Too Long Didn’t Listen: the perils of Renaissance oratory

In 1515, Maximilian I, the Holy Roman Emperor, and the Kings of Poland and Hungary, physically met at Vienna, with suitably large entourages, to conclude a treaty of alliance sealed by a double wedding uniting the Habsburg and Jagiellonian dynasties. Latin was essential as the medium of exchange at the Congress, which met to form an alliance between Maximilian I, the Holy Roman Emperor, and the Kings of Poland and Hungary, all present with their armies. It concluded with a double wedding designed to unite the Habsburg and Jagiellonian dynasties. The commentators repeatedly remark on the ethnic and linguistic diversity. The intense negotiations, which continued actively right up to the final arrival in Vienna were conducted mainly by high-ranking representatives and ambassadors (called oratores, precisely because their job was to speak in Latin) who continued to lead negotiations even after the principals met – the deal was far from done.

Dr Helen Coffey of the Open University commissioned me to translate two reports on the Congress of Vienna. One was by the Bavarian Johann Spiessheimer, a scholar of the Court of Maximilian I, Prefect of Vienna, who used the pen name Johannes Cuspinianus – I’ll call him Cuspinian. The other is the Odeporicon of the Italian humanist, Riccardo Bartolini. Cuspinian is self-effacing and reverential. Bartolini has a much stronger authorial voice, and includes whatever interests him, from tourist destinations to personal reminiscences. To reach the widest educated Christian public, they both write in Latin.

The first thing that struck me while reading these accounts of the Congress, is that you would hardly expect a serious political report on the G7 to place so much emphasis on the gold chains, the high quality textiles, the quality of the trumpets. These things mattered, because they were assurances of power. The insistence on high quality and lavishness ran through the whole event – processions, display, lavish gifts and entertainment. Shows of courtesy were important too. In all this Latinists did double duty, both as practical communicators and as part of the pomp and show Ceremonial summits required dignified exchanges of speeches expressing the proper sentiments of the occasion in Latin. Renaissance humanism had brought high standards of refinement in Latin compositional style, and nothing less than the best scholarly Latin – the linguistic equivalent of silk and velvet – could be offered to princes on these great occasions.

Fortunately, there were people who were good at this. We have said that of the business of the Congress of Vienna was done by Latinist negotiators. It’s quite striking that one of the most important imperial aides ‘Cardinal Gurk’ (Matthäus Lang von Wellenburg) and his Hungarian counterpart ‘Cardinal Esztergom (Tamás Bakócz) were of relatively humble origin, but had risen through the Church as scholars and administrators who could do business for the blue-blooded elite. These same people could also keep the speech making at an appropriate level of dignity and splendour. It is notable that the speech making at key events is not usually done by the key political participants in person, but by their representatives.

As I translated speeches and indeed poems written for delivery to the great princes, I became very bored. Were the Court and the Kings not bored to death with all this flowery sycophancy? The Latin is certainly very scholarly. Renaissance style demanded the abandonment of non-Classical vocabulary, and the adoption of complicated sentence structures found in the Classical prose writers. So now it was sophisticated to call churches temples and put the main verb so far back in the sentence that by the time you meet it, you can’t remember what you needed it for. And then, this Latin was part of the spectacle. A a speech on a majestic occasion required a certain amplitude – the greatness of the topic must be reflected by the number of words spent on it. Expressions of devotion, respect and loyalty needed to be made in well chosen Latin words, including large numbers of redundant superlatives. Glorification of the prince was a topic which could hardly be hurried over – clearly adequate glorification would take a considerable time. But in real life, was anyone listening?

I think not

Even allowing for the fact that the oratores were used to conversing in Latin, I would suspect that listening to a long declamation was pretty challenging. I am quite good at Latin, and think I would follow the gist and key messages. People who didn’t speak Latin regularly, who were not oratores, – how well would they understand spoken Latin? And what about the princes themselves. Officially of course, they were paragons of all manly accomplishments and enjoyed listening to long Latin orations, sometimes even in verse, as much as a good joust and defending Christendom from the Turks. But really? Then make allowances for different pronunciations, lack of microphones, open air crowds. Really?

Well let’s take a real life example. Poor Bartolini suffers a terrible disappointment in St Stephen’s Cathedral Vienna. It is his big moment.

