APES PHILOSOPHICAE: BEES AND THE DIVINE DESIGN IN BARBERINI THESIS PRINTS 181

Apes philosophicae:bees and the divine design in Barberini thesis prints

Louise Rice

The Barberini were supremely fortunate in their heraldry. Itwould be difficult to come up with a device more flexible in itsmeaning or more uniformly positive in its implications than thebee. Bees are intelligent, eloquent, philosophical, social, politi-cal, regal, peace-loving, martial, self-sacrificing, industrious, dis-criminating, and chaste. They are harbingers of divine will andemblems of divine wisdom. Given the almost infinite virtueassociated with the family’s armorial symbol, it comes as no sur-prise that bees figure prominently in works commissioned by orfor the Barberini. Artists and poets alike found in the family’scoat of arms a powerful stimulus to invention and createdaround it a body of panegyric remarkable for the sheer varietyof its bee-related subject matter 1. One never has to look far forthe bees in Barberini Rome; but of all the innumerable contextsin which they appear the most varied and entertaining by far isthesis prints, a genre of engraving that involves elaborateheraldic conceits of a challengingly intellectual kind. Focusingon a selection of thesis prints dedicated to members of the papalfamily, this article takes a closer look at the apimania thatgripped Rome during the Barberini pontificate and exploreshow bee imagery was used to promote and celebrate the politi-cal and cultural agenda of Pope Urban VIII and his closest rel-atives.

Commissioned to decorate the thesis broadsheets of stu-dents undergoing a public academic defense, thesis prints arecelebratory images that extol the dedicatee (the person to whomthe student dedicates his theses), usually by alluding to or oth-erwise incorporating his coat of arms into the narrative frame-work 2. Since the student’s professor was the one who normallyprovided the iconography, the imagery tends to be intensely,even ostentatiously learned. The nominal subject matter mayderive from identifiable sources, classical or otherwise, but mod-ified and manipulated to serve the print’s encomiastic functionit can assume multiple meanings. Unraveling the intricateheraldic conceits that form the basis of most thesis prints canprove challenging. Images of this sort demand an extremelyclose reading and I will therefore concentrate on only a smallhandful of the literally hundreds of Barberini thesis prints (i.e.thesis prints dedicated to members of the Barberini family) thathave come down to us, in order to convey something of the rich-ness and subtlety of their allegorical language.

All of the examples I have selected date from the early yearsof the pontificate, and all of them are Jesuit productions, com-missioned by students defending philosophical theses at eitherthe Collegio Romano or one of its affiliated institutions in Rome.The Jesuits did not have a monopoly on thesis prints, but they

were universally regarded as especially adept at devising theintricate rhetorical conceits around which the imagery typicallyrevolves. We should recall that the Barberini were not only greatsupporters and sponsors of Jesuit education, they were them-selves the products of it. Maffeo Barberini and his threenephews did their schoolwork at the Collegio Romano and hadinculcated in them from an early age the type of Christianhumanism taught there, with its commingling of poetry, science,and philosophy and its concentrated emphasis on the rhetoric ofpraise. Thesis prints embody perhaps better than any othergenre a characteristically Jesuit brand of learning. If we shouldeventually succeed in defining a Barberini style (the stileBarberini of the session’s title), we will no doubt find that it hadits gestation in the Jesuit colleges in Rome, where the pope, hisnephews, and most of their closest associates spent their forma-tive years.

Marcello Sauli, 1624

In May 1624, a young Genoese nobleman, Marcello Sauli,defended philosophical theses at the Collegio Romano, dedicat-ing them to Cardinal Francesco Barberini. Marcello was thegreat-nephew of Cardinal Antonio Maria Sauli, who had diedonly nine months earlier as dean of the college of cardinals, andnephew of Tomaso and Vincenzo Sauli who had recently beenappointed private bankers to Cardinal Francesco 3. He was, inother words, a very well connected young man and his defensewas an especially splendid occasion, attended not only byCardinal Francesco, but also by his brothers Don Taddeo andDon Antonio Barberini, along with sixteen other cardinals anda whole crowd of prelates and noblemen 4.

The print Sauli commissioned to decorate his thesis broad-sheet was engraved by Johann Friedrich Greuter after a designby Giovanni Lanfranco (fig. 1) 5. It represents a young princewho has arrived by boat on a distant shore and is there accom-panied by Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, who reveals to hima mysterious grotto inhabited by river gods. A shield embla-zoned with the Sauli arms hanging from the tree just over theprince’s shoulder associates him generically with the student.Bees make their hives in the arched vaults of the cave. Outside,in the open air, nymphs ply their needles in a graceful exercisein embroidery, while their sisters reward their labor with sweetchunks of honeycomb. The subject, although rare (or possiblyeven unprecedented) in the visual arts, is based on a passage ina familiar text, Homer’s Odyssey. Here is how Homer describes

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Fig. 2. Detail of figure 1. Fig. 3. Detail of figure 1.

Fig. 1. Giovanni Lanfranco and Johann Friedrich Greuter, Thesis print of Marcello Sauli, who defended philosophical theses at the Collegio Romano in 1624.

APES PHILOSOPHICAE: BEES AND THE DIVINE DESIGN IN BARBERINI THESIS PRINTS 183

Fig. 4. Andrea Lilio and Johann Friedrich Greuter, Thesis print of John Campian, who defended philosophical theses at the Collegio Inglese in 1623/24.

the cave of the naiads on the island of Ithaca, in Book 13 of hisepic poem:

at the head of the harbor is a long-leaved olive tree, andnear it a pleasant, shadowy cave, sacred to the nymphsthat are called Naiads. Therein are bowls and jars ofstone, and there too the bees store honey. And in the caveare long looms of stone, at which the nymphs weavewebs of purple dye, a wonder to behold; and therein arealso ever-flowing springs. Two doors there are to thecave, one toward the North Wind, by which men godown, but that toward the South Wind is sacred, nor domen enter thereby; it is the way of the immortals. 6

It is easy to see why this passage was seized on as ideal rawmaterial for a panegyric in honor of Cardinal Barberini, forembedded in its imagery are not one but two separate referencesthat seem to have a direct application to him. The bees makinghoney in the stony chambers of the cave allude to Francesco’sheraldry, while the purple cloth the naiads weave evokes his sta-tus as a prince of the Church. In the context of an encomiasticprint dedicated to Cardinal Francesco, Homer’s language takeson the character of a sibylline prophecy, which through itsarcane references to the bees and to the color purple seems topredict the coming of a Barberini cardinal.

If Homer is at the heart of Lanfranco’s print, he is not theonly nor even the primary source. The passage in the Odyssey is

suggestive but obscure. To appreciate the philosophical implica-tions of the print, one has to understand that the Homeric textwas itself subjected to learned interpretation by ancient com-mentators, most notably by the third century A.D. neoplatonistphilosopher Porphyry, who wrote a lengthy essay on these four-teen lines, entitled “On the Cave of the Nymphs.” In his com-mentary, Porphyry describes Homer’s cave as an enigma; he alsocalls it an allegory:

...the poet, under the veil of allegory, concealed somemysterious signification. [...] this sacred cave is filledwith ancient wisdom. On which account it is highlyworthy our investigation, and necessary that its sym-bolical consecration and obscure mysteries should berendered evident by the light of philosophical enquiry. 7

Porphyry goes on to interpret the cave a symbol of the cos-mos, a moist and mystical place of generation where the soul isjoined to the material body at birth and where at death it is againreleased. The naiads, as they weave their tapestry on stony looms,are stitching together the elemental substance of the naturalworld, giving physical form to the things around us. The olivetree at the entrance to the cave is “the symbol of divine wisdom,... for the olive is the plant of Minerva, and Minerva is wisdom.”

