Christian-Muslim Relations

A Bibliographical History
Volume 6. Western Europe (1500-1600)

Edited by
David Thomas and John Chesworth
with John Azumah, Stanisław Grodź,
Andrew Newman, Douglas Pratt

LEIDEN • BOSTON
2014

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 CONTENTS

Foreword  ....................................................................................................... vii

Abbreviations  ............................................................................................... xi

Martha Frederiks, Introduction: Christians, Muslims and empires

in the 16th century  .................................................................................... 1

Nabil Matar, The Qur’an in English writings, 1543-1697  ......................... 11

Thomas E. Burman, European Qur’an translations, 1500-1700  ............ 25

Works on Christian-Muslim relations 1500-1600  ................................ 39

Spain  ............................................................................................................... 41

Portugal  .......................................................................................................... 295

Italy and Malta  ............................................................................................. 395

France and Northern Europe  ................................................................... 603

Index of Names  ............................................................................................ 867

Index of Titles  ............................................................................................... 880

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 Giovanni Battista Castrodardo
Date of Birth About 1517
Place of Birth Belluno, Italy
Date of Death Between October 1587 and February 1588
Place of Death Belluno, Italy

Biography
Giovanni Battista Castrodardo was born in Belluno in about 1517. His
family was from Castel d’Ardo, a small village on the River Piave, in
the diocese of Ceneda. His father, Alberto, studied law in Padua to be
a notarius (‘attorney’), a profession that Castrodardo’s family members
continued to follow until the beginning of the 19th century. His mother,
Caterina Marenio Aleandro, was the daughter of Cristoforo Marenio
(from Mareno di Piave) and Chiara Aleandro, the sister of the humanist
Pietro Marenio Aleandro and second cousin of Cardinal Girolamo Ale-
andro. Alberto Castrodardo and Caterina had three children: Aleandro,
Giovanni Battista and Andrea.
By 1534, Castrodardo, still a young man, was canon of San Martino
Cathedral. On 20 October 1539, he was ordained priest by Filippo Donato,
suffragan of the bishop of Belluno, Gasparo Contarini. Castrodardo con-
tinued to live in Belluno until about 1543, when he moved to Padua to
study law. Here he was influenced by the intellectual legacy of Pietro Pom-
ponazzi as well as by the Academy of the ‘Infiammati’ lead by Sperone
Speroni and Alessandro Piccolomini. He lived between Padua and Ven-
ice until 1548, visiting the court of Pope Paul III in Rome, and working in
Venice, and he started his career as translator of historical works and edi-
tor for the printer Michele Tramezino and the publisher and bookseller
Andrea Arrivabene. Giorgio Piloni, a late 16th-century historian from Bel-
luno, who knew Giovanni Battista personally, defined him as ‘a man who
studied law and literature for a long time’ (Historia della città di Belluno,
fol. 143v).
Castrodardo’s very short and ambitious career as a scholar is concen-
trated between 1543 and 1548. In 1544, he worked for Michele Tramezino
and translated a historical work in Latin by Niccolò Leonico Tomeo,
Devaria historia libri III, into Italian as Li tre libri di Niccolò Leonico de
varie historie. Castrodardo’s second work was a commentary on Dante’s

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 giovanni battista castrodardo 507

