Angelo Sabino or in Latin Angelus Sabinus (fl. 1460s–1470s) was an Italian Renaissance humanist, poet laureate, classical philologist, Ovidian impersonator, and putative rogue.
Sabino's real name was probably Angelo Sani di Cure, with the toponymic indicating that he was from Cure or Curi (ancient Cures), in formerly Sabine territory, hence his Latin appellation .Andrea Corsini, Sabina sagra e profana, antica e moderna (Rome, 1790), p. 143 online. He wrote under a multitude of pen names, including Aulus Sabinus when he impersonated the Sabinus who was Ovid's friend, and Angelus Gnaeus Quirinus Sabinus,Egmont Lee, Sixtus IV and Men of Letters (Rome 1978), p. 187. an allusion to Quirinus as an originally Sabine god of war in ancient Rome.
As poet Sabino advertised himself as a poet laureate on the title pages of his editions of ancient texts. It is unclear in whose court he held the position, or in what year, though one scholar conjectured 1469.Vincenzo Lancetti, Memorie intorno ai poeti laureati d'ogni tempo e d'ogni nazione (Milan, 1839), p. 170. At any rate, he was identified as such in the period 1469–1474,Christina Meckelnberg and Bernd Schneider, Odyssea Responsio Ulixis ad Penelopen: Die humanistische Odyssea decurtata der Berliner Handschrift Diez. B. Sant. 41 (Leipzig, 2002), p. 12, note 61. following the composition of his historical epic De excidio civitatis Leodiensis ("The Fall of the City of Liège").Lancetti, Memorie intorno p. 171. When Paul Oskar Kristeller compiled Iter Italicum: A Finding List of Uncatalogued or Incompletely Catalogued Humanistic Manuscripts of the Renaissance in Italian and Other Libraries (Brill, 1991), vol. 6, p. 479 online, he regarded the questions pertaining to the poem's authorship as not settled, and listed the poem as anonymous. Written in Latin hexameters and structured in six books, this 6,000-line poemLa Principauté de Liège, "Le péril bourguignon (1390–1505): Sources." gives historical background and narrates the siege, capture and destruction of Liège, in present-day Belgium, by Louis XI of France and Charles the Bold of Burgundy. Its subject matter was more expansive than the title might indicate, as the De excidio also includes a description of Charles' wedding to Margaret of York.De excidio civitatis Leodiensis 1420–29 (Boeren), as cited by Richard Vaughan, Charles the Bold: the last Valois Duke of Burgundy (Boydell, 1973, 2002), p. 49, note 8 online.
Sabino composed the poem at the request of Onofrio de Santa Croce, the papal legate who traveled to Liège in 1467 in an effort to negotiate a peace settlement. Onofrio failed in his embassy, and Sabino's poem was meant to provide an emotive and narrative context for understanding the conflict; or, as Onofrio himself acknowledged in his memoirs, the De excidio was an effort to justify his own conduct in the matter.Eugène Bacha, "Deux écrits de Mathieu Herbenus sur la destruction de Liège par Charles-le=Téméraire," Bulletin de la Commission Royale d'Histoire (de la Belgique) 75 (1907), pp. 385–386 online, citing Mémoire du légat Onufrius sur les affaires de Liége, edition of S. Bormans (Brussels, 1885). Jozef IJsewijn thinks that Onofrio had taken Sabino with him to Liège and Maastricht,Jozef IJsewijn, "The Coming of Humanism to the Low Countries," in Itinerarium Italicum: The Profile of the Italian Renaissance in the Mirror of Its European Transformations (Leiden: Brill, 1975), p. 201. but elsewhere it is assumed that Onofrio commissioned the poem after his return.Bacha, "Deux écrits," p. 385. Bacha thinks that since Onofrio brought the young Flemish scholar Mathieu Herbenus to Rome with him, Herbenus assisted Sabino in the actual composition of the poem. Whether or not the poet had firsthand knowledge, the De excidio is considered a significant historical source on the siege, and was used as such by the early 20th-century historian Godefroid Kurth throughout his classic La Cité de Liège au Moyen-Age.Godefroid Kurth, La Cité de Liège au Moyen-Age (Brussels, 1910), vol. 3, limited preview online. Sabino's epic was never published in his lifetime, as it soon lost its patrons and immediate purpose. Pope Paul II, for whom it was originally intended, died in 1471; Onofrio himself died without having returned to good standing in the papal court.Bacha, "Deux écrits", p. 386; Sylvain Balau, "Sources de l'histoire du pay de Liége au Moyen Age," Memoires couronnés 61 (1902–1903), pp. 647–648 online et passim.
