Mr. Tsien Bo Tong,
So, there you have it from, as they say, the horse’s mouth. Now there remain only two questions of provenance to be answered – if, indeed, they can be. How did the codex get from the hands of Ammianus Marcellinus to the monastery of St. Gall, and how did it get from Poggio into the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Piazza S. Lorenzo 9, Firenze? The first question I prefer to answer after you have read the text, since itis based on a number of clues provided in the text, although it is sketchy at best. The second question is much easier to answer (although it does require a few crafty guesses) and the answer contains the detail of one of the more interesting episodes in Florentine history – the Pazzi Conspiracy.
You will, I trust, bear with me as I describe the bare bones of the story before I explain how it comes into the provenance of our gem. But first I think I should name the players in this wonderful historical moment. The Medici are represented by Lorenzo the Magnificent (Magnifico to all and sundry) the son of Piero the Gouty and grandson of old Cosimo. On the death of his father in 1469, Lorenzo found himself at the head of the family at the tender age of 20 and it did not take him long to show that behind his façade of culture and (decidedly un-handsome) elegance he was already a man of steel and precise judgment. The older members of his party, who had planned to run the shop as his advisers, soon found themselves relegated to the second rank. Magnifico was in charge of the bodega.
He and his handsome brother Giuliano also led the artistic world of Florence as generous patrons of poets, painters, jewelers and humanists. Among his clients were the painters Piero and Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Andrea del Verocchio, Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio and Michaelangelo Buonarotti as well as the humanists Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and the poet Poliziano. Lorenzo was, himself, no mean poet and as a political leader? It was what he was born to do. Curiously, there was no rivalry between Lorenzo and Giuliano – they were vey close. Lorenzo was the brains and Giuliano was the beauty. These two young men were the targets of the conspiracy. With both of them dead, Florence would be there for the taking.
Agaisnt them was ranged a large cast of “villains” led by member of the Pazzi family: Messer Jacopo, the childless head of the family and his nephew and heir Francesco Pazzi. Also involved (although on a considerably lesser level) was Francesco’s brother Guglielmo, despite the fact that he was, incredibly, married to Lorenzo’s sister. Despite the fact that these men were heavily involved in banking – so deep in banking that they were beginning to rival the Medici, especially in Rome – the family was overweeningly proud of their noble status. They traced their descent from one Pazzo Pazzi who, it was said (mostly by the Pazzi),to have been the first man over the wall of Jerusalem during the First Crusade. They could boast a knight in each generation and held themselves to be superior to practically everybody and certainly to the nouveau riche Medici. This pride, combined with the banking rivalry drove them to attempt to bring down Lorenzo and his family. But even the Pazzi were not crazy enough to think that they could do this on their own – and interestingly, pazzi translates into English as “crazy.” What was that song Savanarola used to sing? Ah, yes, “Crazy for Jesus” – the last line was “Sempre pazzo, pazzo, pazzo.” Always crazy,crazy, crazy. Well Savanarola would know about crazy. But I digress.
The Pazzi looked around for allies and they were ready made. Sitting on the Papal throne at the time was Sixtus IV (he of the famous chapel which Michaelangelo would paint) and Sixtus was a man with a large family that he loved to enrich. I might say facetiously (but not entirely) that if you were to look up nepotism in the dictionary, a picture of Sixtus would appear. Sixtus had a nephew named Count Girolamo Riario whom the Pope was trying to give a enough property to justify the assumed title of Count. And the lands that he purchased (Imola and Forli) although within the papal states, were dangerously close to Florence and were coveted by Lorenzo. Another nephew (or, rather, grand-nephew) in the same line was Raffaele Riario, whom Sixtus made Cardinal at the ripe old age of 16 and loaded up with 16 Bishoprics for good measure. Add to this charming group one Francesco Salviati, Archbishop of Pisa and seasoned Medici hater and we have a lovely group photo.
