The Dusty Shelf of History

by Bryce Rogers (July 2012)

And still the beast, glutted with the glories of our past, proves insatiable.

The Swerve, all the more remarkable. Poggio Bracciolini, the subject of the book, was a relatively minor figure in a period that abounded with giants. He was a Renaissance humanist who became, at the height of his career, the apostolic scriptor to the pope—that is, he was a papal secretary responsible for the myriad details of composition and correspondence. Although his employment was highly remunerative—and brought him into contact with some of the luminaries of his day, particularly among the plastic arts—it is not for any accomplishment preformed in this capacity that Poggio is remembered. Instead, his name has been enrolled in the register of the past as a book hunter. At various points in his long career, Poggio travelled north, crossing the Alps and facing hardship, to explore the libraries of far-flung monasteries. He found, among other things, Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria—the most important work from antiquity on rhetoric—and some of Cicero’s lost dialogues. His greatest discovery, however, was made in 1417 when among the dusty shelves of an unknown monastery he alighted on a complete manuscript of Lucretius’ De rerum natura.

made great personal sacrifices to wrest these works from the teeth of time. We must imagine a cultivated Italian—one who’d spent most of his life amidst the sybaritic pomp of Rome—riding through the Black forest, weather-beaten, weary, with mud caked on his cloak; his only companion, a translator; his hope of success, unknown.

And time still nibbles away.

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