When Onofrio had traveled back to Rome from the Low Countries, he brought along the young Matthaeus HerbenusThe first name can also be found as Mattheus, Mathieu, and Matthieu; the last name as Herben. of Maastricht, a future historian, grammarian, and musician. Herbenus became a student of Niccolò Perotti, a friend of Sabino with whose name he was to become most closely associated.J. IJsewijn, W. Lourdaux, and E. Persoons, "Adam Jordaens (1449–1494), an Early Humanist at Louvain," Humanistica Lovaniensia 22 (1973), p. 84 online. It was Herbenus who first brought the De excidio into wider circulation upon returning to his northern home, where its subject matter held more direct interest. He sent copies to Henry of Bergen, bishop of Cambrai, for whom Erasmus later served as secretary, and Lambert d'Oupeye, chancellor of the prince-bishop of Liège.Bacha, "Deux écrits," p. 386, says that Henry's 15th-century copy is preserved at the Bibliothèque Municipale de Cambrai (699 ), and Lambert's at the Bibliothèque Royale in Brussels (II, 1184 [VdG 6605]), but the latter may date to the 16th century. Another 15th-century copy is preserved by the Vatican Library (Vaticani Latini 1675), and the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris holds a 17th-century copy (Latin 11733); see Repertorium chronicarum. The modern text of De excidio was published by E. Martène and U. Durand, Veterum scriptorum et monumentorum historicorum … amplissima collectio (Paris, 1729), vol. 4, col. 1379ff. The network through which Sabino's poem circulated is an example, if minor, of how Renaissance humanism proliferated.IJsewijn, "The Coming of Humanism," pp. 252–255 online.
Herbenus added a short poem and a prose prologue of his own. The manuscript for d'Oupeye ends with short argumenta or summaries of each book, composed by Paschacius Berselius (d. 1535), a Benedictine monk of St. Laurent's abbey near Liège.IJsewijn, "The Coming of Humanism," p. 255; Bacha, "Deux écrits," p. 386.
The literary critic and poet Henri Bebel (d. ca. 1516), who advised readers to avoid stories that lack beauty and charm, listed Sabino among notable recent writers who ought to be taken seriously.Along with Carlo Marsuppini (Carolus Arretinus), Maffeo Vegio (Mapheus Vegius), and Giovanni Gioviano Pontano (Jovianus Pontanus); cited by Léopold Hervieux, Les fabulistes latins (Paris, 1883), vol. 1, p. 458 online. Sabino called himself a vates, the Latin word meaning both "poet" and "prophet," divinely inspired to speak. Poets of the Augustan era sometimes assumed the persona of the vates, for instance Ovid in his Fasti. "Unfortunately," noted an early 20th-century historian who drew on Sabino's poem, "miraculous intervention, borrowed from paganism, long speeches and long poetic descriptions make it an exhausting read."Balau, "Sources de l'histoire du pay de Liége au Moyen Age," p. xxvii, note 1 online.
