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‘Pontifici dexter Caesaribusque meis’: Ambrogio Fracco’s Sacrorum Fastorum libri, Ovid’s Fasti and the Appropriation of March

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Abstract

Written by the Roman humanist Novidio Fracco during the first half of the 16th century and published subsequently in 1547, the Sacri Fasti is an elegiac poem modelled on Ovid’s own Fasti and structured upon the Catholic liturgical calendar. As a work of the Cinquecento, one of the more novel attributes of the poem is in its combination of Ovidian mythologizing with the contemporary political and religious dynamics of Rome. In this way, Fracco draws on scenes from Ovid’s Fasti which celebrate Augustus and the imperial domus and refigures them for the age of Paul III. In this essay, I analyse the proem of Fracco’s third book, a grand battle between Christ and Mars, as emblematic of this synthesis between the mythological and the political. I begin with the poet’s invocation to the Virgin Mary, which, I contend, locates the poem within the Ovidian tradition and which forms an intertext with the opening of Fasti book four, Ovid’s appeal to the goddess Venus. I then discuss the main episode, the conflict between Christ and Mars, in which Fracco reorients March and the city of Rome as Christian and which establishes another intertext with the foundation myth for Rome at the opening of Fasti book three. Finally, I argue that Fracco, like Ovid, imbues his panel with political significance, using it as a means to sanction the partnership, anticipated and idealized during the Cinquecento, between Pope Paul III and Emperor Charles V.

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Notes

  1. Most reconstructions of Fracco’s life are based on F. Pignatti, ‘Fracco, Ambrogio’, in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, Rome, 1997, XLIX, pp. 566–7, which is itself largely a summary of B. Pecci, Contributo per la storia degli umanisti nel Lazio, Rome, 1891, pp. 466–8. Fracco’s education in Rome and presence there by 1527 can be established by De adversis, Rome, Biblioteca Lincei, MS Corsiniana 1327, fol. 139v: ‘Roma quidem patria est studiorum et cura meorum’ (‘Rome is, indeed, my fatherland and the care of my studies’).

  2. On his name, Fracco writes in the dedication to his Sacri Fasti: ‘Ego solus in familiarem meum Ovidium veluti transformatus’ (‘I alone was, so to speak, transformed into my friend Ovid’). Fracco’s poetry comprises three published poems and three different collections in MS. The second includes: (1) An imitation of Ovid’s Heroides, a reimagining of the Tristia set during the 1527 Sack of Rome entitled the De adversis and a collection of epigrammata in Rome, Biblioteca Lincei, MS Corsiniana 1327; (2) two books of hendecasyllabics in Rome, Biblioteca Alessandrina, MS 190, fols 57r–76r and (3) two elegiac epistles addressed to Carlo Borromeo, cardinal archbishop of Milan, 1560–1584, in Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, MS D 343 inf, fols 43r and 50r. These last elegies, unlisted by Pignatti, ‘Fracco’ (n. 1 above), also establish a terminus ante quem of 1560 for Fracco’s death. He published two other poems in addition to his Sacri Fasti. The first, in 1538, is an elegiac poemetto known as the Consolatio ad Romam, which represents the popular contemporary genre of lamenti for the sacked city and anticipates the political arguments in the Sacri Fasti. This was followed around 1546 by an elegiac epistle to Alessandro Farnese, Pope Paul III’s grandson, which envisions future triumphs for the cardinal and requests financial support.

  3. For the text of Ovid’s Fasti, I use the Teubner edition of E. H. Alton, D. E. W. Wormell and E. Courtney, 4th edn, Berlin, 2005. For the Sacri Fasti, I cite, updating for modern punctuation, via the folio from the 1559 Antwerp printing of the text located in the Staatliche Bibliothek, Regensburg. The exception is for the Mars panel, in which I cite by individual line numbers. For the Consolatio ad Romam, I cite by line number from the 1538 Rome edition found in the Bibliothèque Mazarine, Paris.

