Guarinus Veronensis composed his Regulae grammaticales some time between 1414 and 1418, probaby about 1417 (Sabbadini 1896: 38-57; Percival 1978: 43 = 2004 XV). The first reference to this treatise is in his letter written in early 1418 (letter 98, Sabbadini 1915: 178-179). This popular textbook circulated in many slightly modified versions in both manuscript copies and printed editions. Therefore, there is no critical edition of the Regule. I will be using Keith Percival's online edition based on the six manuscripts which he has regarded as involving the least interpolations (Regule grammaticales, henceforth A), comparing it with one of the incunabular editions, published in Venice30.10. 1490 by Guilelmus Tridinensis (henceforth B), which contains many substantial interpolations. It bears the title Guarini Veronensis Viri Peritissimi Grammaticales regulae.
Guarinus Veronensis (d. 1487), known also as Guarinus Guarini and Guarino Guarini (1374 - 1460), was a famous humanist schoolmaster whose role in the advance of the humanistic studies in fifteenth-century Italy was prominent. Born in Verona, he pursued his studies in Verona, Venice, Padua, and Constantinople. He is famous for his journey to Constantinople in 1403 or 1404, where he studied Greek with Manuel Chrysoloras (1350 - 1415) until 1408 (see e.g. Rollo 2012: 36 n. 1). He had had the opportunity to study with Chrysoloras, when the latter taught Greek in Florence between 1379 and 1400. When Guarinus returned to Italy, he brought with him Greek manuscripts and translated several works from Greek into Latin, including one grammatical work - the Erotemata of Chrysoloras. After his visit to Constantinople, Guarinus taught both Latin and Greek in his school in Venice (1414 - 1419). It is during this period that he wrote his Regule Grammaticales. From Venice he moved to Verona to open a school there (1419 - 1430). He became so famous for his teaching of rhetoric that in 1420 he was appointed by the Commune of Verona to lecture in rhetoric at public expense, and "to teach the Epistles and Orations of Cicero, and other means that lead to eloquence" (Garin 1958: 489; Grendler 2006: VIII, 6). This has been regarded as a landmark in the advance of the ‚studia humanitatis‛ (Grendler 1989: 126-127). The next position held by Guarinus was no less eminent; in Ferrara from 1430 on he was a tutor to Leonello Este (1407 - 1450), who succeeded Duke Niccolò III in 1441. There he attracted students from Italy and abroad and became a tutor to numerous future princes, civil servants and teahcers. He also promoted the new curriculum in numerous letters addressed to parents, princes, and students arguing that humanistic studies could make them eloquent, learned and successful leaders of society (Grendler 1989: 119).
Guarinus was such an influential figure in promoting the fame of the ‚studia humanitatis‛ that a magnificent church monument was erected to him when he died in 1460 (grendler 1989: 128). In his funeral oration in Ferrara by his pupil Ludovico Carbone (1435-82), Guarinus was credited with being responsible for introducing humanistic studies to Ferrara. Because of the influential position that he gained in society scholars have felt obliged to see signs of the new humanistic curriculum in his manual on grammar. Such signs are, however, hard to find and the Regule turns out to be a very simple textbook whose essential characteristic is its brevity. Its essence was captured by his son Battista, who recommended the use of the Regule - although there were other works available stating the same rules, because it contained only that which was necessary to enable the student to compose sentences correctly: „It is possible to learn rules from many existing works, but the compendium of my excellent father has proved most helpful to me, since there you can find everything relevant - and nothing superfluous - to the composition of correct sentences“ (Battista Guarini, De modo et ordine docendi ac discendi, written in 1459, quoted by Percival 1976: 78, n. 18 = 2004 IV, my translation). Battista was educated under the direction of his father in Ferrara and was elected his father’s successor in the Professorship in the University, after holding the chair of rhetoric at Bologna. His treatise concerning the order of teaching and learning is supposed to reflect the teaching in Guarinus' school in Ferrara and was probably written at Guarinus' request (Woodward 1963: 159).