When Mass was over, Caesar left his throne and went to the tomb of his father Frederick which was close by, in order to put on his Pontifical robes. Then I was supposed to make a speech, although a very small space had been allocated me for it, and I got up to speak. However, the scoundrels were making so much noise everywhere, there was such a prevailing din of dissonant people and voices (not to mention the clattering of the carpenter who had come to mend Caesar’s dais) that I was compelled to give up without making even a third of the speech – my friends actively encouraged me to do so. (M iv a)

Poor Bartolini. But he remained hopeful, and redeemed himself in his own eyes by showing he could speak Latin fluently enough to extemporise on the spot.

Nonetheless, since I saw the King of Poland pay some slight attention, I achieved this much; though I was vanquished by the outrageous behaviour of those monstrous people, I made an extemporary conclusion. (M iv b)

Bartolini is not of course a major player. There were people who could command silence. In Cuspinian’s account, at 12 A, the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian himself makes a speech of an hour to the visiting Kings.

Altogether, he spoke for almost an hour, so nobly and with such great wisdom that he kept all eyes and faces turned to him, and so won them over that many who were not loyal Caesarians [supporters of the Emperor], but were quite hostile to him, now said openly that they would submit; they said they had never expected such courtesy, wisdom and adroitness in Caesar, being so great a prince as he was.

Since large numbers of oratores, prelates and so on were present, it is no surprise, that the speech may have been well understood. However, the fact that the Emperor gives it personally and his manner in giving it may be an important part of the intended effect. At this point, Maximilian is stage managing an opportunity for the kings, in a gorgeous setting, to have almost an hour to try out the feel of this new fraternal relationship with the Emperor, as the undivided leaders of Latin Christendom, diverse by ethnicity, but united against the heathen menace of the Ottoman Turks.

Nowhere do Maximilian and the Kings show an ability converse directly in Latin, except for brief formal exchanges. For example at Bratislava. (6A Cuspinian) the Emperor’s representative Gurk makes a speech and Esztergom replies for the Kings. Clearly Maximilian actually had very good Latin, so why doesn’t he make the speech? I suspect from many other things in the text that the representatives have to be used because neither Sigismund of Poland nor Vladislaus of Hungary were capable of extended Latin conversation, although the only royal who is explicitly said to need an interpreter is Queen Anne. She is aged 12 (Bartolini’s Odeporicon O iii b). But even if the royal parties had Latin comptence, others didn’t.

When the Kings are preparing to depart (Cuspinian 16 B) Maximilian again makes a prepared speech to them at a grand feast. Now Cuspinian has his moment of glory. It is his job to give a short account of the treaty that his been concluded in Latin and in German. If Cuspinian gave his speech very clearly, and slowly, it was probably fairly intelligible, but he still backed it up in German. What does this tell us about the general intelligibility of the Emperor’s Latin oration?

Bartolini takes great interest in speech making generally. From him we get a much stronger picture of the lesser role of Latin speech-making in formal ceremonies. In A iii b Gurk arrives in Ingoldstadt – the Rector of the University makes a speech of welcome (badly) and the Bishop of Acerra (for reasons of etiquette) replies for Gurk. Then he enters Vienna, where Sebastianus Binderlius speaks an encomium of him, and the Bishop of Acerra again replies. When anyone of major importance goes anywhere, there must be an official welcome party where someone must make a speech and someone else must reply. These speeches are purely ornamental. If they go well, the orators present will appreciate them, but they are quite likely to go badly. Like the interminable speeches at weddings and funerals, it is easy to see how these could become a public menace.

Bartolini is scathing about the unfortunate Rector of Ingolstadt, but admires Binderlius. Maybe he thought his words were wasted, because he digresses into some heartfelt and revealing comments on oratory (B i a).

Concerning the impatience of princes in listening [to speeches]

For princes at this time do not enjoy digressions and ceremony, but prefer a rapid exposition; they want the speech over in a short space, even if the topic is their own praises. If we remain faithful to the precepts of the ancients, and make our aim the urn of Cicero, the princes are either doing something else, or are napping. If we adopt a more concise style of speech, because we have to some extent adopted new principles, either we are ‘getting it wrong through ignorance’, or, even if we say something good, they still say that the speaker is inexperienced, just because the speech was brief.