Divine comedy, which he wrote between 1544 and 1547; this is now unfor-
tunately lost. His third work was the Alcorano di Macometto (Venice,
1547), the first printed translation of the Qur’an in a European vernacular
language. It was published anonymously by Andrea Arrivabene, though
the translation is certainly to be attributed to Castrodardo, as was dem-
onstrated in 2008 (Tommasino, ‘Giovanni Battista Castrodardo bellunese
traduttore’). Arrivabene dedicated the book to Gabriel de Luetz, baron of
Aramon, the fourth French ambassador to the Ottoman Empire (1547-53).
He was charged by Francis I with negotiating an alliance between France
and the Ottomans and with persuading Süleyman the Magnificent to
launch a military campaign against the forces of the Holy Roman Empire
in Hungary. The dedicatory letter is extremely important, because, in the
middle of the Schmalkaldic war (1546-7), the French diplomat embodied
the last anti-imperial and religious hopes of Italian heterodox groups.
Castrodardo’s last work is a chronicle of the bishops of Belluno, which
he wrote after returning to his home town in 1548. This work, frequently
quoted by Giorgio Piloni, was considered lost, but a fragment of it was
recently located in the Saxon State-Regional and University Library of
Dresden. In this text, Castrodardo shows his strong antiquarian scholar-
ship and his cultural withdrawal into local and ecclesiastical history after
his return to Belluno.
Castrodardo abruptly interrupted his literary career in 1548 for no
apparent reason. Once he returned to Belluno, he seems to have lived
for 40 years without revealing his Venetian connections or his works as
a translator, especially the translation of the Qur’an, which was finally
proscribed by the Index Tridentinus in 1564. Although he had been the
canonicus antiquior for more than 40 years, he never became dean of
San Martino Chapter, and he died in Belluno between October 1587 and
February 1588.

MAIN SOURCES OF INFORMATION

Primary
Archival sources
Belluno, Archivio Capitolare della Cattedrale – 14, Massaria capitolare, 1451-1572,
fols 27v, 46r, 54v, 62v, 69r (presence of Castrodardo in Belluno)
Vittorio Veneto, Archivio Diocesano, Archivio Vecchio – Referato VI, rubrica VI,
busta II, fasc. VII, pos. 14 (busta 119), fols 1v-2r; fasc. X, pos. 10 (busta 98)
(Pietro Aleandro’s will)

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 508 giovanni battista castrodardo

Manuscripts
MS Dresden, Sächsischen Landesbibliothek Staats-und Universitätsbibliothek di
Dresden (SLUB) – F65a, fols 88-96 (fragment of Castrodardo’s chronicle
of the bishops of Belluno)
MS Vat – Ottoboni 2419, fols 626v-628r (Aleandro’s family tree)
MS Venice, Biblioteca Marciana – It. X, 73 (7097), fol. 198r (information about
Castrodardo’s commentary on Dante’s Divine Comedy)
Printed works
N. Leonico Tomeo, Li tre libri di Nicolo Leonico de varie historie, nuovamente tra-
dotti in buona lingua volgare, Venice: [Michele Tramezino], 1544
G. Piloni, Historia della città di Belluno, Venice, 1607 (repr. Bologna, 2002),
fols 39r, 142v-143v, 180v, 517-518
Secondary
P.M. Tommasino, L’Alcorano di Macometto. Storia di un libro del Cinquecento
europeo, Bologna, 2013, pp. 129-59
P.M. Tommasino, ‘Piccolo prologo a Giovanni Battista Castrodardo (1517c.-
1588c.) e al suo Alcorano di Macometto’, Archivio Storico di Belluno Feltre
e Cadore 84, 351 ( January-April 2013) 37-60
P.M. Tommasino, ‘Frammenti ritrovati di Giovanni Battista Castrodardo (c. 1517-
c. 1588) storico dei vescovi di Belluno’, Studi Veneziani 65 (2012) 87-132
P.M. Tommasino, ‘Giovanni Battista Castrodardo bellunese traduttore
dell’Alcorano di Macometto’, Oriente Moderno 48:1 (2008) 15-40
N. Zemon Davis, Trickster travels. A sixteenth-century Muslim between worlds,
New York, 2006, p. 305 n. 71
A. Da Rif, Capitolo e Canonici della Chiesa Cattedrale di Belluno (853-2003), Bel-
luno, 2003, p. 116
G. Tomasi, La Diocesi di Ceneda. Chiese e uomini dalle origini al 1586, Vittorio
Veneto, 1998, i, pp. 139-40; ii, p. 147

Works on Christian-Muslim Relations

L’Alcorano di Macometto, ‘The Qur’an of
Muḥammad’
Date 1547
Original Language Italian
Description
The Alcorano di Macometto (in full L’Alcorano di Macometto. Nel qual si
contiene la dottrina, la vita, i costumi, et le leggi sue. Tradotto nuovamente
dall’Arabo in lingua Italiana) was published by Andrea Arrivabene in
Venice in 1547. Arrivabene dedicated the book to Gabriel de Luetz, baron

