Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms, and Legacy by Albert Rabil,Review by: Jill KrayeThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 67, No. 3 (Jul., 1989), pp. 466-468Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4210048 .

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466 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

perspective for his particular object of study and he must synthesize informa- tion from various sources (thus he links movements of peoples to patterns of climate which affected their economic and social conditions). In practice Gumilev adopts several perspectives, viewing both the whole canvas of Asian history and the particular events surrounding Genghis Khan and his succes- sors. This approach from different viewpoints puts the events into perspective, allowing both broad and detailed treatment, but it also muddles the chronolo- gical sequence and leads to repetition.

PresterJohn, whose legend was known to Otto of Freising about I I45, was a Chinese-educated leader of the Khitans called Ye-lu Dashi (IO87-I I43), who defeated the Muslim Seljuks in I I4I. 'John' is the Chinese title wang (king) (confusingly, Gumilev quotes Russian sources (p. I37), to show that nomad kings used this title after I I 83, although Otto of Freising had already called the man 'Johannes'; Otto's early date also conflicts with the idea, p. 362 etseq., that Christians in the Holy Land constructed the legend ofJohn's victories in order to divert the Second Crusade to Mesopotamia). Despite its title, the book contains relatively little about Prester John; more attention is given to the careers of such great Mongol leaders as Genghis and Kublai Khan.

Gumilev is familiar with the whole culture of the Asiatic nomads and he shows their importance in history, but with a bias, seldom missing the chance of a disparaging remark against the Chinese: the Huns, for example, lived better than the Chinese, they sought not land, but free trade and enjoyed freedom, peace, and friendship with their neighbours until harassed by Chinese aggression (pp. 30-35). One might easily forget that Hun, Turk, and Mongol advances were marked by massacres and brought few benefits to the people they conquered.

This is a scholarly book, packed with detailed information derived mainly from Russian and Asiatic sources, and the author is an expert on central Asian history. His analysis of the main sources for Genghis Khan (the 'Golden Book' and the 'Secret History of the Mongols') is masterly. His book is aimed at both scholars and the general reader: the latter, however, will be confused by the mass of unfamiliar names and dates, made more confusing by the ever- changing perspectives and the frequent leaps back and forth in time. The translator's English is generally intelligible but awkward, and his unusual spellings of names make unfamiliar even those which should be well known (thus: Chinggiskhan, Manichaes, Huang He, Yangzi, Lao Zi, Enisei). Consequently, this book may be a treasure-house for the expert in Asiatic history but it will be difficult and bewildering for the general reader. St David's University College CARL LOFMARK Lampeter

Rabil, Albert, Jr. (ed.). Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms, and Legacy. 3 volumes. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, I988. xv + 492; xv + 4I4; xv + 692 pp. Bibliography. Notes. Index. ?I20.00.

THE aim of these three volumes, consisting of forty-one essays by experts in various fields, is to provide a comprehensive account of Renaissance huma- nism, accessible to undergraduates, but with enough detailed information in

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REVIEWS 467

the notes and bibliography to be useful to non-specialist scholars. The second volume, which deals with humanism outside Italy, contains three long essays devoted to humanism in Central and Eastern Europe. The first, by Drazen Budisa, deals with Croatian humanism, whose essential characteristics were determined by its two powerful neighbours: the Ottoman Empire, which occupied part of Croatia and constantly threatened the rest, thus making anti-Turkish propaganda the major motif of Croatian humanist literature; and Italy, whose cultural colonization of the Dalmatian coast extended far beyond her own territories. Another feature, shared by humanism throughout Europe, was the parallel development of Latin and vernacular literature, often within the literary production of the same author. Indeed, the culture of some Croatian humanists was not merely bi- but trilingual: for instance, Marko Marulic ('in his time the best-known Croat in Europe') made Latin transla- tions of the Italian works of Dante and Petrarch as well as of The Croat Chronicle. Budisa provides an extensive bibliography of scholarship in Croatian, but his grasp of Western literature is very defective. Thus, he fails to mention the only substantial monograph on Andrija Dudic, published in Paris in I935. And although he informs us about a I979 Croatian translation of the Nova de universis philosophia of Franjo Petric, he says nothing of the growing scholarly industry dedicated to the study of this important sixteenth-century thinker, known to the wider world as Francesco Patrizi da Cherso. Moreover, Budisa's views about Renaissance philosophy, assuming that Platonism took over centre stage from Aristotelianism, are decidedly out-of-date.

