The Disputationes Camaldulenses of Cristoforo Landino constitute an important document. Composed in the manner of Ciceronian dialogues, they present us with a group of speakers famous in the history of Florentine thought: among others, Lorenzo de’ Medici, Alberti, and Ficino of the ‘Platonic Academy’ at Careggi to which Landino belonged; Alamanno Rinuccini, the Acciaiuoli, and Marco Parenti of the other ‘academy', presided over by Argyropoulos. The first dialogue deals with the relative merits of the active and contemplative life, the second with the problem of the highest good—two topics dear to the Renaissance. The third and fourth give an allegorical interpretation of the Aeneid. It would be hard to find personages or themes more central to quattrocento intellectual history. Inevitably one looks to the Disputationes for the light they throw on these Florentine scholars and on their interests.

The widespread influence of Ovid's Amoves in the Renaissance is well known. In this note, I hope to show how, directly or indirectly, the fourth elegy of the second book brings together four poets not ordinarily associated. Ovid's elegy may well have served Marlowe, Donne, Suckling, and Herrick as a model for a pose that became a commonplace in Renaissance poetry, the stance of the indifferent lover.

When, during their controversy, Tyndale asks More why he has criticized the Tyndale translation of the New Testament but has said nothing against the translation of his ‘derelyng’ Erasmus, More answers:

I have not contended with Erasmus my derling, because I found no suche malicious entente with Erasmus my derlyng, as I fynde with Tyndall. For hadde I founde with Erasmus my derling the shrewde entente and purpose that I fynde in Tyndall: Erasmus my derlyng should be no more my derlyng….

The strange and important figure of Giordano Bruno more and more draws our attention. With equal possibility of accuracy we may view him as charlatan and as martyr to learning; his colossal ego made him seem the first just as it made him become the latter. Particularly his residence in England in 1583-84 and his connections there with Sidney, Greville, Dyer, Dee, and Florio have drawn the attention of students of the English Renaissance. ‘Appare dunque manifesto', says Professor Ludovico Limentani, Tinteresse di qualsiasi informazione che possa illuminare anche del piu fioco barlume quel periodo della travagliata esistenza del grande pensatore.’