Guarinus' other grammatical works include a lexicographical metrical treatise, the Carmina differentalia, or Versus differentiales, concerned with the differentiation of synonyms, homonyms, and related phenomena and based largely on one of the famous medieval verse grammars, the Graecismus of Eberhard of Bethune (c. 1200). The first Greek grammar to appear in print later in the fifteenth century was a bilingual version of Chrysoloras' Erotemata (c. 1475), for which a summary and commentary in Latin were provided by Guarinus; it is in this form that the Greek grammar became widely known in Italy. Guarinus was also collaborating with Chrysoloras when the latter was compiling his elementary accidence of Greek in Constantinople. Guarinus' remaining grammatical works include a treatise on the Latin diphthongs De ratione diphthongandi, another on accents Tractatus utilis de accentu, and a metrical manual dealing with the assimilation rules affecting prepositions prefixed to verb stems. He contributed to the history of the texts of the letters of Pliny the Younger, the commentary of Servius on Vergil, and the historical works of Iulius Caesar.
Guarinus' Regule grammaticales is a concise treatise on the parts of speech, which has a section on verbal syntax integrated into its verb section; it additionally introduces the most common figures of construction. It was in all likelihood designed to accompany the study of Alexander of Villadei's Doctrinale. The grammatical doctrine of the Regule is fully inherited involving no theoretical innovations. His method seems to consist in simplifying and abbreviating the more comprehensive Summe by such fourteenth-century authors as Francisco da Buti, Folchino dei Borphoni, and Goro d'Arezzo.
Guarinus adopted Priscian's division of grammar into four, ‚littera, syllaba, dictio‛ and ‚oratio‛. In A, none of them is defined and only the first of these parts, the letters, is discussed; this takes the form of listing the Latin vowels and consonants. The fourth part, the sentence (‚oratio‛), is introduced by giving an example, ‚Victor amat Andream‛. This, like most of the examples used by Guarinus was invented rather than inherited or drawn from Classical literature. The mode of his exposition is equally laconic throughout the treatise. However, in B all these concepts are defined, adopting Priscian's definitions with minor modifications (A ii r).
The parts of speech are divided into declinable (noun, verb, participle, pronoun) and indeclinable (preposition, adverb, interjection and conjunction), as was customary in medieval grammars of Latin. Guarinus' textbook seems to initially follow this order of treatment, which is based on Priscian, but only the first two parts of speech, the noun and the verb, receive a systematic treatment; after the sporadic discussion on the participle, the rest of the parts of speech are ignored. Without providing any definition for the noun, Guarinus goes on to describe its grammatical accidents briefly; the accidents (‚species, genus, numerus, figura and casus‛) are those of Priscian. Guarinus introduces them by giving one example of each, e.g. ‚Figure nominum sunt tres: simplex, ut animus, composita, ut magnanimus, decomposita, ut magnanimitas‛. The articles ‚hic, hec, hoc‛, which were used to spell out the gender of nouns in ancient and medieval grammar, now also serve to distinguish between adjectival and substantival nouns. The article occupies a place of its own in the exposition, being discussed after the accidents: ‚Hic est signum masculini, hec feminini, hoc neutri, hic et hec communis, hic et hec et hoc omnis, hic vel hec incerti‛. The approach is much more methodical in B. The mode of exposition is now catechetical asking questions of each accidental property, and definitions are often given in answer, e.g. ‚Quid est numerus in nomine? Est forma dictionis in voce, quae discretionem quantitatis fecit‛. The noun itself is not defined, but some interpolated manuscript copies define it.
The noun section shows signs which may be interpreted as a lack of design: the definition of the noun is absent, and its two subdivisions – common/proper and substantival/adjectival nouns – are dissociated from each other, the nominal declensions and a piece of syntactical doctrine being inserted between them. Here a comparison with the approach of B permits us to see that these irregularities have been removed by an interpolator. B quotes the traditional notional definitions in addition to the formal definitions of proper and common nouns, and the substantive and adjective are defined using Scholastic terminology. These two topics are discussed together, as was regularly done in medieval grammar: „Proprium nomen est illud quod uni soli convenit, ut Gabriel. Appellativum est illud quod naturaliter commune est multorum, ut homo et animal. Substantivum dicitur quod significat per modum per se stantis. Adiectivum vero quod adiacet alteri, id est substantivo suo“. B concludes the chapter with three rules of concord, present in several other humanist grammars (Luhtala 2014: 62 and forthcoming): „Nominativus cum verbo tenetur concordari in duobus, in persona et numero, ut praeceptor docet. Relativum cum antecedente tenetur in tribus, scilicet in genere, in numero et in persona; ut video Petrum qui legit. Adiectivum cum substantivo tenetur in quatuor, in genere, numero, persona et casu, ut vir facetus“ (A iii r).
