Sidonius Apollinaris

Two 14th-century florilegia, the 1329 Flores moralium auctoritatum from the Capitular Library of Verona (ms. CLXVIII), and the one kept in the Vatican Library (Vat. lat. 5114, digitized, Sidonius on ff. 89r-90v), have been supposed to have a common ancestor (confirmed by recent research, plausibly to be located in Verona) which, in turn, has been tentatively attributed to Guglielmo da Pastrengo. Together they contain 61 quotations from Sidonius’ Letters (Verona 26, Vatican 53, of which 18 in common): see Kitamura 2011-2013, vol. 3, 435-44.

Guglielmo (c. 1290-1362) was a prominent lawyer and diplomat in Verona, closely associated with Petrarch in scholarly pursuits in the local Capitular Library to which he had privileged access. The discovery of Cicero’s Letters to Atticus is one of many which originated in this cooperation. In his De viris illustribus et de originibus, Guglielmo lists Sidonius as follows, qualifying his language as ‘rough but learned’ (Bottari p. 215, see also Hernández Lobato pp. 51-52):

Sydonius, Arverniensis episcopus, Epistolarum grande volumen ad diversos scabro sed erudito sermone condidit.

It is evident from the florilegia, that he had a complete copy of Sidonius’ correspondence at his disposition in Verona.

Guglielmo Bottari (ed.), Guglielmo da Pastrengo. De viris illustribus et de originibus, Padua, 1991.
Monica Cerroni, ‘Guglielmo da Pastrengo’, in Treccani. Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 61 (2004), online.
Charles J. Gross Jr., ‘The Verona Florilegium of 1329’, PhD thesis, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1959/1960. Download here
Jesús Hernández Lobato, El Humanismo que no fue. Sidonio Apolinar en el Renacimiento, Bologna, 2014.
Hideki Kitamura, ‘I Flores moralium auctoritatum del 1329′, MA thesis, University of Florence, 2008-2009.
—–, ‘Due florilegi e il pre-umanesimo veronese tra il XIV e il XV secolo – i codd. Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 5114 e Verona, Biblioteca Capitolare, CLXVIII (i Flores moralium auctoritatum del 1329)’, PhD thesis, University of Florence, 2011-2013. Download here

About a copy of Sidon. Ep. 2.2, discovered and sent by Enoch of Ascoli to Leon Alberti:

Ida Mastrorosa, ‘“Enochi Asculani Epistula” Baptistae de Albertis, Romae, Ex Roschildia, die VI Decembris 1451’, Albertiana 3 (2000) 189-248

—–, ‘Tipologia edilizia e diletti bucolici in Sidonio Apollinare (Ep. II 2): Il dono di Enoch d’Ascoli all’Alberti’, Albertiana 5 (2002) 191-236.
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—–, ‘Lettera di Enoch d’Ascoli a Battista Alberti, con allegata un’epistola di Sidonio Apollinare, Roskilde, 6 dicembre 1451’, in: P. Benigni et al. (eds), Corpus epistolare e documentario di Leon Battista Alberti, Florence, 2007, 245-53.

Sidonius’ description of the portraits of philosophers painted in gymnasia (quod per gymnasia pingantur, Ep. 9.9.14) could have been Marcilio Ficino’s direct inspiration for adorning his own gymnasium with philosopher portraits (letter to Pietro Vanni: M. Ficino, Opera omnia, Lettere, p. 836), according to Albert Blankert in a 1966-1967 article. Ficino’s portraits are now lost, but they probably inspired the frescoes of Palazzo Panigarola in Milan by Bramante, a few of them preserved in the Brera Gallery (dated to 1486-1487; see illustration). These also correspond to Sidonius’ characterization Heraclitus fletu oculis clausis Democritus risu labris apertis, ‘Heraclitus with eyes closed through weeping, Democritus with lips wide open with laughter’.

A. Blankert, ‘Heraclitus en Democritus bij Marsilio Ficino (Heraclitus and Democritus in Marsilio Ficino)’, Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 1 (1966-1967) 128-35 (see Bibliography 1960s). Not mentioned in Hebert, ‘Philosophenbildnisse’, Klio 1988.

An article about the Laurentianus Pluteus 90 sup. 8 manuscript, Pietro Crinito’s copy (c. 1490) of the famous codex Marcianus 554 (M), and the light which his and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s marginal notes shed on the textual transmission and fifteenth-century understanding of Sidonius:

Michaelangiola Marchiano, ‘Un manoscritto di Sidonio Apollinare postillato da Giovanni Pico della Mirandola e da Pietro Crinito’, Medioevo e Rinascimento 20 (2009) 279-89.
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In 1638, the Napolitan Jesuit poet Giovanni Battista Mascolo (1582-1656) put out Encomia coelitum, a calendar of Christian saints, one for each day, which compared their glorious deeds to the superseded exploits of the Ancients. Each month is provided with an introduction in which Mascolo explains why he picked these particular saints. Each saint then receives a ‘Synopsis’ and an ‘Encomion’. Sidonius Apollinaris is selected for 23 August. His synopsis (p. 378) runs:

Poeta fuit insignis ex Gallia: carmen pietate condivit, non eo usus ad fabulas, et ineptias, sed ad res divinas, et castas, quo ceteris scribendi norma(m) dedit: alluditur ad appellationem ipsius Apollinaris.

He was a famous poet from Gaul, who seasoned his verse with piety, not using it for idle tales, but for divine and chaste purposes, providing others with a standard in writing. This is an allusion to his surname Apollinaris.

The encomion praises him for being both a lyrical poet and a prefect of Gaul [sic], which is reflected in his name: a Sidone accepit purpuram, ab Apolline lauream. Of course his inspiration was non Venus, sed virtus.
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The introduction to the month (p. 346) explains that, from amongst other laureati, Sidonius is selected because he truly chastened the laurel (qui laurum ex incesta, vere fecit innubam; compare Daphne in Ov. Met. 10.92).
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In the 1750s, Mascolo’s calendar was translated and illustrated in Augsburg (see on this site Reception Germany).

On this subject, see further Joop van Waarden, ‘Sidonius Edifies German Nuns’, blogpost on ‘Sidonius in Antiquity and Modernity’, 23 August 2016.

About 1790, the German edition was in its turn translated into Dutch and published with other illustrations: see there.

The poet and librettist Ranieri de’ Calzabigi (1714-1795) wrote an Ipermestra o Le Danaidi for Christoph Willibald von Gluck, eventually put to music by Giuseppe Millico in 1784. The libretto, published in Naples in 1784, provides a synopsis of the plot followed by these lines:

Solus, Hipermestrae servatus munere, Lynceus
Effugit: aspicies illam sibi parva paventem,
Et pro dimisso tantum pallere marito.

No mention is made of the poet, but it is Sidonius, and the lines are from the Epithalamium for Polemius and Araneola, Carm. 15.171-73.

Source: Marisa Squillante, ‘Enchaînons-les d’une chaîne éternelle,/ d’un même trait blessons-les tous: L’amore tradito nel mito delle Danaidi’, Kleos 23 (2013) 535-50. On Academia