Translating Impiety: Girolamo Frachetta and the First Vernacular Commentary on Lucretius
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33137/q.i..v35i1.22352Abstract
This essay sheds light on an important but largely overlooked chapter in the story of the early modern reception of Lucretius’ De rerum natura: the publication, in 1589, of Girolamo Frachetta’s Breve spositione di tutta l’opera di Lucretio, the first publication to systematically explicate the philosophical content of Lucretius’ poem in a vernacular language. Published more than half a century before the first vernacular translation of the poem, Frachetta’s commentary was a groundbreaking effort to make Lucretius’ version of Epicurean philosophy accessible not only to the Latin-educated elite, but to a broader vernacular readership – a potentially dangerous enterprise at a time when professing belief in the more controversial tenets of Epicurean philosophy could provoke investigation for heresy by the Inquisition. This essay shows how Frachetta crafted a commentary capable of effectively explicating Lucretius’ philosophy to a vernacular readership, while taking measures to proactively defend himself from possible accusations of heresy and his text from the threat of suppression.
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