Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T05:03:14.630Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The ‘Opicius’ Poems (British Library, Cotton Vespasian B.iv) and the Humanist Anti-Literature in Early Tudor England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

David R. Carlson
David R. Carlson*
Affiliation:
University of Ottawa
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Following the format of a catalogue manuscript description, this study analyses the design and contents of a manuscript presented to king Henry VII of England about 1492-93. Featuring an epic account of the 1492 English invasion of France and a pastoral dialogue praising the domestic peace imposed by the Tudor regime, the five poems are the work of a little-known Italian writer “Johannes Opicius, “ in a stylishly written and decorated copy. Like other contemporary presentations, especially the works of the early Tudor laureate Bernard Andre”, the verse is as classicizing as the design is Italianate and humanist, innovative features for English literary culture. Like other cognate products, however, Opicius’ performance lacks properties usually associated with literature. The work was not for reading nor for recirculation, owing its inspiration solely to a wish to gratify the monarch. The presentation was chiefly a matter of performing the magnificence of the king.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 55 , Issue 3 , Autumn 2002 , pp. 869 - 903
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2002

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Manuscripts

LBL = London, British LibraryGoogle Scholar
Andé, Bernard. “Vita Henrici septimi.“ LBL, Cotton Domitian A.xviii.Google Scholar
Carmeliano, Pietro. “De vere.” LBL, Royal 12.A.xxix.Google Scholar
Carmeliano, Pietro. “Suasoria Laeticiae.” LBL, Addit. 33736.Google Scholar
More, Thomas, “In suscepti diadematis diem Henrici octavi. In subitum imbrem. Ad regem. De spectaculis equestribus. De utraque rosa in unum coalita.” LBL, Cotton Titus D.iv.Google Scholar
Opicius, Johannes. “De regis in Galliam progressu. De regis laudibus sub praetextu rosae purpureae. Mortalibus exhortatio ut Christi natalicuium concelebrant. Laus Deo pro seccessu foelici et bono statu Henrici. Ad regem libelli oblatio.” LBL, Cotton Vespasian.B.iv.Google Scholar
Opicius, Johannes. (attributed). “Psallite felices protecti culmine rose.” LBL, Royal ll.E.xi.Google Scholar
Traversagni, Lorenzo. “Triumphus amoris.“ London, Lambeth Palace, Ms. 450.Google Scholar

