Sibyls and Sibylline oracles. 4. The Renaissance

The Sibyls were thoroughly christianised after Lactantius finished with them. He successfully reimagined them as virtuous pagans of the distant past. Most later readers imagined the Sibylline oracles poems were authentic predictions of Christ and the end times.

Their reputation continued to expand in late antiquity and the Mediaeval period. According to Finn Schulze-Feldmann (2017), they were integral to a wave of Christian apocalyptic literature: they were an ideal hook to hang new prophecies on.

Delphic Sibyl: Filippino Lippi, Carafa Chapel ceiling, Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome, 1488–1493. The scroll in the Sibyl’s hand reads propheta ex virgini (for virgine) nascetur, ‘a prophet will be born of an unmarried girl’. (Image source: Wikimedia)

Into the Mediaeval period

The first step was that the acrostic in Sibylline oracles 8 took on a life of its own. We find it quoted in the pseudo-Constantinian Speech to the assembly of saints §18 (late 300s), and Augustine gives a Latin translation (City of God 18.23, early 400s). But they seem to have known it an excerpted form. Augustine doesn’t know the last part of the acrostic; and they both ascribe the poem to the Erythraean Sibyl — evidently not agreeing with Lactantius’ idea that a different Sibyl wrote each poem.

Bear in mind I can only pick out a handful of highlights. In the early 700s Bede wrote a short but influential treatise on the Interpretation of sibylline words with a condensed version of Lactantius’ account, with the novelty that he names Cassandra as the Tiburtine Sibyl. Several later writers draw on Bede’s account.

Note. Souda σ.359 (900s) also names Kassandra as a candidate for the identity of the Phrygian Sibyl. The only ancient precedent for counting Kassandra as a Sibyl seems to be that Lykophron, Alexandra 1464, compares Kassandra to Melankraira, which is one of several names given for the Cumaean Sibyl (pseudo-Aristotle, Mirabilia 838a).

Ælfric’s Christmas homily (990s) refers to several alleged pagan prophecies of Christ. ‘Sibylla’ is his first example (tr. Thorpe, pp. 18–19):

...heathen men also have set in their books concerning all these things which we have now read before you. One of these was Sibylla, who wrote in song-craft wise of Christ’s birth, and of his passion ... and yet was a heathen.

The ten Sibyls as depicted in a manuscript of the Romuleon, cod. Laurenziana Med. Palat. 156 (1464–1465). (Image source: Internet Archive)

Sibyls appear more and more frequently as the Mediaeval period goes on. Sometimes they’re cited as a religious and moral paradigm. Abelard’s seventh letter to Héloise (1130s) draws on Augustine, Lactantius, and Vergil’s fourth Eclogue, to cast ‘Sibylla’ as a model for women leading a religious life: he likens Sibylla more to an evangelist than a prophet.

In a similar vein Petrarch’s Rerum memoranda 4.30 (mid-1300s) discusses four of the Sibyls, and says the Delphic Sibyl’s prophetic power was a reward for her virginity. Incidentally, this shows a conflation of the Sibyl with the Pythia. The Pythia was a historical job title: she was a priestess who delivered oracular pronouncements on behalf of Apollo at Delphi. The Delphic Sibyl, by contrast, is purely mythical, described originally by Chrysippos in his lost book On divination (Stoicorum veterum fragmenta ii.1216). I haven’t found out who was the first to conflate them, but it must surely be earlier than Petrarch.

Hellespontian Sibyl: Jörg Syrlin the Elder, choir stalls of the Ulmer Münster (1468–1474). The inscription reads Sibilla Ellespo(n)tica in agro Troiano: felix ille dives ligno qui pe(n)det ab alto, ‘The Hellespontian Sibyl, in the Trojan country: a blessed rich man is one who hangs from a high beam.’ The second line is a hexameter verse spoken by ‘Sibylla’ in Iacopo de Voragine’s Golden legend (1260s; p. 792 ed. Graesse, 1846). I’m aware dives is a standard variant for deus — ‘blessed is that god’ — however, I like the Ulm text just the way it is. (Image source: Wikimedia)

Sometimes the interest is more antiquarian, like encyclopaedic works treating the Sibyls as historical figures. Vincent de Beauvais’ Speculum historiale 2.100–102 (mid-1200s) presents them this way, synthesising Lactantius’ account with a bundle of other material. Boccaccio combines a moral and encyclopaedic approach when he includes the Erythraian and Cumaean Sibyls in his catalogue of famous women, De claris mulieribus (1362).