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 giovanni battista castrodardo 509

of Aramon, the fourth French ambassador to the Ottoman Empire (1547-

53). Both the ambassador and the publisher were closely linked with
Venetian evangelical circles and Italian reformers, who regarded Sultan
Süleyman and France as allies during the Schmalkaldic war (1546-47). In
spite of the fact that a promotional frontispiece claims that the work was
newly translated from Arabic into the vernacular, it was actually trans-
lated from Robert of Ketton’s Latin translation, published by Theodor
Buchmann, known as Bibliander, and Johann Oporinus, in Basel in 1543.
Nevertheless, the Alcorano is not merely a summarised and inaccurate
translation of the medieval Latin Qur’an, neither is it an anti-Islamic
polemic or a systematic textual refutation of contradictions in the Qur’an.
It is a handy and useful historical companion to Islam more accessible to
a large readership than Bibliander’s Latin encyclopedia, which appeared
in folio. Arrivabene wanted to present a new guide to Islam written in
more comprehensible language and printed in a smaller and cheaper for-
mat (quarto). He wished to publish a volume aimed at furnishing Italian
and Italophone readership – especially political and religious refugees in
Istanbul, who were linked with the French embassies in both Venice and
Istanbul – with information about Islamic history and about Islam as the
dominant religion of the Ottoman Empire.
Three different versions of the same text were published by Arriv-
abene. The third and definitive version, dated 1547 but probably pub-
lished a little after, consists of three books (100 folios) prefaced by a long
introduction (50 folios), which is preceded by three preliminary texts: a
dedicatory letter signed by Andrea Arrivabene, an anonymous dedica-
tory sonnet written by the poet Paolo Crivelli, who was a member of
Aramon’s delegation, and an anonymous letter to readers, which should
be attributed to Giovanni Battista Castrodardo (six folios). The structure
of the text is therefore very simple and clear. The introduction is based on
contemporary turcica, polemical Morisco works and Venetian historio-
graphy; the first book is based on biographies of the Prophet Muḥammad
and on historical tracts about early Islam collected in the Corpus Islamo-
latinum; the second and third books contain the Italian translation of the
Qur’an, based on the medieval Latin translation by Robert of Ketton.
Although the Alcorano contains a considerable number of polemical
marginalia, necessary to avoid Venetian censorship, its originality relies
on the anti-Imperial and pro-Ottoman political propaganda in the text,
especially in the introduction, as well as on Giovanni Battista Castro-
dardo’s personal and very literal use of contemporary European sources

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 510 giovanni battista castrodardo

on Islam, such as the polemical work attributed to Juan Andrés and the
humanist Venetian histories of Bernardo Giustinian.
Significance
The Alcorano di Macometto reflects the diplomatic context in which
it was published: a military alliance between France and the Ottoman
Empire. It is not a polemical text, but an encyclopedia of Islam that could
have been used ‘in war time as well as in peace time’, as the publisher
stresses in the dedicatory letter. Moreover, it contains a printed transla-
tion of the Qur’an into a language easily accessible to both European
and Mediterranean audiences between 1547 and 1647. Thus, it was widely
diffused through Europe and the Mediterranean and probably beyond.
General readers, such as the prophet Scolio from Lucca and the miller
Menocchio, studied by Carlo Ginzburg, owned a copy of this Islamic
handbook. It is highly probable that it was here that Menocchio found
the story of Abraham destroying the idols (Q 21) that he used as an argu-
ment to attack Catholic worship of saints. Moreover, European diplo-
mats and travellers, Italian Reformers and Venetian book-sellers spread
the Alcorano in Europe as a product of Italian Renaissance culture.
It is remarkable that its first readers in Britain were translators of Ital-
ian literature, such as William Thomas, Thomas Hoby (the translator of
the Cortegiano), Henry Parker (the translator of Petrarch’s Trionfi) and
the exiled Italian Giacomo Castelvetro. In 17th-century England, both John
Selden and Robert Ashley owned copies of it. Among French scholars, it
was read by at least Guillaume Postel, Joseph Juste Scaliger, Antoine de
Laval and Montesquieu, who owned a copy and probably used it for his
Persian letters. Furthermore, around 1630 the French renegade Thomas/
Osman d’Arcos wrote from Tunis to Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Pereisc to
ask for a copy of ‘the Latin, or of the Italian Koran’. In addition, at least
two manuscript copies were taken from the printed text. So far, only one
of these is known, kept in the Bancroft Library, Berkeley. A second, made
in Russia in the 18th century, was sold in London in 1899. During the
17th century, Castrodardo’s Alcorano was the basis for the German trans-
lation by Salomon Schweigger (1616), from which was taken a translation
into Dutch (1641). Between the late 16th and 17th centuries, it was also
translated into Hebrew and Spanish among Amsterdam’s Sephardic Jews.
Manuscripts
MS Berkeley CA, University of California, The Bancroft Library – UCB
7 (17th century; MS version taken from the printed text)

