Michael Pacis, Epistola Responsiva, Letter on the Turkish threat to Christendom, in Latin, manuscript on paper

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Description

22 leaves, plus original flyleaf, 208mm. by 144mm., complete, a single gathering, about 20-22 lines, written in dark brown ink in a semi-humanistic cursive minuscule, larger initial on first page with simple meandering plantstem decoration into two margins, slight stains on a few pages, generally fine and with original margins, nineteenth-century red-brown morocco gilt, paper endleaves

Catalogue Note

The author describes himself as a monk of Trieste, writing to Antonio Hyarotti, of Capodistria, the Venetian colony on the Adriatic coast of Istria, now rector of the law schools of Padua. He thanks his correspondent for his letter and agrees that the whole human race is under threat from the Turks. If the might of Venice is defeated, he says, then all of Italy is at risk. The Italian princes, however, are asleep to the danger, quarrelling with each other rather than uniting against their common enemy. If God exists and created the world (and there are long arguments here as to why he must), then it is fundamental justice to punish evil and to protect righteousness. Most of the text is a moral and legal case for war. The author cites Augustine, Lactantius, Cicero, Sallust, Richard of St-Victor, Duns Scotus, Thomas Aquinas, and many others. He cites detailed instances of just wars, from the Old Testament and from Roman history, and from the Trojan Wars. He derides the laxity of his own times, and the lack of modern heroes of the calibre of Hercules, Achilles, Ulysses, Hannibal and others. What would one do, he asks rhetorically, if a great wild boar came in to destroy a beautifully-planted vineyard? One would expel it, of course, as the Turks must be driven back.

The letter is dated 1 May 1472, which was a crucial year in the Italian response to the Ottoman advances across the eastern Mediterranean, and the papal fleet of Sixtus IV responded to the dangers, attacking the coast of Turkey and burning Smyrna and Adalia. Trieste and Capodistria, the home towns of the correspondents, are only about 15 miles apart and were especially vulnerable to invasion.

The present manuscript appears to be unique, and it is certainly unrecorded and unpublished. Another letter from Michael Pacis, written from Rome in 1476, is in the Archivio di Stato in Trento (Kristeller, Iter Italicum, VI, 1992, p.230).

The flyleaf is, in effect, a title-page. The text begins on fol.1r, “Michael pacis tergestinus Monachus, Suo Antonio Hyarotto iustinopolitano nobilissimo, et in florentissimo patavino studio iuristarum Rectori, S.P.D., Non potuisses o Antoni rem profecto …”, and ends on fol.22r, “… etiam dum vivimus facile amittimus, Vale, Ex prataliensi zenobio, iiii kl. Maias 1472”.