Now how, you might wonder, did these somewhat disparate groups link up in a plota gainst Lorenzo? One way that it happened was in the purchase of Imole for the purported Count Girolamo. The town was in the possession of Galeazzo Maria, ruler of Milan, who had been promising to sell it to his ally Lorenzo. But the Pope pressured him into selling it the Count. An embarrassed Lorenzo refused to lend money for the sale and naturally the Pazzis stepped in to lend the cash and they became the Pope’s bankers, replacing the Medici. Lorenzo had been out-maneuvered and prodigiously embarrassed by a family that he had considered his allies – after all he had married his sister to a Pazzi. And the man who carried out the transaction; wh ocarried the money to Mila and the keys to the Pope? Francesco Salviati, who had been appointed Archbishop of Pisa behind Lorenzo’s back – Pisa was, after all part of Florentine territory and Florence (which is to say Lorenzo) should have had a say in the appointment – and who was related to the Pazzi family and bankrolled by them. Lorenzo had done all he could to prevent the elevation of Salviati, denying him entry into Pisa. The Pope threatened excommunication and eventually a deal was brokered buy Milan that brought a peace that crackled with rancor and hatred.
It was these (and other) confrontations that finally led to a plot being prepared to assassinate Lorenzo and his brother, decapitating the Medici faction. The plan was expanded to bring in some military help led by (at a distance) Duke Federigo of Urbino (the "Light of Italy") and in Florence by the Count of Montesecco – a soldier in the service of the Pope. For the Pope was deeply involved, both through his relatives and through his own personal hatred of Lorenzo. Typically for a Della Rovere he prevaricated on his wishes. He told Montesecco to proceed, that he wanted a change in leadership in Florence, but no-one must be killed, but he MUST have a change leadership in Florence. When he was told that it would require death to achieve that he replied that no-one must be killed but he MUST have a change in leadership in Florence. He had, in fact, sent the plot into action while providing himself with deniability. One last conspirator must be mentioned since he alone ties the Pazzi conspiracy into our narrative: Jacopo, Poggio’s son; he to whom the letter was written.
All of Poggio’s six children had done well. Pietro Paulo rose to be Prior of Santa Maria ad Minerva in Rome. Giovanni Battista became a doctor of civil and canon law and an acolyte of the pontiff. Giovanni Francesco was canon of Florence and, later, chamberlain of Pope Leo X. Filipo was a canon of Florence and Lucretia married extremely well. Jacopo was the only son not too enter the Church – he was a scholar who translated Poggio’s history of Florence from Latin into Italian. He composed a commentary on Petrarch’s Triumph of Fame which he dedicated to Lorenzo and also a treatise on the origin of the war between the English and the French. What was he doing in this malodorous company?
I have done some detailed, private research into Jacopo’s story and have come up with a few salient facts. Obviously he had absorbed some of Poggio’s political position in his later years since he was involve in a plot led by Luca Pitti to overthrow Lorenzo’s father Piero in 1466. He would have been 24 at the time. He was fined 1000 guilders and banished for 20 years. Then, surprisingly, because of some kind of “relationship” with Lorenzo the fine and the sentence were annulled and he was rehabilitated politically three years later. In fact, he was listed as one of Lorenzo’s squires at a tournament that Lorenzo gave in1469 in hour of his succession to power. From 1469 to 1471 he served as Lorenzo’s secretary until he was suddenly replaced by Niccolo Michelozzi. Although nothing was stated explicitly, the falling out seems to have been personal rather than political. With Lorenzo’s habit of surrounding himself with handsome young men, one wonders what exactly the “relationship” was about.
After that Jacopo moves decidedly to the side of the Medici’s foes. He is inked with the Duke of Urbino and becomes secretary to Archbishop Salviati. He begins to rail against the cultural decline of Florence under the Medici, reviving ancient Roman speeches as his weapons. He becomes friends with Marsilio Ficino who some consider to have been an undetected silent backer of the Pazzi conspiracy and who had also criticized Lorenzo through the words of Plutarch and Seneca. Jacopo had moved to the center of the plot. There is an old Florentine saying that goes back centuries before Dante: Cosa fatta, capo ha. A thing, once done, has an end. On the 26thof April, 1478, the plot was finally unleashed.
There had been several earlier planned attempts but each had collapsed for the same reason – they had to kill both brothers at the same time – for if on of them survived he would become a rallying point for the powerful Medician forces. Giuliano was usually the one who was missing as he was not well at the time. Finally it was decided that the best moment would be Sunday, in the Duomo, at high mass. The Count of Montesecco had arrived in the city with thirty crossbowmen and fifty foot soldiers but he balked at the final plan. Lorenzo was his designated target and he would not murder in a Cathedral. He was quickly replaced by two priests who, being churchmen, had no such scruples. Their names were Antonio Maffei and Stephano da Bagnone. Finally everyone was where he was supposed to be: the Medici brothers were together in the Cathedral along with Archbishop Salviati, Cardinal Riario, Count Montesecco and, of course, Francesco de’ Pazzi and his supporters including one Bernardo Baroncelli.