The orators are between a rock and a hard place. If they obey the rules of oratory, and produce something that measures up to the standards of the orators present, they bore the princes. If they keep it brief, they look incompetent. And as the speeches might need to be presented in written form too, there was no hiding place. Elaborate Renaissance prose with complex sentence structure and all those delayed main verbs was the only language that could satisfy the leisurely scrutiny of scholars.

It wasn’t only the princes who were easily bored. In K i b Bartolini himself is bored by one of the senior negotiators for the kings.

The Archbishop of Pécs began a speech in response to this intricate letter; he spoke with the elegance due but perhaps at greater length than the occasion required. After rejoicing in the coming of Caesar and the great happiness it afforded the Kings, and discoursing on their affection and services towards Caesar, he continued with magnificent praise of the Emperor; then he changed the topic to the necessity of entering into peace, and concord, and taking up an expedition against the Turks – this was no doubt learned enough, except that this last part, which I would rather have reserved for the joint meeting with the Kings, dealt with relations with the Turks at excessive length.

The Kings’ ambassadors have just offered their formal credentials to Maximilian. The Archbishop could have confined himself to endorsing this fairly simple document with a few well chosen words. Instead, he made pointless false start on the formal presentation, missing many opportunities to sit down. Maximilian could hardly interrupt the Archbishop once he got going. But Bartolini goes on to show how it should be done.

Praise of Mota’s response

When the oratorical formalities were finally over, Caesar, had summoned Gurk, who was sitting next to him as usual, Szydłowiecki and Doctor Mota to consult with him. He gave the task of making a response to Pedro Mota, the Spaniard, as learned and imposing a man as any to come out of Spain. In order to free Caesar from tedium, he first mentioned Caesar’s happiness at the arrival of the ambassadors, and expanded his theme with praise of no mean order... He responded so successfully and briefly, that Caesar could not have been more pleased with his economy of organization.

So princes hate them, etiquette demands them, but what is the point of all these speeches. The written distribution of the speech was an age old strategy – Bartolini on his attempt at speech at the wedding

It is true that although the speech was hardly heard, it can at least be read. I have decided to append the speech below, although in a brief and summary form.

As the ceremonies carried on Maximilian resorted to direct methods when he found the University of Vienna had turned up to offer formal congratulations on his conditional marriage to Anne of Hungary.

Since Caesar was pressed by important business he ordered them to speak briefly, indicating that he would read the speeches presently if they were presented in written form. When my friend Vadianus, a man of the brightest talent, learned this – he had been given the task of speaking – he addressed Caesar briefly as follows.

Holy Emperor Maximilian, I think it should well suit your wishes that, at your command, we have condensed into one page, the speech which I was to give before you on behalf of the University, since important and demanding matters of imperial business require it; the fact that we have done this must demonstrate our common duty and devotion to you. When you have leisure to read this, please remember that these words are in no way sufficient to commit to the literary records the true extent of what we feel about your majesty and power and merit, given our ardent love towards you, and our overwhelming admiration of what you have done.

Vadianus neatly makes a virtue of necessity – no number of words are adequate to express the devotion of the University. And Caesar will read the whole speech when he has leisure. When the Congress is over, and the Peasants’ Revolt of the moment suppressed, and the Ottomans crushed, when the Muscovites and the King of France have been taught better manners, then Maximilian will sit down to read the effusions of loyalty from the University of Vienna. He isn’t the only one with scrolls piling up in his to do tray. The King of Hungary receives a poem on his greatness from Bartolini, accompanied by a very short speech.

I beg and beseech that you will be pleased to accept the poem which I wrote in praise of the marriage of the Most Serene Louis and Mary and of your own Majesty a full three days ago. If I find that you have enjoyed it in some opportunity for leisure furnished by the wise and valiant conclusion of your projects, it will then have the appearance of a prelude. Meanwhile I hope for happiness for your Majesty and your delightful son. May you live long alongside him, and may he seem your likeness, both in his manner of life and the glory of his deeds.

Bartolini then publishes the poem. At this point it is clear what is happening. The complimentary speeches have to exist for reasons of honour on the side of the princes, and preferment on the part of the authors. But the princes don’t actually want to listen to them. In fact, the elite at any gathering may not be able to follow the elaborate Latin very well, and there may even be problems of audibility. The solution is to publish; then the administrators can read the speeches in print, and the princes can be assured that they exist without having to waste any time on them. That leaves them free for more important uses of time, which in the case of Maximilian and the Kings include two days of tournament, where the people who really matter can forge relationships and make vital demonstrations of power and unity.

