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1. Apes phz·tosophz·cae:
bees and the divine design in Barberini thesis prints
Louise Rice
The Barberini were supremely fortunate in their heraldry. It
would be difficult to come up with a device more flexible in its
meaning or more unifor1nly positive in its implications than the
bee. 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 and
emblems of divine wisdom. Given the almost infinite virtue
associated with the family's armorial symbol, it comes as no sur-
prise that bees figure prominently in works comn1issioned by or
•
for the Barberini. Artists and poets alike found in the family's
coat of arms a powerful stimulus to invention and created
around it a body of panegyric remarkable for the sheer variety
of its bee-related subject matter 1
. One never has to look far for
the bees in Barberini Rome; but of all the innumerable contexts
in which they app.ear the most varied and entertaining by far is
thesis prints, a genre of engraving that involves elaborate
heraldic conceits of a challengingly intellectual kind. Focusing
•
on a selection of thesis prints dedicated to members of the papal
family, this article takes a closer look at the apimania that
gripped Rome during the Barberini pontificate and explores
how bee imagery was used to promote and celebrate the politi-
cal and cultural agenda of Pope Urban VIII and his closest rel-
•
at1ves.
Commissioned to decorate the thesis broadsheets of stu-
dents undergoing a public academic defense, thesis prints are
celebratory images that extol the dedicatee (the person to whom
the 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 normally
provided the iconography, the imagery tends to be intensely,
even ostentatiously learned. The nominal subject matter may
derive from identifiable sources, classical or otherwise, but mod-
ified and manipulated to serve the print's encomiastic function
it can assume multiple meanings. Unraveling the intricate
heraldic conceits that form the basis of most thesis prints can
prove challenging. Images of this sort demand an extremely
close reading and I will therefore concentrate on only a small
handful of the literally hundreds of Barberini thesis prints (i.e.
thesis prints dedicated to members of the Barberini family) that
have come down to us, in order to convey something of the
richness and subtlety of their allegorical language.
All of the examples I have selected date from the early years
of the pontificate, and all of them are Jesuit productions, com-
missioned by students defending philosophical theses at either
the'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 the
intricate rhetorical conceits around which the imagery typically
revolves. We should recall that the Barberini were not only great
supporters and sponsors of Jesuit education, they were them-
selves the products of it. Maffeo Barberini and his three
nephews did their schoolwork at the Collegio Romano and had
inculcated in them from a11early age the type of Christian
humanism taught there, with its commingling of poetry, s·cience,
and philosophy and its concentrated emphasis on the rhetoric of
praise. Thesis prints embody perhaps better than any other
genre a characteristically Jesuit brand of learning. If we should
eventually succeed in defining a Barberini style (the stile
Barberiniof the session's title), we will no doubt find that it had
its gestation in the Jesuit colleges in Rome, where the pope, his
nephews, and most of their closest associates spent their forma-
•
t1veyears.
MarcelloSaulz~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 the
great-nephew of Cardinal Antonio Maria Sauli, who had died
only nine months earlier as dean of the college of cardinals, and
nephew of Tomaso and Vincenzo Sauli who had recently been
appointed private bankers to Cardinal Francesco 3
. He was, in
other words, a very well connected young man and his defense
was an especially splendid occasion, attended not only by
Cardinal Francesco, but also by his brothers Don Taddeo and
Don Antonio Barberini, along with sixteen other cardinals and
a 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 design
by Giovanni Lanfranco (fig. 1) 5
. It represents a young prince
who has arrived by boat on a distant shore and is there accom-
panied by Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, who reveals to him
a mysterious grotto inhabited by river gods. A shield embla-
zoned with the Sauli arms hanging from the tree just over the
prince'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 exercise
in embroidery, while their sisters reward their labor with sweet
chunks of honeycomb. The subject, although rare (or possibly
even unprecedented) in the visual arts, is based on a passage in
a familiar text, Homer's Odyssey.Here is how Homer describes
APES PHILOSOPHICAE: BEESAND THE DIVINE DESIGN IN BARBERINI THESISPRINTS 181
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Fig. 1. Gio 1anni Lanfranco and Johann Friedricl1 Greuter, Thesispri11tof MarcelloSaulz;who de/e11ded
philosophicaltheses at t/JeCollegioRomano zn 1624.
•
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Fig. 2. Detail of figure 1. Fig. 3. Detail of figure 1.
•
182 •
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LOUISE RICE

3. the cave of the naiads on the island of Ithaca, in Book 13 of his
•
epic poem:
at the head of the harbor is a long-leaved olive tree, and
near it a pleasant, shadowy cave, sacred to the nymphs
that are called Naiads. Therein are bowls and jars of
stone, and there too the bees store honey. And in the cave
are long looms of stone, at which the nymphs weave
webs of purple dye, a wonder to behold; and therein are
also ever-flowing springs. Two doors there are to the
cave, one toward the North Wind, by which men go
down, but that toward the South Wind is sacred, nor do
men enter thereby; it is the way of the immortals. 6
It is easy to see why this passage was seized on as ideal raw
material for a panegyric in honor of Cardinal Barberini, for
embedded in its imagery are not one but two separate references
that seem to have a direct application to him. The bees making
honey in the stony chambers of the cave allude to Francesco's
heraldry, while the purple cloth the naiads weave evokes his sta-
tus as a prince of the Church. In the context of an encomiastic
print dedicated to Cardinal Francesco, Homer's language takes
on the character of a sibylline prophecy, which through its
arcane references to the bees and to the color purple seems to
predict the coming of a Barberini cardinal.
If Homer is at the heart of Lanfranco's print, he is not the
only 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 text
was itself subjected to learned interpretation by ancient com-
mentators, most notably by the third century A.D. neoplatonist
philosopher 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 also
calls it an allegory:
...the poet, under the veil of allegory, concealed some
mysterious signification. [...] this sacred cave is filled
with ancient wisdom. On which account it is highly
worthy our investigation, and necessary that its sym-
bolical consecration and obscure mysteries should be
rendered 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 is
joined to the material body at birth and where at death it is again
released. The naiads, as they weave their tapestry on stony looms,
are stitching together the elemental substance of the natural
world, giving physical form to the things around us. The olive
tree 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 devised
the program of Sauli's defense, seems to have relied more on
Porphyry's commentary than on the original lines by Homer.