On mediaeval accounts of the Sibyls, see further McGinn 1985: 18–21; Raybould 2017: 32–48; Schulze-Feldmann 2017. Boccaccio: pp. 41–42 and 50–51 in the English translation by Guido Guarino. Boccaccio also has chapters on other prophetesses of antiquity, Manto (60–61), Cassandra (70; recall that Bede had regarded her as a Sibyl), and Nicaula, the queen of Sheba, who appears in some later Sibyl-lists.

The Quattrocento

All of this leads up to an outpouring of Sibyl-related artworks in the 1400s and 1500s. These include Michelangelo’s Sibyls on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Layout of the Sibyls in the nave of Siena Cathedral (1480s). (Base image: Wikimedia; my annotations)

The most important depiction of the ancient Sibyl canon is the floor panels in the nave of Siena Cathedral (1480s). The centre aisle is dominated by panels of Hermes Trismegistus, Romulus and Remus, and the Mount of Wisdom; the side aisles have the full set of ten Sibyls, with individual iconography and prophetic ‘quotations’. (The floor is fully uncovered for only a few weeks each year, so plan your visit accordingly: timetable here.) The Siena Sibyls were completed just 20 years after the first printed edition of Lactantius came out in 1465.

A few other notable artworks contained the full set of ten Sibyls:

• Rimini, the Tempio Malatestiano (ca. 1454): one of the side chapels, the Capella dei Martiri, is flanked by two pillars with sculptures of all ten Sibyls and two Hebrew prophets. (Selection of photographs here.)
• Ulm, Münster: the choir stalls have wood carvings by Jörg Syrlin (1468–1474) of all ten Sibyls, eight classical philosophers and poets, and the queen of Sheba as an eleventh quasi-Sibyl.
• Filippino Lippi, who worked in Botticelli’s workshop, painted a pair of paintings featuring the ten Sibyls (ca. 1472); the paintings are held at Christ Church, Oxford.

The Christ Church Sibyls (ca. 1472). Left to right: Persian, Libyan, Delphic, Cimmerian, Erythraean, Samian, Cumaean, Hellespontian, Phrygian, and Tiburtine. Text beneath the Sibyls (not shown) quotes various ‘sayings of the Sibyls’.

Depictions of the Sibyls normally have short textual prophecies associated with some or all of the Sibyls. The sources aren’t always easy to track down. Some come from Lactantius, others are obscure. Above, in the caption to a photo of one of the Ulm Sibyls, I noted a hexameter line quoted from the Golden legend.

There are also plenty of partial sets of Sibyls. Lippi later went on to paint four Sibyls on the ceiling of the Carafa Chapel at Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome (ca. 1490; image at top). And of course there are the five Sibyls in the Sistine Chapel (1508–1512). As was often customary — most notably in the case of the Orsini Sibyls, below — Michelangelo’s Sibyls are placed alongside prophets of the Hebrew Bible.

The Sistine Chapel ceiling (1508–1512), with Sibyls and prophets highlighted.

In one notable case, we have a group of Sibyls who are completely disconnected from the Varro-Lactantius canon: the Cortina Sibyls.

These are a group of five Sibyls — originally there must have been more — in an early 15th century fresco at Cortina d’Ampezzo, in the far north of Italy. The fresco was concealed behind plasterwork at the Cassa Rurale ed Artigiana and discovered during restoration work in the 1890s. The names are damaged, but the surviving portions have nothing in common with Lactantius’ ten Sibyls.