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 giovanni battista castrodardo 511

MS Amsterdam, Ets Haim Bibliotheek – HS.EH.48.D.20 (17th century;

Spanish trans.)
Editions & Translations
L’ALCORANO | DI MACOMETTO. | LA VITA, LA DOT- | TRINA,
I COSTVMI | ET LE SVE LEGGI | Nuouamente dal Arabo | tradotto
in uolgare. | Con Gratie, e Priuilegi | M D XLVII | [4], xxxviii, 100;
4° | +4 a-i4 k2 A-2B4 (first version)
L’ALCORANO | DI MACOMETTO, | NEL QVAL SI CONTIE | NE LA
DOTTRINA, | LA VITA, I CO= | STVMI, ET LE | LEGGI SVE. | Tradotto
nuouamente dall’Arabo | in lingua Italiana. Con Gratie, e Priuilegii.
| M D XLVII | [5], xxxviii, 100 | πA4πB1 a-i4 k2 A-2B4 (second version)
L’ALCORANO | DI MACOMETTO, | NEL QVAL SI CONTIE | NE LA
DOTTRINA, | LA VITA, I CO= | STVMI, ET LE | LEGGI SVE. | Tradotto
nuouamente dall’Arabo | in lingua Italiana. Con Gratie, e Priuilegii.
| M D XLVII | [5], l, 100 | πA4πB1 a-i4 k2 l-n4 A-2B4 (third version)
Alcoranus Mahometicus. Das is Der Türcken Alcoran Religion und Aber-
glauben [Nürnberg: Ludovicum Lochner, 1616] (German trans.)
De Arabische Alkoran, door de Zarazijnsche en de Turcksche proph-
ete Mahometh, Hamburgh: for Barent Adriaensz, Berentsma, 1641
(Dutch trans.)
studies
Tommasino, L’Alcorano di Macometto
A. Shalem (ed.), Constructing the image of Muhammad in Europe,
Berlin, 2013
E.M. Dal Pozzolo, M.P. Pedani and R. Dorigo (eds), Venezia e l’Egitto,
Milan, 2011
H. Bobzin and A. den Hollander (eds), Early printed Korans. The dis-
semination of the Koran in the West, Leiden, 2004
G. Vercellin, Venezia e l’origine della stampa in caratteri arabi, Padua,
2001
H. Bobzin, Der Koran im Zeitalter der Reformation. Studien zur Frühge-
schichte der Arabistik und Islamkunde in Europa, Beirut, 1995
H. Lazarus-Yafeh, ‘A seventeenth-century Hebrew translation of the
Qurʾān’, Scripta Mediterranea 19-20 (1998-99) 199-211
C. De Frede, La prima traduzione italiana del Corano sullo sfondo dei
rapporti tra Cristianità e Islam nel Cinquicento, Naples, 1976
C. De Frede, La prima traduzione italiana del Corano sullo sfondo dei
rapporti tra Cristianità e Islam nel Cinquicento, Naples, 1967

Pier Mattia Tommasino

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