Giovanni Nanni

Giovanni Nanni (aka Annius of Viterbo) was born on the 5th January 1437 in Viterbo, Italy. Entering the Dominican order he began his life in the convent of S. Maria in Gradi in approximately 1448. Approximately 1464, he left Viterbo for Florence to study a Masters degree in Theology. By 1471 he was living in the city of Genoa in the convent of S. Domenico, where he became Prior.

He spent until 1476 as a teacher of grammar at the convent until he was replaced by a humanist named Giorgio Valla. Soon afterward he gained the patronage of Archbishop Paolo Fregoso. By the late 1480's, Nanni returned to Viterbo and lectured in history. In subsequent years he wrote a number of smaller works of history, most of which are now lost.

By 1498, Nanni had composed his Magnum Opus or 'Great Work'. He secured the patronage of one Garcilaso de la Vega in Rome and travelled there in order to publish the work under the direction of a publisher named Eucharius Silber.

Nanni's book - called the Antiquitates, was composed of 17 parts. It contained 12 annotated texts and 4 treatise. These comprised fragments from 9 historians - Archilochus, Metasthenes, Cato, Fabius Pictor, Myrsilus, C. Sempronius, Philon, Xenophon and Antoninus Pius - all of which had been lost to the world. Also included were fragments of Berosus the Chaldean and Manetho. These authors provided historical accounts that explained early history from the time of Noah. They were in remarkable accord with biblical history.

The annotations on the texts Nanni took from dozens of authentic historians such as: Pliny, Diodorus Siculus, Solinus, Isidore of Seville, Gellius, Macrobius, Herodotus, Plutarch, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Livy, Appian, Eusebius, Trogus, Sallust, Josephus, Valerius Maximus, Quintus Curtius and Rufus. In addition, he used poets and geographers such as Juvenal, Horace, Tibullus, Homer, Vergil, Pomponius Mela and Propertius to aid his explanations.

After Nanni's death in 1502, his Antiquitates of 1498 was increasingly questioned and came to be regarded as an elaborate fraud. The annotations were known to be genuine but the 9 lost authors were believed to be a figment of his imagination because they could not be found amongst his possessions. Neither could Berosus or Manetho.

Was Nanni's Berosus Defloratio Chaldaica a Work of Elaborate Fiction?
Briefly, in this article, we shall try to establish the authenticity of Giovanni Nanni's Antiquitates beyond reasonable doubt. First, let us consider the language that Nanni’s Berosus was originally written in. Ligota (1987:56) notes that Nanni frequently referred to Aramaic (ancient Hebrew/Arabic) words in Berosus and also suggests that it was this language Berosus wrote in. Ligota’s suggestion logically follows because Nanni obtained the fragments from two visiting Armenians of the Dominican Order of Monks (or Friars) – (Master Mathias and Master Georgius according to Farrer, 1907:76) – the latter of whom gave him the fragments as a gift in Genoa. The existence of this Master Georgius is no longer questioned, for it is certain that both the monks visited Genoa in the Summer of 1474 or the Spring of 1475 (Danielsson, O. (1992:10) and John, R.T. (1994:22)).

That the Berosus fragments were originally written in Aramaic (ancient Chaldean) is confirmed by William Harrison in Parry (2001:11 – footnote 34) who revered the brevity of Nanni’s Berosus as an example of “the ancient form of writing used by Antiquity until the use of history came in place (or at lest was known among the gentiles)”. Moreover, a Hebrew Berosus further elucidates Nanni’s behaviour mentioned in Grafton (1991:90), namely that: “Annius could certainly borrow some texts from his Armenian confreres and ask advice on Hebrew and Aramaic from his Jewish friend the still unidentified ‘Samuel the Talmudist,’”. As Wiener (2012:203) counters: “…obviously [this was] Samuel Zarfati, the court physician of Alexander VI, a most learned Spanish Jew.” Therefore it is safe to conclude that Nanni studied the Latin translation given him with aid from a Jewish friend who knew Aramaic Hebrew.