Fig. 4. Andrea Lilio and Johann Friedrich Greuter, TheszsprzntofJohn Campian,who defendedphilosophicalthesesat the CollegzoInglesezn 1623/24.
APES PHILOSOPHICAE: BEESAND THE DIVINE DESIGN IN BARBERINI THESIS PRINTS 183

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Fig. 5. Luca Pe1111i
and Master L.D., Divine ]ustz·c·e
trii111zphing
over the Seven Deadly Sin.1,c. 1547.
Certain details of the iconography make this plain. For instance,
Homer describes the wetness of the cave in only the vaguest
terms: ''therein are also ever-flowing streams." Porphyry, on the
other hand, elaborates the image, quoting an otherwise
unknown Homeric hymn: ''The nymphs residing in caves shall
deduce fountains of intellectual waters to thee ... Hence waters,
bursting through every river, shall exhibit to mankind perpetual
effusions of sweet streams.'' It is this image of the cave as the
source of the world's rivers - found in Porphyry but not in
Homer - that informs Lanfranco's depiction of the grotto teem-
ing with river gods. Above all, by transforming Hon1er's verses
into a neoplatonic meditation on the nature of things, Porphyry
infuses the scene with philosophical meaning, and it is this, in
combination with the references to the bees and purple of the
dedicatee, that makes the subject so singularly appropriate in
the context of a philosophy defense.
In his portrayal of Porphyry's philosophical cave,
Lanfranco has very sensibly made one or two small changes for
the sake of visual clarity. He brings the naiads out into the day-
light and substitutes embroidery needles and thread for
184
Homer's stone looms. This allows him to reveal what it is the
nymphs are creating. If we look closely, we see that one of them
is stitching a mappamundi or map of the world, another a chart
of the oceans, and a third a plan of the constellations, together
signifying the generation of land, sea, and sky (jigs. 2-3). The
idea 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 mo1nents 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 the
center of the composition, is embroidering the cardinal's coat of
arms, the ''purple cloth'' of Homer's text, thus planting the
patron 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 is
described in an inventory of the cardinal's possessions dated
1631: ''A thesis broadsheet dedicated by Marcello Sauli, printed
LOUISERICE
•

5. 011 white satin, with a frieze all
around the edge embroidered with
flowers and gold thread, with bee
emblems, and with the coat of arms
of the cardinal in each of the four
corners, lined with red taffetta 9
."
Framing the scene of the naiads
embroidering with a border of real
embroidery would have had the
effect of making the broadsheet itself
seem like one of the nymphs' cosmic
samplers. The conceit is elegant. The
philosophical cave of Porphyry's
description becomes the backdrop to
a philosophical disputation. Just as
the naiads generate in their needle-
point the stuff and substance of
nature itself, so Sauli embroiders (i.e.
explicates) the world of their cre-
ation - the world, that is, of natural
and moral philosophy - in theses
printed on embroidered silk. The
bees nourish the nymphs with their
honey just as the dedicatee sustains
and supports the student with his
patronage; and the action at the cen-
•
ter of the print, where Melissea
stitches the cardinal's stemma on
Homer's purple cloth, magically
materializes in the embroidered coats
of arms at the corners of the broad-
sheet.
Attuned to a sensibility at once
learned and aristocratic, Sauli's the-
sis print perfectly reflects the intel-
lectual predilections of the papal
nephew to whom it is dedicated. Six
years after Sauli's defense, in 1630,
Lucas Holstenius, a member of
Cardinal Francesco's inner circle
who later became his librarian, pub-
lished an edition of Porphyry's ''On
the Cave of the Naiads'' with a Latin
translation, which he dedicated to
his Barberini patron 10
. Although the
gorgeous satin broadsheet he must
certainly have seen in •Cardinal
Francesco's collection may not have
been what inspired Holstenius to
undertake the project, the coinci-
dence beautifully illustrates the
shared philological and philosophi-
cal interests of those who moved in
Francesco's orbit.
John Campian, 1623/24
Sauli's print is based on ancient
sources, but the next example we
will consider is an invented allegory
(fig..4). It is shot through with classi-
cal allusions but there is no single
text on which it is based, and to
Fig. 6. Detail of fig. 4.
--
I
lJ I
Fig. 7. Detail of fig. 4.
APES PHILOSOPHICAE: BEESAND THE DIVINE DESIGN IN BARBERINI THESISPRINTS
•
interpret its meaning we must under-
take a close and careful reading of its
dense figurative language. The print
was commissioned by a student at the
English College in Rome. An aristo-
cratic boarding school for English
Catholics training for the priesthood,
the English College was run by the
Jesuits and closely affiliated with the
Collegio Romano. The student was a
certain John Poyntz from
Gloucestershire, but like most of the
students at the English College he
went by a pseudonym and was
known as John Campian 11
. This tak-
ing of pse_udonyms, by the way, is an
interesting phenomenon in itself.
Nominally, the students did it to pro-
tect their families back home from
,
the persecution that might follow if
their Catholic sympathies were
known, and perhaps at one point
there really was a need for such dis-
cretion. But by the seventeenth cen-
tury the practice was more for show
than anything else, a propagandistic
ploy designed to draw attention to
the plight of English Catholics. The
fact that Campian includes, promi-
nently displayed in the lower right
corner of his thesis print, his family
coat of arms - the arms of the Poyntz
family - proves the point. Had he
been seriously interested in hiding his
identity, he would not have included
such an obvious indicator of it 12
.
Campian defended philosophi-
cal theses in late 1623 or early 1624
and, like Sauli, he dedicated them to
Cardinal Francesco Barberini 13
. His
thesis print, designed by Andrea Lilio
and engraved by Johann Friedrich
Greuter, is particularly difficult to
read, crammed as it is with dozens of
figures engaged in all kinds of incon-
gruous activities 14
. But if we work our
way patiently through its various ele-
ments, we discover a political allego-
ry in which good government, repre-
sented by Rome, is modeled on the
society of the bees. In a palatial set-
ting, enthroned beneath a baldachin,
a queen holds court. She may be
Anglia (England), although more
likely she is a generic personification
of Catholic Monarchy. All around her
on the political stage are examples of
savage brutality and unjust rule. On
the left, a Brazilian chieftain dances
to the rhythm of a tambourine while
devouring the severed arm of a
defeated enemy who lies at his feet 15
.