The signal for the slaughter was said to have been the elevation of the Host but there is much disputation on this point. The moments before that must have been an agony of suspense for the plotters. Then that solemn moment was rent by the sound of a riot. Baroncelli struck first, burying his knife in Giuliano’s chest. Close behind him was Francesco who struck so fast and furiously that he managed to direct one violent blow directly into his own thigh – such was his murderous rage. Giuliano staggered towards a door to escape and collapsed and died with 19 stab wounds in his body. At the same cue the priest-assassins leapt for Lorenzo who was talking to some friends and spun him around and stabbed. But they missed their aim, only cutting him slightly on the neck. Lorenzo wrapped his mantle around his left arm and drew his sword to defend himself. His friends and supporters swept in front of him to protect him from the priests and also Baroncelli who, having dispatched Giuliano, joined the attack on Lorenzo. Baroncelli seems to have been the most effective of the assassins, even though he was only a Pazzi employee. Francesco Nori stepped in front of Lorenzo to shield him and was immediately paunched in the belly by Baroncelli – what later proved to be a fatal wound. While this melee was ongoing, Lorenzo managed to make his way to the north sacristy and get inside. His supporters followed in a fighting retreat dragging the dying Nori with them and locking the doors behind them. At the same time as the murderous attack began, Lorenzo’s brother-in-law, Giulielmo de’ Pazzi, began screaming that he was sorry, that he was innocent, that he was loyal. While Cardinal Raffaele Riario, who had been at the altar, fell to his knees in terror, praying and weeping until he was dragged to safety by the Cathedral Canons. The crowd in the Duomo had, of course, panicked and rushed for the main doors, many of them probably unaware of what was happening– they were simply reacting to the terror of others. Once Lorenzo and the Medici faction had locked themselves in the sacristy the assassins found themselves stymied and made their escape to the Pazzi’s close by house – all except Baroncelli who holed up in Giotto’s extraordinary Campanile just outside the Duomo.
As suddenly as the mayhem had begun there was utter silence in the Cathedral, the great space was completely empty except for one dead body – Giuliano. An hysterical Lorenzo kept asking about his brother; he had not seen the attack on Giuliano, Then a banging began on the sacristy doors and men outside it began to shout that they were loyal to Lorenzo, let them in! But Lorenzo knew that this could be a trick – the assassins could have returned or sent mercenaries to finish the job. Finally one of Lorenzo’s friends had the bright idea of climbing up to the organ loft to see what was happening outside. From there he could see the still and bloody Giuliano on the Cathedral floor and he could also see that the men at the door were friends and relatives. He called down, the doors were opened, and everyone helped to rush Lorenzo out of the Duomo – making sure that he caught no sight of his dead brother – and off to the safety of the Medici Palace. And Giuliano was left, uncovered on the Cathedral floor. Thus ended the first part of the Pazzi conspiracy.
Two other prominent members of the plot had also been there at the beginning of the mass but had left early. Jacopo de’ Pazzi, head of the family, left to rally the family and command a small army of mercenaries, perhaps seventy-five in number. At the planned signal, the ringing of the bell in the Campanile, he rode up and down the Piazza della Signoria calling “People and Liberty " in the hope of rallying the people of Florence to his cause. He was also standing by to seize the central government building, where the priori and the head of the official government, the Gonfalonier, were. That he was confident that he could seize this ancient fortress was due to that actions of the other plotter, who had also left the Duomo early.