  4. On Ovidian stylistic borrowings in the Sacri Fasti, see J. Miller, ‘Ovid’s “Fasti” and the Neo-Latin Christian Calendar Poem’, International Journal of the Classical Tradition, 10, 2003, pp.173–86 (177–9).

  5. For a brief analysis of Lazzarelli’s Fasti, see A. Fritsen, ‘Ludovico Lazzarelli’s Fasti Christianae Religionis: Recipient and Context of an Ovidian Poem’, in Myricae: Essays on Neo-Latin Literature in Memory of Jozef IJsewijn, ed. D. Sacré and G. Tournoy, Leuven, 2003, pp 115–32. There are few studies on Bonincontri’s Fasti, although the best remains B. Soldati, ‘Gl’Inni Sacri d’un astrologo del Rinascimento’, in Miscellanea di studi critici edita in onore di Arturo Graf, Bergamo, 1903, pp. 405–29. The Fasti of Mantuanus have similarly received little attention, although J. Smet, The Fasti of Blessed Baptista Mantuanus, Washington DC, 1943 offers a summary. For background on the study of the Fasti in the Renaissance, see A. Fritsen, Antiquarian Voices: The Roman Academy and the Commentary Tradition on Ovid’s Fasti, Columbus, 2015, esp. pp. 29–62.

  6. Ara, virtually indistinguishable here from libellus (poetic book), introduces the theme of the ara which will reappear throughout the panel.

  7. All Latin translations are my own.

  8. Ovid models his exchanges with divinities on Callimachus’s Aetia. For an overview, see J. Miller, ‘Ovid’s Divine Interlocutors in the Fasti’, in Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History, III, ed. C. Deroux, Brussels, 1983, pp. 156–92.

  9. Miller, ‘Ovid’s “Fasti”’ (n. 4 above), p. 178, also notes the connection here between Mary and Juno. On the description of the goddess, cf. Ovid, Fasti, VI.37, where she is described as the ‘regina dearum’.

  10. On the invocation of deities, B. Harries, ‘Causation and the Authority of the Poet in Ovid’s Fasti’, Classical Quarterly, 39, 1989, pp. 164–85 (168), argues that it develops a shared possession of the causa between the poet and the god/goddess: ‘Thus, when Minerva is asked directly to supply details of the Quinquatrus minores … the account which follows might easily be the goddess’s own and is clearly not to be questioned’.

  11. On the relationship between cause and time in the Fasti, see ibid.; C. Newlands, Playing with Time: Ovid and the ‘Fasti’, Ithaca NY, 1995.

  12. J. Miller, ‘Ovid’s Janus and the Start of the Year in Renaissance Fasti Sacri’, in The Afterlife of Ovid, ed. J. North and P. Mack, London, 2015, pp. 81–94 (89), points out that Fracco enters an inspired state also in his invocations to the Holy Trinity (January) and the Holy Spirit (June).

  13. On this balance between imitation and competition, see S. Hinds, Allusion and Intertext: Dynamics of appropriation in Roman poetry, Cambridge, 1998, pp. 52–63, who explores the similar dynamic between Virgil and Ennius, and their respective claims to being the ‘primus poeta’ (‘first poet’).

  14. Ovid, Fasti, III.173.

  15. See Matthew 5:17: ‘nolite putare quoniam veni solvere legem aut prophetas non veni solvere sed adimplere’.

  16. Cf. Ovid, Fasti, III.1 and III.172.

  17. Ibid., II.858.

  18. Ibid., II.481 and V.559.

  19. At Aeneid, I.21–2, Juno comes ‘for the destruction of Libya’ (‘excidio Libyae’), while a few lines later at I.49 she laments the would-be loss of her offerings: ‘aut supplex aris imponet honorem?’ (‘or will a suppliant place an offering upon my altars?’).

  20. Ibid., V.619–40.

  21. Although infrequent, anti-Semitism does appear in Fracco’s poetry, most notably at the opening of Book V of the De adversis, Rome, Biblioteca Lincei, MS Corsiniana 1327, fol. 163v, where he compares his own struggles with those of Ovid in Tomis, singling out his mistreatment by Jews during the Sack: ‘Sitque alios passus quam vis quos ipse ferebat, / Iudeos nullos pertulit ille viros’ (‘And although he [Ovid] suffered at the hands of others whom he was enduring, he endured no Jewish men’).