Padre Vincenzo Guiniggi, the Jesuit professor who devisedthe program of Sauli’s defense, seems to have relied more onPorphyry’s commentary than on the original lines by Homer.

Certain details of the iconography make this plain. For instance,Homer describes the wetness of the cave in only the vaguestterms: “therein are also ever-flowing streams.” Porphyry, on theother hand, elaborates the image, quoting an otherwiseunknown Homeric hymn: “The nymphs residing in caves shalldeduce fountains of intellectual waters to thee... Hence waters,bursting through every river, shall exhibit to mankind perpetualeffusions of sweet streams.” It is this image of the cave as thesource of the world’s rivers – found in Porphyry but not inHomer – that informs Lanfranco’s depiction of the grotto teem-ing with river gods. Above all, by transforming Homer’s versesinto a neoplatonic meditation on the nature of things, Porphyryinfuses the scene with philosophical meaning, and it is this, incombination with the references to the bees and purple of thededicatee, that makes the subject so singularly appropriate inthe context of a philosophy defense.

In his portrayal of Porphyry’s philosophical cave,Lanfranco has very sensibly made one or two small changes forthe sake of visual clarity. He brings the naiads out into the day-light and substitutes embroidery needles and thread for

Homer’s stone looms. This allows him to reveal what it is thenymphs are creating. If we look closely, we see that one of themis stitching a mappamundi or map of the world, another a chartof the oceans, and a third a plan of the constellations, togethersignifying the generation of land, sea, and sky (figs. 2-3). Theidea is reiterated in four poems composed by Padre Guiniggi,which were set to music and sung by multiple choirs with instru-mental accompaniment at key moments during Sauli’s defense.In the headings to the poems, these three embroiderers are iden-tified respectively as Epichthonia (nymph of the earth),Thalassia (nymph of the seas), and Urania (nymph of the heav-ens) 8. A fourth naiad, Melissea (nymph of the bees), near thecenter of the composition, is embroidering the cardinal’s coat ofarms, the “purple cloth” of Homer’s text, thus planting thepatron at the very heart of the philosophical allegory.

It is worth noting, in connection with Lanfranco’s interpre-tation, that Cardinal Francesco’s personal copy of Sauli’s broad-sheet was itself embroidered. Here is how the object isdescribed in an inventory of the cardinal’s possessions dated1631: “A thesis broadsheet dedicated by Marcello Sauli, printed

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Fig. 5. Luca Penni and Master L.D., Divine Justice triumphing over the Seven Deadly Sins, c. 1547.

on white satin, with a frieze allaround the edge embroidered withflowers and gold thread, with beeemblems, and with the coat of armsof the cardinal in each of the fourcorners, lined with red taffetta 9.”Framing the scene of the naiadsembroidering with a border of realembroidery would have had theeffect of making the broadsheet itselfseem like one of the nymphs’ cosmicsamplers. The conceit is elegant. Thephilosophical cave of Porphyry’sdescription becomes the backdrop toa philosophical disputation. Just asthe naiads generate in their needle-point the stuff and substance ofnature itself, so Sauli embroiders (i.e.explicates) the world of their cre-ation – the world, that is, of naturaland moral philosophy – in thesesprinted on embroidered silk. Thebees nourish the nymphs with theirhoney just as the dedicatee sustainsand supports the student with hispatronage; and the action at the cen-ter of the print, where Melisseastitches the cardinal’s stemma onHomer’s purple cloth, magicallymaterializes in the embroidered coatsof arms at the corners of the broad-sheet.

Attuned to a sensibility at oncelearned and aristocratic, Sauli’s the-sis print perfectly reflects the intel-lectual predilections of the papalnephew to whom it is dedicated. Sixyears after Sauli’s defense, in 1630,Lucas Holstenius, a member ofCardinal Francesco’s inner circlewho later became his librarian, pub-lished an edition of Porphyry’s “Onthe Cave of the Naiads” with a Latintranslation, which he dedicated tohis Barberini patron 10. Although thegorgeous satin broadsheet he mustcertainly have seen in CardinalFrancesco’s collection may not havebeen what inspired Holstenius toundertake the project, the coinci-dence beautifully illustrates theshared philological and philosophi-cal interests of those who moved inFrancesco’s orbit.

John Campian, 1623/24

Sauli’s print is based on ancientsources, but the next example wewill consider is an invented allegory(fig. 4). It is shot through with classi-cal allusions but there is no singletext on which it is based, and to

interpret its meaning we must under-take a close and careful reading of itsdense figurative language. The printwas commissioned by a student at theEnglish College in Rome. An aristo-cratic boarding school for EnglishCatholics training for the priesthood,the English College was run by theJesuits and closely affiliated with theCollegio Romano. The student was acertain John Poyntz fromGloucestershire, but like most of thestudents at the English College hewent by a pseudonym and wasknown as John Campian 11. This tak-ing of pseudonyms, by the way, is aninteresting phenomenon in itself.Nominally, the students did it to pro-tect their families back home fromthe persecution that might follow iftheir Catholic sympathies wereknown, and perhaps at one pointthere really was a need for such dis-cretion. But by the seventeenth cen-tury the practice was more for showthan anything else, a propagandisticploy designed to draw attention tothe plight of English Catholics. Thefact that Campian includes, promi-nently displayed in the lower rightcorner of his thesis print, his familycoat of arms – the arms of the Poyntzfamily – proves the point. Had hebeen seriously interested in hiding hisidentity, he would not have includedsuch an obvious indicator of it 12.

Campian defended philosophi-cal theses in late 1623 or early 1624and, like Sauli, he dedicated them toCardinal Francesco Barberini 13. Histhesis print, designed by Andrea Lilioand engraved by Johann FriedrichGreuter, is particularly difficult toread, crammed as it is with dozens offigures engaged in all kinds of incon-gruous activities 14. But if we work ourway patiently through its various ele-ments, we discover a political allego-ry in which good government, repre-sented by Rome, is modeled on thesociety of the bees. In a palatial set-ting, enthroned beneath a baldachin,a queen holds court. She may beAnglia (England), although morelikely she is a generic personificationof Catholic Monarchy. All around heron the political stage are examples ofsavage brutality and unjust rule. Onthe left, a Brazilian chieftain dancesto the rhythm of a tambourine whiledevouring the severed arm of adefeated enemy who lies at his feet 15.On the right, a Turkish sultan exe-cutes his brother, a reference to the

APES PHILOSOPHICAE: BEES AND THE DIVINE DESIGN IN BARBERINI THESIS PRINTS 185

Fig. 6. Detail of fig. 4.

