Scalamonti, Francesco.   _Vita Viri Clarissimi Et
Famosissimi Kyriaci Anconitani_.  Ed.  and trans. Charles
Mitchell and Edward W. Bodnar, S.J. (Philadelphia: American
Philosophical  Society, 1996). 246 pp.
Reviewed by Carolyn Coulson-Grigsby, cec94002@uconnvm.uconn.edu,
University of Connecticut

     The _Vita Viri Clarissimi et Famosissimi Kyriaci Anconitani_
is a fascinating text about the life of Ciriaco di Filippo de'
Pizzicolli, an Anconian merchant who lived from about 1391 to
around 1457.  Ciriaco should be an interesting figure for a
variety of scholars, including religious, economic, political,
and cultural historians, archaeologists, scholars of humanism,
and those interested in travel literature.  Ciriaco was not a
mystic, but his papal connections and political influence do
place him in the middle of fifteenth-century church history.  As
an import and export merchant in the eastern Mediterranean and
the Levant, Ciriaco had social and political access to the Turks,
Christendom's greatest threat. His role as trusted political
informant and friend to Pope Eugenius IV forces us to consider
seriously his fight to unify the Eastern and Western Churches. 
During his extensive travels, Ciriaco satisfied his profound
interest in the pagan classical past by visiting hundreds of
archaeological sites and recording the Greek and Roman
antiquities he saw, with a special emphasis on inscriptions.  He
kept travel journals, some of which survive and some of which
were copied by his friends and disciples.  He was also the
subject of numerous admiring letters exchanged by
fifteenth-century humanists and so is important to the history of
Italian humanism.
     Ciriaco had a long relationship with the man who was to
become Pope Eugenius IV.  Before becoming Pope, Gabriele
Condulmer was Cardinal of Siena, legate of Pope Martin V, and
rector of the province of Piceno in Ciriaco's native Ancona.
There, in 1421 Ciriaco became an accounting officer in
Condulmer's campaign to repair the port and organize its
finances.  When Condulmer left the post after two years, Ciriaco
resigned his position so that he could travel.  In 1424, Ciriaco
renewed his relationship with the future pope when he spent forty
days as the Cardinal's houseguest in Rome.  When Condulmer was
elected to the papacy in 1431, Ciriaco canceled travel plans in
order to dispatch letters to friends in high places expressing
his pleasure and support for the new pope.  At this time Ciriaco
put his plan to unite the Roman and Greek Churches and crusade
against the Turks into high gear.
     A number of texts seem to swirl around Ciriaco, several of
which are included in Mitchell and Bodnar's book.  Their primary
text, and the one from which the book gets its title, was
compiled by Francesco Scalamonti, a life-long friend of Ciriaco.
The _Vita_ was previously published with some omissions and
emendations in 1792 by Giuseppe Colucci. Colucci worked from a
copy of the manuscript, made under the direction of Girolamo
Tiraboschi who owned the manuscript in 1774/5.  The current
editors provide a detailed explanation of the ways in which the
various copies made under Tiraboschi's direction are incomplete
and modified from the original manuscript, which Mitchell and
Bodnar have returned to in this new version of the text.  Besides
re-editing Scalamonti's text from the original manuscript,
Mitchell and Bodnar provide a translation and commentary on the
text. Their introduction provides codicological and scribal
information on the manuscript, and a discussion of the rather
complicated authorship and origin of the project to put together
a biography of Ciriaco.
     I must here try to explain the genesis of the biography as
succinctly as possible, because it is precisely the complicated
nature of the _Vita_'s development which makes it especially
interesting.  During Ciriaco's lifetime, a Venetian humanist
named Lauro Quirini wanted to write Ciriaco's biography, but
needed details of his subject's life.  He wrote to Ciriaco asking
for this biographical information, but Ciriaco never responded. 
Instead, Ciriaco's long-time friend Scalamonti provided the
desired information, including much material actually written by
Ciriaco himself.  The text of the _Vita_ was therefore intended
as material to be used in the writing of a biography, rather than
a formal biography itself.  
     The circumstances in which the extant manuscript, was
produced add to the complex nature of the text's "authorship".
Sometime between 1464 and 1479, Samuele da Tradate, a
Milanese-born courtier in Mantua and a fan of Ciriaco, asked
Felice Feliciano, an antiquary, follower of Ciriaco, and
accomplished scribe, to copy a collection of Ciriacan materials,
including the _Vita_.  Also included in the manuscript in
Felice's hand are Scalamonti's preface to the _Vita_, in which he
explains to Quirini the origins of the biographical material he
is sending; a miscellany of Ciriaco's writings, including
journals, letters, poems, inscriptions; and drawings of a giraffe
and an elephant which he saw in Egypt, all copied by Felice. 
This collection is then followed by a letter written to Felice
from another lover of antiquities, where the author praises
vividly Ciriaco's endeavors and the work of Felice, and then adds
some inscriptions he copied in Torcello and Murano.  The
manuscript concludes with Felice's account of a trip he took with
Samuele da Tradate and Andrea Mantegna, plus a few more
inscriptions for good measure.
     Scalamonti, Quirini, Felice, and Samuele da Tradate were all
avid fans of Ciriaco and felt that the preservation of his work
and memory were tremendously important.  The emotional
involvement these "preservers" have with their subject might
cause some scholars to question the reliability or "truth" of the
extant texts. The fact that Scalamonti had been friends with
Ciriaco most of their lives raises questions about the
"objectivity" of the text  (if any text can be objective).
Mitchell and Bodnar do not seem concerned about the apparent
conflict of interest, claiming that "Failing Ciriaco himself,
Lauro Quirini could hardly have found a better informant to give
him reliable materials for his proposed biography" (7). This
statement seems to be based on Scalamonti's noble heritage, his
successful career as a diplomat, and his relationship with
Ciriaco. Scalamonti's love and reverence for Ciriaco is not seen
as a hindrance to the reliability of his materials. The editors
also find Quirini to be qualified to write Ciriaco's biography, 
because he admired his subject, came from an ancient patrician
Venetian family, earned a doctorate in Arts and lectured on
Aristotle's Ethics. 
     The editors discuss in a fair amount of detail the Vita's
sources in Ciriaco's own writings, especially the Itinerarium,
which was actually a letter from Ciriaco to Pope Eugenius IV
asking for support in his attempt to obtain a diplomatic
assignment to the King of Ethiopia.  Ciriaco explains that such
an assignment can fulfill his multiple desires:  to unite the
Eastern and Western Churches, to further explore Egypt, the upper
Nile and the North African coast, and to demonstrate and enhance
his politically-strategic connections.  The convergence of
Ciriaco's interests in this one endeavor is emblematic of his
life.  

