Page 4-B
Coluccio: Dust Was His Destiny
By MARTHA ADAMS
Sometimes history buries its
major actors in the shuffle of
years.
Just because his poetry and
prose style weren’t up to scratch,
a man whose influence shaped
the course of the modern world
may be forgotten while others,
who wielded more lucid pens, are
remembered in his place.
Such a man was Coluccio Sa
lutati, the chancellor of Flor
ence, Italy, from 1375 to 1406.
Who doesn’t remember the im
portance of his contemporaries,
Petrarch, the love-sick poet, and
Boccaccio, the bawdy tale-teller?
But poor Coluccio’s name is hid
den away in dusty volumes that
no one but the serious scholar
takes off the library shelf.
. Yet this man did as much, if
not more, than his friends whose
names have come down to us
on ae laurels of their literature,
to shake the mediaeval world and
push it into the Rennaissance,
the birthplace of our modern
western civilization.
Coluccio was a cornerstone of
the modern world, but a corner
stone long covered with ivy and
hidden from the view of his de
scendants and heirs.
The task of clearing off the
ivy and laying bare the man and
historical figure has fallen to the
internationally-known UNC class
icist, Kenan Professor Emeritus
Berthold L. Ullman. Dr. Ull
man’s work, “The Humanism of
Coluccio Salutati” has just been
published in Padua, Italy, in
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Ullman Rescues Him From Obscurity
celebration of the UNC profes
sor’s 80th birthday.
The book is the product of 30
years’ study and research car
ried out in libraries in all parts
of Italy and Europe.
It is considered a milestone in
the study of the early Renais
sance by his colleagues.
Coluccio was one of earliest
“humanists”, those men who
refused to accept the medieval
view of man and the world cen
tered entirely on the cultivation
of the Christian soul and the
Afterlife. Man and his works
must also have a value of their
own, proclaimed the humanists
in simple terms, and it is right
to study and enjoy them.
The humanists went about
breaking with the Middle Ages
and entering the modern world
in a strange way. They focused
their attention on even more an
cient times, rediscovering and
glorifying the cultures of Rome
and Greece. The Classics, to
quote Dr. Ullman, were a “door”
which “opened up the future
through the past.” The early
humanists found in the Greek
and Latin masterpieces the ideas
they desired to transform so
ciety.
Most of the masterpieces of
poetry, philosophy, and history
had been forgotten, lost, or de
formed during the Dark and
Middle Ages. The Greek works
were largely inaccessible be
cause of the scant knowledge of
the language in the West.
The Ancients were also regard
ed with suspicion by the Catholic
Middle Ages because they were
pagans with dangerous end im
moral theories about the joys
of life, joys in which they per
mitted the gods of their myths
to share.
Coluccio was born in 1331 and
was a quiet, modest man. He
was trained as a notary and
practiced in the small towns
around Florence until, in 1375,
he was named Chancellor,
office he developed into a sort
of foreign ministry.
His love .for the classics began
at an early age, and by the
time he was twenty, he had al
ready started collecting a li
brary. When he died half a cen
tury later, this library had
grown to 800 volumes, mam
moth proportions for an era in
which all books had to be labor
iously copied by hand.
Upon his death, his iibrary
passed into the hands of the
Medicis, who used it as a core
for the first public lfcrary in
the modern world. Such a li
brary had for many years been
a dream of Coluccio, who lent
his books freely to everyone.
He was an avid letter writer,
defending his beloved classics
against all comers and propagan
dizing them throughout Italy.
Around him developed a group
of young students and followers
who would become the core of
the Florentine Renaissance as
it blossomed in the 15th Cen
tury.
Through his influence on the
UNO’s Dr. Berthold L. Ullman
young, Cohiccio Salutati was one
of the most important factors in
establishing Florence as the
center of the Italian Renais
sance and a Mecca lor western
culture.
He was responsible for bring
ing the first permanent teach
er of Greek in Italy to the Uni
versity of Florence. Although
his own efforts at learning the
difficult tongue ended in failure,
his disciples thrived on it and
set about translating Homer,
Plato, Plutarch, and Ptolemy.
Their resurrection of Plato
provided the basis for the de
velopment of Renaissance phi
losophy. Ptolemy gave a boost
to the study of geography and the
explorations of the 15th and 16th
Century.
Coluccio was also a scholar
and took the first steps towards
the modern techniques of his
torical, textual, and philological
criticism. Careless scribes
through the ages had filled man
uscripts of the great works of
the past with errors and misin
terpretations.
"These manuscripts are not
copies but imitations,” wrote
Coluccio to a friend. “They are
no more like the original than a
statue is like a man, worse in
Okay For Garden ,
Terrible For Cow
By M. E. GARDNER
I have just read in a national
magazine under the caption 1
“Plant These More Often" an
article about Dutchman’s Breech
es-Dicentra cucularia.
Searching back into my me
mory I seemed to associate the
plant, Dutchman’s Breeches,
with an outbreak of “blind stag
gers” among livestock in south
west Virginia. This was a good
number of years ago.