A similar lack of design is true also of the verb section. The verb is introduced by listing its grammatical accidents: ‚genus, tempus, modus, species, figura, coniugatio, persona and numerus‛. After each of these subcategories has been briefly described, a disproportionately large section on verbal syntax follows, covering roughly half of the entire treatise. This seems to constitute the most substantial part of the treatise. B is again more methodical, defining the verb and discussing its accidents in an orderly manner, using the catechetical method. This is where the paths of the two copies of the Regule radically diverge. After the extensive digression into verbal syntax and a limited discussion on the participle, A presents a series of miscellaneous topics dismissing the rest of the parts of speech altogether: the pronoun, adverb, interjection and conjunction. By contrast, B proceeds to offer a brief account of these parts, leaning heavily on Priscian's doctrine. The discussion on verbal syntax together with the miscellaneous topics are transferred to the end of the parts of speech section. The same subdivisions of verbs occur in the section on verbal syntax in the two versions of the Regule, but they are presented in a different order.
The syntactical section is headed by a division of verbs into personal and impersonal in accordance with the medieval tradition; both are defined and the medieval idea of a natural or logical word order is implicit in it (expressed by the phrases ‚ante‛ and ‚post verbum‛ or ‚a parte ante/post‛). (In B, these divisions come after the discussion on verbal syntax, B iii.) Personal verbs are those exhibiting three persons and are construed ‚a parte ante‛ with a nominative case before them, whereas impersonal verbs lack number and persons and take an oblique case before them: ‚Personalia sunt que tres personas habent, ut amo, amas, amat, et semper volunt habere nominativum ante se. Impersonalia sunt que carent numeris et personis, ut tedet, et ante se volunt obliquum ut me tedet vitiorum‛. Then two rules of concord are given, one concerning the relationship between a verb and a nominative case, and the other, clearly out of place here, has to do with the relative pronoun and its antecedent. ‚Nominativus cum verbo tenetur concordare in duobus: in numero et in persona, ut Andreas scribit, non autem scribunt. Relativum cum antecedente tenetur concordare in tribus: in persona, genere, et numero, ut 'Video Petrum qui ludit'‛.
A division of impersonal verbs into active and passive follows. Impersonal passive verbs ending in ‚-tur‛ are divided into four types, familiar from the medieval tradition: active, neuter acquisitive, neuter transitive and neuter absolute. Without providing any examples of these subtypes the author turns his attention to impersonal active verbs and discusses their construction. These include the usual items ‚interest, refert, libet, placet, liquet, accidit, suppetit, evenit, contingit, vacat, restat, decet, delectat, iuvat, oportet, penitet, tedet, miseret, piget, pudet‛. The verbs ‚incipit, desinit, debet, solet, potest‛, and ‚vult‛, when joined with an infinitive, are also regarded as impersonal.
Then the author tacitly turns his attention to personal verbs. What follows is a detailed account of various subtypes of active, passive, neuter and deponent verbs, with a large number of examples, which are often translated into the Italian vernacular. Mnemonic verses are regularly attached to these descriptions.
An account of passive, neuter and deponent verbs along similar lines follows; now technical terms are used less sparingly. The following medieval terms are used to label the subtypes of neuter verbs: ‚verbum copulativum, possessivum‛ and ‚acquisitivum‛, and the verb ‚regere‛ ’to govern’ occurs twice. Priscian's term ’transitive’ emerges in the description of neuter verbs, which have the passive only in the third person, such as ‚terra aratur a me‛. B uses technical terms systematically throughout the discussion.