Francesco Salviati, Archbishop of Pisa, was given charge of a crucial part of the plot: accompanied by our own hero, Jacopo di Poggio Bracciolini as well as a large group of armed supporters, mostly Perugian toughs, he was to seize the Pallazzo della Signoria from the inside. He was to take captive all the members of the government and kill anyany of the Priory who tried to stop them. The attempt was a ludicrous failure.The Archbishop, leaving most of his followers below, informed the Gonfalonier of Justice , Cesare Petrucci, that Pope Sixtus had bestowed an appointment on Petrucci’s son, the credentials of which he had come to deliver. But he spoke with such hesitation and constant blushing that Petrucci grew suspicious and suddenly rushed out to call the guards. The Archbishop ran for his men and Petrucci ran after him. Meanwhile below, a large number of Salviati’s men managed to get themselves locked up in one of the Signoria’s room leaving only Jacopo and a few others at liberty in the Pallazzo. Salviati appeared, being chased by Petrucci and Jocopo di Poggio – hardly a man of battle – drew his sword and charged the Gonfalonier. Petrucci caught him by the hair and threw him to the floor. Then he seized an iron cooking spit (that was somehow close at hand) and, followed by the priors rushed at the Archbishop and his few un-trapped accomplices and beat them into submission. That is when he ordered the Vacca to be tolled, summoning the people to the square in front of the Pallazzo to defend the republic and, of course, the Medici and their friends. Old Jacopo Pazzi rode up and down yelling “the people” and “liberty” to noavail. The crowds that began to gather were clearly hostile and cries of “Palle! Palle!” began to fill the air. With the plot failed the Pazzi and their supporters were doomed.
The Archbishop and his men along with Jacopo were already prisoners. Jacopo de’ Pazzi fled the city with his men. Francesco de’ Pazz huddled naked in his palace with his horrible leg wound. Guglielmo de’ Pazzi, brother to Francesco but brother-in-law to Lorenzo surrendered himself and was immediately banished from Florence. Cardinal Riario was taken from the Duomo and held captive, in terror for his life, for six weeks. The Count of Motesecco was captured in flight, brought back to Florence, tortured into confession (which is how the knowledge of the Pope’s involvement was revealed) and beheaded. He was lucky.
The most common way of looking at the world of Renaissance Italy is to see, metaphorically, as a blaze of glory, bright as the newly risen sun in May: Ficino gazing in rapture at the unblemished mind of Plato, Leonardo meticulously recording the articulation of a bird’s wing, Botticelli mysteriously fashioning, over and over, that one ever-fascinating face that haunts each one of his paintings from Venus to Madonna, and Michelangelo – Michelangelo arching over it all with the greatest ceiling in the universe (leaving out, for one moment, the night sky). It is not an inaccurate vision but it is maintained only with one eye closed. The reality of the other eye is a shocking surprise.
Renaissance Italy is also a world of the most consummate cruelty and sadistic pleasure. This is world where traitors were routinely “planted” – buried alive upside down, where 85 year old Andrea Orsi was tied to a plank and the tail of a horse and dragged around the government square three times, his face pressed to the ground. Later he was quartered, his intestines were thrown about the piazza “and one of those dogs of a soldier,” says the chronicler, “grabbed the heart, cut it out . . .put it up to his mouth, and bit into it.”
In Milan the talented ruler Galeazzo Maria Sforza (who seized girls and wives at will and then passed them on to his courtiers) ordered his enemies to be nailed alive their coffins, lopped off husbands hands to steal their wives and had a poacher executed by forcing him to swallow, fur intact, a large hare. In fact, when Sforza was himself assassinated, his killers were mounted on a wheel and, while still alive, torn in half from crotch to neck. In Florence, a hermit was accused of plotting the death of a prominent Florentine. He was tortured by the city by having his feet burned until they dripped fat – then he was made to get up and walk on coarse salt. He died nineteen days later. When a murder was exceptionally vicious, the killer would be carted, completely naked, to the site of the crime while wearing his sinning, severed hands tied around his neck, each dangling by a thumb, and the stumps of his arms pinned up to the level of his eyes, so that the could see them. And in the field of politics there was an unspoken and universal policy: NO MERCY. In fact there is a lovely little song that the Florentines liked to sing which says lie low, watch, wait
Till Fortune turns around to serve you,
Then out with your list of all their crimes,
And never fear, just grab on with your teeth,
Cut, chop, tear, break and beat,
And never more go crouching to those crazy bastards.
Just remember what Pico wrote in his Oration On the Dignity Of Man, which many consider to be the ‘manifesto’ of the Renaissance: “Thou shalt have the power to decline unto the lower or brute creatures, Thou shalt have power to be re-born unto the higher, or divine, according to the sentence of they intellect.” Sometimes in Florence they did both simultaneously.