Text and apparatus:

     The text of the _Vita_ is presented twice, first in Latin
and then in English.  The editors have punctuated the Latin text,
expanded most abbreviations, and divided the prose into
paragraphs. The paragraphs are numbered in both Latin and
English, so cross-referencing is fairly easy.  Mitchell and
Bodnar have made relatively few corrections to the Latin,
primarily for spelling or grammar, and the manuscript readings
are provided in footnotes.  Notes to the translation follow the
text in the form of endnotes.
     The Latin text includes many Italian sonnets either written
to or by Ciriaco.  In the translated text these are rendered in
English poetic form by Nelia Saxby with emendations and
punctuation by Cecil Grayson.  The many inscriptions recorded in
the _Vita_ are included in the Latin text without any emendations
by the editors.  Each inscription is followed by its reference
number in either the nineteenth-century _Corpus Inscriptionum
Latinarum_ (in most cases), the _Inscriptiones Graecae_, or
Bernard Ashmole's studies of Ciriaco, completed in the 1950s. 
The English version of the _Vita_ does not include any attempt to
translate the inscriptions; instead the _CIL_ reference numbers
are again given in place of the inscriptions.  Drawings in the
manuscript are indicated but not reproduced.

Appendices & Indices:

     Most of the appendices are letters written either to or by
Ciriaco.  The first one seems to be the most important, since it
is the only one for which the editors provide a translation or
explanation.  Ciriaco's earliest known work, it is a letter in
which he defends his interest in pagan authors and uses the
literary form of a dream debate. He explicitly refers to Dante
and implicitly refers to Virgil and Ovid.  This work is dated to
1423, during his time as financial officer to Cardinal Condulmer.
The Latin text is footnoted and followed by a translation.  Three
more appendices present letters; one letter is written by
Ciriaco, and the others are written to or about him. These texts
are not translated, and one of them includes a fair amount of
Greek.  
     The fifth appendix presents the passages from Ciriaco's
_Itinerarium_ which correspond with Scalamonti's _Vita_. The last
appendix features the Latin text of headings Ciriaco wrote to
accompany drawings he made of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. 
The original drawings have been lost, although two exist in
copies. This information is not provided clearly; I had to go
through three stages of cross-referencing to understand where
these headings came from.  In this appendix, Mitchell and Bodnar
have chosen to translate the Latin headings in endnotes, rather
than in a separate section.
     The appendices are followed by a bibliography of about 240
primary and secondary sources.  This list is followed by a  short
list of papers delivered at two recent conferences, one on
Ciriaco and the other on Felice Feliciano, the scribe of the
_Vita_. 
     Finally, the editors provide four Indices:  Mythological,
Ancient and Early Medieval Personal Names, Late Medieval and
Renaissance Personal Names, Geographical Names and Locations, and
Ancient, Medieval, and Renaissance Monuments and Artifacts. 
These indices and their categories reinforce the manifold nature
of both Ciriaco interests and the texts by and about him.  His
interest in the antique and pagan past, his connections to the
politically and religiously important people of his day, his
travels as a merchant and his interest in other lands all add up
to make Ciriaco a fascinating figure, who generated a collection
of equally interesting and complex texts.

     Overall, Mitchell and Bodnar's book serves as a useful
source of Ciriacan materials.  Although the complex
interrelationships between subject, author, scribe, patron, and
text are not explored by the editors, their collection is a
valuable starting point for inquiries into this multi-layered
network.  The worlds of literature, archaeology, economic history
and religious history all converge in this group of texts which
all share Ciriaco as a subject. The _Vita Viri Clarissimi et
Famosissimi Kyriaci Anconitani_ not only a site where different
disciplines meet; it is also a site which demands a study of the
roles played by its many "authors".