There is some overlap between the chapters on Croatia and Hungary: three humanists, Faust Vrancic, Janus Pannonius and his uncle Ivan Vitez, are treated in both (the last appears in the Hungarian chapter as Ja'nos and both forms figure separately in the index). This is due partly to the peripatetic nature of the humanists themselves and the continual interchange between the two cultures, but also to the fact that Marianna Birnbaum's essay, although focused on Hungarian humanism, is a distillation of her I986 book Humanists in a Shattered World: Croatian and Hungarian Latinity in the Sixteenth Century (see SEER, 67, I989, pp. I38-39). Hungarian humanism falls into two distinct phases, before and after the Battle of Mohacs (I 526). Typical of the first stage, dominated by the Italophile court of Matthias Corvinus, was the Latin lyric poet Janus Pannonius, who studied with Guarino in Ferrara and also at the University of Padua. The very different orientation of Hungarian humanism in the post-Mohacs period, reflecting a shift in European humanism as a whole, is exemplified byjohannes Sambucus, who had much closer ties to French and German humanists than to Italian and whose interests were more philological and historical than literary. In both phases, however, the humanism of Hungary was, as Birnbaum stresses, 'outside the mainstream, and therefore often derivative': imitating Italian models in the fifteenth century and Northern ones in the sixteenth. Although Latin remained the language of the court and of scholars in Hungary until the eighteenth century, it interacted with the vernacular through translations of classical texts and the direct influence of Latin literature on Hungarian Renaissance poets like Bailint Balassi.

Rado Lencek's chapter begins with a general discussion of 'humanism in the Slavic cultural tradition', drawing an interesting distinction between

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468 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

Roman Catholic areas, where the Latin liturgy was imposed on the population, thereby keeping it in some sort of linguistic contact with the literature of Latin antiquity, and lands which adopted the Orthodox rite, whose more tolerant attitude towards use of local vernaculars in Christian worship resulted in cultural isolation from both the Greek and Byzantine heritage. Lencek also emphasizes the socio-political dimension of the spread of humanism, which could not take root in areas which did not offer the support of powerful patrons and a wealthy educated class in the cities. The rest of his chapter is concerned with Czech humanism, which like that of Croatia and Hungary - and the rest of Europe, for that matter - was at first dominated by Italy. Lencek's attempts to study the Czech diffusion of Italian humanist works and ideas are not well-informed. Like Budisa, he still clings to the old-fashioned belief that scholastic Aristotelianism was being overwhelmed by a 'Platonic current' - in reality, more like a ripple. He also suggests that the new Latin versions of Aristotle's Ethics, Meteorology and Physics listed in some fifteenth-century Czech library catalogues might be those of Leonardo Bruni, who did not in fact translate the latter two treatises, nor did he write the comedy Polixena, which Lencek attributes to him in ignorance of recent scholarship. The next generation of Czech humanists was far less Italianized; they tended to be educated at home and more concerned than their predecess- ors with transmitting the 'classical heritage into the realm of vernacular literature'.

While the editor of these volumes is to be congratulated on giving such wide coverage to Slavonic lands, rarely included in general books on humanism, there is one notable gap: Poland. This unjustifiable omission means that Jan Kochanowski, a Neo-Latin poet of the first rank, is mentioned only in passing, while other Polish humanists, such as Hosius and Modrzewski, do not appear at all. Nor do we hear anything about Filippo Buonaccorsi (Callimachus Experiens), an Italian humanist who, in flight from his native land under suspicion of conspiring against the Pope, ended up as a diplomat and political adviser to the Polish crown, as well as a central figure in the humanist circles of Cracow. The Warburg Institute JILL KRAYE

University ofLondon

Ivantysynova, Tatiana. Cesi a Slovaci v ideologii ruskych slavianofilov (4o.-6o. roky xix. storocia). Veda, Bratislava, I987. 280 pp. Bibliography. Notes. Rus- sian and English summaries. Index. K'cs. 28.oo.

As Konstantin Aksakov wrote, the Slavophiles wished to 'turn back not to the situation of the old Russia (that would mean frozenness, stagnation), but to the road of the old Russia (that means movement)' (p. 37). The evolution of their ideology, relevant aspects of which are recounted here in some detail, if a little repetitiously, is seen as a parallel attempt to the Westernizers' to emancipate Russian thought. Ivantysynova stresses the Slavophiles' awareness of the 'inevitability of economic and social change in Russia and the abolition of serfdom' (p. 44). The author has investigated Czech and Slovak contacts with

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