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The definition of models established by humanism for the development of its own Latin was based on similar cultural principles. In theory (but not necessarily in practice), medieval authors beginning with Petrarch were excluded from the canon of Latin authors to be imitated. Even if Poggio Bracciolini, Leonardo Bruni, Gasparino Barzizza (1360-1431), and their most faithful disciples tended to impose a certain preeminence of the Ciceronian model, in fact all authors from Antiquity were admitted, independent of any chronological classification or sharp distinction between prose and poetry. It was only toward the late fifteenth century that the linguistic conception allowing for a wider variety of models began to be contested by a theory tending to limit the model to a single author, in order to aspire to a principle of purity, and to thereby avoid the heterogeneous combination of diverse elements. By imposing the normative models of Petrarch for poetry and Boccacio for vernacular Italian prose, Pietro Bembo (1474-1547) in particular also referred to Latin models, identified as being Cicero for prose and Virgil for poetry. An epistolary exchange between Paolo Cortesi (1465-1510) and Angelo Poliziano (1454-1494) (published in 1498) is nevertheless emblematic in this respect. The former maintained that it is necessary to have a model to imitate, and that there should be only one, for there is only one ideal form; gathering various models equates to bringing together “a number of different seeds in the same field, scattered and incompatible with one another.” Consequently, the single model to be followed could only be Cicero, who represented the apex of Latin eloquence. Poliziano, on the contrary, retorted that too-faithful an imitation of Cicero prevented bringing one’s true capacities into play as well as finding the courage to choose one’s own path, different from the one already begun.
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