The adverb section is exhausted by an account of various expressions of place. It starts by listing various interrogative adverbs (‚ubi, quo, unde, qua, quorsum, quousque‛) signifying place (‚in loco, ad locum, de loco, versus locum‛) followed by expressions of place by means of proper and common nouns. The expressions of place using the supine accusative and gerund are also noted. When the author moves on to discuss the participle, he defines this part of speech, but does not proceed by discussing each of its accidents. ‚Participium est pars orationis declinabilis que pro verbo ponitur, genus et casum habens ad similitudinem nominis. A verbo autem tempora recipit et significationem‛. The tenses of the participle are briefly touched upon, then their formation and origin in verbs of each five genders. The relationship of participles to nouns is discussed by listing four ways in which a participle can be turned into a noun: by its construction (that is, by using the genitive instead of the accusative), e.g. ‚doctus iuris‛; by comparison, as ‚doctior‛, by composition, e.g. ‚inaratus‛; by losing its tempus, as ‚venerandus, id est dignus venerari‛.
Finally, an exercise in thematic translation is given: If you have a participle (in the vernacular) which does not exist in Latin, it can be turned into Latin by using the relative pronoun and a verb, e.g. ‚Hermolao bandezante Polo scrive‛ can be expressed in Latin with a relative clause: ‚Hermolaus, a quo exsulat Paulus, scribit‛, or by a temporal clause headed by ‚dum, donec‛, and ‚postquam‛, e.g. ‚venute le galee, tu lexi‛ can be transformed into ‚postquam venerunt triremes, tu legis‛, and ‚Guarinus appreciante la virtu, Francesco studia‛ into ‚postquam a Guarinus licet virtus, Franciscus studet‛.
Then miscellaneous topics follow, the first of which concerns the comparison of nouns. The comparative noun is first defined: ‚Comparativum est illud quod cum positivi intellectu magis adverbium significat, ut albior magis albus, et ulterior magis ultra quam ille qui est ultra‛. Then follows its formation from the different parts of speech, nouns, verbs, participles, prepositions and adverbs; its construction with the ablative and the nominative together with ‚quam‛. Instances of misuse are also listed: when the comparative is construed with the genitive (‚sum maior sociorum‛), when it has the same meaning as the positive, e.g. ‚senior‛ pro ‚senex‛, or when it signifies less, as ‚tristior‛ meaning ‚parum tristis‛, or when it means the opposite, e.g. ‚dulcior‛ meaning ’less bitter’, when different qualities are compared, e.g. ‚nix est albior corvo‛, when nouns or pronouns are compared ‚Neronior‛ or ‚ipsior‛. These topics would seem to belong to an advanced level of study as does also the final statement, according to which a well-formed comparison requires four things: the thing compared, the thing to which it is compared, and the quality shared by both, e.g. ‚Hector est fortior Troianis‛.
The superlative is also defined: ‚Superlativum est illud quod ad plures sui generis comparatum superponitur omnibus, vel per se prolatum habet intellectum positivi cum valde adverbio, ut fortissimus iuvenum, id est fortis super iuvenes et fortissimus Cesar, id est valde fortis‛. The derivation of the superlatives from various parts of speech and their formation from the genitive or dative are discussed. A note on concord concludes this section: the superlative is said to agree with the noun preceding or following it.
Between two topics related to nouns – the discussion on comparison and on patronymics – is inserted a section on figures of construction, which includes the eight most common ones, familiar from medieval Italian grammars: ‚prolepsis, syllepsis sive conceptio, zeugma, synthesis, antiptosis, evocatio, appositio‛, and ‚synecdoche‛. Then patronymical nouns are defined: ‚Patronymicum nomen est illud quod a propriis nominibus patrum vel avorum derivatur in des et significat filios vel nepotes cum genitivo primitivi, ut Eacides, id est filius vel nepos Eaci‛. Abusively they can also be derived from the names of mothers, e.g. ‚Iliades‛, that is ‚Filius Ilie‛, or kings, such as ‚Romulides‛ from ‚Romulus‛, from brothers, as ‚Phehontiades‛, sister of ‚Phethon‛. Then the formation of masculine and feminine patronymics from the genitive or dative are discussed.
The next topic is the derivation of verbs, traditionally discussed in the ‚figura verbi‛; it includes inchoative, meditative, frequentative, desiderative and diminutive verbs. The relative pronoun is the topic of the next section, being defined as follows: ‚Relativum est quod rem ante latam refert iterum‛. It is divided into two using the philosophical distinction between substance and accidents; this division is medieval. The former are those which are referred to by a noun (‚qui, ille, is, ipse, sui‛); the latter is that to which adjectives refer: ‚qualis, quantus, quot, quotus, cuius‛ et cetera. Each of the subtypes of these two divisions is defined: ‚Qualis est relativum significans qualitatem, cui respondent nomina bonitatem, malitiam, vel colorem significantia, ut iustus, pravus, candidus, ut sum iustus, qualis tu est‛.