The Cortina Sibyls (ca. 1400–1420). Left to right: [Sibilla V]alve(n)sis; Sibilla [N]icaulia (the queen of Sheba); Sibilia Po(n)tue(n)sis (Po(r)tue(n)sis?); Sibilla A[grip(?)]a; and a Sibyl whose name is lost. The Cortina Sibyls wear crowns, which aligns them with older portrayals of the personified Virtues. See Raybould 2017: 67–75; Schulze-Feldmann 2017: 206. (Image source: cortina.dolomiti.org; Cornford 1903: 370 gives a useful line drawing.)

It’s not unusual for extra Sibyls to pop up here and there. Above I mentioned that Bede included Cassandra in his canon. Nic(h)aula, the queen of Sheba, is one of the Sibyls in the Cortina fresco, above; sometimes she’s added to a Sibyl-list as an extra, a quasi-Sibyl. She appears among the woodcarvings in the choir stalls at Ulm; and a 16th century chapbook, published by Simrock in the revised edition of his Deutsche Volksbücher (1869), gives a catalogue of the twelve ‘Orsini Sibyls’ (see below) but then appends Nichaula as a thirteenth Sibyl.

One important Sibyl was never part of any canon: the Apennine Sibyl. She’s more folklore than anything else. She first appears in an early 15th century book, Andrea de Barberino’s Il Guerrin Meschino (1410); later also in Antoine de La Sale’s La Salade (ca. 1440). The story is that she complained about Mary’s privileged position, thinking she herself deserved to be the mother of Christ; as a punishment, she was condemned to dwell in a cave inside a mountain until the end of time — in either Monte Sibilla or Monte Vettore, two neighbouring mountains in a part of the Apennine mountain range in central Italy known as the Monti Sibillini.

Raybould suspects the Apennine Sibyl may be one of the Cortina Sibyls. He links the far left Sibyl, the Sibilla Valvensis, to the former Diocese of Valva — Latin Valvensis — or its successor, the Diocese of Sulmona-Valva: both had their seat at L’Aquila, 50 km south of Monte Vettore. (I have my doubts: 50 km isn’t that close, and there are some big mountains in between.)

See Raybould 2017: 59–66 for an account of ‘independent’ Sibyls.

The Orsini Sibyls: prose Vaticinia, verse Prophetiae Sibyllarum

The most influential new canon was the Orsini Sibyls. Frescoes in the entrance hall of the Palazzo Orsini at Monte Giordano, Rome, which were completed by 1434, depicted twelve Sibyls alongside twelve prophets.

These paintings came with new ‘prophetic’ texts, supposedly spoken by the Sibyls. I’ll refer to these texts as the Vaticinia, following Nerida Newbigin (2018). Copies of the Vaticinia, with descriptions of the frescoes, circulated in a variety of forms for many decades.

The Orsini Sibyls are the old Varro-Lactantius canon plus two new additions: the Sibylla Europaea, or European Sibyl; and the Sibylla Agrippa (or Agripa, or Egrippa, or Agrippina). It’s always been suspected that the ‘Agrippan’ Sibyl originated as a textual corruption of Aegyptia ‘Egyptian’; other theories exist. The Orsini Sibyls quickly became the standard canon for 15th century literature, theatre, and music.

On the Orsini frescoes and the new Sibyl canon see Settis 1985: 99–101; Newbigin 2018: 316. On the name Agrippa: Settis 1985: 95–98 derives it from a portrait of the ancient statesman Marcus Agrippa; McGrath 2007: 268–273 is non-committal; Roth 2010: 51 n.11 follows Émile Mâle in deriving it from Aegyptia. Note that A[grip]a is a possible supplement to one of the damaged Cortina Sibyls, above.

Newbigin gives an admirably clear account of how the Orsini Vaticinia propagated. In the mid-1400s they appeared in at least two vernacular translations, most notably one by Rustici in the ‘Codice Rustici’; and in Florence they started to be used in plays.

Sacre rappresentazione were traditionally grand stagings of biblical stories, with expensive costuming and music. A common feature was to open with a procession of the prophets, or Ordo prophetarum, ending with a Sibyl who would sing a Latin hexameter poem.