On the right, a Turkish sultan exe-
cutes his brother, a reference to the
185

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steps beside the cannibal, she seems
at first glance to be another of his
victims, for like the fallen enemy on
whom he is feasting, she has no
hands, only severed stumps. But on
closer exa1nination, it is clear that
she belongs to the same dimension
of representational reality as the
other two personifications. She is,
in fact, Sloth. Her ragged garment
slipping off her shoulder and her
loosened hair suggest poverty and
slovenliness; her head lolls as she
sleeps; and underfoot she tramples
on a spur, the attribute of her oppo-
site, Diligence. Sloth has no hands
because she does no work. We can
compare the figure in Lilio's print
to the corresponding personifica-
tion in Luca Penni's Divine Justice
triumphing over the Seven Deadly
Sins from around 1547 (fig. 5) 19
. In
the earlier work, Sloth's amputation
is given meaning by the inclusion of
a distaff, which she cannot put to
good use. Lilio has omitted the
distaff, but in a clever twist has jux-
taposed the handlessness of the
cannibal'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 each
case but the meaning is different.
Fig. 8. Matthaeus Greuter, Title page to [Alessa11dro
Donati, S. ].], Francisco Card. Barberino Lyricu1n Car1nenin
Philosophicz·s
Di.,putatz·onz·bus
Ioannis CampzaniColl.Angl. Conv. e1nodi1lati1m
Latina Pallas·
D.D., Rome, n.d.
In the foreground are twin
embodiments of Rome, Ecclesia on
the left and Roma on the right.
Ecclesia is identified by the papal
tiara carried in front of her by a
putto. She is accompanied by two
royal handmaidens 20
, who present
her with the attributes of her rule:
the sword for law, the cornucopia
for abundance, the honeycomb for
the sweetness of her authority, the
book and la1np for learning and
enlightenment. Three suppliants
Ottomans' notorious state-sanctioned policy of royal fratricide
as a means of ensuring political stability 1
6
. Nearer the center of
the print, a third ruler, European to judge by the style of his
armor and therefore presumably a Protestant, does battle
against a personification of Rome 17
. These three men represent
Rome's religious enemies, or to be more precise, they represent
political 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 the
Protestant 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 his
resolve. Next to the Turk, Injustice shatters the scales and sword
that, when intact, are the attributes of her opposite, Justice. The
third vice is rather more difficult to recognize. Seated on the
186
kneel humbly in front of Ecclesra,
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 in
armor and carry spears. She holds her spear and shield in readi-
ness against the attacking Protestant, while at her feet are three
defeated enemies. Ecclesia and Roma between them suggest the
papacy's double dominion, spiritual and temporal; or one could
think of them in slightly different terms, as embodying the
notion of a church at once triumphant and militant, with
Ecclesia Triumphans on the left and Ecclesia Militans on the
right.
The actions of these two personifications are echoed and
explicated in the emblems that hang from the columns left and
right (figs. 6-7). Over Ecclesia, the emblem represents a swarm
of bees, their monarch at their center, flying heavenward in
orderly formation, with the motto PARCERE SVBIECTIS (''to
spare the hun1bled''); over Roma are two swarms of bees, each
LOUISE RICE
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•
•
Fig. 9. Antonio Tempesta a11dJohann Friedrich Greuter, Thesisprznt ofJohnSalisbury,iuhodefendedphzlosopl?ical
thesesat the CollegioInglesein 1627.
with their ruler, in headlong battle, with the motto ET DEBEL-
LARE SVPERBOS (''and to conquer the proud''). The mottoes
come from Book VI of Virgil's Aeneid. Having crossed into the
underworld Aeneas encounters his deceased father, who shows
him the future generations of Romans, and to one of these
Romans as yet unborn, the last in a long line, he addresses these
prophetic words: ''Remember thou, 0 Roman, to rule the
nations with thy sway - these ·shall be thine arts: to crown Peace
with Law, to spare the humbled and to conquer the proud 21
. '' In
Campian's pript, the emblems reiterate what we see in the fore-
ground, where on the left Ecclesia elevates the humble and on
the right Roma casts down the proud, thus transforming Virgil's
salute to the emperor Augustus into a paean to the Barberini
pope.
Meanwhile, Catholic Monarchy, sitting enthroned at the
top of the steps between two coats of arms of Cardinal
Barberini, looks for lessons to the swarms of bees who are mass-
ing overhead, as they reenact the actions depicted in the
emblems. In them she finds a model of good governance, for
bees are social creatures who when at peace live in harmony
with one another, obedient to their monarch, cooperative and
industrious, 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 the
subject:
'
[Bees] form themselves into political communities, hold
councils together in private, elect chiefs in common,
and, a thing that is most remarkable of all, have their
'
own code of morals. In addition to this, being as they
are, neither tame nor wild, so all-powerful is Nature,
that, from a creature so minute as to be nothing more
hardly than the shadow of an animal, she has created a
marvel beyond all comparison. What muscular power,
what exertion of strength are we to put in comparison
with such vast energy and such industry as theirs? What
display of human genius, in a word, shall we compare
with the reasoning powers manifested by them? In this
they have, at allevents, the advantage of us - they know
of nothing but what is for the common benefit of all22
.
Such ideas are commonplace in classical literature.
