Las polémicas sobre Cicerón en el renacimiento europeo

Abstract

The present text studies the polemic on the imitation of Cicero within the context of the early Humanistic Renaissance in Italy (15th century), and how it later spread throughout Europe in the following century, in such a way that some of the most eminent minds of the time, such as Poliziano, Pietro Bembo, Erasmus or El Brocense, became involved in it. These men tried to make ideologically explicit what had been commonplace in Renaissance poetics since Dante and, above all, since Petrarch: the imitation of Latin models with a view to their emulation in what were still called vulgar languages.A very interesting subprocess within this polemic was its theological derivation, as the Roman Church (through Bembo, Cortese and Sadoleto) appropriated the Ciceronian style and simple imitation as a model for containing the much-feared stylistic freedom -- for, as is well known, every formal innovation eventually leads, necessarily, to innovation in contents and worldviews.