Young 1922 gives texts of various versions of the Ordo prophetarum. One, at 13, includes a repeated refrain. Florence cod. Riccardiana 1271 fols. 70v–71v has a list of the Lactantius Sibyls with their Orsini Vaticinia; Marco di Bartolomeo Rustici’s Dimostrazione, an account of an imaginary pilgrimage, includes accounts of first the Varronian canon, then the Orsini canon, with vernacular translations of the Vaticinia. See Newbigin 2018 passim.

An Annunciazione play by Feo Belcari (1460s or 1470s) included eight of the Sibyls, and each Sibyl declaimed or sang their Vaticinium in a versification of Rustici’s text. Around 1470 there appeared a set of engravings by Baccio Baldini, apparently partly based on Belcari’s play, featuring all twelve Sibyls and with vernacular verse versions of the Vaticinia. A later recension of the Annunciazione play also included the full set of twelve.

See Heitz 1903 for a facsimile of the St Gallen blockbook; again, on the entire sequence of developments, see Newbigin 2018.

Around the same time as Baldini’s engravings, another set appeared in a famous blockbook at St Gallen, Switzerland, with the Latin Vaticinia but without the descriptions of the Orsini Sibyls. Here, as an example, is how the Agrippan Sibyl appears — one of the additions in the Orsini canon — with her description and Vaticinium as they appear in a 1481 book published by Filippo Barbieri.

The twelfth and final Sibyl is depicted about 30 years old, mature and serious; clothed in Roman style, wearing a tunic of red velvet; and she holds a text, ‘The Agrippan Sibyl speaks about Christ’. Her prophecy is as follows:

‘The Word will be invisible but felt; it will spring up like a root, be dried like a leaf, and its beauty will not be seen. A mother’s womb will be encompassed around him, and God will weep with eternal joy. He will be trodden by people; be born from a mother as God; pass his life like a sinner.’

The Florentine plays have her speak (or sing) the same prophecy in Italian; the Latin version, starting invisibile verbum..., appears in many artworks over subsequent centuries.

As Newbigin shows (2018: 316–317), Barbieri himself is not responsible for the descriptions of the prophets and Sibyls; he inserted them into his book from elsewhere.

Versions of the Agrippan Sibyl and her Vaticinium. The St Gallen blockbook (ca. 1470; facsimile from Heitz 1903); pseudo-Barbieri, 1481 edition; illumination in a manuscript, Paris Bibl. Mazarine cod. 412 fol. 17 (ca. 1490); pseudo-Barbieri, 1500–1525 edition with the addition of a hexameter poem, one of the Prophetiae Sibyllarum.

A further development followed in the early 1500s. A new edition of Barbieri’s book came out posthumously, including the portraits, the descriptions, and the Latin Vaticinia, but also adding verse ‘prophecies’ after the Vaticinia.

These poems may be referred to as the Prophetiae Sibyllarum. That title comes from a musical setting of them by the great choral composer Roland de Lassus (ca. 1556–1558). Each Sibyl has six lines of Latin hexameter.

The image above shows a sample, at right. The right-hand facing page has the portrait; the left-hand page has the description, then the prose Vaticinium, then the hexameter Prophetia poem.

The Prophetiae poems have only the loosest resemblance to the Vaticinia. Reinhold Schlötter and Marjorie Roth have argued that some of them were based on the Belcari-Baldini vernacular versions; that may be. More interesting to my mind is Roth’s argument that Lassus’ musical setting of the Prophetiae was designed for an aristocratic revival of the rappresentazione theatrical form.

She suggests this explains the presence of Lassus’ prologue, which isn’t in any other version. Its wording is quite specific to Lassus’ setting:

Carmina chromatico quae audis modulata tenore,
haec sunt illa quibus nostrae olim arcana salutis
bis senae intrepido cecinerunt ore Sibyllae.

The songs you hear, modulated in a chromatic tenor,
are the ones that long ago gave the secrets of our salvation:
twice six Sibyls sang them with fearless voice.

‘Chromatic tenor’ describes Lassus’ setting precisely. It would be interesting to know who wrote this prologue in the 1550s: the quality of the Latin verse is of a high standard.