Moreover, because the hive has a single all-powerful ruler, it
offers a paradigm in nature for the concept of n1onarchy in
human society. Particularly relevant, given the English context
of the print, is a passage from an English treatise on bees first
published in 1609, Charles Butler's Feminine Monarchie: ''For
the Bees abhorre as well Polyarchie, as Anarchie, God having
shewed in them unto men, an expresse patterne of A PERFECT
MONARCHIE, THE MOST NATURAL AND ABSOLUTE
FORME OF GOVERNMENT." 23
The significance of the polit-
ical allegory would not have been lost on an audience of Romans
APES PHILOSOPHICAE: BEESAND THE DIVINE DESIGN IN BARBERINI THESISPRINTS 187

8. •
and English Catholics. It is spelled out in the preface to the vol-
ume of poems by Padre Alessandro Donati published on the
occasion 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 the
title page, would follow the model of the bees and
learn to be subject to the authority of Rome. Then truly
she would direct her people back to the true religion •
from which they were once led astray. And you indeed
would lovingly embrace them who have sought shelter
from such a shipwreck in the haven of Rome, and hold
and warm them within your broad protection, so that
the Catholic faith, irrigated and nourished by the hon-
eyed waters of your patronage, might once again take
root in Britain. 24
The volume's title page to which Donati makes reference is
designed and engraved by Johann Friedrich's father Matthaeus
Greuter (fig. 8). In it, England kneels at the feet of Rome, pre-
senting the royal arms of her nation. DISCE REGI (learn to be
ruled), reads the tablet at her side. Rome, holding a scepter and
a figure of Victory, points to a laurel tree above which a swarm
of bees have settled, warmed by the ''Urban sun." 25
Two addi-
•
tional figures, one crowned to symbolize monarchy, the other
armed, Minervalike, to represent military might, allude to the
pair of poems that follow, entitled respectively Apis Regnatrix
and Apis Bellatrix, as well as to the emblems and the actions of
the swarming bees in the accompanying thesis print. Like the
cells of a hive, the different embellishments of the defense - the
thesis print, the title page, the preface, the poetic text that was
set to music and sung - are like so many interlocl<:ingpieces, fit-
ting neatly into the overarching program, amplifying and enrich-
ing the political allegory.
It is perhaps worth a brief digression to consider the political
situation in England at the time of Campian's defense in late 1623
or 1624. King James I had for some time been trying to arrange a
marriage between his son Charles and the sister of King Philip IV
of Spain. The negotiations collapsed in December 1623 amid bit-
ter wrangling. But James was soon persuaded to consider another
Catholic bride for his son and throughout 1624 there was a flurry
of diplomatic activity culminating, a year later, in the marriage of
Charles to Henrietta Maria, the youngest sister of the king of
Franee. Both unions were sanctioned by the pope, who hoped that
the presence of a Catholic queen in England would improve the
situation of the faithful in that country and perhaps even lead to
the return of Charles to the Catholic fold. As it turned out his
hopes proved groundless. If anything, the vitriolic response of
Parliament to the imposition of a Catholic queen triggered for a
while even worse persecutions than before. But while negotiations
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thesesat t/JeCollegzo
Roinano in 1624.
188 LOUISE RICE
•

9. were still in progress and in the months lead-
ing up to the marriage, English Catholics
must have rejoiced at the prospect of a
Catholic queen and embraced it as a sign of
better times to come 26
•
It is tempting to see in the program of
Campian's defense an allusion to these
events, given the starring role assigned to the
bee we would call the queen, the alpha insect
who rules the hive. She is recognizable by
virtue of her larger size at the center or at the
vanguard of each of the swarms, her leader-
ship serving as a 1nodel to Catholic
Monarchy, who studies her actions intently.
Given the prominence of the queen bee,
does Campian's thesis print have a gendered
significance? Should we read in it a veiled
reference to the wish-for arrival of a Catholic
queen on the throne of England?
The difficulty with such an interpreta-
tion is that it depends on those who devised
the program being aware of the queen bee's
sex and this, as it turns out, is by no means
certain. In fact, throughout antiquity and
into the seventeenth century, the leader of
the hive was believed to be male and was
known as the ''king.'' 27
It does seem extraor-
dinary that such an error could have been
perpetuated century after century, but evi-
dently it was easier to suppose that a king
could procreate asexually than that the hive,
the model of good government, could be
ruled by a female 28
• It took a naturalist born
and raised under the greatest of all queens,
Elizabeth I, to think afresh on the subject.
Charles Butler seems to have been the first
to recognize and acknowledge the sex of the
queen bee. In The Feminine Monarchie,
published in 1609, he wrote ''I am enforced
... to straine the common signification of the
word Rex, and ... to translate it Queene, sith
the males heer beare no sway at al, this being
an Amazonian or feminine kingdome. '' 29
'
Significantly, Butler dedicated his treatise to
Anne of Denmark, wife of James I, thereby
drawing a rhetorical parallel between the
queen who rules the hive and the queen who
rules England. Butler's work was well
known in his native land, where it was
reprinted half a dozen times in the hundred
years following its initial publication, but in
Rome it seems to have had no immediate
impact. In 1625, a year after Campian's
defense, the Accaden1ia dei Lincei pub-
lished its Apiariu1n, which has been called
''the most thoroughgoing and imaginative
examination of the archaeology, history, lit-
erature, and science of bees ever.'' 30
This
monumental work, for all its scientific pre-
tensions, remains mired in ancient knowl-
edge. There is no indication that Federico
Cesi an·d the other Lincei who collaborated
with him on the project knew of or were
interested in Butler's conclusions and
-
I
Fig. 11. Walter de Milemete, A sz·ege
machine/or hurling beehives, 1326. Christ Cl1urch, Oxford (ms. 92, ff.
74-75).
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APES PHILOSOPHICAE: BEESAND THE DIVINE DESIGN IN BARBERINI THESIS PRINTS 189

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Fig. 13. Bernardino Capitelli, Thesis prznt dedicated to Taddeo Barberini, c. 1627-29. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
throughout they identify the ruler of the hive as male and its king.
Ironically, one of the main goals of the Apiarium was to publicize
and promote the new science of microscopy. Like the famous
engraving by Matthaeus Greuter illustrating the Barberini bees
as observed through the microscope (it, too, a Lincei product
and exactly contemporaneous), the Apiarium describes in loving
detail parts of the insect never before imagined. Yet it leaves the
all-important question of the king's sex unexamined and unchal-
lenged. The explanation may lie in the conflicted nature of the
Apiarium, which fuses science and panegyric in a manner not
always in the best interest of either. Dedicated to Urban VIII, it
•
is a treatise cast as a entomological allegory in which the hive is a
metaphor for the Church and its king for the pope. Throughout,
Cesi dwells on the points of similarity between them 31
. Like the
pope but unlike hereditary rulers, the king bee is elected to his
authority by his peers; he is chaste; he does not bear arms, that is
to 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 analogy
between the hive and that most insistently masculine of human
institutions, the Catholic Church. For the Lincei, as for other
intellectuals seeking patronage in Barberini Rome, the king bee
was an ideal rhetorical device for expressing praise of the pontiff
and they were unwilling to challenge his patriarchal supremacy
by inquiring too closely as to his sex. Scientific curiosity, in the
face of panegyric necessity, was put on hold 32
.