Printed Works

Anderson, Perry. 1974. Lineages of the Absolutist State. London.Google Scholar
Ammonio, Andrea. 1958. Andreae Ammonii Carmina Omnia. Ed. Clemente, Pizzi. (Nuova collezione di testi umanistici inediti o rari, 13.) Florence.Google Scholar
Anglo, Sydney. 1992. Images of Tudor Kingship. London.Google Scholar
Armstrong, C. A. J. 1960. “An Italian Astrologer at the Court of Henry VII.“ In Italian Renaissance Studies: A Tribute to the Late Cecilia M. Ady, ed. Jacob, E. F., 433-54. London.Google Scholar
Backhouse, Janet. 1987. “Founders of the Royal Library: Edward IV and Henry VII as Collectors of Illuminated Manuscripts.” In England in the Fifteenth Century (Proceedings of the 1986 Harlaxton Symposium), ed. Daniel, Williams, 23–41. Woodbridge.Google Scholar
Backhouse, Janet. 1993. “A Salute to the Tudor Rose.” In Miscellanea Martin Wittek: Album de codicologie et palhgraphie of fert d Martin Wittek, ed. Anny, Raman and Eugène, Manning, 1–14. Louvain.Google Scholar
Backhouse, Janet. 1995. “Illuminated Manuscripts Associated with Henry VII and Members of his Immediate Family.” In The Reign of Henry VII (Proceedings of the 1993 Harlaxton Symposium), ed. Benjamin, Thompson, 175-87. Stamford.Google Scholar
Bellamy, John. 1973. Crime and Public Order in England in the Later Middle Ages. London.Google Scholar
Binns, J. W. 1990. Intellectual Culture in Elizabethan and Jacobean England: The Latin Writings of the Age. (ARCA Classical and Medieval Texts, Papers and Monographs, 24.) Leeds.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1995. The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field. Trans. Susan, Emanuel. Stanford.Google Scholar
Brownlow, F. W., Jr. 1990. John Skelton: The Book of the Laurel. Newark, DE.Google Scholar
Carley, James P. 1997a. “The Royal Library as a Source for Sir Robert Cotton's Collections: A Preliminary List of Acquisitions.“ In Sir Robert Cotton as Collector: Essays on an Early Stuart Courtier and his Legacy, ed. Wright, C. J., 208-29. London.Google Scholar
Carley, James P. 1997b. “Marks in Books and the Libraries of Henry VIII.” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 91:583–606.Google Scholar
Carley, James P. 2000. The Libraries of King Henry VIII. (Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 7.) London.Google Scholar
Carlson, David R. 1987. “The Occasional Poetry of Pietro Carmeliano.” Aevum 61:495–502.Google Scholar
Carlson, David R. 1988. “Politicizing Tudor Court Literature: Gaguin's Embassy and Henry VII's Humanists’ Response.“ Studies in Philology 85:279–304.Google Scholar
Carlson, David R. 1991a. “Reputation and Duplicity: The Texts and Contexts of Thomas More's Epigram on Bernard André.” ELH58:261-81.Google Scholar
Carlson, David R. 1991b. “Royal Tutors in the Reign of Henry VII.” Sixteenth Century Journal 22:253-79.Google Scholar
Carlson, David R. 1993. English Humanist Books: Writers and Patrons, Manuscript and Print, 1475-1525. Toronto.Google Scholar
Carlson, David R. 1995. “Richard Pynson and Alexander Barclay: A Tudor Printer and his Writer.” Anglia 113:283–302.Google Scholar
Carlson, David R. 1998. “The Writings of Bernard Andrd (c. 1450-c. 1522).” Renaissance Studies 12:229-50.Google Scholar
Clough, Cecil H. 1978. “Baldassare Castiglione's Presentation Manuscript to King Henry VII.” Liverpool Classical Monthly 3:269-72.Google Scholar
Clough, Cecil H. 1981. “A Presentation Volume for Henry VIII: The Charlecote Park Copy of Erasmus’ Institutio Principis Christiani.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 44:199–202.Google Scholar
Currin, John M. 1996. “Henry VII and the Treaty of Redon (1489): Plantagenet Ambitions and Early Tudor Foreign Policy.” History 81:343-58.Google Scholar
Currin, John M. 1998. “Persuasions to Peace: The Luxembourg-Marigny-Gaguin Embassy and the State of Anglo-French Relations, 1489-90.” English Historical Review 113:882–904.Google Scholar
de la Mare, Albinia. 1980. “Humanistic Hands in England.” In Manuscripts at Oxford: An Exhibition in Memory of Richard William Hunt (1908-1979). ed. de la, Mare and Barker-Benfield, B. C., 93–101. Oxford.Google Scholar
See also Hunt, R.W.Google Scholar
Edwards, A. S. G. and Derek, Pearsall. 1989. “The Manuscripts of the Major English Poetic Texts.” In Book Production and Publishing in Britain 1375-1475. ed. Jeremy, Griffiths and Pearsall, , 257- 78. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Gairdner, James. 1858. Memorials of King Henry the Seventh. (Rerum Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores [Rolls Series],10.) London.Google Scholar
