set 2007
Missa Thomas cesus (fols. 166v-81)
03/09/07 Archiviato in: Civiltà bizantina
Dear Professore Ronchey,
perhaps you know this already, a Thomas mass, copied may 1461 at St. Peter, etc. See the link.
http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=ft4199n91h&chunk.id=d0e7703
Sincerely,
michel
Carissimo Michel,
segnalazione follemente interessante, una vera ghiottoneria! Bisognerà mettersi a studiare questa messa dal punto di vista bizantino, ossia della vicenda romana di Tommaso Paleologo e del progetto che il papa stava tessendo intorno a lui. A meno che qualcuno non l'abbia già fatto... Temo di no, ma, se si', speriamo che gli accada di visitare il sito e che ci invii altre notizie.
Grazie, la ricerca continua, per sua natura non si ferma mai!
SR
Opere di Pio II
01/09/07
Dear Professore,
Thank you for your kind mail. We have just come back from visiting the Documenta in Kassel and a visit to Weimar. So I have to apologise for the delay of my reaction to your remarks. Indeed it is a pity that in the near future till now an English edition of your remarkable study on the Flagellation painting and your interpretations of the meaning of it is not on the way. But the French edition will serve a broader field of readers who are interested in one of the most fascinating periods of our Western Civilisation. And the subject and its implications are so very “up-to-date”. Your visions are most important for the reflection on our position of the Christian world versus the Islamic world. So your book deserves most urgently an English edition. When my coeditor Zweder von Martels will be back from holiday I will forward your mail to him and ask him if he knows of possibilities of and English edition. He is working at the university of Groningen in the department of Neolatin. He has already organised in the past a seminar on Pius II (see the publication: here ).
I have placed a link on one of the pages of my website to your book (http://home.planet.nl/~golds067/navigat.htm ) as a small contribution and respectful gesture to your publication.
Some years ago I have read another, but fiction, on the episode you dexcribe. From a Russian author, a diplomat, Nikolay Spasskiy, translated in Italian language and published by Mondadori: Il Bizantino. That book gave me also a great pleasure reading it. What a time that was!
And now a small note on myself: It has been already 30 years ago that we owned a part of a very beautiful “fattoria” near Casolé d’Elsa. It is called Rofena and owned by a small group of Dutch families. When we spend our weeks there I went of course very often to Siena and there began my aventure with Enea Silvio Piccolomini. The best way of knowing such a complex person is translating him, in my opinion. And so I am doing that nearly every day; his letters, his Commentarii, his speeches, his descriptions of parts of our world. The title of our book will be: Nihil humanum mihi alienum est, (‘Niets menselijks is mij vreemd’, in Dutch), a remark of him (and of course an citation from Terentius) and a testimonium of his self-knowledge. He was a keen manipulator with fact, even with his own birthday, that he falsified in order to be more convenient with astrology. The book will contain a selection of his works and a commentary and an introduction. My part is the translation of the texts, Zweder does the introduction and we both do the notes.
Best regards,
michel
Carissimo Michel,
grazie davvero di tutto. Vorremmo inserire nel sito i link relativi sia al seminario dell'Università di Groningen su Pio II, sia alla traduzione delle lettere turche del Busbequius, ma sfortunatamente non risultano più raggiungibili tramite gli indirizzi che ci ha fornito: pensa di poterci inviare i nuovi indirizzi?
E ci tenga informati, la prego, sulla traduzione delle opere di Pio II che lei e Zweder von Martels state portando avanti. E' un lavoro prezioso, oltre che meraviglioso, dal quale, sono certa, emergeranno nuove impressioni e forse anche nuovi dati.
Quanto a Nikolaj Spasskij, l'autore del romanzo su Bessarione, è un vecchio amico e sono davvero lieta che il suo libro, di cui ho seguito in parte la gestazione (l'ispirazione è scoccata proprio a Pienza!), sia arrivato fino a lei. Chissà se anche lui, da Mosca, dov'è rientrato dopo essere stato ambasciatore a Roma, ci sta seguendo.
Per ora un cordialissimo saluto,
SR
http://www.rug.nl/staff/z.r.w.m.von.martels/research
http://home.planet.nl/~golds067/intro.htm
dear Silvia,
with great pleasure i read your mail. I have just finished the reading of your fantastic study on the Flagellation painting of Piero della F. The book is so rich in content, the regesta maior included, that next week I will begin re-reading your book. You have succeeded not only to deliver convincing arguments for your thesis but also you did write your story in a way that gives your book a place in the list of literary compositions. So the one part of the enjoyment of the reader is the scientific content and the other part is formed by the way you make literature of your writing. What me has pleased also is the way you make up the end-notes. They are many and they testify of your enormous knowledge of the subject and still they don’t obstruct the reader from reading, as so often is the case with a complicated stuff. Oh writer, beware of exposing to much learning that stand in the way of comfortable reading! A shout-out that regards to may writers.
My co-editor Zweder von Martels has also received your book and will begin reading it this month, because I urged him to do so in order to get a right view on his subject: the role the crusade had for Pius II during his pontificate and already before this time when he was busy in Germany. Zweder has written his dissertation on the Turkish letters of Augerius Busbequius, who lived a century after Pius II, and we both published the translation of these letters; I did the translation, because, I dare say, that is my “fort” , Zweder did the introduction, because that was the fruit of his dissertation (he discovered and proved, that the Letters were fiction and made long after the period that Busbequius was in Constantinople as a diplomat). And there exist a link between the fear for the expansion of the Turkish Empire during the time of Pius II and later; till now we could say! So Zweder will express this in his introduction to our Piccolomini-book.
The seminar on Piccolomini/Pius II was in December 1997 and there is no site on internet dealing with that. But there exist a book, edited by Zweder, of the proceedings of that seminar: Pius II, ‘El più expeditivo Pontifice’ (Selected Studies on Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini), Brill 2003 (see the first link where you can find the book and other stuff).
From the translation of the Letters of Busbequius there is no site, because the publisher Verloren will not permit it. I have only a small fragment placed on my site ( see the second link), but the book is still available (Latin text and Dutch translation). S forget, please, linking anything to your site (except perhaps the ‘laudatio’ I gave for your book, but there are already many that are much better!).
When will our Piccolomini-book be there? That depends on Zweder, who is very busy with his university obligations. Our plan was this yaer, but it will be next year, I hope.
I asked Zweder if he know a way of bringing out your book in English. In his opinion your Italian publisher has enough contacts with other (English) publishers to arrange that. I hope sincerely that you will succeed in finding an English publisher, you and your book deserve a much wider publicum that those who can read it in the original language.
In between I had discovered that you in the past did write on the book of Spasskiy, so my asking if you know Il Bizantino was superfluous.
My apologies for writing in English. Thanks to you my knowledge of your language is already much better in reading but writing in Italian is another story.
Last point; on internet is an essay from Claudia Märtl on Pius on the Gozzoli frescoes in Florence: http://cma.gbv.de/dr,cma,003,2000,a,06.pdf , perhaps you have this already.
Best regards,
michel
Carissimo Michel,
di nuovo, grazie: delle preziose informazioni, delle indicazioni bibliografiche, dei rimandi ai link sulle ricerche che state svolgendo all'Università di Gröningen e a quello dell'articolo di Claudia Märtl, oltre che, naturalmente, delle parole di lode e della, per cosi' dire, empatia scientifica. Sono curiosa di conoscere anche le reazioni di Zweder von Martels, una volta che avra' - e se avra' - letto il libro.
A presto!
SR