  22. For this use of cornu, see Oxford Latin Dictionary, s.v. 6d.

  23. Cf. Virgil, Aeneid, I.592–3: ‘quale manus addunt ebori decus, aut ubi flavo / argentum Pariusve lapis circumdatur auro’.

  24. For the hasta as a symbol of Mars, see C. Bailey, P. Ovidi Nasonis Fastorum liber III, Oxford, 1921, p. 35, and S. Heyworth, Ovid Fasti: Book III, Cambridge, 2019, p. 75.

  25. Ovid, Fasti, III.171–2: ‘sic ego. sic posita dixit mihi casside Mavors / sed tamen in dextra missilis hasta fuit’. Earlier, at III.9–10, Ovid had also called upon the god to set down his spear, which he failed to do. Heyworth, Ovid Fasti (n. 24 above), p. 117, speculates that this reluctance is thematically motivated by Ovid, who desires to keep his emphasis on the bellicose Romans in his panel on the Rape of the Sabine Women.

  26. R. Maltby, A Lexicon of Ancient Latin Etymologies, Leeds, 1991, p. 372, quotes Cicero, De natura deorum, II.67: ‘qui magna verteret Mavors’ (‘Mavors who overturns great things’).

  27. For examples of etymologizing in the Fasti, see, e.g. II.19, III.810, IV.87–9, V.74.

  28. For a summary of the lengthy debate on Ovid’s programmatic division between arma and ara, see S. Green, Ovid, Fasti 1: A Commentary, Leiden, 2004, pp. 37–8.

  29. That this Mars is given a new purpose is much different from Ovid’s version of the god who, as Heyworth, Ovid Fasti (n. 24 above) p. 76, notes, is set ‘on the path that leads to lust and humiliation’.

  30. On the phrase, see M. Robinson, A Commentary on Ovid’s Fasti, Book 2, Oxford, 2011, p. 152.

  31. Ovid, Fasti, II.139–40. The comparison between Augustus and Romulus has generated significant debate on the political nature of the Fasti. For an overview, see Robinson, A Commentary (n. 30 above), pp. 138–9.

  32. In the Renaissance, the image of a downtrodden Rome became a literary trope. In his 1528 Presa di Roma, Eustachio Celebrino bluntly calls the city the ‘coda di mundo’, while in the De adversis, Rome, Biblioteca Lincei, MS Corsiniana 1327, fol. 170v, Fracco remarks that Rome was ‘ante vocata caput’ (‘once known as the head of the world’). For more on the theme, see V. de Caprio, ‘Testi poetici sul Sacco di Roma del 1527’, Rivista di Studi Italiani, 4, 1986, pp. 35–53, esp. 37–42; A brief analysis of Fracco’s panel on the Sack is found in B. Xinyue, ‘Commemorating the Sack of Rome (1527): Antiquity and Authority in Renaissance Poetic Calendars’, Papers of the British School at Rome, 88, 2020, pp. 1–21.

  33. On the phrase, see P. Partner, Renaissance Rome, 1500–1559: A Portrait of a Society, Berkeley, 1979, p. 73.

  34. Both anniversaries are recounted in the Sacri Fasti. For an overview, see L. von Pastor, The History of the Popes, from the Close of the Middle Ages, transl. and ed. R. F. Kerr, 2nd edn, XI, St. Louis, 1923, pp. 23–8.

  35. On the campaign against Tunis and la Goletta, see J. Tracy, Emperor Charles V, Impresario of War, Cambridge, 2002, pp. 147–9.

  36. Sacri Fasti (n. 3 above), fol. 95r.

  37. For an overview of the triumph, see V. Forcella, Tornei e giostre: ingressi trionfali e feste carnavelesche in Roma sotto Paolo III (1534–1549), Rome, 1885, pp. 35–50; H. Gamrath, Farnese: Pomp, Power and Politics in Renaissance Italy, Rome, 2007, pp. 73–80.