190
At the English College, where Campian's defense took
place, Butler's Fe1ninine Monarchie may have been more avail-
able and more attentively read than elsewhere in Rome. But, if
so, we find no echo of it in Campian's thesis print or in the
accompanying texts. On the contrary, in the verses he com-
posed for performance during the defense, Padre Donati
remains true to the poetic tradition and refers to the ruler of
the hive as the ''king.'' And since Donati presumably also pro-
vided the iconographic program of the thesis print, we must
infer that here, too, it is king bees and not queen bees who are
shown mustering their swarms. That Campian's print alludes to
contemporary diplomatic efforts to secure a Catholic bride for
the future king of England is therefore unlikely. The political
allegory is instead of a more generic and yearning kind, which
has as its theme the return of England, under the protection of
the cardinal nephew, to the Catholic fold and the submission of
her king to the magnanimous authority of the Barberini pope.
John Salisbury, 1627
Francesco Barberini became cardinal protector of the
English College in 1626. Among the students who dedicated
their theses to him following his appointment was John
Salisbury, who defended in philosophy in 1627. Although con-
siderably simpler than Campian's in its narrative structure,
LOUISE RICE
'

11. Salisbury's thesis print, designed by Antonio Tempesta and
engraved by Johann Friedrich Greuter, once again deals with
the theme of kingship (jig. 9) 33
• It represents the legendary
encounter between Diogenes and Alexander the Great, but
with a Barberini twist. Most depictions of this always popular
subject follow Plutarch's version of the story as recounted in
his Lzfe of Alexander. Seeing the philosopher utterly destitute
and living in a barrel, Alexander asks if there is anything he can
do for him, to which Diogenes replies that the one thing he
wants is the one thing not in a king's power to give, namely the
light of day: thus his request, ''stand a little out of my sun." 34
Salisbury's print is based instead on a rather less familiar
source, namely the fourth of the Discourses of the late 1st
cen-
tury/early 2nd
century A.D. rhetorician Dio Chrysostom. Dio
constructs his text in the form of an imaginary dialogue
between 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 them
as well. At one point, he has the cynic berate Alexander for his
reliance on the use of force, accusing him of lacl(ing ''the badge
of royalty:''
''And what badge is that?'' said Alexander. ''It is the
badge of the bees,'' Diogenes replied, ''that the king
wears. Have not you heard that there is a king among
the bees, made so by nature, who does not hold office
by virtue of what you people who trace your descent
from Heracles call inheritance?'' ''What is this
badge?'' inquired Alexander. ''Have you not heard
farmers say," asked the other, ''that this is the only bee
that has no sting, since he requires no weapon against
anyone? For no oth~r bee will challenge his right to be
king or fight him when he has this badge. I have an
idea, however, that you not only go about fully armed
but even sleep that way. Do you not know,'' he con-
tinued, ''that it is a' sign of fear in a man for him to
carry arms? And no man who is afraid would ever
have a chance to become king any more than would a
slave." At these words, Alexander came near to hurl-
ing his spear 35
.
Here, unmistakably, is the subject of Salisbury's thesis
print. Diogenes gestures towards a formation of bees flying in
a perfect circle around their king; Alexander is astonished by
what he sees and flings down his spear, while onlookers express
surprise and consternation. Scouring classical literature for a
story involving bees, the Jesuit professor who provided the
program for Salisbury's defense found in Dio's text an ideal
anecdote on which to build his allegorical conceit. Because it
involves a philosopher engaged in philosophical debate, it is in
every way appropriate in the context of a philosophy defense.
Because it touches on a category of kingship that derives from
nature rather than inheritance, it suggests an analogy to the one
form of human monarchy that is likewise non-hereditary,
namely the papacy. And because it describes a king who has no
sting, it seems implicitly to allude to the pope, who as a priest
bears no arms yet governs with absolute authority 36
. In Dio's
text, the bee is the mirror of the monarch, the king's equivalent
in the insect world whose royal self-confidence is held up as a
model to his human counterpart. Translated into the language
of Barberini panegyric, the story becon1es, instead, a commen-
tary on the superiority of spiritual over temporal authority and
a celebration of the pope's ascendancy over all other earthly
rulers 37
.
Antonio Deodatz~ 1624
If the stingless king bee who rules the hive is a metaphor for
the pope (and by extension for the cardinal nephew), the sting-
ing foot-soldier drone who makes war against the enemies of his
society is an equally appropriate figure for the professional sol-
dier in the family. Francesco's brother Taddeo Barberini was the
secular member of the family, destined to marry and continue
the dynasty. Like his father Carlo, Taddeo was expected to play
the role of soldier to the Barberini papacy and defender of the
territories under his uncle's temporal rule. Taddeo as far as we
know was not much of an intellectual, certainly not on a par
with 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 age
and they may have known each other at the College, where
Taddeo too had done his schooling. At any rate, Deodati, in
choosing to dedicate his theses to Taddeo, commissioned a the-
sis print that acknowledges and celebrates his patron's military
profession. Designed, again, by Antonio Tempesta and engraved
by Camillo Cungi, it represents a ferocious battle, in which a
besieged castle is assaulted from land and sea, while its defend-
ers attempt to repel their attackers by flinging hives full of
enraged bees into their ranks (jig. 10) 38
. The scene is probably
invented. It is close to several accounts of ancient battles but not
exactly like any of them. Bees were certainly used in ancient war-
fare. There are accounts of bees being released into tunnels dug
by sappers to undermine defensive walls 39
. Herodian tells us
that when Septimius Severus attacked the city of ·Batra in
Mesopotamia, the citizens threw earthen jars filled with stinging
insects, presumably bees and wasps, into their midst, causing
the Romans to flee 40
. From the Middle Ages come numerous
reports of bee warfare 41
. In 908 marauding Danes besieging the
city of Chester were driven away by beehives thrown from the
ramparts. 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 near
Antioch in 1098; and a century later, Richard the Lionheart is
said to have returned the favor, setting out on the Third Crusade
with some thirteen shipfuls of beehives. A fourteenth-century
English manual on siege warfare illustrates a contraption appar-
ently specifically designed for lobbing beehives into enemy for-
tifications (jig. 11) 42
. And the practice continued into the early
modern era, with several anedoctal accounts of beehives used as
venomous projectiles during the Peasants' War, the Thirty Years
War, and the ongoing war against the Turks 4
3
.
