonymo di Utopia composto. Venice,
Italia.” In Firpo, Studi sull’Utopia: 1548a.
Raccolti da Luigi Firpo, 31–58. ———, trans. La republica nuovamente ri-
Florence, 1977. trovata, del governo dll’isola Eutopia,
Garzoni, Tommaso. La piazza universale di nella qual si vede nuovi modi di gover-
tutte le professioni del mondo. Venice, nare Stati, reggier Popoli, dar leggi
1587. à i senatori, con molta profundità di
Gibson, R. W. St. Thomas More: A Prelimi- sapienza, storia non meno vtile che nec-
nary Bibliography of his Works and essaria. Opera di Thomaso Moro
of Moreana to the Year 1750. New Cittadino di Londre. Venice, 1548b.
Haven, 1961. ———. Orazione consolatoria in morte
Goldhill, Simon. Who Needs Greek? Con- della S. Elisabeth Dotta Capodelista.
tests in the Cultural History of Venice, 1555.
Hellenism. Cambridge, 2002. ———. La sferza de’ scrittori antichi et
Grendler, Paul F. “Utopia in Renaissance
moderni. 1550. Ed. Paolo Procaccioli.
Italy: Doni’s ‘New World.’” Journal of
Rome, 1995.
the History of Ideas 4 (1965): 479–94.
Logan, George M. The Meaning of More’s
———. Critics of the Italian World, 1530–
Utopia. Princeton, 1983.
1560: Anton Francesco Doni, Niccolò
Long, A. A. “Cicero’s Politics in De Officiis.”
Franco, and Ortensio Lando. Madison,
In Justice and Generosity: Studies in So-
WI, 1969.
cial and Political Philosophy: Proceedings
Hankins, James. “Roma caput mundi: Hu-
manism in High Renaissance Rome.” of the Sixth Symposium Hellenisticum,
In Hankins, Humanism and Platonism ed. André Laks and Malcolm
in the Italian Renaissance, 1:495–507. Schofield, 213–40. Cambridge, 1995.
Rome, 2003. Menchi, Silvana Seidel. “Chi fu Ortensio
Justinian. The Digest. Ed. Theodor Mommsen Lando?” Rivista Storica Italiana 106
and Paul Krueger. Trans. Alan Watson. (1994): 501–64.
4 vols. Philadelphia, 1985. ———. “Ortensio Lando cittadino di
Lando, Ortensio. Cicero relegatus; & Cicero Utopia: Un esercizio di lettura.” In La
revocatus: dialogi festiuissimi. Leiden, fortuna dell’Utopia di Thomas More
1534. nel dibattito politico europeo del ‘500,
———. Forcianae Quaestiones . . . autore 95–118. Florence, 1996.
Philalethe Polytopiensi cive. Naples, More, Sir Thomas. The Correspondence.
1535. Ed. E. F. Rogers. Princeton, 1947.
———. In Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami ———. Utopia. Vol. 4 of The Complete
Funus, Dialogus lepidissimus (excerp- Works of St. Thomas More, ed. Edward
tum ex familiaribus congressibus Surtz and J. H. Hexter. New Haven,
Philalethis ex Utopia civis). Basel, 1965.
1540. ———. “Letter to Dorp.” In vol. 15 of
———. Dialogo contra gli uomini letterati The Complete Works of St. Thomas
More, ed. Daniel Kinney, 1–127. Plato. Republic. In vol. 4 of Platonis opera,
New Haven, 1986a. ed. John Burnet. 2nd ed. Oxford,
———. “Letter to a Monk.” In vol. 15 of 1963.
The Complete Works of St. Thomas ———. The Collected Dialogues, including
More, ed. Daniel Kinney, 198–311. the Letters. Ed. Edith Hamilton and
New Haven, 1986b. Huntington Cairns. Princeton, 1989.
———. “Letter to Oxford.” In vol. 15 of Procaccioli, Paolo. “L’utopia consumata. Il
The Complete Works of St. Thomas ‘Mondo savio-Mondo pazzo’ di
More, ed. Daniel Kinney, 130–49. Doni.” Letteratura italiana e utopia
New Haven, 1986c. (1995): 13–27.
———. Utopia: Latin Text and English Rebora, Piero. Civilità Italiana e Civilità
Translation. Ed. George M. Logan, Inglese: Studi e Ricerche. Florence,
Robert M. Adams, and Clarence H. 1936.
Miller. Cambridge, 1995. Rivoletti, Christian. Le metamorfosi
———. Life of John Picus. In vol. 2 of The dell’utopia: Anton Francesco Doni e
Complete Works of St. Thomas More, l’immaginario utopico di metà
ed. Anthony S. G. Edwards, Katherine Cinquecento. Lucca, 2003.
Gardiner Rodgers, and Clarence H. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Social Contract. In
Miller, 47–75. New Haven, 1997. The Collected Writings of Rousseau, ed.