It’s really Lassus’ Prophetiae Sibyllarum that led me to extend this account of the Sibyls into the Renaissance. His setting is truly wild — one of the most extraordinary, imaginative, unexpected things I’ve ever heard. Give it a listen: it’s genuinely hard to find any place where you can predict what chord is coming next.

The opening of the prologue in Lassus’ setting of the Prophetiae Sibyllarum (ca. 1558); note-lengths halved for legibility. In spite of the high quality of the prologue’s Latin verse, Lassus’ setting almost completely ignores the rhythmic features of the dactylic hexameter, including elision. In 16th century choral settings of Latin hexameter, settings that use homophonic chords typically represent the dactylic rhythms rigorously; polyphonic settings simply ignore the hexameter. Lassus’ setting of Vergil’s Eclogue 1, ‘Tityre tu patulae’, is notable for switching between the two approaches in different sections.

I’ve written a piece about Lassus’ choral setting before: I had a number of small misunderstandings, as I’ve now found out in doing the research for this write-up, so I’m glad to have a chance to correct them here. The misunderstandings were over the intertwined origins of the Prophetiae poems and the prose Vaticinia; the role of Belcari’s plays; and the misattribution of the Vaticinia to Barbieri. In addition I was completely unaware of Rustici’s translations of the Vaticinia in the 1450s.

I began this series wanting to clear up in my mind the disconnect between Lassus’ Prophetiae and the ancient Sibylline oracles. The fact that it took four blog posts to get here simply reflects that the story is convoluted. At every stage in their history, the Sibyls have been ferociously esoteric. Lassus’ eerie music directly mirrors their enigmatic nature. If I’ve confused things by giving too many details, Newbigin’s lucid article will clear up any misunderstandings in Part 4, at least.

Final note: I have written ‘Sibyl’ with a capital S, contrary to the practice of treating it as a generic term. This is because it is not generic: it is part of the proper name of each Sibyl. The lower case is only appropriate in cases where it is not part of a proper name; independent sibyls, such as the Apennine Sibyl, are edge cases.

References

• Cornford, F. M. 1903. ‘Fresco at Cortina d’Ampezzo.’ Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society 10: 369–373. [Internet Archive]
• Heitz, P. 1903. Oracula sibyllina (Weissagungen der zwölf Sibyllen). Nach dem einzigen, in der Stiftsbibliothek von St. Gallen aufbewahrten Exemplare. Straßburg. [Internet Archive]
• McGinn, B. 1985. ‘Teste David cum Sibylla: the significance of the sibylline tradition in the Middle Ages.’ In: Kirshner, J.; Wemple, S. F. (eds.) Women in the medieval world. Essays in honor of John H. Mundy. Oxford. 7–35.
• McGrath, E. 2007. ‘Jacob Jordaens and Moses’s Ethiopian wife.’ Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 70: 247–285. [JSTOR]
• Newbigin, N. 2018. ‘Feo Belcari, Baccio Baldini, and the texts of the prophets and sibyls.’ Romance philology 72.2: 313–352. [JSTOR]
• Raybould, R. 2017. The Sibyl series of the fifteenth century. Leiden/Boston.
• Roth, M. A. 2010. ‘Prophecy, harmony, and the alchemical transformation of the soul: the key to Lasso’s chromatic Sibyls.’ In: Wuidar, L. (ed.) Music and esotericism. Leiden/Boston. 45–76.
• Schulze-Feldmann, F. 2017. ‘The Sibyls at the gateway to the Renaissance.’ Bruniana & Campanelliana 23.1: 203–209. [JSTOR]
• Settis, S. 1985. ‘Sibilla Agripa.’ Études de lettres: revue de la Faculté des Lettres de l’Université de Lausanne 1985.4: 89–124. [E-Periodica]
• Simrock, K. J. 1869. ‘Zwölf Sibyllen Weissagungen.’ In: Auserlesene deutsche Volksbücher, vol. 1. Frankfurt. 383–419. [Internet Archive]
• Young, K. 1922. Ordo prophetarum. Madison, WI. [Internet Archive]