The moment of speechmaking is an important element of ceremonial, but princes like to keep it short – unless they are speaking! But the speech writers like to write elaborately and at length. The important thing is that the speeches should be read by other oratores, weighed, appreciated, competence applauded. Speeches are not just for the benefit for the great and good. The honour of making them is an important achievement and the skill with which the the task is done marks a man’s ability out to the ecclesiastical and diplomatic community, attracting notice, patronage, and promotion. For people like Bartolini and Cuspinian, speeches are, in effect, applications for jobs in the Civil Service, processed possibly by the kings and princes themselves, but more usually by their administrators. Clearly the Rector of Ingolstadt is not going anywhere very fast. But Bartolini hopes his final flourish has caught the eye of the King of Poland.

Augustus and Autism 3: Octavian -brilliance behind the mask

Post 2 laid down a lot of claims about the career of the young Augustus. In the next few posts I am going to use it as the base for raising autistic issues. In this post, I am going to focus on a very well known trait of High Functioning Autism: I am going to state that people considered autistic, or who consider themselves autistic, typically experience some sort of challenge in communicating with others – and indeed, that other people, neurotypical or autistic, may have trouble ‘reading’ them. All presentations of all people are unique. But where high intelligence is not matched by easy communication, where there are challenges in ‘reading’ others, following social cues, presenting an accessible face, you and I, my sympathetic reader, start thinking about High Functioning Autism. A major and contested issue here is the idea that autistic people have impaired or untypical Theory of Mind, essentially, that they have problems with empathy, imaginative grasp of the viewpoint of others and with using common social cues, like expression. We will look at this in Post 4.

For this post, I want to stick with some basic traits associated with High Functioning Autism: social awkwardness, struggles in handling emotional and social demands, communication challenges which can result in others forming unreliable impressions of character and ability. Leaving empathy on one side, I want to bring in alexithymia and slow processing, often part of an autistic profile.

Alexithymic people have difficulty reading and communicating their own emotions. An alexithymic person may process emotional impulses as intense feelings of well or ill being. They may even manifest things like sadness or fear as physical illness: the need to stay in bed, the stomach ache may be real, but the alexithymic person won’t make the link with, say, experiencing social media bullying or being anxious about exams. Alexithymia can be accompanied by ‘flat affect’ – a lack of readable emotional signalling – and this can cause a double empathy gap, where the alexithymic person can appear not to empathise, but possibly not to emote at all, making them inscrutable, outwardly cold, and giving others who want to understand them very little to go on.

Then, just before we go back to Octavian, there is slow-processing. This is not a feature shared by all autistic people, nor is it exclusive to autism, but it is often in the mix. Slow-processing people are not ‘slow’ – if ‘slow; is a polite word for ‘stupid’. People who have slow processing may have very high intelligence, but be slow to respond to stimuli – they just take more time to process new data, and to formulate responses to it. If, in a social situation, you ask me to multiply three three digit numbers in my head, I will laugh, and say I can’t do it, and then try a bit out loud, and generally socialise the task, while probably not completing it. If you ask an autistic mathematician, they may say nothing, look at you blankly, and after a silence which a neurotypical person finds uncomfortable, give the correct answer. That is slow processing. There is no chatter to cover the silence, because how can you chatter when you are processing?

So is any of this to do with the young Augustus any more? There is so little reliable data that you can’t diagnose the young Augustus. But we can ask whether there is room in his story for some of these features, and I think this is a worthwhile question, because, like it or not, he is going to go onto be such an enduring historical figure, that it is just impossible for nerds like us not to wonder what he was like.

I see the slow-processing and flat affect straight away. How? Well in the mismatch between how he seems and what he does. High functioning autistic people are often very striking characters within their own family and friendship group, where they may display great talents of one sort or another. To outsiders they appear quiet, slow, unobjectionable, uninspiring- in fact they don’t attract that much notice. Octavian did nothing interesting as a child, except live with Julius Caesar’s sister. His only public appearance was giving a family funeral oration (hers), as normal a rite of passage for Roman boys as a Bar Mitzvah. Caesar missed out much of Octavian’s uneventful childhood, being in Gaul throughout the 50s: some boys were actively mentored for power by their famous fathers, but that just can’t have been true for Octavian. Yet, suddenly, when he is 16, he is being conspicuously groomed for succession by Caesar.

