I have been petrified

The other week saw a jolly event: the second launch of Roscoe and Italy, a collection of essays edited by the indefatigable Stella Fletcher. The volume discusses a wide range of aspects of the intellectual life of the Liverpudlian pioneer of Renaissance studies, William Roscoe, including chapters on his friends, including one by myself on William Shepherd, first (and so far only) British biographer of the adventurous humanist, Poggio Bracciolini.

The first launch of the book was in Roscoe’s hometown, an event at which I could not be present. Not to be outdone by Liverpool, Florence decided to have a presentazione, at the British Institute. It involved elegant speeches by Stefano Baldassarri, Mark Roberts of the Institute, and John Law, followed by a lively discussion. During that, I pointed out how wonderfully inappropriate the event was: Roscoe, as is well-known, never left the shores of Britain and, indeed, found travelling to London too unpleasant. He would not have wanted to journey to Florence, and preferred to conjure up its Renaissance identity through the books and paintings with which he surrounded himself.

All the same, it was a pleasure to be able to celebrate both the author and the book about him on the banks of the Arno. There was much praise for the work and it is certainly a stimulating and, indeed, well-produced volume. Of course, no book is without its imperfections, and I am sure sharp-eyed readers will catch some misprints or other infelicities. I myself noticed one on first opening it, but this was a matter of amour propre. On the page with the list of contributors, it is stated ‘David Rundle is Corpus Christi College, Oxford’.

As a battle-cry, it cannot equal ‘I’m Spartacus’ but it is still an impressive claim. The weight of the college’s Headington stone walls sit heavily on my shoulders… It is a bold statement that has left me asking existential question about the meaning of ‘is’. Is ‘is’ as in the cinema bill boards, where to say Helen Mirren is The Queen suggests a representation so impressively real that you could the actor has inhabited the being of the person portrayed? It reminds me of a theatre studies exercise at school in which we each had to act one of the buildings of Macclesfield — I was to be the church (I am told my spire was not up to much but that I made a wicked nave).

Or is ‘is’ to suggest that somehow I capture the quintessence of the institution? I appreciate that my work on humanism in England makes an association between me and the foundation of Richard Fox which was praised (beyond reality) by Erasmus. I am not so sure, though, that that is the entire identity of Corpus now, nor am I sure I am, in character, any more a Corpuscule than I am a Houseman (Christ Church being my alma mater).

But then, perhaps, ‘is’ means here simply that I have come to look like the crenellated quadrangles of the small but complex College. If that is the case, I truly am petrified.

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