Fig. 7. Detail of fig. 4.

steps beside the cannibal, she seemsat first glance to be another of hisvictims, for like the fallen enemy onwhom he is feasting, she has nohands, only severed stumps. But oncloser examination, it is clear thatshe belongs to the same dimensionof representational reality as theother two personifications. She is,in fact, Sloth. Her ragged garmentslipping off her shoulder and herloosened hair suggest poverty andslovenliness; her head lolls as shesleeps; and underfoot she trampleson a spur, the attribute of her oppo-site, Diligence. Sloth has no handsbecause she does no work. We cancompare the figure in Lilio’s printto the corresponding personifica-tion in Luca Penni’s Divine Justicetriumphing over the Seven DeadlySins from around 1547 (fig. 5) 19. Inthe earlier work, Sloth’s amputationis given meaning by the inclusion ofa distaff, which she cannot put togood use. Lilio has omitted thedistaff, but in a clever twist has jux-taposed the handlessness of thecannibal’s victim with the handless-ness of his associated vice. He pres-ents us with a witty visual homo-nym: the motif is the same in eachcase but the meaning is different.

In the foreground are twinembodiments of Rome, Ecclesia onthe left and Roma on the right.Ecclesia is identified by the papaltiara carried in front of her by aputto. She is accompanied by tworoyal handmaidens 20, who presenther with the attributes of her rule:the sword for law, the cornucopiafor abundance, the honeycomb forthe sweetness of her authority, thebook and lamp for learning andenlightenment. Three suppliantskneel humbly in front of Ecclesia,

and to one of them, it seems, she is offering her scepter. Roma,on the right, is identified by the shewolf and she too is accom-panied by a pair of handmaidens, who like her are dressed inarmor and carry spears. She holds her spear and shield in readi-ness against the attacking Protestant, while at her feet are threedefeated enemies. Ecclesia and Roma between them suggest thepapacy’s double dominion, spiritual and temporal; or one couldthink of them in slightly different terms, as embodying thenotion of a church at once triumphant and militant, withEcclesia Triumphans on the left and Ecclesia Militans on theright.

The actions of these two personifications are echoed andexplicated in the emblems that hang from the columns left andright (figs. 6-7). Over Ecclesia, the emblem represents a swarmof bees, their monarch at their center, flying heavenward inorderly formation, with the motto PARCERE SVBIECTIS (“tospare the humbled”); over Roma are two swarms of bees, each

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Fig. 8. Matthaeus Greuter, Title page to [Alessandro Donati, S. J.], Francisco Card. Barberino Lyricum Carmen inPhilosophicis Disputationibus Ioannis Campiani Coll. Angl. Conv. emodulatum Latina Pallas D.D., Rome, n.d.

Ottomans’ notorious state-sanctioned policy of royal fratricideas a means of ensuring political stability 16. Nearer the center ofthe print, a third ruler, European to judge by the style of hisarmor and therefore presumably a Protestant, does battleagainst a personification of Rome 17. These three men representRome’s religious enemies, or to be more precise, they representpolitical administrations or forms of government based on reli-gions other than Catholicism. Thus the cannibal stands for hea-then societies, the Ottoman Turk for the whole of Islam, and theProtestant king for all heretical nations 18.

Each of the three non-Catholic rulers – the heretic, the infi-del, and the heathen – is encouraged by his attendant vice. Envy(or possibly Fury), a withered hag with serpents in her hair,nudges the Protestant from behind, keeping him firm in hisresolve. Next to the Turk, Injustice shatters the scales and swordthat, when intact, are the attributes of her opposite, Justice. Thethird vice is rather more difficult to recognize. Seated on the

[Bees] form themselves into political communities, holdcouncils together in private, elect chiefs in common,and, a thing that is most remarkable of all, have theirown code of morals. In addition to this, being as theyare, neither tame nor wild, so all-powerful is Nature,that, from a creature so minute as to be nothing morehardly than the shadow of an animal, she has created amarvel beyond all comparison. What muscular power,what exertion of strength are we to put in comparisonwith such vast energy and such industry as theirs? Whatdisplay of human genius, in a word, shall we comparewith the reasoning powers manifested by them? In thisthey have, at all events, the advantage of us – they knowof nothing but what is for the common benefit of all 22.

Such ideas are commonplace in classical literature.Moreover, because the hive has a single all-powerful ruler, itoffers a paradigm in nature for the concept of monarchy inhuman society. Particularly relevant, given the English contextof the print, is a passage from an English treatise on bees firstpublished in 1609, Charles Butler’s Feminine Monarchie: “Forthe Bees abhorre as well Polyarchie, as Anarchie, God havingshewed in them unto men, an expresse patterne of A PERFECTMONARCHIE, THE MOST NATURAL AND ABSOLUTEFORME OF GOVERNMENT.” 23 The significance of the polit-ical allegory would not have been lost on an audience of Romans

APES PHILOSOPHICAE: BEES AND THE DIVINE DESIGN IN BARBERINI THESIS PRINTS 187

Fig. 9. Antonio Tempesta and Johann Friedrich Greuter, Thesis print of John Salisbury, who defended philosophical theses at the Collegio Inglese in 1627.

with their ruler, in headlong battle, with the motto ET DEBEL-LARE SVPERBOS (“and to conquer the proud”). The mottoescome from Book VI of Virgil’s Aeneid. Having crossed into theunderworld Aeneas encounters his deceased father, who showshim the future generations of Romans, and to one of theseRomans as yet unborn, the last in a long line, he addresses theseprophetic words: “Remember thou, O Roman, to rule thenations with thy sway – these shall be thine arts: to crown Peacewith Law, to spare the humbled and to conquer the proud 21.” InCampian’s print, the emblems reiterate what we see in the fore-ground, where on the left Ecclesia elevates the humble and onthe right Roma casts down the proud, thus transforming Virgil’ssalute to the emperor Augustus into a paean to the Barberinipope.

Meanwhile, Catholic Monarchy, sitting enthroned at thetop of the steps between two coats of arms of CardinalBarberini, looks for lessons to the swarms of bees who are mass-ing overhead, as they reenact the actions depicted in theemblems. In them she finds a model of good governance, forbees are social creatures who when at peace live in harmonywith one another, obedient to their monarch, cooperative andindustrious, but who when provoked are warlike and coura-geous, willing to die in defense of their colony. The idea of see-ing in bees an ideal model of human society and proper gover-nance has, of course, an ancient pedigree. Here is Pliny on thesubject:

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Fig. 10. Antonio Tempesta and Camillo Cungi, Thesis print of Antonio Deodati, who defended philosophical theses at the Collegio Romano in 1624.

and English Catholics. It is spelled out in the preface to the vol-ume of poems by Padre Alessandro Donati published on theoccasion of Campian’s defense:

I give you, Most Eminent Cardinal, the form of politi-cal administration that nature makes innate in bees,presented both in copperplate and in concise and poet-ical song. [...] If only our England, whom I show in thetitle page, would follow the model of the bees andlearn to be subject to the authority of Rome. Then trulyshe would direct her people back to the true religionfrom which they were once led astray. And you indeedwould lovingly embrace them who have sought shelterfrom such a shipwreck in the haven of Rome, and holdand warm them within your broad protection, so thatthe Catholic faith, irrigated and nourished by the hon-eyed waters of your patronage, might once again takeroot in Britain. 24

The volume’s title page to which Donati makes reference isdesigned and engraved by Johann Friedrich’s father MatthaeusGreuter (fig. 8). In it, England kneels at the feet of Rome, pre-senting the royal arms of her nation. DISCE REGI (learn to beruled), reads the tablet at her side. Rome, holding a scepter anda figure of Victory, points to a laurel tree above which a swarmof bees have settled, warmed by the “Urban sun.” 25 Two addi-

tional figures, one crowned to symbolize monarchy, the otherarmed, Minervalike, to represent military might, allude to thepair of poems that follow, entitled respectively Apis Regnatrixand Apis Bellatrix, as well as to the emblems and the actions ofthe swarming bees in the accompanying thesis print. Like thecells of a hive, the different embellishments of the defense – thethesis print, the title page, the preface, the poetic text that wasset to music and sung – are like so many interlocking pieces, fit-ting neatly into the overarching program, amplifying and enrich-ing the political allegory.