It is interesting that Nanni did not know who had first translated the fragments and found them hard to understand – making reference to “Berosus or his translator” (Ligota, 1987:55) in his ‘Commentaries” of 1498. This suggests the books were old when Nanni was first given them (as Harrison in Parry (p.10) comments: “thes bokes are at the lest 500 yeres olde…” [Parry adding] “for Godfrey of Viterbo [AD1120-1196] knew them centuries before Annius”. (Parry later states that Godfrey only mentions the genuine Berosus – but that remains to be determined). Indeed, the wider story appears to be precisely this: fragments of the three authentic books of Aramaic Berosus had survived the fire at the Library of Alexandria. Around AD378, a Spanish-born Bishop of Alexandria, named Lucius Valerius, was deposed by Emperor Theodosius and relocated to Samosata (modern Samsat in Adiyaman Province, Turkey) with these various fragments, where he undertook a Latin recension into five parts. We learn this much from St Jerome (c.f. Schaff (1892:382)) together with The Chronicle of (Pseudo)-Dexter (this being the disputed history chronicle of the bishop of Barcelona in Spain, Flavius Lucius Dexter, the son of Pacianus, who flourished approx AD395 according to his contemporary St. Jerome. Dexter’s work plus other Spanish ecclesiastical chronicles were claimed to have been rediscovered by the Jesuit J. Roman de la Higuera (1538-1611) in the library of the Benedictine Abbey of Fulda in Germany. If we take Dexter’s work as authentic and not a fabrication designed by Higuera, it neatly explains why Nanni had five books of Berosus (rather than the original three) given to him by Armenian (Turkish) Dominican Monks in Genoa. This was the main argument used by critics to discredit Nanni.

Were the Fragments of Nine Lost Authors also Fictive?
Next, we must consider those works that Nanni claimed to have found in Mantua around the year 1480. Bayle recounts that Didimus Rapaligerus Livianus mounted a posthumous defence of Nanni in AD1678 saying that: “It is very well known…that Berosus was given him at Genoa, by Father George of Armenia a Dominican [Friar]; and that he found all the rest [i.e. fragments of Archilochus, Metasthenes, Cato, Fabius Pictor, Myrsilus, C. Sempronius, Philon, Xenophon and Antoninus Pius], except Manetho, at one Mr Williams’s of Mantua” (Bayle et al, 1737:299). Now, some fierce critics have tried to dismiss this ‘Mr Williams’ as a figment. Who exactly was he? The answer, it turns out, may be quite simple.

Nanni refers to him as “Guilelmus Mantuanus” and dates his collections to the year AD1315 in Mantua (Ligota, 1987:56). Now it so happens that Charles Cawley’s ‘Medieval Lands’ the encyclopaedia of territories in the medieval western world, elucidates this mysterious Guilelmus. Cawley contains the following very interesting statement: “Matthew of Paris recounts that…Guglielmo VII Marchese di Monferrato [AD1240-1292]…was appointed Vicar-General in northern Italy by his father-in-law as candidate for the kingdom of Italy, and led the movement to oust Charles Comet d’Anjou from the kingdom of Sicily. He succeeded in depriving the latter of his possessions in Lombardy and captured and castrated his ambassadors [probably between AD 1272 and 1275]. He became head of the Ghibelin League formed by the Marchese di Saluzzo [Thomas I (AD 1239-1296) – Ed.] and contingents from Castile in the towns of Pavia, Asti, Mantua, Verona, Genoa, Milan, Alessandria and Ivrea.”

Nanni visited Mantua with the Most Reverend Cardinal Paul de Campo Fulgoso in the 1480’s, who he mentions in a letter to his brother Thomas. Clearly, Guglielmo later became known as Guilelmus of Mantua and his Collectanea (collection of ancient authors) was where Nanni obtained his fragments of the 9 lost authors. The collection of Guglielmo (which he must have repossessed from Charles I of Naples in Northern Italy) would have originally come from Sicily. Mantua library was probably opened to honour William’s name, in AD1315, by his close kinsman Theodore I, Marquess of Montferrat. This would neatly explain why Nanni in his work of 1498 makes mention of a learned Talmudist, Rabbi Moses, who is probably the Sicilian - Moses of Palermo - who lived in the second half of the 13th century and translated various works of old Arabic into Latin for Charles I of Naples.

Charles d’Anjou, as he was know, was renowned for his love of learning and at that time had commissioned a number of Jewish scholars to translate Arabic works into Latin as part of the ‘Latin Renaissance’. Livianus (in Bayle et al, 1737:299) cites a Lutheran saying of the fragments Nanni obtained in Mantua: “…they are all of them interpolated, castrated, imperfect, and neither translated with fidelity of judgement: and yet that they were anciently extracted from those true and legitimate authors, there are such arguments as can admit of no contradiction. To instance only in [the 22 fragments of] Cato. Examine it again and again, condemn it as you will, yet you must see and confess that it discovers the wit and style of the true Cato, which are not to be imitated or counterfeited by such sort of persons”.

The Reception of Antiquitates in Protestant Europe
Let us then move now to consider the works impact on Protestant Theologians. It is noteworthy that eminent Reformers with a high view of Scriptural inspiration, together with other intellectual scholars just as capable, held Nanni (or Annius) in great esteem. Martin Luther “preferred Annius’s Berosus to Herodotus and his ilk” (Grafton, 1991:87) and found it his richest non-biblical source. Philipp Melanchthon used his history extensively, as did Melanchthon’s student Johann Funck, who considered Nanni’s Berosus “the most approved history of the Babylonians” yet rejected Nanni’s Metasthenes as inconsistent (Grafton, 1991:98).

