Author: Reeve, Michael
Title: Piccolomineana
Review/Collection: In : Scheidegger Laemmle, Cédric (ed.), Cicero in Basel, Locating Classical Reception in a Humanist City, De Gruyter, 2024, 374 p.
Place edition: Berlin, Boston
Editor: De Gruyter
Year edition: 2024
Pages: 69-82
Keywords: Héritage - Fortuna - Legacy
Description: Michael Reeve returns to that other founding father of humanist Basel, Enea Silvio Piccolomini. Reeve not only offers account of Piccolomini’s years in Basel and surveys the evidence of Ciceronian manuscripts which Piccolomini and other ‘manuscript hunters’ may have encountered at the Council of Basel, but takes a closer look at the University’s founding charter issued in 1459. As Reeve shows, the document from the Pope’s chancery offers praise of learning with a distinctly Ciceronian flavour. While it is still cherished at Basel – in the twentieth century alone excerpts were both cut in stone and set to music! – and has had significant impact on the self-image of the city and her University, Reeve offers the rather sobering insight that the entire text of the charter depends on formulae which also occur in the charters of the twenty-odd European universities that were founded at the time, some well before the University of Basel. While this may offend local pride, falsely founded on an idea of Basel’s exceptionalism, it is testimony to the internationalism that characterised Basel and the Upper Rhine region at the time [Scheidegger Laemmle 2024, 11].
Link: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783111454641-004/pdf
Author initials: Reeve 2024
Title: Piccolomineana
Review/Collection: In : Scheidegger Laemmle, Cédric (ed.), Cicero in Basel, Locating Classical Reception in a Humanist City, De Gruyter, 2024, 374 p.
Place edition: Berlin, Boston
Editor: De Gruyter
Year edition: 2024
Pages: 69-82
Keywords: Héritage - Fortuna - Legacy
Description: Michael Reeve returns to that other founding father of humanist Basel, Enea Silvio Piccolomini. Reeve not only offers account of Piccolomini’s years in Basel and surveys the evidence of Ciceronian manuscripts which Piccolomini and other ‘manuscript hunters’ may have encountered at the Council of Basel, but takes a closer look at the University’s founding charter issued in 1459. As Reeve shows, the document from the Pope’s chancery offers praise of learning with a distinctly Ciceronian flavour. While it is still cherished at Basel – in the twentieth century alone excerpts were both cut in stone and set to music! – and has had significant impact on the self-image of the city and her University, Reeve offers the rather sobering insight that the entire text of the charter depends on formulae which also occur in the charters of the twenty-odd European universities that were founded at the time, some well before the University of Basel. While this may offend local pride, falsely founded on an idea of Basel’s exceptionalism, it is testimony to the internationalism that characterised Basel and the Upper Rhine region at the time [Scheidegger Laemmle 2024, 11].
Link: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783111454641-004/pdf
Author initials: Reeve 2024