It is perhaps worth a brief digression to consider the politicalsituation in England at the time of Campian’s defense in late 1623or 1624. King James I had for some time been trying to arrange amarriage between his son Charles and the sister of King Philip IVof Spain. The negotiations collapsed in December 1623 amid bit-ter wrangling. But James was soon persuaded to consider anotherCatholic bride for his son and throughout 1624 there was a flurryof diplomatic activity culminating, a year later, in the marriage ofCharles to Henrietta Maria, the youngest sister of the king ofFrance. Both unions were sanctioned by the pope, who hoped thatthe presence of a Catholic queen in England would improve thesituation of the faithful in that country and perhaps even lead tothe return of Charles to the Catholic fold. As it turned out hishopes proved groundless. If anything, the vitriolic response ofParliament to the imposition of a Catholic queen triggered for awhile even worse persecutions than before. But while negotiations

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were still in progress and in the months lead-ing up to the marriage, English Catholicsmust have rejoiced at the prospect of aCatholic queen and embraced it as a sign ofbetter times to come 26.

It is tempting to see in the program ofCampian’s defense an allusion to theseevents, given the starring role assigned to thebee we would call the queen, the alpha insectwho rules the hive. She is recognizable byvirtue of her larger size at the center or at thevanguard of each of the swarms, her leader-ship serving as a model to CatholicMonarchy, who studies her actions intently.Given the prominence of the queen bee,does Campian’s thesis print have a genderedsignificance? Should we read in it a veiledreference to the wish-for arrival of a Catholicqueen on the throne of England?

The difficulty with such an interpreta-tion is that it depends on those who devisedthe program being aware of the queen bee’ssex and this, as it turns out, is by no meanscertain. In fact, throughout antiquity andinto the seventeenth century, the leader ofthe hive was believed to be male and wasknown as the “king.” 27 It does seem extraor-dinary that such an error could have beenperpetuated century after century, but evi-dently it was easier to suppose that a kingcould procreate asexually than that the hive,the model of good government, could beruled by a female 28. It took a naturalist bornand raised under the greatest of all queens,Elizabeth I, to think afresh on the subject.Charles Butler seems to have been the firstto recognize and acknowledge the sex of thequeen bee. In The Feminine Monarchie,published in 1609, he wrote “I am enforced... to straine the common signification of theword Rex, and ... to translate it Queene, siththe males heer beare no sway at al, this beingan Amazonian or feminine kingdome.” 29

Significantly, Butler dedicated his treatise toAnne of Denmark, wife of James I, therebydrawing a rhetorical parallel between thequeen who rules the hive and the queen whorules England. Butler’s work was wellknown in his native land, where it wasreprinted half a dozen times in the hundredyears following its initial publication, but inRome it seems to have had no immediateimpact. In 1625, a year after Campian’sdefense, the Accademia dei Lincei pub-lished its Apiarium, which has been called“the most thoroughgoing and imaginativeexamination of the archaeology, history, lit-erature, and science of bees ever.” 30 Thismonumental work, for all its scientific pre-tensions, remains mired in ancient knowl-edge. There is no indication that FedericoCesi and the other Lincei who collaboratedwith him on the project knew of or wereinterested in Butler’s conclusions and

Fig. 11. Walter de Milemete, A siege machine for hurling beehives, 1326. Christ Church, Oxford (ms. 92, ff.74-75).

Fig. 12. Antonio Tempesta and Camillo Cungi, Title page to Thadaeo Barberino Urbani VIII Pont. Max. FratrisFilio Arcis Aelianae praefecto etc. MELISSONIKION inter Philosophicas Antonii Deodati RagusiniDisputationes emodulatum in Romano Collegio Societatis Iesu, Rome, 1624.

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throughout they identify the ruler of the hive as male and its king.Ironically, one of the main goals of the Apiarium was to publicizeand promote the new science of microscopy. Like the famousengraving by Matthaeus Greuter illustrating the Barberini beesas observed through the microscope (it, too, a Lincei productand exactly contemporaneous), the Apiarium describes in lovingdetail parts of the insect never before imagined. Yet it leaves theall-important question of the king’s sex unexamined and unchal-lenged. The explanation may lie in the conflicted nature of theApiarium, which fuses science and panegyric in a manner notalways in the best interest of either. Dedicated to Urban VIII, itis a treatise cast as a entomological allegory in which the hive is ametaphor for the Church and its king for the pope. Throughout,Cesi dwells on the points of similarity between them 31. Like thepope but unlike hereditary rulers, the king bee is elected to hisauthority by his peers; he is chaste; he does not bear arms, that isto say, he alone in the hive is without a sting; above all, he is male.The masculinity of the alpha bee is essential to the poetic conceit;to replace him with a queen would be to undermine the analogybetween the hive and that most insistently masculine of humaninstitutions, the Catholic Church. For the Lincei, as for otherintellectuals seeking patronage in Barberini Rome, the king beewas an ideal rhetorical device for expressing praise of the pontiffand they were unwilling to challenge his patriarchal supremacyby inquiring too closely as to his sex. Scientific curiosity, in theface of panegyric necessity, was put on hold 32.

At the English College, where Campian’s defense tookplace, Butler’s Feminine Monarchie may have been more avail-able and more attentively read than elsewhere in Rome. But, ifso, we find no echo of it in Campian’s thesis print or in theaccompanying texts. On the contrary, in the verses he com-posed for performance during the defense, Padre Donatiremains true to the poetic tradition and refers to the ruler ofthe hive as the “king.” And since Donati presumably also pro-vided the iconographic program of the thesis print, we mustinfer that here, too, it is king bees and not queen bees who areshown mustering their swarms. That Campian’s print alludes tocontemporary diplomatic efforts to secure a Catholic bride forthe future king of England is therefore unlikely. The politicalallegory is instead of a more generic and yearning kind, whichhas as its theme the return of England, under the protection ofthe cardinal nephew, to the Catholic fold and the submission ofher king to the magnanimous authority of the Barberini pope.