Deodati's thesis print is not as rigorously conceived· as the
others discussed above. It presents a degree of heraldic confu-
sion. Deodati's coat of arms is depicted on the shield held by
the mounted soldier in the lower right corner. It features a diag-
onal ladder among its several armorial elements and we may
therefore conclude that the ladders propped up against the city
walls are heraldic ladders in exactly the same way that the bees
are heraldic bees. The problem is that the bees are fighting on
behalf of the defenders of the city, whereas the ladders, and the
shield too, belong to the attackers. The student and his sponsor
are thus put on opposite sides in an heraldic battle. Additional
discrepancies make it difficult to locate the scene either geo-
graphically or temporally. Both armies appear to be generically
Greco-Roman and this makes one think of various ancient
sieges such as the Athenian siege of Syracuse or the Roman
siege of Carthage. Yet the arrival of St. Michael swooping down
from heaven with sword in hand would seem rather to point to
APES PHILOSOPHICAE: BEESAND THE DIVINE DESIGN IN BARBERINI THESISPRINTS 191

12. a Biblical battle or even a medieval one. Michael's presence
recalls several crucial battle scenes in Tasso's Gerusalemme
Liberata, in which the angel brings victory to the forces of
Christianity; and indeed Tempesta's composition is strikingly
similar to several plates he produced for an illustrated edition
of Tasso's epic 4
4
.
The accompanying poems that were set to music and sung
during the defense do little to clarify the situation. Published in
a libretto entitled MELISSONIKION, or The Victory of the Bees,
they tell generically of the ferocity of bees and their courage and
nobility in battle 45
. But the libretto's title page, which like th~
thesis 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 referred
to by the title ARCIS AELIANAE PRAEFECTVS, i.e. prefect
(or castellano) of Castel S. Angelo, the papal fortress at the
Vatican. This was the first title assigned to Taddeo after the elec-
tion of his uncle and, until his accession to the prefecture of
Rome in 1631, the one by which he was best known 47
• We find
it referred to in at least one other thesis print dedicated to him
in these years. Etched by the Sienese printmaker Bernardino
Capitelli around 1627-29, the print represents Castel S. Angelo
artfully framed within a triumphal arch decorated with statues
of Justice and her companions Force and Grace (fig. 13)48
. The
tablet directly over the arch is inscribed with a passage from
Book VII of Virgil's Aeneid: ''I see a stranger draw near; from
the selfsame quarter a troop seeks the same quarter, and reigns
in the topmost citadel!'' 49
We are meant not only to recognize
the passage but to realize that it follows immediately on Virgil's
description 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, the
text is made to take on a double sig11ificance,alluding both to
•
Taddeo's coat of arms and to his position as castellano of Castel
S. Angelo. Thus it is placed directly beneath the Barberini bees
(here cast as an illustration of Virgil's omen, converging on a
princely crown at the apex of a laurel tree ) and directly above
the view of Castel S. Angelo, to which it refers through the cul-
minating and bolded word ARCE, meaning citadel or fortress 5°.
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, whether
based on an actual historical event or, as I suspect, purely
invented, Michael's defense of the besieged fortress has the
effect of transforming that fortress into a second ''Castel
S. Angelo." The underlying encomiastic conceit of both thesis
•
1
On the Barberi11i bees, see, for example, John Beldon Scott, I1nages of
Nepotis1n. The Pai11tedCeilings of PalazzoBarberini, Princeton, 1991, chpt. 11
and passi1n; Irving Lavin, ''Bernini's Bumbling Barberini Bees,'' and Tristan
Weddigen, ''Tapisserie und Poesie: Gianfrancesco Ron1anellis Giochi di Putti
fiir Urban VIII.," in Barocke Inszenierung, ed. Josepl1 I111ordeet al., Zurich,
1999, pp. 50-71, 72-103; David Freedberg, ''Iconography between the History
of Art and tl1eHistory of Scie11ce: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, a11d
the Beginnings of Natural History, Chicago, 2002, pp. 154-92.
2
On thesis prints and the spectacle of the academic defense in seventeenth-cen-
tury Ron1e, see Louise Rice, ''Pietro da Cortona and the Ron1an Baroque Thesis
Print," in Pietro da Cortona 1597-1669.Atti del convegno internazionale (Roma
e Firenze, 12-15 novembre 1997), Ron1e and Milan: Electa, 1998, pp. 189-200;
iden1, ''Jesuit Thesis Prints and the Festive Acaden1ic Defe11ceat the Collegio
Romano," in The Jesuits: Ci,ltures, Sciences, a11dthe Arts, 1540-1773, ed.
J. O'Malley et al., Toro11to:University of Toronto Press, 1999, pp. 148-69.
3
Cardinal Sauli was eighty-six years old and the senior participa11t at the con-
192
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 of
the literally hundreds of thesis prints dedicated to the members
of the Barberini family during the pontificate of Urban VIII and
in the years that followed. Cardinal Francesco, who was more
closely connected to the colleges than a11yof his relatives and
more directly involved in their supervision and patronage,
received more dedications than anyone else in the family. But all
of the Barberini - the pope, his brothers, his three nephews, and
in due course his grandnephews too - at one time or another
sponsored student defenses and were honored in encomiastic
thesis prints like those commissioned by Sauli, Campian,
Salisbury, and Deodati. Bees are the common denominator in
most of these prints, but the professors who supplied the
iconography were tirelessly inventive in their use of the insect,
taking advantage of its multivalency as a symbol of good and
devising around it a seemingly infinite variety of encomiastic
themes. The resulting corpus of images is a goldmine of
Barberini iconography, preserving, in the figured and figurative
language of allegory, a remarkable record of the intellectual pas-
sions, political goals, and dynastic an1bitions 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 years
of the pontificate document a farflung network of clientele, origi-
nating in the city's colleges and university and radiating out from
there to the far corners of the world. Of the students mentioned in
this paper, one came from Genoa, another from Sicily,and two
from England; but others who dedicated their theses to members
of the papal family included every conceivable breed of Italian -
Romans, Venetians, Milanese, Neapolitans, etc. - as well as
Germans, Bohemians, Hungarians, Poles, Frenchmen, Spaniards,
Greeks, Lebanese, even East Indians. The client relationships they
established with the Barberini while studying in Rome remained in
effect, in some cases, long after they left school and returned to
their 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 of
accruing intellectual capital in Rome while expanding the sphere of
their influence throughout Italy, Europe, and beyond .
clave that elected Pope Urban VIII; he died on 23 August 1623, seventeen days
after 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 preso
per suoi Depositarij li Signori Tomasso et Vincenzo Sauli banchieri genovesi in
. ,,
questa piazza.