Francesco de’ Pazzi was seized naked and bleeding from the Pazzi Palace where he had gone to hide and curse and dragged to the Pallazzo, briefly interrogated (tortured) and then flung over the battlements with a rope around his neck, his belly slit and his tripes hanging out. He was followed in close order and in a similar condition by our poor Jacopo and then by Saviati who, according to accounts by onlookers, at the moment of his death sank his teeth into the neck of the hanging Francesco as if to say: “this is all YOUR fault!” Then, in quick succession, over went the Archbishop’s brother – another Jacopo – the two priests who failed to kill Lorenzo and who had been taken from the Benedictine monastery where they had hidden and been beaten, mutilated, ears and noses removed. If any of these men were still alive when they hit the end of the rope, the last thing they would have seen, on the wall opposite them, would have been the reliefs on the Loggia dei Lanza representing Faith, Hope and Charity.
Altogether between 60 and 80 were hung – which turned out to be too many for the space of the building, so the rest were hung from the Bargello. An undetermined number of other Pazzi supporters were simply thrown over the battlements where their bodies (alive or dead) were beaten to pulp by the cheering populace. It must have been quite a sight. Master Jacopo Pazzi was finally caught in the village of Castagno di San Goldenza. He was beaten, returned to Florence, tortured, confessed and hanged in the same place that the Archbishop had been hung two days earlier. Days later a mob of boys dug up his corpse (buried with the noose still around his neck) and dragged all over the city. They beat the corpse and pulled it to the Pazzi Palace and banged on the door with its head, demanding admittance for the Master. Finally they took it down to the Arno and cast it in and so it was washed out to the sea.
The only conspirator of importance to escape – apparently the only one who was truly capable of anything concrete –was Bernardo Baroncelli. He made it all the way to Constantinople but, unfortunately for him, the Medici had what we now call “pull” even there and he was extradited and hung like all the rest. In an ironic way his death became a kind of immortality – if one can say such a thing – for as he hung there a young artist sketched his figure in a notebook and so the image of Baroncelli is with us today. That artist was Leonardo da Vinci and I enclose a copy of the sketch.
This image leads me to one last aside before returning to the object of all our enquiries. This aside concerns the work of perhaps the most famous Florentine painter: Sandro Botticelli. According to Giorgio Vasari, Botticelli was a personal favourite of Lorenzo and was much commissioned by him. Around the year 1478 Botticelli painted one of his most famous works – the Birth of Venus – possibly commissioned by a Medici. The painting illustrates, among other things, the ideals of Florentine Renaissance civilization – a setting from the best from the pagan classical world in a Christian framework, a mixture of pagan and Catholic ideals of love. In the same year he created probably the most brutal and disgusting paintings of his life.
It was the custom, you see, in Florence of that time, to identify and humiliate criminals, bankrupts and traitors by depicting them in large format on the facades of buildings – sometimes on the Signoria but more often on the Palace of the Podesta, more commonly referred to as the Bargello. Underneath were posted verses (much of it doggerel) mocking the dead and exulting in their destruction. Lorenzo himself made this contribution:
San Bernardo Bandini
Un nuovo Giuda
Traditare naicidale in
Chiese iofui
Ribello per aspettere morte
Pia cruda
Morte piu cruda.
So it was that Lorenzo chose his favorite Sandro to paint the dead conspirators as they appeared, hanging from the battlements of the Signoria, their intestines below them. The paintings were done, according to the documents of the time, over the Porta della Dogana in the Pallazo Vecchio. There are those who believe that this was a tribute to Botticelli’s skills and that he was honored and his career advanced by this honor but it is also written that Andrea del Sarto, when commissioned to paint dead criminals on the wall of the Mercanzia, did it by night because he considered it a shameful thing to do. The horrifying realism of these images shocked the remaining friends and relatives of the dead and the Pope never ceased to demand their removal – especially that of the Archbishop. While Salviati’s portrait was de-painted in 1480, the others remained on the wall until the overthrow of the Medici in 1494. Botticelli was paid forty large florins.
By now you will be surely asking: “What has any of this to do with the cimelium? "Why is this man still rolling this stone?” The answer is, in a word: Provenance! I will explain. The punishment of the Pazzi and their allies did not end with the executions. Hundred’s (like Lorenzo’s brother-in-law) were expelled from the city, including two of Jacopo Brachiolini’s brothers. In one way or another all the Pazzi relatives and in-laws were punished, mostly by confiscation and banishment. Then, on June 1 , the great auction began.
