The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

Poggio sends a crude copy of On the Nature of Things to his friend Niccoli, who makes a proper copy. Eventually this new copy “spawned dozens of further manuscript copies—more than fifty are known to survive—and were the sources of all fifteenth-century and early sixteenth-century printed editions of Lucretius” (204). The original medieval version stays in the monastery, where finally it is completely lost, perhaps from fire, neglect, sabotage, or simple reuse of its parchment. Three ninth-century versions of the work, two complete and one partial, are later discovered and survive today in European collections.

The papal throne remains vacant until 1418, when a new pope, Martin V, is chosen, but he makes no offer to Poggio, who decides “to make a very surprising and risky career move” (206) and accepts a post as secretary to Henry Beaufort, the uncle of England’s King Henry V and bishop of Winchester. Poggio hopes to find a wealth of ancient manuscripts in the monasteries of England, but after four years there, he is sorely disappointed.

“His letters back to Italy were a litany of complaints. There was plague; the weather was miserable”; he has little to do and is poorly paid; “the truly terrible news was that the libraries—at least the ones he visited—were from Poggio’s