Dal Sabellico al Sansovino: un’altra fonte occulta del trattato "Del Secretario"

For some time now, scholars have been aware of the fact that Francesco Sansovino’s treatise Del Secretario (1564-15807) begins with a page plagia- rized from Giovan Battista Pigna’s Principe (1561), and it has recently been demonstrated that the epistolary doctrine from Books II and III comes from Francesco Negro’s Opusculum scribendi epistolas (1488) and from Erasmus’ Opus de conscribendis epistolis (1522). This study seeks to shed further light on the way in which Sansovino compiled his texts by examining the primary sources for the first seven chapters of Book I, which are dedicated to illustrat- ing the qualities and duties of the ‘ideal secretary’. Though theories behind the art of being a secretary had been circulating in manuals since the begin- ning of the century both in Italy and abroad, what emerges from an examina- tion of the Secretario is that it was highly influenced – not only in terms of structure and contents but also often in the very words used – by the speech pronounced by the Venetian chancellor Marco Aurelio in Marcantonio Sa- bellico’s dialogue entitled De officio scribae (1502).

For some time now, scholars have been aware of the fact that Francesco Sansovino's treatise Del Secretano (1564-1580<sup>7</sup>) begins with a page plagiarized from Giovan Battista Pigna's Principe (1561), and it has recently been demonstrated that the epistolary doctrine from Books II and III comes from Francesco Negro's Opusculum scribendi epistolas (1488) and from Erasmus' Opus de conscribendh epistolis (1522). This study seeks to shed further light on the way in which Sansovino compiled his texts by examining the primary sources for the first seven chapters of Book I, which are dedicated to illustrating the qualities and duties of the 'ideal secretary'. Though theories behind the art of being a secretary had been circulating in manuals since the beginning of the century both in Italy and abroad, what emerges from an examination of the Secretano is that it was highly influenced - not only in terms of structure and contents but also often in the very words used - by the speech pronounced by the Venetian chancellor Marco Aurelio in Marcantonio Sa-bellico's dialogue entitled De officio scribae (1502).