  38. Sacri Fasti (n. 3 above), fol. 45r.

  39. Ibid., fol. 45v.

  40. G. Brunelli, ‘L’opzione militare nella cultura politica romana: le relazioni papato-impero (1530–1557)’, in L’Italia di Carlo V: Guerra religione e politica nel primo cinquecento, ed. F. Cantu and M. A. Visceglia, Rome, 2003, p. 526, cites the Orationes tres of Bernardino Rutilio, the Exhortatio contra Turcas of Cardinal Bessarion and the orations of Cardinal Reginald Pole as exempla.

  41. Fracco, Sacri Fasti, (n. 3 above), fol. 1v.

  42. Fracco, Consolatio ad Romam (n. 3 above), pp. 375–8. Fracco generally uses the term ‘Parthian’ (‘Parthi’) as a stand-in for Ottoman, e.g., his panel on the general council at Sacri Fasti (n. 3 above), fol. 69r: ‘Haec nostri coget Parthos in numinis aras / thura dare …’ (‘This one [peace] will compel the Parthians to offer incense at the altars of our god’).

  43. Ovid, e.g. imagines vengeance upon the Parthians in his Mars Ultor panel at Fasti, V.545–98; Fracco’s concern over the Ottomans is evinced by his 10 August entry, Sacri Fasti (n. 3 above), fol. 102r, memorializing Charles V’s 1529 relief of Vienna, while they are mentioned explicitly at Fracco, Consolatio ad Romam (n. 3 above), pp. 513–17, where Charles and Paul campaign together: ‘in te collectae venient Othomane cohorts … ultor erit Caesar Pater et cum Caesare patrum’ (‘the gathered Ottoman cohorts will rush against you … Caesar – and with Caesar the pope – will be your avengers’).

  44. Protestants are notably mentioned in Fracco’s 24 February entry, Sacri Fasti (n. 3 above), fol. 24r, which celebrates Charles’s coronation as Holy Roman Emperor. There, Fracco imagines imperial victories over the Lutheran Henry IV of Saxony and the English monarch Henry VIII.

  45. For translation of the phrase ‘primus et ultimus orbis’, see Green, Ovid (n. 28 above), p. 326.

  46. For an analysis of the passage, see Heyworth Ovid Fasti (n. 24 above), p. 107.

  47. See Ovid, Fasti, III.233. Heyworth, Ovid Fasti (n. 24 above), p. 127, calls this etymology ‘delightfully absurd’ given that she was also a Vestal Virgin.

  48. Cf. Ovid, Fasti, III.206, where Mars calls Hersilia ‘mea nurus’ (‘my daughter-in-law’).

  49. See above, n. 42.

  50. Fracco, Sacri Fasti, fol. 59r. Xinyue, ‘Commemorating the Sack of Rome’ (n. 32 above), p. 10, treats the entry as an allegorical extension of the Sack panel (6 May) celebrating Rome’s ‘rebirth’. In reality, it commemorates a specific mass held by Paul before a planned diplomatic mission to attain peace between Charles V and Francis I. For more see L. von Pastor, Storia dei Papi: Dalla fine del Medio Evo, transl. and ed. A. Mercati, V, Rome, 1959, p. 170.

  51. Likely a reference to the Roman church of Santa Maria della Pace.

  52. For historical background on the temple and how its aetiology is manipulated by Mars, see Heyworth, Ovid’s Fasti (n. 24 above), p. 130.

  53. Fracco himself has ‘coelestia lilia’ (‘celestial lilies’) sprinkled on Paul’s head during his coronation (5 November; Sacri Fasti [n. 3 above], fol. 147v). The δίκης κρίνον (‘lily of justice’), e.g. was a common feature of Paul III’s imagery.

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    Evan Loren Brubaker

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Brubaker, E.L. ‘Pontifici dexter Caesaribusque meis’: Ambrogio Fracco’s Sacrorum Fastorum libri, Ovid’s Fasti and the Appropriation of March. Int class trad 30, 247–270 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12138-022-00622-w

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