things with the intellect. For a mind which teaches and shows that which is, is not
God, but it can be said very rightly of God. You want this truth not to be God but
if it is referred to God, it is without doubt really God, different in appellation but
not in being. That is why it is immaterial whether youfind the truth in the
Prophets and other holy writings, in the sayings of the pagans or in works of
poetry, which you hate. For truth is God and of God as you can see, so that once
you have found it where you least hoped to, you should embrace it with the
greatest joy.^8In other words, Salutati maintains that poetry and pagan letters are part of the
baggage of a theologian:‘You have seen that Jerome, Augustine, and Boethius,
who never ceased to cite the poets, did not forbid the songs of heathen writers
or the teaching of the pagans but allowed them provided that we impose a
limit on them.’^9
Moreover, Salutati refers expressly to Augustine’sDe doctrina christianain
his defence of the inseparability of theology and human sciences.^10 However,
we must not think that the Italian Renaissance thinking on this was uniform,
as witnessed by another Florentine humanist Leonardo Bruni’s translation of
Basil of Caesarea’sAd iuvenesorAd adolescentes(To young people).^11 Bruni
completed his translation around 1403 and dedicated it to Salutati. In his
dedicatory preface, he stresses that the short work is of unrivalled importance
in the controversies between Salutati and his conservative detractors because
of Basil’s uprightness, his strong moral code, and his unique knowledge of
classical authors and sacred writings. He chose to translate it, he says, because
he wanted‘to break once and for all by the authority of this great man the
ignorance and perversity of those who slander humanities and think that we
should stay away from them altogether’.^12
That may have been Bruni’s and Salutati’s aim, but it does not give an
accurate reflection of Basil’s view. The latter in fact, while recommending the
reading of pagan letters to Christians, does not share Salutati’s view that God
and his truth manifests himself as much in the works of Homer as he does in
the Bible. The second chapter ofAd iuvenesshows very clearly that Basil
makes a basic distinction between profane and sacred letters. According to
him, Christians consider this life worthless and direct all their hope to the
next. The right way to heavenly bliss is signposted by the Scripture and its
(^8) For Latin text see Coluccio Salutati,EpistolarioIV/1, in F. Novati (ed.),Epistolario di
Coluccio Salutati, vol. 4 (Rome: Forzani, 1891–1911), 200. Also cited in Latin by Gianni,
‘Salutati’, 47.
(^9) See Salutati,EpistolarioIV/1, 203. (^10) See Gianni,‘Salutati’, 46, 53.
(^11) The authoritative study here is still Luzi Schucan,Das Nachleben von Basilius Magnus‘Ad
adolescents’:Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des christlichen Humanismus(Geneva: Droz, 1973).
Schucan, however, does not mention the work’s more specific impact on the reception of
humanist studies by the Reformation.
(^12) See Leonardo Bruni,Humanistisch-philosophische Schriften, ed. Hans Baron (Leipzig:
Teubner, 1928), 99.
36 Irena Backus