4
BAV, Urb. Lat. 1094, f. 311: [1 Jun 1624] ''In detto giorno di giovedl dopo
pranzo dal Signor Marcello Sauli nella sala del Collegio Ro1nano nobil1nente
apparata, et co11inter1nedij di suavissi1ne tnl1siche, furono sostenute con molta
franchezza, e sua co1nn1endatione publiche conclusioni di filosofia dedicate al
Signor Cardinal Barberino, che v'intervenne con altri 16 cardinali, oltre gli
Eccellentissin1i Signori D. Taddeo et D. Antonio Barberini, molti prelati, et
altra 11obilta.''
5
Hollstein, German Engravings, Etc!Jings, and Woodcuts, XII, Atnsterdam,
1983, p. 65, no. 55; David Woodward, Maps asPrints i11-the
Italian Re11aissance.
Makers, Distributors, & Consumers [The Fanizzi Lectures, 1995],London, 1996,
pp. 85-87.
6
Ho1ne1·,Odyssey, XIII.102-12 (Loeb ·Classical Libra1·y, Cambridge MA and
London, 1980, II, pp. 8-11).
LOUISE RICE

13. 7 Select Works of Porphyry, trans. Thomas Taylor, London, (1'' ed. 1823) 1994,
pp. 146-47.
8 [Vincenzo Guiniggi, S. J.], Naiadum cantus ad Cytharam e1nodulatus cum
Marcellus Saulius Ianuensis de Philosophia Universa publice disputaret in aula
Collegij Romani Societatis Iesu sub auspiciis Illustrissimi Principis Francisci·
Cardinalis Barberini, Rome: Alessandro Zannetti, 1624. The n1usical setting
does 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 i11
Domenico Allegri. Music Jar an Acade1nic Defense (Rome, 1617), ed. Anto11y
Jol1n, Middleton WI, 2004, pp. VII-XVII, XX-XXII.
9
BAV,Barb. Lat. 5635 (cited inJ. A. F. Orbaan, Docu1nenti sul barocco in Roma,
Rome, 1920, p. 495): [4 Dec 1631] ''U11altra conclusione, stampata in raso
bianco, dedicata dal Signor Marcello Sauli, con fregio a torno, tutto recamato
di oro et fiori, con imprese con api, con quatro armi di Sua Emine11zaalle can-
tonate, foderata di taffettano rosso. ''
10 Porphyrii Philosophi ...De antro nympharu1n quad in Odyssea describuititr...
Lucas Holstenius Hamburgensis Latine vertit, Ro111e,
1630. Holstenius's edition
is based on the Latin translation by Konrad Gesner, first published i11Zurich in
1542.
11
John Poyntz alias Campian (c. 1602-1671) entered the Society soon after his
defense and "vent on to have a distinguished career as a professor and head-
master, assumi11gthe rectorship of the Jesuit college in Ghent i111655, of the
English College in Rome in 1659, and of the Jesuit college in Liege in 1663. See
Liber Ruber Venerabilis Collegii Angloritm de Urbe, ed. Wilfrid Kelly, 2 vols.,
London, 1940-43, I, p. 198; Henry Foley, Records of the English province of the
Society of Jesus, 1875-1883, VI, p. 298.
12
For the Poyntz coat of ar111s,
see Burke's Genealogical and Heraldic History of
the Landed Gentry1,17'h
ed., London, 1952, p. 2066. The crest in the form of a
clenched fist is a punning play on the derivation of Poyntz fron1the French poing.
13
Since Urban was elected in August of 1623, the dedication must have been
arranged at very short notice. Tl1is means that all of the festive trappings for
Ca1npian's defense - the thesis pri11t,tl1e poems, the libretto with its engraved
frontispiece, the musical settings, etc. - were conceived and executed in just a
few months, an in1pressive feat when one considers the p.u1nber of people and
the extensive preparations involved.
14
Hollstein, German Engravings, Etchings, a11dWoodcuts, XII, Amsterdam,
1983, p. 64, no. 52; Massi1no Pulini, Andrea Lilia, Milan, 2003, p. 226.
15
Europeans were fascinated by the instances of ca11nibalismthey encountered
in the new world and in their imagination associated all of its peoples with the
practice (see Astrid Wendt, Kannibalismus i11Brasilien: eine Anal)ise europa·i-
scher Reiseberichte und Amerika-Da1'stellungen fur di·e Zeit zwischen 1500 und
1654, New York and Frankfurt, 1989; Annerose Me11ninger, Die Macht der
Augenzeugen: neue Welt itnd Kannibalen-Mythos, 1492-1600, Stuttgart, 1995;
Cannibalism and the Colonial World, ed. Francis Barker et al., Ca1nbridge and
New York, 1998). Although Lilia could have relied on a variety of visual
sources, his depictio11 is particularly close to tl1e B1·azilian1nan-eater featured
on the title page to the third volume of Theodor de Bry's America, Frankfurt,
1593 (illustrated in Anthony Grafton et al., New Worlds, Anci·ent Texts : the
Power 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. Since
the fourteenth century, tl1e Ottoma11 dynasty adopted fratricide as a preferable
alternative to the violent struggles for succession that typically broke out a1nong
a sultan's heirs. In the later fifteenth century, Sultan Mehmed II codified the
practice into law: ''For welfare of the state, the one of 111y
sons to who111God
grants the sultanate may lawfully put his brothers to death.'' The custo1n con-
tinued until well into the seventeenth century. Upon succeeding to tl1e thro11e
in 1595, Mehmed III ordered the executio11by strangulation of all nineteen of
his brothers. The sultan at the time of Campian's defense was Murad IV. In
1624 he was only thirteen years old and had not yet engaged in fratricide, but
he was by no means opposed to the strategy and in the 1630s he put it to use,
killing two of his brothers. Tl1ereafter royal fratricide gradually fell into disuse,
and instead of facing execution the sultan's brotl1ers were confined to the noto-
rious ''Cage," a priso11within the walls of the Topkapi palace where tl1eylived
out their lives in al111ost
complete social isolation. See Anthony Alderson, The
Structure of the Ottoman Dynasty, Oxford, 1956, pp. 4-12; Halil Inalcik, The
Ottoman E1npire: The Classical Age, 1300-1600, London, 1973, p. 59-61.