The final topic on nouns – heteroclite nouns, having irregular forms – receives a detailed discussion. The irregularities arise from gender, declension, number and case. The exposition largely takes the form of mnemonic verses.
The final topic is drawn from the pronoun section, explaining the difference between ‚quis‛ and ‚uter‛, which is such that ‚quis‛ is said of two or more but ‚uter‛ is only said of two; ‚quis‛ differs from ‚qui‛, in that ‚qui‛ is used relatively, interrogatively and infinitely; wheras quis is used infinitely and interrogatively. In the remaining last part the Italian vernacular is used: ‚Quot requiruntur in nubo, nubis? Tria: in prima parte quelli chi marida in ablativo a vel ab mediante, el sposo in dativo, la sposa in nominativo, ut a me nupsit Petro aliqua‛.
Guarinus' grammar has been regarded as „the first new Renaissance grammar of Latin“ (McCuaig 1999: 99) and „the prototype, on which all subsequent humanistic grammars of Latin were based“ ( Percival 1975: 238 = 2004, I). These are overstatements which do not correspond to the facts of the Latin grammars composed in Italy before and after Guarinus. Guarinus made heavy use of the works of his predecessors, and it is difficult to judge whether a particular common feature shared by the grammars of Perottus, Sulpitius, and Guarinus for instance, should derive from Guarinus' Regule or from one of his sources. Moreover, the famous works of Perottus and Sulpitius do not lend themselves to a comparison with Guarinus' manual, since these works differ so radically in purpose and extent. Guarinus' Regule has also been credited with making a radical break from the medieval tradition, in that his grammar is practically devoid of Scholastic terms and concepts (Grendler 1989:, 167-169). However, a contrary opinion voiced as early as 1896 by Sabbadini has been gaining ground, namely that the substance of the Regule is medieval; it was Sabbadini who first pointed out the parallels of Guarinus' doctrine with that of his medieval predecessors, e.g. Francesco da Buti and Folchino dei Borphoni (Sabbadini 1896: 39 - 41 and Sabbadini 1902: 310). I will now explore to what extent Guarinus' Regule can be regarded as a distinctly humanist grammar and in what ways his work harks back to the medieval tradition.
Priscian was one of the favourite grammarians of the humanists, who wanted to study his grammar in its authentic form, free from Scholastic influence. When Guarinus integrates Priscianic elements into the framework of his grammar, this does not mean that he was using Priscian directly. These were regular features shared by several Italian grammars before Guarinus, occurring also in the standard elementary textbook popular in Southern Europe, known as Ianua. It is true that Guarinus' textbook on grammar avoids Scholastic influence, including such terms as, for instance, ‚suppositum‛ and ‚appositum‛ standing for subject and predicate, and a number of philosophical terms employed in describing the uses of the ablative case (‚ex vi cause materialis, ex vi cause instrumentalis‛ and so forth). But he also avoids philosophical and non-philosophical terms employed by Priscian, such as „substantia“ and „qualitas“ in his definition of the noun and ’transitive’ and ’acquisitive’ in the discussion on verbal syntax; he has also excluded the subtypes of common nouns involving logical semantics (e.g. homonyms, synonyms, and relational nouns) from his Regule. When he, moreover, fails to define the noun and the verb, preferring to introduce these parts by listing their grammatical accidents, it appears that he wanted to avoid theoretical issues, such as definitions and abstract semantic categories. He was not alone in this enterprise; Scholastic terminology had also been excised from the Regule parve of Goro d'Arezzo in the first half of the fourteenth century (Black 2001: 128). No matter how completely Guarinus may have wanted to eradicate medieval terminology from his textbook, the substance of its syntactical section remains medieval. It is in the Middle Age that Priscian's theory of syntax was cast in the form of rules, represented by the verbal syntax of the Regule consists.