In Protestant Geneva he was also held in high esteem by the well respected Abraham Bucholzer who incorporated Nanni’s work into his Isagoge chronologica of 1577. And others, like Guillaume Postel and members of the intellectual Florentine Academy (such as Pier Francesco Giambullari), who were far less Scriptural yet just as erudite, also considered Nanni’s works genuine. Postel may have ‘touched it with a pin’ when he wrote that Nanni’s Berosus had a bad reputation because “he passed down to posterity an account similar to that in the sacred [books], and thus is despised and ridiculed by men poorly disposed toward divine things, because of the very quality for which he ought to be praised and preferred to all other authors”.

He also noted that “Berosus sometimes told stories that redounded to the discredit of the Chaldeans, and a witness testifying against his own interest deserves belief” and again “Though Berosus the Chaldean is preserved in fragments, and is disliked by atheists or enemies of Moses, he is approved of by innumerable men and authors expert in every language and field of learning. Hence I grant him the faith deserved of any accurate author” (Grafton, 1991:82,95). This is a very powerful argument in favour of Nanni's authenticity because his copious annotations from numerous authentic authors fully corroborated his rediscovered texts. Indeed, many names of kings used in the texts were known long before Nanni mentioned them. For example, the Jesuit Juan de Mañana (1536-1624), who wrote his Historiae de rebus Hispaniae libri XX in 1592, only accepted the historicity of Spanish kings who could be found in genuine works of ancient history as well as the Antiquitates. These included Tubal, Geryon, Siculus, Hispalus, Hesperus, Hercules and Atlas. These kings are thus demonstrably not a fiction of Nanni's invention.

Did Nanni Create Fraudulent Inscriptions in Viterbo?
As regards Nanni’s supposed fraudulent inscriptions and statuettes, Livianus in Bale also notes that: “…He is accused of forging some tables of marble, whereof he has published an explanation. If therefore the truth deserves examining, this author clears Annius by substantial arguments from his adversaries charge of imposture, proving beyond contradiction, that two of those tables called Libiscillæ, from the place where they were found, had been dug up a long time before Annius was born…. And as to those two called Cibelariæ, and that called Longobarica, they were discovered by others and presented to [Pope] Alexander VI, to say nothing of that called Osiriana, which was brought before the time of Annius.” (Bayle et al, 1737:299).

How Convincing were his Humanist Critics?
Third, and finally, none of the arguments used by his critics to discredit Annius prove very persuasive. Critics such as Eduardo Fumagalli, Beatus Rhenanus, Pietro Crinito, Juan Luis Vives, Francois Baudouin and Joannes Goropius Becanus were in many cases influenced by the spirit of secular humanism and provide weak, insubstantial claims against his works. We shall now instance some of these bogus arguments and provide a brief rebuttal of each.

1: Pseudo-Berosus evidences great harmony with the other fragments, which harmony can only be obtained through Nanni’s personal authorship and intervention. A: Ligota (1987:45), however, comments: “…the forged texts are set in a mosaic of references to authentic ones - a theoretical framework does emerge. Indeed, though the ancient texts Annius invented have a story to tell, their function, as the commentaries make clear, is as much to show why the story is true as to tell it, that is, to unfold the story as a demonstration of its veracity”. Then, Ligota notes in a footnote: “Telling this one story, which in the Judeo-Christian scheme is the only (true) story there is, allowing for no external point of view. As long as the scheme obtains, criteria for historical truth cannot be entirely abstracted from the specific history they are derived from because they are also an integral part of its content”. Thus we find that this ‘doctoring’ argument backfires and serves to show the remarkable unity between various authors which would be expected to obtain should they all have recorded what actually happened.

2: It is absurd to think that a Babylonian knew anything in detail about countries so far away, or that the art of navigation was so advanced in Noah’s time that he dared travel all over the world. A: The extraordinary cargo of the ship-wreck of Uluburun has proven that the ancients travelled far further than previously thought. Berosus would have had access to many merchant traders who visited Babylon. Noah did not travel all over the world. According to Berosus, he ventured only around the Mediterranean Sea and the countries surrounding it.

3. Pseudo-Berosus never mentions the Hebrews (the Assyrian’s close neighbours). A: It is well attested that all the kings of Assyria from Ninus to Belochus were dissolute individuals who hated war and conflict and remained permanently in their royal palaces to pursue every pleasure. Thus it is not surprising that they do not record encounters with the Hebrews.