John Salisbury, 1627

Francesco Barberini became cardinal protector of theEnglish College in 1626. Among the students who dedicatedtheir theses to him following his appointment was JohnSalisbury, who defended in philosophy in 1627. Although con-siderably simpler than Campian’s in its narrative structure,

Fig. 13. Bernardino Capitelli, Thesis print dedicated to Taddeo Barberini, c. 1627-29. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Salisbury’s thesis print, designed by Antonio Tempesta andengraved by Johann Friedrich Greuter, once again deals withthe theme of kingship (fig. 9) 33. It represents the legendaryencounter between Diogenes and Alexander the Great, butwith a Barberini twist. Most depictions of this always popularsubject follow Plutarch’s version of the story as recounted inhis Life of Alexander. Seeing the philosopher utterly destituteand living in a barrel, Alexander asks if there is anything he cando for him, to which Diogenes replies that the one thing hewants is the one thing not in a king’s power to give, namely thelight of day: thus his request, “stand a little out of my sun.” 34

Salisbury’s print is based instead on a rather less familiarsource, namely the fourth of the Discourses of the late 1st cen-tury/early 2nd century A.D. rhetorician Dio Chrysostom. Dioconstructs his text in the form of an imaginary dialoguebetween Diogenes and Alexander on the nature and responsi-bilities of kingship. Like Plutarch he includes the famous anec-dote of the sun, but he invents other exchanges between themas well. At one point, he has the cynic berate Alexander for hisreliance on the use of force, accusing him of lacking “the badgeof royalty:”

“And what badge is that?” said Alexander. “It is thebadge of the bees,” Diogenes replied, “that the kingwears. Have not you heard that there is a king amongthe bees, made so by nature, who does not hold officeby virtue of what you people who trace your descentfrom Heracles call inheritance?” “What is thisbadge?” inquired Alexander. “Have you not heardfarmers say,” asked the other, “that this is the only beethat has no sting, since he requires no weapon againstanyone? For no other bee will challenge his right to beking or fight him when he has this badge. I have anidea, however, that you not only go about fully armedbut even sleep that way. Do you not know,” he con-tinued, “that it is a sign of fear in a man for him tocarry arms? And no man who is afraid would everhave a chance to become king any more than would aslave.” At these words, Alexander came near to hurl-ing his spear 35.

Here, unmistakably, is the subject of Salisbury’s thesisprint. Diogenes gestures towards a formation of bees flying ina perfect circle around their king; Alexander is astonished bywhat he sees and flings down his spear, while onlookers expresssurprise and consternation. Scouring classical literature for astory involving bees, the Jesuit professor who provided theprogram for Salisbury’s defense found in Dio’s text an idealanecdote on which to build his allegorical conceit. Because itinvolves a philosopher engaged in philosophical debate, it is inevery way appropriate in the context of a philosophy defense.Because it touches on a category of kingship that derives fromnature rather than inheritance, it suggests an analogy to the oneform of human monarchy that is likewise non-hereditary,namely the papacy. And because it describes a king who has nosting, it seems implicitly to allude to the pope, who as a priestbears no arms yet governs with absolute authority 36. In Dio’stext, the bee is the mirror of the monarch, the king’s equivalentin the insect world whose royal self-confidence is held up as amodel to his human counterpart. Translated into the languageof Barberini panegyric, the story becomes, instead, a commen-tary on the superiority of spiritual over temporal authority anda celebration of the pope’s ascendancy over all other earthlyrulers 37.

Antonio Deodati, 1624

If the stingless king bee who rules the hive is a metaphor forthe pope (and by extension for the cardinal nephew), the sting-ing foot-soldier drone who makes war against the enemies of hissociety is an equally appropriate figure for the professional sol-dier in the family. Francesco’s brother Taddeo Barberini was thesecular member of the family, destined to marry and continuethe dynasty. Like his father Carlo, Taddeo was expected to playthe role of soldier to the Barberini papacy and defender of theterritories under his uncle’s temporal rule. Taddeo as far as weknow was not much of an intellectual, certainly not on a parwith Francesco, and relatively few students dedicated their the-ses to him. One who did was Antonio Deodati, a Sicilian noble-man who studied at the Collegio Romano and defended in phi-losophy in 1624. Deodati must have been close to Taddeo in ageand they may have known each other at the College, whereTaddeo too had done his schooling. At any rate, Deodati, inchoosing to dedicate his theses to Taddeo, commissioned a the-sis print that acknowledges and celebrates his patron’s militaryprofession. Designed, again, by Antonio Tempesta and engravedby Camillo Cungi, it represents a ferocious battle, in which abesieged castle is assaulted from land and sea, while its defend-ers attempt to repel their attackers by flinging hives full ofenraged bees into their ranks (fig. 10) 38. The scene is probablyinvented. It is close to several accounts of ancient battles but notexactly like any of them. Bees were certainly used in ancient war-fare. There are accounts of bees being released into tunnels dugby sappers to undermine defensive walls 39. Herodian tells usthat when Septimius Severus attacked the city of Hatra inMesopotamia, the citizens threw earthen jars filled with stinginginsects, presumably bees and wasps, into their midst, causingthe Romans to flee 40. From the Middle Ages come numerousreports of bee warfare 41. In 908 marauding Danes besieging thecity of Chester were driven away by beehives thrown from theramparts. A similar fate awaited the Duke of Lorraine in 940,when he attacked the fortifications of Otto I. Muslims used bee-hives against the Crusaders during the seige of Maara nearAntioch in 1098; and a century later, Richard the Lionheart issaid to have returned the favor, setting out on the Third Crusadewith some thirteen shipfuls of beehives. A fourteenth-centuryEnglish manual on siege warfare illustrates a contraption appar-ently specifically designed for lobbing beehives into enemy for-tifications (fig. 11) 42. And the practice continued into the earlymodern era, with several anedoctal accounts of beehives used asvenomous projectiles during the Peasants’ War, the Thirty YearsWar, and the ongoing war against the Turks 43.

Deodati’s thesis print is not as rigorously conceived as theothers discussed above. It presents a degree of heraldic confu-sion. Deodati’s coat of arms is depicted on the shield held bythe mounted soldier in the lower right corner. It features a diag-onal ladder among its several armorial elements and we maytherefore conclude that the ladders propped up against the citywalls are heraldic ladders in exactly the same way that the beesare heraldic bees. The problem is that the bees are fighting onbehalf of the defenders of the city, whereas the ladders, and theshield too, belong to the attackers. The student and his sponsorare thus put on opposite sides in an heraldic battle. Additionaldiscrepancies make it difficult to locate the scene either geo-graphically or temporally. Both armies appear to be genericallyGreco-Roman and this makes one think of various ancientsieges such as the Athenian siege of Syracuse or the Romansiege of Carthage. Yet the arrival of St. Michael swooping downfrom heaven with sword in hand would seem rather to point to

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prints is clear: with Taddeo directing the defense of the castle,Rome’s security is guaranteed 51.

Conclusion

The engravings discussed here represent only a fraction ofthe literally hundreds of thesis prints dedicated to the membersof the Barberini family during the pontificate of Urban VIII andin the years that followed. Cardinal Francesco, who was moreclosely connected to the colleges than any of his relatives andmore directly involved in their supervision and patronage,received more dedications than anyone else in the family. But allof the Barberini – the pope, his brothers, his three nephews, andin due course his grandnephews too – at one time or anothersponsored student defenses and were honored in encomiasticthesis prints like those commissioned by Sauli, Campian,Salisbury, and Deodati. Bees are the common denominator inmost of these prints, but the professors who supplied theiconography were tirelessly inventive in their use of the insect,taking advantage of its multivalency as a symbol of good anddevising around it a seemingly infinite variety of encomiasticthemes. The resulting corpus of images is a goldmine ofBarberini iconography, preserving, in the figured and figurativelanguage of allegory, a remarkable record of the intellectual pas-sions, political goals, and dynastic ambitions of the papal family.