Having aroused my curiosity,
I consulted Dr. Hardin’s bulle
tin “Poisonous Plants of North
Carolina” and confirmed by
suspicion. I also checked with
a member of the staff in Veter
inary Science.
Dutchman’s Breeches contains
several alkaloids which poison
cattle when eaten. This plant
is found in the deep woods and
cliffs in most of our mountain
counties and, locally, in a small
area of the Piedmont.
It does make a good garden
plant, however, if placed in a
shaded spot between rocks and
in good soil. The name comes
from the small divided blossoms
which resemble a pair of minia
ture Dutchman’s Breeches. The
plant flowers from April through
May producing four to eight
cream or creamy-pink blossoms
on slender stems 6 to 12 inches
high.
While we are on the subject
of poisons, 1 have wanted you
so many times about the proper
use of insecticides that I had al
most promised myself not to
raise the subject again. How
ever, disturbing news again
comes, byway of the newspap-
I ers, of the death of a litUe two
year-old and the illness of many
others in the same county, caus
ed by parathion poisoning.
This will probably not happen
again in this community but the
sacrifice of the little one is too
high a price to pay for adult ig
norance and carelessness.
We inspect privies, septic
I tanks, garbage cans, slaughter
I houses and kitchens. Are garbage
I cans and cockroaches more im-
I portant than human lives. Why
I not include the tobacco barn,
I the machinery shed or wherever
'I pesticides are stared u our io>
TBECHAFEL HUX WMLT
fact, for statues do not speak
but these inaccurate copies speak
falsely.”
These and other techniques of
modern scholarship he passed on
to his followers. ■ •
In his daily job as chancellor
of Florence, he initiated the in
timate connection between litera
ture and politics which the later
Rennaissance developed to per
fection. His diplomatic letters
ip the style of Cicero were the
consternation of Florence's ene
mies.
The ruler of Milan is report
ed to have said that he feared
a letter from Coluccio more than
1,000 Florentine horsemen.
A century later the position
he had created was occupied by
none other than Mechiavelli.
Coluccio was not a man of
all one color, as Dr. Ullman’s
work clearly demonstrates.
Indeed, he is a prime exam
ple of a “cultural” split-person
ality, a man of transition. Despite
his humanism, the Middle Ages
still clung to him, nor did he al
ways try to diake them off. He
was capable of urging a student
to read pagan poetry and at the
same time writing a sincere
eulogy of monastery life which
would have warmed the heart of
spection? Require safe storage
and use of pesticides by legisla
tion. if necessary, because we
‘ will be using these materials
as long as we produce food and
fiber.
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1 any mediaevalist. While criti
cizing rigid Church scholastic
philosophy, he continued in his
own works to make abundant
use of allegory, a thoroughly
mediaeval device. He remained
a deeply religious man.
As a pioneer in a new human
istic age, he found little con
flict in his two worlds, however.
One merely embellished the oth
er. The men who followed him
were not so lucky, and one won
ders if Salutati might have suf
fered had he lived 50 or a hun
dred years later.
Aside from his study of Coluc
cio’s life and influence, Dr. Ull
man has also attempted a “re
construction” of Coluccio’s li
brary to discover the sources on
which this pioneer humanist
nourished himself.
The reconstruction consists of
locating books once owned by
Salutati in the many libraries
where they are now scattered. It
is pure "detective work” or
“fishing", according to Dr. Ull
man.
Coluccio was good enough to
put his name in some of his
volumes. In others he wrote dis
tinctive “call-numbers” on the
fly leaf or notes in the margin.
Where these marks have been
erased they can sometimes be
discovered with ultra-violet
lights.
Dr. Ullman has succeeded in
locating 111 manuscripts which
belonged to Salutati and shed
light on his background. Some
were discovered by pure chance,
others after painstaking research
and calculation. The manuscripts
are listed and commented on in
the present book on Salutati.
Dr. Ulknan, who has been at
the University since 1914, is one
of the most highly respected and
honored classicists in the Unit
ed States.
He was president of the Medi
aeval Academy of America and
a member of the committee on
prizes of the International Bal
zan Foundation, patterned after
the Nobel Foundation. He holds
an honorary degree from the
University of Padua, Italy.
In 1959, be was made a mem
ber of the Academy of Arcadia,
an Italian literary society found
ed in the 17th Century, and in
accordance with the Academy’s
tradition given the name “Nico
cles of Abdera.”
He served for many years as
chairman of the UNC Depart
ment of Classics.
Dr. Ullman has also served
as president of the American
Philological Association, the
Classical Association of the Mid
dle West and South; the Ameri
can Classical League; the Arch
aeological Institute of America,
the Chicago Society; as delegate
to the American Council of
Learned Studies; to the Interna
tional Federation of Classical
Studies; to the Union Aca
demique Internationale. He is
a member of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Ijpi' H” j 1 i i w i , l j | f l l. Juimßl
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