From imperial Rome to papal Rome: Recipients, Readers, and Translators of the Life of Moses by Philo of Alexandria

Abstract

When, in 1480, Lilio Tifernate, the papally commissioned author of six volumes of translations of philonian works between 1477 and 1485, dedicated his own translation of the Life of Moses to Sixtus IV, the process of appropriation of the philonian Moses to papal policy appeared to be well established. The same Tifernate, in the aftermath of the Council of Florence, had followed Bessarion to Constantinople, bringing back a philonian manuscript with him to Italy two years later. At the same time, Nicholas V, first, and Sixtus IV, later, were determined to include Philo in their project to rediscover the Greek and patristic heritage, as evidenced by the passage of manuscripts and translations prepared in that same time interval and throughout the mid-15th century. In the first part, the contribution dwells on the political strategy behind the composition of the Life of Moses,

inserting the philonian writing into the economy of the Expositio treatises in order to frame its aims on a historical level in the context of the Alexandrian's Roman stay in the aftermath of the pogrom of 38 AD. In the second part, the essay outlines the itinerary of the reception of the writing in the Humanistic and Renaissance ages through the crucial stages and turning points in the textual transmission, in order to illustrate the passage of the philonian Moses from imperial Rome to papal Rome, from the philonian theological and political reading to the papal theological-political one.