Patronage of Rome’s educational institutions and of the stu-dents who studied in them was an essential part of Barberini state-craft. The thesis prints dedicated to them over the twenty-one yearsof the pontificate document a farflung network of clientele, origi-nating in the city’s colleges and university and radiating out fromthere to the far corners of the world. Of the students mentioned inthis paper, one came from Genoa, another from Sicily, and twofrom England; but others who dedicated their theses to membersof the papal family included every conceivable breed of Italian –Romans, Venetians, Milanese, Neapolitans, etc. – as well asGermans, Bohemians, Hungarians, Poles, Frenchmen, Spaniards,Greeks, Lebanese, even East Indians. The client relationships theyestablished with the Barberini while studying in Rome remained ineffect, in some cases, long after they left school and returned totheir homes. These young men, on the threshold of adulthood,publicly declared their fealty to the bees in thesis prints commis-sioned to mark the completion of their education. The Barberini,in sponsoring them, found an effective and gratifying means ofaccruing intellectual capital in Rome while expanding the sphere oftheir influence throughout Italy, Europe, and beyond.

192 LOUISE RICE

a Biblical battle or even a medieval one. Michael’s presencerecalls several crucial battle scenes in Tasso’s GerusalemmeLiberata, in which the angel brings victory to the forces ofChristianity; and indeed Tempesta’s composition is strikinglysimilar to several plates he produced for an illustrated editionof Tasso’s epic 44.

The accompanying poems that were set to music and sungduring the defense do little to clarify the situation. Published ina libretto entitled MELISSONIKION, or The Victory of the Bees,they tell generically of the ferocity of bees and their courage andnobility in battle 45. But the libretto’s title page, which like thethesis print is engraved by Cungi after a design by Tempesta,does offer an important clue as to the meaning of the thesis print(fig. 12) 46. For here the dedicatee, Taddeo Barberini, is referredto by the title ARCIS AELIANAE PRAEFECTVS, i.e. prefect(or castellano) of Castel S. Angelo, the papal fortress at theVatican. This was the first title assigned to Taddeo after the elec-tion of his uncle and, until his accession to the prefecture ofRome in 1631, the one by which he was best known 47. We findit referred to in at least one other thesis print dedicated to himin these years. Etched by the Sienese printmaker BernardinoCapitelli around 1627-29, the print represents Castel S. Angeloartfully framed within a triumphal arch decorated with statuesof Justice and her companions Force and Grace (fig. 13) 48. Thetablet directly over the arch is inscribed with a passage fromBook VII of Virgil’s Aeneid: “I see a stranger draw near; fromthe selfsame quarter a troop seeks the same quarter, and reignsin the topmost citadel!” 49 We are meant not only to recognizethe passage but to realize that it follows immediately on Virgil’sdescription of a swarm of bees that settles in the upper branch-es of a laurel tree, an omen which the prophet interprets as fore-telling the arrival of Aeneas in Latium. In Capitelli’s print, thetext is made to take on a double significance, alluding both toTaddeo’s coat of arms and to his position as castellano of CastelS. Angelo. Thus it is placed directly beneath the Barberini bees(here cast as an illustration of Virgil’s omen, converging on aprincely crown at the apex of a laurel tree ) and directly abovethe view of Castel S. Angelo, to which it refers through the cul-minating and bolded word ARCE, meaning citadel or fortress 50.Although Deodati’s thesis print contains no such obvious por-trayal of Castel S. Angelo, it, too, makes reference to it.Whatever the nature of the battle scene it represents, whetherbased on an actual historical event or, as I suspect, purelyinvented, Michael’s defense of the besieged fortress has theeffect of transforming that fortress into a second “CastelS. Angelo.” The underlying encomiastic conceit of both thesis

1 On the Barberini bees, see, for example, John Beldon Scott, Images ofNepotism. The Painted Ceilings of Palazzo Barberini, Princeton, 1991, chpt. 11and passim; Irving Lavin, “Bernini’s Bumbling Barberini Bees,” and TristanWeddigen, “Tapisserie und Poesie. Gianfrancesco Romanellis Giochi di Puttifür Urban VIII.,” in Barocke Inszenierung, ed. Joseph Imorde et al., Zurich,1999, pp. 50-71, 72-103; David Freedberg, “Iconography between the Historyof Art and the History of Science: Art, Science, and the Case of the Urban Bee,”in Picturing Science, Producing Art, ed. Peter Galison and Caroline Jones,London, 1998, pp. 272-96; idem, The Eye of the Lynx. Galileo, his Friends, andthe Beginnings of Natural History, Chicago, 2002, pp. 154-92.2 On thesis prints and the spectacle of the academic defense in seventeenth-cen-tury Rome, see Louise Rice, “Pietro da Cortona and the Roman Baroque ThesisPrint,” in Pietro da Cortona 1597-1669. Atti del convegno internazionale (Romae Firenze, 12-15 novembre 1997), Rome and Milan: Electa, 1998, pp. 189-200;idem, “Jesuit Thesis Prints and the Festive Academic Defence at the CollegioRomano,” in The Jesuits: Cultures, Sciences, and the Arts, 1540-1773, ed.J. O’Malley et al., Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999, pp. 148-69.3 Cardinal Sauli was eighty-six years old and the senior participant at the con-

clave that elected Pope Urban VIII; he died on 23 August 1623, seventeen daysafter the conclave ended. On Cardinal Francesco’s association with the family,see BAV, Urb. Lat. 1093, f. 862v: [9 Dec 1623] “Il Cardinal Barberino ha presoper suoi Depositarij li Signori Tomasso et Vincenzo Sauli banchieri genovesi inquesta piazza.”4 BAV, Urb. Lat. 1094, f. 311: [1 Jun 1624] “In detto giorno di giovedì dopopranzo dal Signor Marcello Sauli nella sala del Collegio Romano nobilmenteapparata, et con intermedij di suavissime musiche, furono sostenute con moltafranchezza, e sua commendatione publiche conclusioni di filosofia dedicate alSignor Cardinal Barberino, che v’intervenne con altri 16 cardinali, oltre gliEccellentissimi Signori D. Taddeo et D. Antonio Barberini, molti prelati, etaltra nobiltà.”5 Hollstein, German Engravings, Etchings, and Woodcuts, XII, Amsterdam,1983, p. 65, no. 55; David Woodward, Maps as Prints in the Italian Renaissance.Makers, Distributors, & Consumers [The Panizzi Lectures, 1995], London, 1996,pp. 85-87.6 Homer, Odyssey, XIII.102-12 (Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge MA andLondon, 1980, II, pp. 8-11).