The picture of Guarinus' method emerging from the Regule is not at all tidy, because it varies within one copy of his textbook and from one copy to another. It is also difficult to know which features are due to a conscious choice and which result from a lack of design in the work. In the early version (A), the noun and the verb lack definitions but the participle is defined; this is in the latter part of the treatise, in which several grammatical concepts are defined: comparison, the relative pronoun, heteroclite nouns and so forth. In the section on verbal syntax, semantic labels other than the ’agent’ and ’patient’ are avoided in the account of the active verbs, but in the subsequent subdivisions of the neuter, passive and deponent verbs, more semantic terms surface, such as ‚verbum acquisitivum, transitivum‛, and ‚effectivum‛. These are simplified forms of Scholastic terms which usually take a more complex form such as „per naturam acquisitionis“ or „ex vi cause materialis“ and so forth. When the approach varies within the work so that the number of theoretical notions increase towards the end of the treatise, I interpret it as meaning that the author’s intention is to simplify the doctrine, but he fails to apply his approach systematically. When one of the interpolated manuscript copies of the Regule includes many more such terms in their genuinely Scholastic form, interpolations by later copyists and schoolmasters are probably at issue: ‚exigere per naturam cause finalis; ex natura pretii vel cause materialis; per naturam acquisitionis; per naturam separationis; ex natura cause materialis; ex natura acquisitionis; ex natura cause efficientis‛ (Black 2001: 127 quoting from Plimpton, ms 145). It seems safe to conclude that Guarinus generally avoided the use of technical terms, not only philosophical or Scholastic, but all kinds of technical terms, even those used by Priscian, the favourite grammarian of the humanists.
The Regule shares the same overall structure as can be found in Francesco da Buti's Regule and other fourteenth-century Summe. The scope of Guarinus' treatise is, however, radically narrower. One of the fundamental properties of Guarinus' Regule is indeed its brevity, regarded as a sign of renovation by Sabbadini (Sabbadini 1906: 114); it is this quality that his son, Battista Guarini, praises when he recommends its use in the study of the parts of speech. Although it was not the only short manual available – Goro d'Arezzo had composed a short treatise Regule parve in the first half of the fourteenth century – the majority of the textbooks were much more comprehensive. The explanation for the conciseness of Guarinus' manual offered by Black is that it was designed to pave the way for the study of the Doctrinale in the secondary level of education, whereas the Summe compiled in the previous century were meant to replace the Doctrinale rather than supplement it (Black 2001: 87, 128). Indeed, in Guarinus' school the Regule served as an introduction to the study of the Doctrinale – a work that was also recommended by Battista Guarino (Kallendorf 2002: 276). Another medieval textbook, the Ianua, was used at an elementary level in Guarinus' school in Ferrara.
In one of his early works, Keith Percival described the development of the humanist grammar as taking place in three stages: in the first period only medieval grammatical handbooks were used, whereas in the second stage, inaugurated by Guarinus Veronensis Regule, „medieval theories of syntax were abandoned and replaced by new ones, the operation being in the nature of an anatomical excision of undesirable parts of the medieval tradition. Little in the way of original or novel concepts was introduced at this time. (…) much of the medieval system remained intact“ (Percival 1975: 244-245 = 2004, I). Robert Black, drawing attention to the fact that Goro d'Arezzo had already abandoned Scholastic terminology a hundred years before Guarinus, has come to a more radical conclusion, denying Guarinus any role in the renovation of the grammatical method: „Guarinus can in no way be considered a reformer of grammar education along humanist lines“ (Black 2001: 129). Accepting Black’s conclusion, which is based on a systematic study of medieval Latin grammars composed in Italy, I would rather see Guarinus included in the first stage of studia humanitatis, in which the attitude towards medieval textbooks was not yet hostile. The excising of Scholastic terminology by him does not seem to take place in opposition with medieval language theories; the fact that his manual was designed to pave the way for the study of the Doctrinale, a product of Parisian Scholasticism, is evidence enough; the pupil would encounter the Scholastic terms later in the curriculum anyway.
Thus, the Regule turns out to be a medieval rather than a humanistic manual on grammar on the following grounds.
