Good Morning, Halejrb!
Thank you for providing me with an interesting start to my day. I own
a well-thumbed "Modern Library" edition of Tacitus, and despite his
stuffiness (think of the Muppet Show's "Sam the Eagle") he's my
favourite historian of antiquity. Within the conventions of his era,
consensus among modern historians considers Tacitus the classical
world's most authoritative voice.
In considering your question, I'm going to treat both his "Annals" and
his "History," which deserve to be considered jointly as a single
narrative.
Unfortunately, it is unlikely that we will ever be able to construct a
continuous timeline for the survival of these works. There are simply
too many gaps in the record, too many centuries without a mention of
his name. Even in his own time, the only contemporary references to
Tacitus are in the letters of his friend, Pliny. It has been
suggested that the critical nature of his writing on recent events may
have been "politically incorrect" in his own day.
There is an unsubstantiated tradition that the third-century Emperor
Tacitus ordered copies of his alleged ancestor's work made annually.
Perhaps this is true, but we have no firm knowledge of the survival of
his work until the fourth century, when the Greek witer Ammianus
Marcellinus attempted a continuation of Tacitus' work.
From here to the Italian Renaissance, with its re-awakening of
interest in the ancient authors, there are few mentions of Tacitus in
Western literature. As Moses Hadas stated in the preface to my copy
of the collected works, "From the fifth century to the fifteenth, he
is mentioned not more than two or three times." (Page xxii, see below
for full citation)
There are a few early manuscripts for which I have found confirmation.
The most recent discovery, of interest to all scholars of the period,
was located in the Vatican library. It was found two years ago, while
the library was being re-shelved. The manuscript was long-lost codex
to the "Annals," containing much missing material on Caligula and
Claudius. It is recorded as part of the Vatican collection as early as
the 14th century, but had apparentl been mislaid. The story is told
at this link, which quotes from the April 2000 Reuters report:
http://omega.cohums.ohio-state.edu/hyper-lists/classics-l/00-05-01/0000.html
The website "Tertullian.org" has a discussion of other extant
manuscripts. This is the link:
http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/tacitus/
The oldest manuscript of "Annals 1-6" is in the historic library of
Lorenzo Medici ("The Magnificent"), and hence is known as the Codex
Mediceus. It has been dated from 850AD, and stylistic cues point to
the German abbey of Fulda. The source manuscript for all extant
copies of "Annals 11-16," also from the same collection (Mediceus II)
was written between 1038 and 1055 at the mountaintop monastery of
Monte Cassino (destroyed in WWII).
How it came to leave the mountain is unclear. We know it was still at
Monte Cassino in the early 14th century. It then passed through the
hands of Boccaccio (somehow) before ending in the hands of collector
Niccolo Niccolini, who seems to have regarded it as a guilty secret.
Eventually, however, he showed his MS to scholar/collector Poggio
Bracciolini. For information on Bracciolini's life and career,
including locating the "History" and several minor works, this is his
entry in the Catholic Encyclopedia:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12177a.htm
From here, the dissemination of Tacitus' work became widespread.
Rediscovered at a time when statecraft was at a premium and ancient
authors revered, Tacitus was a Renaissance best-seller. Machiavelli,
for example, quoted him extensively, and Montaigne considered his work
to be full of insights applicable to his own day. Indeed the French,
in particular, have long considered Tacitus a touchstone of their own
political thinking. One would imagine that his aristocratic
prejudices charmed the royalists, while his sternly rational character
was admired by the various Republics.
I hope this is satisfactory. There is certainly a great deal more
information available, but typically it falls into two categories:
endless repetitions of "we don't really know," for the predecessors of
the extant manuscripts; and dull cataloguing of the widely-known for
the post-Renaissance era.
I used as a starting point the preface to my edition of Tacitus:
The Complete Works of Tacitus: Moses Hadas, ed., A.J. Church & W.J.
Brodribb, tr. Modern Library, New York, 1942
To find the above links and many more, I used the following search
strategy:
+Tacitus +manuscript +discovery
Thank you again for an enjoyable question to answer. If you require
further detail, please don't hesitate to ask. |