More, Sir Thomas, et al. Luciani opuscula, Roger D. Masters and Christopher
Erasmo Roterodamo interprete . . . Kelly, trans. Judith R. Bush, Roger D.
Eiusdem Thomae More De optimo reip. Masters, and Christopher Kelly, 4:
statu deq; nova insula Utopia libellus 127–224. Lebanon, NH, 1994.
vere aureus. Florence, 1519. Saladin, Jean-Christophe. La bataille du
Nelson, Eric. “Greek Nonsense in More’s grec à la Renaissance. Paris, 2000.
Utopia.” The Historical Journal 44 Sansovino, Francesco. Del governo de’ regni
(2001): 889–917. e delle repubbliche cosí antiche come
———. The Greek Tradition in Republican moderne. Venice, 1561.
Thought. Cambridge, 2004. Scott, Izora. Controversies over the Imitation
Olin, John C. “Erasmus’s Adagia and More’s of Cicero as a Model for Style and Some
Utopia.” In Miscellanea Moreana: Phases of their Influence on the Schools
Essays for Germain Marc’hadour, ed. of the Renaissance. New York, 1910.
Clare M. Murphy, Henri Gibaud, Scrivano, Riccardo. “Ortensio Lando
and Mario A. Di Cesare, 127–36. traduttore di Thomas More.” Studi
Binghamton, 1989. sulla cultura lombarda in memoria di
Pace, Richard. De fructu qui ex doctrina Mario Apollonio (1972): 99–108.
percipitur. Ed. and trans. Frank Manley Skinner, Quentin. The Foundations of
and Richard S. Sylvester. New York, Modern Political Thought. 2 vols.
1967. Cambridge, 1978.
Parrish, John Michael. “A New Source for ———. “Sir Thomas More’s Utopia and the
More’s Utopia.” The Historical Jour- Language of Renaissance Humanism.”
nal 40 (1997): 493–98. In The Languages of Political Theory in
Patrizi, Francesco (da Cherso). La Città Fe- Early Modern Europe, ed. Anthony
lice. Venice, 1553. Pagden, 123–57. Cambridge, 1987.
La Pazzia. Venice, [1541]. ———. “Political Philosophy.” In The
Pettit, Philip. Republicanism: A Theory of Cambridge History of Renaissance Phi-
Freedom and Government. 2 nd ed. losophy, ed. Charles B. Schmitt,
Oxford, 1999. Quentin Skinner, Eckhard Kessler,
and Jill Kraye, 389–452. Cambridge, Tuck, Richard. Philosophy and Government:
1988. 1572–1651. Cambridge, 1993.
———. “Machiavelli’s Discorsi and the Wheeler, Thomas. “Thomas More in Italy:
Pre-Humanist Origins of Republican 1535–1700.” Moreana 7 (1970): 15–
Ideas.” In Machiavelli and Republican- 23.
ism, ed. Gisela Bock, Quentin Wootton, David. “Friendship Portrayed: A
Skinner, and Maurizio Viroli, 121– New Account of Utopia.” History
41. Cambridge, 1990. Workshop Journal 45 (1998): 25–47.
———. Liberty Before Liberalism. Cam- ———. “Introduction.” In Thomas More,
bridge, 1998. Utopia, with Erasmus’s The Sileni of
———. “A Third Concept of Liberty.” Alcibiades, ed. and trans. David
Proceedings of the British Academy 117 Wootton, 1–34. Indianapolis,
(2001): 237–68. 1999.

Utopia Through Italian Eyes Thomas More PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Utopia Through Italian Eyes Thomas More PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Utopia through Italian Eyes:

Thomas More and the Critics of

T he most striking sixteenth-century reading of Thomas More’s (1478–

Renaissance Quarterly 59 (2006): 1029–57 [ 1029 ]

that the only path to public wellbeing is if men live in a community of

by his passions is left to rule himself, then he is enslaved. The Greek

condemns Hythloday’s advice because it is contrary to publica opinio.)25

Erasmus hesitate to identify the social and political implications of his

a Greek account of the felicissimus reipublicae status (the happiest state

measure of all things, it is hardly ever possible for a commonwealth to be

La Sferza de’ Scrittori (Scourge of the Writers), in which he playfully mocks

“have no desire to rule states, to build cities, to form dynastic marriages, to

All of the great republican institutions are again dismissed as instances of

anti-Ciceronian: indeed, he was if anything even more rabid than Lando.84

Firpo, Luigi. Ricerche campanelliane. di Filalete cittadino di Utopia. Venice,

You might also like