At the age of four he lost his father. In his twelfth year he delivered a funeral oration to the assembled people in honour of his grandmother Julia. Four years later, after assuming the gown of manhood, he received military prizes at Caesar’s African triumph, although he had taken no part in the war on account of his youth. When his uncle presently went to Spain to engage the sons of Pompey, although Augustus had hardly yet recovered his strength after a severe illness, he followed over roads beset by the enemy with only a very few companions, and that too after suffering shipwreck, and thereby greatly endeared himself to Caesar, who soon formed a high opinion of his character over and above the energy with which he had made the journey.

Suetonius Life of Augustus

The trip in Spain seems to be in 46 BC. That is Caesar had already given Octavian the Pontificate (47 BC) and Triumphal honours (46 BC). Octavian also led ceremonies in the dedication of Caesar’s new temple to Venus Genetrix. We can take it that Caesar had some contact with Octavian while he was in Rome. In Spain, Caesar made him a constant companion and rode with him in his carriage, according to Velleius Paterculus (who wrongly thinks he was as already old as 18). The honours, the attention, the place on the great Parthian campaign, prevented by the assassination. You would think that anyone who had ridden in Caesar’s carriage would be rather an interesting conversationalist. And yet the direct evidence of the Cicero letters we looked at in Post 2 is that there was nothing very impressive about Octavian – he seemed to have talent, but his stepfather disagreed. That’s it. Of course, in the Philippics Cicero praised Octavian to the skies – but that was the usual adulatory yadda yadda compulsory when you were promoting anyone, and we know that Cicero had decided to promote Octavian largely because he had Caesar’s name and could possibly be used to lure Caesarians away from Antony.

While Cicero credited Octavian with conventional virtues for rhetorical effect, Octavian made himself more and more indispensable by practical means – raising troops. If we can credit that to him and not some shadowy fixer, he was a very remarkable young man. But he was not immediately impressive even to a skilled judge of men like Cicero. In terms of respectable historiography this doesn’t amount to a hill of beans, but to me it is a Gotcha! moment. He has to have had amazing ability, although there is nothing to see in public. However, some sort of family awareness must have filtered to Caesar, who must have felt that Octavian wouldn’t embarrass him as a pontifex. Besides, you don’t call a prospective adoptee all the way to Spain in time of war on spec. Caesar was not disappointed. Octavian was able to impress by his grit in the practical task of making the journey, a practical achievement not affected by challenges with high level social communication And Caesar gave the young man lots of focussed time, one to one, in private. That makes complete sense. Then Caesar commits – the adoption. Pontificate, the Triumphal Honours, Spanish wars, the Parthian Expedition; he isn’t just making a private adoption for sentimental reasons, he is setting up a fast track to power.

Cicero, on the other hand, had no expectations when Octavian turned up. The adoption wasn’t known to the public until Caesar died, and in any case Octavian was abroad. On a first meeting Cicero thinks Octavian is polite, later he thinks he might have some talent, by the Autumn, he is trying to explain to him that he really can’t get him made a Senator and Commander until January.

Am I just making all this up. Well, no, there is support in Suetonius Life of Augustus 79

His expression, whether in conversation or when he was silent, was so calm and mild, that one of the leading men of the Gallic provinces admitted to his countrymen that it had softened his heart, and kept him from carrying out his design of pushing the emperor over a cliff, when he had been allowed to approach him under the pretence of a conference, as he was crossing the Alps.

Later, he talks of Augustus’ preference for simple words, and, in chapter 34 ,the care he took to prepare his speeches.

In fact he never afterwards spoke in the senate, or to the people or the soldiers, except in a studied and written address, although he did not lack the gift of speaking offhand without preparation. 2 Moreover, to avoid the danger of forgetting what he was to say, or wasting time in committing it to memory, he adopted the practice of reading everything from a manuscript. Even his conversations with individuals and the more important of those with his own wife Livia, he always wrote out and read from a note-book, for fear of saying too much or too little if he spoke offhand.

He wrote down what he wanted to say, and read it out, even to his wife!

High Functioning Autism, Augustus, here you come!