Green, Richard Firth. 1980. Poets andPrincepleasers: Literature and the English Court in the Late Middle Ages. Toronto.Google Scholar
Gutierrez, Nancy A. 1983. “John Skelton: Courtly Maker/ Popular Poet.” Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association 4:59–76.Google Scholar
Gwynne, Paul. 1992. “The Frontispiece to an Illuminated Panegyric of Henry VII: A Note on the Sources.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 55:266-70.Google Scholar
Hamilton, George L. 1909. “Theodulus: A Mediaeval Textbook.” Modern Philology 7:169-85.Google Scholar
Hunt, R. W. and Albina, de la, Mare. 1970. Duke Humfrey and English Humanism in the Fifteenth Century. Oxford.Google Scholar
Jenkins, A. D. Fraser. 1970. “Cosimo de' Medici's Patronage of Architecture and the Theory of Magnificence.“ Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 33:162-70.Google Scholar
Laus Pisonis. 1934. In Minor Latin Poets. Ed. Duff, J. Wight and Arnold, Duff, 287-315. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Modigliani, Anna. 1984. “Un nuovo manoscritto di Pietro Carmeliano: Le 'Epistole’ dello pseudo-Falaride nella Trinity College Library di Dublino.“ Humanistica Lovaniensia 33:86–102.Google Scholar
Montrose, Louis Adrian. 1980. “'Eliza, Queene of Shepheardes,’ and the Pastoral of Power.” English Literary Renaissance 10:153-82.Google Scholar
Morison, Stanley. 1943. “Early Humanistic Script and the First Roman Type.” The Library, 4th ser., 24:1–29.Google Scholar
Morison, Stanley. 1972. Politics and Script: Aspects of Authority and Freedom in the Development of Graeco-Latin Script from the Sixth Century B. C. to the Twentieth Century A. D., ed. and completed by Nicolas, Barker. Oxford.Google Scholar
Nelson, William. 1939. John Skelton Laureate. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Paparelli, Gioacchino. 1968. “II De curia- Hum miseriis.” In Enea Silvio Piccolomini Papa Pio II, ed. Domenico, Maffei, 213-19. Siena.Google Scholar
Paparelli, Gioacchino. 1977. “II De curialium miseriis di Enea Silvio Piccolomini e il Misaulus di Ulrich von Hutten.” Italica 24:125-33.Google Scholar
Plomer, H. R. 1913. “Bibliographical Notes from the Privy Purse Expenses of King Henry the Seventh.” The Library, 3rd ser., 4:291–305.Google Scholar
Rigg, A. G. 1997. “Anglo-Latin in the Ricardian Age.” In Essays on Ricardian Literature in Honour of J. A. Burrow. ed. Minnis, A. J., Charlotte C., Morse, and Thorlac, Turville-Petre, 121-41. Oxford.Google Scholar
Riley, Henry Thomas, ed., 1870. Annales Monasterii S. Albani. (Rerum Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores [Rolls Series], 28.) London.Google Scholar
Robbins, Rossell Hope. 1954. “A Song for Victory in France (1492).” NeuphilologischeMitteilungen 55:289-93.Google Scholar
Rundle, David. 1995. “A New Golden Age? More, Skelton and the Accession Verses of 1509.” Renaissance Studies 9:58–76.Google Scholar
Ruysschaert, José. 1953. “Lorenzo Guglielmo Traversagni de Savone (1425-1503): Un humaniste franciscain oublié.” Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 46:195–210.Google Scholar
Saul, Nigel. 1997. Richard II. New Haven.Google Scholar
Sutton, Anne F. and Livia, Visser-Fuchs. 1996. “Pietro Carmeliano's Early Publications.“ The Ricardian 10:346-86.Google Scholar
Tite, Colin G. C. 1994. The Manuscript Library of Sir Robert Cotton. (The Panizzi Lectures 1993.) London.Google Scholar
Tournoy, Gilbert. 1978. “Two Poems Written by Erasmus for Bernard AndreV' Humanistica Lovaniensia 27:45–51.Google Scholar
Tournoy, Gilbert. 1989. “Delia Rena, Andrea.” In Dizionario biografico degli Italiani. 37:236-41. Rome.Google Scholar
Trapp, J. B. 1991. Erasmus, Colet and More: The Early Tudor Humanists and their Books. (The Panizzi Lectures 1990). London.Google Scholar
Ullman, Berthold Louis. 1980. Ancient Writing and its Influence. 1932. Reprint, Toronto.Google Scholar
Ullman, Berthold Louis. 1960. The Origin and Development of Humanistic Script. Rome.Google Scholar
Veblen, Thorstein. 1953. The Theory of the Leisure Class. 1899. Reprint, New York.Google Scholar
Vergil, Polydore. 1950. The Anglica Historia ofPolydore Vergil A. D. 1485-1537. Ed. Denys, Hay. (Camden Society, 74.) London.Google Scholar
Wahlgren-Smith, Lena. 2000. “Heraldry in Arcadia: The Court Eclogue of Johannes Opicius.” Renaissance Studies 14:210-34.Google Scholar
Weiss, Roberto. 1947. “Lineamenti di una biografia di Giovanni Gigli, collettore papale in Inghilterra e vescovo di Worcester (1434-1498).” Rivista di storia delta chiesa in Italia 1:379-89.Google Scholar