7 Select Works of Porphyry, trans. Thomas Taylor, London, (1st ed. 1823) 1994,pp. 146-47.8 [Vincenzo Guiniggi, S. J.], Naiadum cantus ad Cytharam emodulatus cumMarcellus Saulius Ianuensis de Philosophia Universa publice disputaret in aulaCollegij Romani Societatis Iesu sub auspiciis Illustrissimi Principis FrancisciCardinalis Barberini, Rome: Alessandro Zannetti, 1624. The musical settingdoes not survive nor is there any record of the composer’s identity. On the phe-nomenon of choral music at academic defenses, see my introductory essay inDomenico Allegri. Music for an Academic Defense (Rome, 1617), ed. AntonyJohn, Middleton WI, 2004, pp. VII-XVII, XX-XXII.9 BAV, Barb. Lat. 5635 (cited in J. A. F. Orbaan, Documenti sul barocco in Roma,Rome, 1920, p. 495): [4 Dec 1631] “Un altra conclusione, stampata in rasobianco, dedicata dal Signor Marcello Sauli, con fregio a torno, tutto recamatodi oro et fiori, con imprese con api, con quatro armi di Sua Eminenza alle can-tonate, foderata di taffettano rosso.”10 Porphyrii Philosophi...De antro nympharum quod in Odyssea describuitur...Lucas Holstenius Hamburgensis Latine vertit, Rome, 1630. Holstenius’s editionis based on the Latin translation by Konrad Gesner, first published in Zurich in1542.11 John Poyntz alias Campian (c. 1602-1671) entered the Society soon after hisdefense and went on to have a distinguished career as a professor and head-master, assuming the rectorship of the Jesuit college in Ghent in 1655, of theEnglish College in Rome in 1659, and of the Jesuit college in Liège in 1663. SeeLiber Ruber Venerabilis Collegii Anglorum de Urbe, ed. Wilfrid Kelly, 2 vols.,London, 1940-43, I, p. 198; Henry Foley, Records of the English province of theSociety of Jesus, 1875-1883, VI, p. 298.12 For the Poyntz coat of arms, see Burke’s Genealogical and Heraldic History ofthe Landed Gentry, 17th ed., London, 1952, p. 2066. The crest in the form of aclenched fist is a punning play on the derivation of Poyntz from the French poing.13 Since Urban was elected in August of 1623, the dedication must have beenarranged at very short notice. This means that all of the festive trappings forCampian’s defense – the thesis print, the poems, the libretto with its engravedfrontispiece, the musical settings, etc. – were conceived and executed in just afew months, an impressive feat when one considers the number of people andthe extensive preparations involved.14 Hollstein, German Engravings, Etchings, and Woodcuts, XII, Amsterdam,1983, p. 64, no. 52; Massimo Pulini, Andrea Lilio, Milan, 2003, p. 226.15 Europeans were fascinated by the instances of cannibalism they encounteredin the new world and in their imagination associated all of its peoples with thepractice (see Astrid Wendt, Kannibalismus in Brasilien: eine Analyse europäi-scher Reiseberichte und Amerika-Darstellungen für die Zeit zwischen 1500 und1654, New York and Frankfurt, 1989; Annerose Menninger, Die Macht derAugenzeugen: neue Welt und Kannibalen-Mythos, 1492-1600, Stuttgart, 1995;Cannibalism and the Colonial World, ed. Francis Barker et al., Cambridge andNew York, 1998). Although Lilio could have relied on a variety of visualsources, his depiction is particularly close to the Brazilian man-eater featuredon the title page to the third volume of Theodor de Bry’s America, Frankfurt,1593 (illustrated in Anthony Grafton et al., New Worlds, Ancient Texts : thePower of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery, Cambridge MA and London,1992, p. 110, fig. 3.4).16 Royal fratricide was not the hostile invention of an anti-Islamic West. Sincethe fourteenth century, the Ottoman dynasty adopted fratricide as a preferablealternative to the violent struggles for succession that typically broke out amonga sultan’s heirs. In the later fifteenth century, Sultan Mehmed II codified thepractice into law: “For welfare of the state, the one of my sons to whom Godgrants the sultanate may lawfully put his brothers to death.” The custom con-tinued until well into the seventeenth century. Upon succeeding to the thronein 1595, Mehmed III ordered the execution by strangulation of all nineteen ofhis brothers. The sultan at the time of Campian’s defense was Murad IV. In1624 he was only thirteen years old and had not yet engaged in fratricide, buthe was by no means opposed to the strategy and in the 1630s he put it to use,killing two of his brothers. Thereafter royal fratricide gradually fell into disuse,and instead of facing execution the sultan’s brothers were confined to the noto-rious “Cage,” a prison within the walls of the Topkapi palace where they livedout their lives in almost complete social isolation. See Anthony Alderson, TheStructure of the Ottoman Dynasty, Oxford, 1956, pp. 4-12; Halil Inalcik, TheOttoman Empire: The Classical Age, 1300-1600, London, 1973, p. 59-61.17 Although he portrays no specific individual, this soldier-king in contemporaryarmor is perhaps meant to recall Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden, whoalready by 1623 had emerged as a leading figure in the Protestant alliance andone of Rome’s fiercest and most committed enemies.18 Notably absent from this gathering of enemies of the faith are the Jews. Theyare omitted because, at the time, there was no nation under Jewish rule. Sincethe diaspora, Jews lived in non-Jewish societies, subject to laws imposed bynon-Jewish rulers, and they therefore play no part in the political theater rep-resented here.19 Henri Zerner, Ecole de Fontainebleau. Gravures, Paris, 1969, unpaginated,Master L.D., 85 bis. Penni’s composition was copied in an anonymous Jesuitthesis print made in or before 1621. The print exists in at least three differentfinished states, one dedicated to Paul V, another to Cardinal Ludovisi, andanother to a secular member of the Cesarini family. It must therefore haveenjoyed wide circulation in Rome and would certainly have been known toLilio and his Jesuit advisor.20 The royalty of Ecclesia’s handmaidens, indicated by their crowns, brings tomind the passage in Psalms 45:9: “Kings’ daughters were among thy honorable