On the grand floor of Florence’s mint – the Zecca – the officials assigned the task displayed and auctioned off the Pazzi possessions; everything from household goods to fine clothing, jewelry and paintings. Furniture, draperies, weapons – every item that had belonged to the disgraced family and its supporters was piled up and sold off. There was so much stuff in the vast mint that it filled the Zecca “from side to side”. And yet I am being disingenuous. For one thing, Piero de’ Pazzi was widely know as the possessor of an extraordinary collection of ancient manuscripts and these were remarkably absent from the auction. In fact there were no books or manuscripts to be seen. In the city that had re-introduced the book to secular European culture the second richest family and their supporters had no books? It is widely believed by the more astute historians of the era that Lorenzo himself had intruded into the official business of the disposal by the city of the traitor’s goods in order to skim off all the books as well as a number of precious possessions that were known to belong to the Pazzi and that later turned up in Medici hands. And since Jacopo was one of the prominent conspirators, his books and manuscripts must have been confiscated in the loot scooped up by Lorenzo.
Now, Lorenzo would have no idea of the details of what he had his hands on. He was more of a collector than a scholar. And so the codex and the copy made by Poggio would have simply gone into the Medici collection which was housed in the convent of San Marco. This collection was entrusted to the priests of San Marco following the fall of the Medici in 1494 and the prior of the convent was none other than Girolama Savanarola. If fact, that nearly brought about the destruction of all those magnificent books and documents (including yours). For when Svanarola fell from grace and power a mob attacked the convent on April 8, 1498 and the prior carried out a fighting retreat and only surrendered at the very doors of the library.. After this the collection was carried off to Rome by Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici (later Pope Leo X) and it was finally restored to Florence as a gift by Pope Clement VII, the other Medici Pope, who commissioned from Michelangelo the splendid building that now houses it. Duke Cosimo I opened it to the public in 1591. And there it stands today – thousand of rare volumes, 12,000 manuscripts, 4,000 incunabula and first editions: such are the riches of the Biblioteca Laurenziana, a library which is unique in the world for the quality of its priceless contents.
Now – I can almost hear the question on your lips – why would I think to look there? A library that has been poured over by all the great scholars of the world. A library that has been catalogued and re-catalogued since John Lascaris first did it in the 1480’s. The answer is: for two reasons. The first one is that The Reverend William Shepherd wrote a life of Poggio (2ndedition, 1837) and in the preface he mentions that he suspected that scattered around Europe there were a number a number of manuscripts belonging to Poggio and also letters by him, that had never been read or documented since his death. In fact, he found some documents in the house of one “Col. Johnes of Hafod,” in Cardiganshire, on “the finest vellum” and “beautifully written” and among them unpublished letters by Poggio. Shepherd wrote, “I was convinced that there existed in the libraries of the city of Florence several manuscripts from which much information might be gathered respecting the history of the Scholar [Poggio].” But he was unable to raise the money to go and look for himself, and no-one else seems to followed up on his hunch.
Shepherd goes on to say that he had been about to bring out a German edition of his book in 1812 with “extensive notations containing new discoveries” but “to my great mortification . . . the manuscript, which had been put into the hands of a printer at Berlin, was irrevocably lost in the confusion which followed the conquest of Prussia by the Emperor Napoleon after the Battle of Jena. The good reverend is extremely coy, but there are strong suggestions that one of the documents that he was tracing was Poggio’s will and one of the places he was targeting was the Biblioteca Mediciea Laurenzania.
The other reason why I felt compelled to look there was the fact that in 1971 one Rosario Pintaudi found in a library strong-box three zinc-lined boxes full of papyri (more than 1,000), un-catalogued and un-restored. In fact, if I may digress, you can purchase a CD reproducing them at http://www.trismegistos.org/daht_coll/detail.php?tm=128 for the price of 40 Euros. Now if this wealth of documents could remain undiscovered country since the creation of the library why could not one sole codex, of which no one (aside from Poggio) has ever known the existence of. Besides, we must remember the case of the Historia Arcana, Procopius’ Secret History of the Emperor Justinian and his wife, written secretly during the reign of said Emperor. Somehow, and no one knows how, a single copy of it made its way into the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, the Vatican Apostolic Library – or, as we researchers like to call it – “the Vat.” It was probably in that collection since the Vat’s creation during the reign of Pope Nicholas V (1447-1455) but was not discovered until an archivist turned it up in the early 1620’s. Who knows what else is out there to be "turned up" – as Poggio himself might have said.
So there (Biblioteca Laurenziana)I searched and there I found.