As educator In the fall of 1472, Sabino was offered a three-year appointment as master of the grammar school of Viterbo at an annual salary of 100 ducats, but he declined.Lee, Sixtus IV, p. 188. He was a professor of rhetoric sometime in the early 1470s at the Studium Urbi. The English classical scholar William Lilye attended Sabino's lectures on grammar and rhetoric, as well as those of Sulpitius Verulanus and Pomponio Leto.M. Audin, translated by Edward G. Kirwan Browne, The Life of Henry the Eighth and History of the Schism of England (London, 1852), p. 422 online. By September 1474, for reasons that are unclear, Sabino was no longer a university professor.Lee, Sixtus IV, p. 189.
Literary feud On 9 August 1474, Georg Sachsel and Bartholomæus GolshCatalogue of the John Boyd Thacher Collection of Incunabula (1914) p. 101 online. published Sabino's commentary on the ancient Roman satirist Juvenal (Paradoxa in Iuvenalem), which he dedicated to his friend Niccolò Perotti.Concetta Bianca, "Pomponio Leto e l'invenzione dell'Accademia Romana," in Les Académies dans l'Europe humaniste: idéaux et pratiques. Actes du colloque international de Paris (10-13 juin 2003) p. 35 online. About the Paradoxa a 19th-century editor remarked "these commentaries are not lacking in insight and wit, but one looks for critical judgment and taste in vain. Consequently he [Sabino] strikes us as having fairly limited value for understanding the author."Nicolas-Louis Achaintre, Decimi Junii Juvenalis Satirae (Paris, 1810), p. 95 online: non carent isti commentarii subtilitate et argutiis; sed in iis frustra judicium et elegantiam quaeres. Ille igitur parvi admodum pretii ad auctoris intelligentiam nobis visus est.
According to Gyraldus and others,Lilius Gregorius Gyraldus, De poetis nostrorum temporum 25 (Berlin, 1894), Wotke p. 20 online; Friedrich Gotthilf Freytag, Adparatus litterarius (Leipzig, 1753), vol. 2, p. 1378 online; W. Parr Greswell, Memoirs of Angelus Politianus (Manchester, 1805), p. 83 online; Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies (1990), p. 104. Sabino and Perotti were assailed by the irascible"Un uomo orgoglioso e iracondo", in the words of Vincenzo Lancetti, Memorie intorno ai poeti laureati d'ogni tempo e d'ogni nazione p. 171. Domizio Calderini, who produced an edition of Juvenal the same year. Although Sabino's Paradoxa had been written long before they were published, Calderini attacked their editor as "Fidentinus", after the plagiarist in Martial's epigrams,Maria Agata Pincelli, Martini Philetici: in corruptores latinitatis (Rome 2000), p. 78 online. Fidentinus appears in Martial's Epigrams 1.29, 38, 53, 72. and Perotti as "Brotheus", the son of Vulcan who threw himself into the fire because his imperfections exposed him to ridicule. Some sources identify Sabino as Brotheus,Broteo, Grammatico ("Brotheus the grammarian") is identified as Angelo Sabino in Vincenzo Lancetti, Pseudonimia: ovvero Tavole alfabetiche de'nomi finti o supposti degli scrittori (Milan, 1836), p. 49 online. and Calderini may have used the nickname for both.See notes on these sources by David Clément, Bibliothèque curieuse historique et critique (Leipzig, 1756), vol. 6, p. 56 online. Angelo Maria Quirini, Specimen variae literaturae quae in urbe Brixia ejusque ditione (Brescia, 1739), p. 161 online, points out that Gyraldus seems to have swapped around the nicknames, calling Sabino "Brotheus." Calderini had published an edition of Martial, to which he appended an annotated text of Ovid's gruesomely erudite curse poem Ibis, the source for the obscure figure Brotheus.Ovid, Ibis 519–520. Brotheus is Broteas in Ovid and other classical texts. The myths pertaining to a Broteas vary to such an extent that more than one figure may have carried the name. Calderini's particular use of the name as attached to a single myth seems to delimited the Renaissance conception of Brotheus.