women.” Here, the handmaidens presumably represent Catholic kingdomsloyal to the pope.21 Virgil, Aeneid, VI.851-53 (Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge MA andLondon, 1986, I, p. 567).22 Pliny, Natural History, XI.iv.11-12, trans. John Bostock and H. T. Riley,London, 1855, III, p. 5.23 Charles Butler, The Feminine Monarchie, or A Treatise concerning Bees and theDue Ordering of them, Oxford, 1609, unpaginated (chpt. 1, part 8). For otherexamples of similar rhetoric, see Jeffrey Merrick, “Royal Bees: the GenderPolitics of the Beehive in Early Modern Europe”, Studies in Eighteenth-CenturyCulture, XVIII, 1988, pp. 15-16.24 [Alessandro Donati, S. J.], Francisco Card. Barberino Lyricum Carmen inPhilosophicis Disputationibus Ioannis Campiani Coll. Angl. Conv. emodulatumLatina Pallas D.D., Rome, n.d., pp. 3-4: “Quam politicae administrationis for-mam a natura insitam APIBVS, atque in aere expressam tibi obtuli, eamdemLyrico brevique carmine adumbratam offero, CARD. AMPLISS. [...] VtinamAnglia nostra, quam ego in fronte praeposui, APIVM exemplo a tua Roma dis-ceret regi. Rectius profecto populos & ipsa regeret suos ad solidam Religionemaliquando traductos. Tu quidem eos, qui ex tanto naufragio Romanos ad por-tus enavigarunt, perhumaniter complecteris, amplissimoque praesidio defendisac foves; ut Catholica Fides nunc demum in Britannia altissimas radices fixurasit, cum beneficiorum tuorum melleis liquoribus irrigatur, & alitur.”25 For the motif, Virgilian in origin, of bees swarming above a laurel tree, seebelow at note 49.26 Ludwig von Pastor, The History of the Popes, trans. E. Graf, vol. XXIX,London, 1938, pp. 276-303.27 Merrick, op. cit. at note 23, pp. 7-37; Freedberg, 2002, op. cit. at note 1,pp. 173-77.28 Merrick (op. cit. at note 23, p. 10) notes Aristotle’s tendency to translate “cul-tural stereotypes into universal laws. [...] He granted that kings resembled‘mothers’ by virtue of their generative powers but referred to them nonethelessas the ‘fathers’ of their hives.” It must be admitted, in defense of Aristotle andother pre-modern apiologists, that bee reproduction is an exceedingly compli-cated subject, not easily understood even after the advent of the microscope.29 Butler, op. cit. at note 23, unpaginated (Preface).30 Freedberg, 2002, op. cit. at note 1, p. 166. See also Enrica Schettini Piazza,“Teoria e sperimentazione nell’Apiario di Federico Cesi”, in Convegno celebra-tivo del IV centenario della nascita di Federico Cesi (Atti dei convegni Lincei, 78),Rome, 1986, pp. 231-49.31 Freedberg, 2002, op. cit. at note 1, pp. 166-78.32 Recognition of the queen bee’s sex and her role in procreation did notbecome widespread until the middle of the century, and even then seems not tohave been universally accepted. See Merrick, op. cit. at note 23, pp. 16-19.33 Hollstein, German Engravings, Etchings, and Woodcuts, XII, Amsterdam,1983, p. 64, no. 54; Eckhard Leuschner, Antonio Tempesta. Ein Bahnbrecher desrömischen Barock und seine europäische Wirkung, Petersberg, 2005, pp. 500-501, 517 n. 134.34 Plutarch, Life of Alexander, XIV.3-5 (Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge MAand London, 1971, VII, pp. 258-59).35 Dio Chrysostom, Discourses, IV.61-64 (Loeb Classical Library, CambridgeMA and London, 1961, I, pp. 196-97).36 Ancient authority is divided as to whether the king has no sting or merelyrefrains from using it. See Merrick, op. cit. at note 23, p. 11; Freedberg, 2002,op. cit. at note 1, pp. 173-74, 440 nn. 42-43.37 The poems that were set to music and sung during Salisbury’s defense werepublished at the same time as the thesis print, under the title Panacrides apesmusicis concentibus advocandae ad philosophicas theses Ioannis Salisburii Coll.Angl. Convict. Illustriss. Principi Francesco. Card. Barberino venerabundae sededunt, Rome, 1627. In the engraved title page, the renunciation of the spear –the human equivant of a bee’s stinger – emerges as the principal theme. Mars,holding a broken lance and seated in front of a heap of shattered spears, pointsto the stingless king bee at the center of his swarm. The title, Panacrides apes,refers to the bees of Mount Panacres on Crete, who according to the Greeklyric poet Callimachus nourished the infant Jupiter with their honey.Callimachus and another poet who wrote of Jupiter’s infancy, Virgil, are seatedto the left and right of the title, each holding a snapped weapon.38 Leuschner, op. cit. at note 33, p. 501.39 Aineias the Tactician, On the Defence of Fortified Positions, XXXVII.4 (LoebClassical Library, Cambridge MA and London, 1928, pp. 186-87); AdrienneMayor, Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs: Biological and ChemicalWarfare in the Ancient World, New York, 2003, p. 181.40 Herodian, History of the Empire, III.ix.4-6 (Loeb Classical Library,Cambridge MA and London, 1969, I, pp. 317-19): “...the people of Hatra vig-orously defended themselves by firing down missiles and stone on the army ofSeverus below and causing them a good deal of damage. They made clay con-tainers filled with little flying insects that had poisonous stings, which were thenfired off. When these missiles fell on Severus’s army, the insects crawled into theeyes and exposed parts of the skin of the soldiers without being noticed andstung them, causing severe injuries.”41 For the following and numerous additional examples, see Eva Crane, TheWorld History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting, New York, 1999, pp. 540-41.42 Walter de Milemete, ms. 92, ff. 74-75, Christ Church, Oxford (illustrated inCrane, op. cit. at note 41, p. 541, fig. 50.3a).43 Crane, op. cit. at note 41, pp. 542-43. 44 See, in particular, The Illustrated Bartsch, XXXVII, ed. Sebastian Buffa, New

APES PHILOSOPHICAE: BEES AND THE DIVINE DESIGN IN BARBERINI THESIS PRINTS 193

York, 1984, p. 100, no. 1216; p. 102, no. 1218. Tempesta produced three differ-ent sets of Tasso illustrations; but significantly the ones cited here are from anedition dedicated to Taddeo Barberini. Tempesta, in fact, had close ties with theBarberini and appears on their payroll in 1625 as drawing master to Antonio, theyoungest of the papal nephews. See Karin Wolfe, Cardinal Antonio Barberini theYounger (1608-1671). Aspects of his Art Patronage, PhD diss., CourtauldInstitute of Art, 1998, p. 5; Leuschner, op. cit. at note 33, pp. 500-08.45 Thadaeo Barberino Urbani VIII Pont. Max. Fratris Filio Arcis Aelianae prae-fecto etc. MELISSONIKION inter Philosophicas Antonii Deodati RagusiniDisputationes emodulatum in Romano Collegio Societatis Iesu, Rome, 1624.46 Leuschner, op. cit. at note 33, pp. 500, 517 n. 132.47 BAV, Arch. Barb., Ind. IV. 1254 (“Memorie per la vita del Signor Prefetto[Taddeo Barberini], scritte da S. E. [Cardinal Francesco Barberini]”), f. 11v;Emmanuel Rodocanachi, Le Château Saint-Ange, Paris, 1909, pp. 198, 203-204.The post of castellano of Castel S. Angelo, which the pope typically assigned toa nephew or brother, was largely honorary; the actual running of the fortresswas in the hands of a vice-castellano. For more on the position, see GaetanoMoroni, Dizionario di erudizione storico-ecclesiastica da San Pietro sino ai nostrigiorni, Venice, 1840-79, X, pp. 201-209. 48 Sue Welsh Reed and Richard Wallace, Italian Etchers of the Renaissance &Baroque, ex. cat., Boston, 1989, pp. 163-65. The arms carried by an eagle at thefoot of the arch are those of the Guidi di Bagno family; it is likely that the stu-

dent was a younger relative of Giovanni Francesco Guidi di Bagno, who wasmade a cardinal by Urban VIII in pectore in 1627 and openly in 1629, precise-ly the years when Capitelli was active in Rome. The identification of the centralpersonification as Justice stems from her attribute, an ostrich, which Ripa con-nects with Justice because “le cose, che vengono in giuditio, per intricate chesiano, non si deve mancare di strigarle, & isnodarle, con animo patiente, comelo struzzo digerisce il ferro, ancorche sia durissima materia” (Cesare Ripa,Iconologia, Padua, 1618 [facs. ed., Turin, 1988], p. 188). The presence ofJustice and the fact that the artist includes, on the near side of the Tiber, a viewof the precinct where executions took place in Rome suggests that the print wasmade for a defense at Rome’s law school, the Sapienza.49 Aeneid, VII. 68-70 (Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge MA and London, 1986,II, pp. 6-7): [Continuo vates] “externum cernimus,” [inquit]/ “adventare virum etpartis petere agmen easdem/ partibus ex isdem et summa dominarier arce.”50 The word arx to refer to Castel S. Angelo appears also in the title page toDeodati’s libretto; arx Aeliana, or the Aelian fortress, is the fortress of theemperor Hadrian (Publius Aelius Hadrianus).51 Although dedicated to Taddeo, the print was evidently enjoyed by othermembers of the family as well. A copy printed on turquoise satin and displayedin a gilded frame went with Cardinal Francesco when he moved to theCancelleria in 1633. See Marilyn Lavin, Seventeenth-Century BarberiniDocuments and Inventories of Art, New York, 1975, pp. 34, 83, 105.

194 LOUISE RICE