In his educational treatise (Kallendorf 2002: 268-270), Guarinus divides the study of grammar into two, adopting this division from the newly rediscovered Institutio oratoria of Quintilian; the first part, called methodical, covers the rules of the parts of speech, and the second part, the historical, is devoted to the reading of classical Latin texts, both prose texts, and poetry as well as Plautus' comedies and Seneca's plays. The elegant style is absorbed from Cicero's Letters and Orations after the pupils have completed their study of methodical grammar by studying three medieval textbooks: the Ianua, Guarinus' Regule and Doctrinale. Battista also refers to Quintilian's authority in asserting that it is impossible to properly understand classical Latin without knowing Greek. These are the important aspects of the new orientation of the „studia humanitatis“ which Guarinus set out to promote and for which he became famous. This is how I interpret the following famous passage from Guarinus' letter 98 to his son, written in 1452, at the age of seventy-eight, in which he compared the new humanistic education with the medieval schooling that he had received in the 1380s: „Until our time, humanistic studies lay prostrate in a dark night and writing had lost every splendor of elegance. But Italy has now emerged from cultural darkness. Thanks to the rediscovery of the texts of Cicero and other ancient authors, we now write elegant classical Latin. Humanistic education endows us with wisdom and eloquence.“ (Garin 1958: 416, translated by Grendler 1995: V, 781).
Guarinus' Regule was a popular work, which appeared in a large number of manuscripts and printed editions. There are forty manuscripts and at least forty-six Italian incunables: the twenty Italian editions dating from the sixteenth century show that its popularity continued until the seventeeth century, but then it has fallen out of favour, there being only six editions from the seventeenth century (Grendler 1989: 169; Percival 1972: 242 and 251, note 4; Colombat 1999: 26; Pade 2015 has identified fifty incunabular editions). In northern Italy, the Regule seems to have become something of a standard grammar (Brizzi 1976: 90-91). This means that it had proven to be pedagogically successful; perhaps there was a market for a short practical manual on grammar. However, its influence on other grammarians is difficult to assess, because its doctrine represents standard doctrine in medieval Latin grammars composed in Italy. Where Guarinus' Regule may have been influential is in minimizing the study of formal grammar, and its brevity may have been a source of inspiration for other short manuals of grammar, but this is speculative. Guarinus' name is mentioned by Piccolomini (Kallendorf 2002: 222-224), when he lists contemporary authors whose works are worth reading in his treatise on the education of boys (‚tersa sunt legentibusque frugifera‛). His name is not among the most important humanist grammarians of the quattrocento listed by the Flemish scholar Despauterius in a dedicatory letter at the beginning of the first part of his grammar, which first appeared in 1512; they are Sulpitius, Perottus, Antonius Mancinellus and Aldus Manutius (Comm. gramm. 1537, b 4 v); nor is he mentioned in Erasmus' De ratione studii, in which Sulpitius and Perottus are praised as the best grammarians (ASD 1-2, 148).
The Regule became heavily interpolated. Since the author wrote his treatise early on in his career, the question arises whether it was the author himself who wanted to present a revised edition of his work, but there is no evidence to support this hypothesis. If this should have been the case, his son Battista would in all likelihood have known it. The following passage from Battista's educational treatise shows that he is aware of the corrupted state of his father’s manual: „In that compendium of my father’s that I mentioned above, many people wanted to make numerous additions“ (edited and translated by Kallendorf 2002: 273). If Battista knew that some of the interpolated versions circulating were actually revisions of the Regule by the author himself, one could reasonably assume that he would have mentioned it here.
It is also worth mentioning that Guarinus' teaching methods have been at the centre of a debate concerning the contrast between medieval and humanistic learning. The orthodox view of the ‚studia humanitatis‛ as representing a revolutionary change in European cultural history wa s challenged by Grafton and Jardine 1986. They also questioned many central elements of the humanistic reform, such as the moral contents of the study of classical literature and the success of the humanistic teaching methods. By carrying out a close study of Guarinus' commentaries on Vergil's Georgics, Rhetorica ad Herennium, Cicero's De amicitia and his own work Carmina differentialia, they came to the conclusion that Guarinus' focus was always on language, grammar and philology (in the sense of providing information on historical, mythological and geographical issues) rather than moral philosophy no matter which subject he was teaching. Black’s profound study Humanism and Education in Medieval and Renaissance Italy (2001) has permitted us to see that tradition is as important as innovation in the transition from Scholasticism to humanism in the fifteenth-century Italy.