17
Although he portrays no specific individual, this soldier-king in contemporary
armor is perl1aps meant to recall Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden, who
already by 1623 had emerged as a leading figt1re i11the Protestant alliance and
one of Rome's fiercest a11dmost con1mitted enemies.
18
Notably absent from this gathering of enemies of the faith are the Jews. They
are omitted because, at the time, there was no nation under Jewish rule. Since
the diaspora, Jews lived in non-Jewish societies, subject to laws i1nposed by
non-Jewish rulers, and they therefore play no part in the political theater 1·ep-
resented here.
19
Henri Zerner, Ecole de Fontainebleau. Gravitres, Paris, 1969, unpagit1ated,
l1aster L.D., 85 bis. Penni's composition was copied in an anony1nous Jesuit
thesis print made in or before 1621. The print exists in at least three different
finished states, one dedicated to Paul V, a11other to Cardi11al Ludovisi, and
another to a secula1· member of the Cesarini family. It 1nust therefore have
enjoyed wide circulation in Rome and would certainly have bee11 known to
Lilia and his Jesuit advisor.
20
The royalty of Ecclesia's handmaidens, indicated by their crowns, brings to
mind the passage in Psal1ns45:9: ''Kings' daughters were among thy honorable
women.'' Here, the ha11dmaidens presun1ably represent Catholic kingdoms
loyal to the pope.
21
Virgil, Aeneid, VI.851-53 (Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge MA and
London, 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, T!JeFeminine Monarchie, or A Treatise concerning Bees and the
Due Ordering of them, Oxford, 1609, unpaginated (chpt. 1, part 8). For other
examples of sin1ilar rhetoric, see Jeffrey Merrick, ''Royal Bees: the Gender
Politics of the Beehive in Early Mode1·11
Eu1·ope'', Studies in Eig!Jteent!J-Century
Culture, XVIII, 1988, pp. 15-16.
24
[Alessandro Donati, S. J.J, Francisco Card. Barberino Lyricu1n Carmen in
Philosophicis Disptttationibus Ioannis Campiani Coll. Ang!. Conv. emodulatum
Latina Pallas D.D , Ron1e, n.d., pp. 3-4: ''Quam politicae administrationis for-
n1an1a natura insitam APIBVS, atque i11ae1·eexpressam tibi obtuli, eamdem
Lyrico brevique carmine adumbratam offero, CARD. AMPLISS. [...] Vtinan1
Anglia nostra, qua1n ego in fronte praeposui, APIVM exen1plo a tua Raina dis-
ceret regi. Rectius profecto populos & ipsa regeret suos ad solida111
Religionem
aliquando traductos. Tu quidem eos, qui ex tanto naufragio Ro1nanos ad por-
tus enavigarunt, perhun1aniter co111plecteris,amplissimoque praesidio defendis
ac foves; ut Catholica Fides nunc den1um in Britannia altissimas radices fixura
sit, cun1 beneficiorum tuoru1n melleis liquoribus irrigatur, & alitur. ''
25
For the motif, Virgilian in origin, of bees swarming above a laurel tree, see
below at note 49.
26
Ludwig vo11Pastor, The Hi.story of the Popes, trans. E. Graf, vol. XXIX,
London, 1938, pp. 276-303.
27
Merrick, op. ci·t. 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 la"vs. [...] He granted that kings resembled
'mothers' by virtue of their generative powers but referred to them nonetheless
as the 'fathers' of their hives.'' It must be admitted, in defense of Aristotle and
other pre-n1odern apiologists, that bee reproduction is an exceedingly co111pli-
cated subject, not easily u11derstood eve11afte1·the advent of the microscope.
29
Butler, op. cit. at note 23, unpaginated (Preface).
3
°Freedberg, 2002, op. cit. at note 1, p. 166. See also Enrica Schetti11iPiazza,
''Teoria e speri1ne11tazionenell'Apiario di Federico Cesi'', in Convegno celebra-
tivo del IV ce11tenariodella 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 not
become widespread until the middle of the century, and even then see111s
not to
have bee11universally accepted. See Me1·rick, op. cit. at note 23, pp. 16-19.
33
Hollstei11, German Engravings, Etchi11gs, a11dWoodcuts, XII, An1sterdam,
1983, p. 64, no. 54; Eckhard Leuschner, Antonio Tempesta. Ein Ba!Jnbrecher des
ro1nisc!Je11
Barack und seine europiiische Wirkung, Petersberg, 2005, pp. 500-
501, 517 n. 134.
34
Plutarch, Life of Alexander, XIV3-5 (Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge MA
a11dLondon, 1971, VII, pp. 258-59).
35
Dia Chrysosto1n, Discourses, IV61-64 (Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge
MA and London, 1961, I, pp. 196-97).
36
Ancient authority is divided as to whetl1er the king has no sting or merely
refrai11sfrom using it. See Merrick, op. cit. at note 23, p. 11; Freedberg, 2002,
op. cit. at 11ote1, pp. 173-74, 440 11n.42-43.
37
The poe1ns that were set to n1usic and sung during Salisbury's defense were
published at the same time as the thesis pri11t,under the title Panacrides apes
musicis co11centibusadvocandae ad philosophicas t!Jeses Ioannis Salisburii Coll.
Ang!. Convict. Illi,striss. Principi Francesco. Card. Barberino venerabu11dae se
deditnt, Rome, 1627. In the engraved title page, the renunciation of the spear -
the human equivant of a bee's stinger - en1erges as the principal theme. Mars,
holding a broken lance and seated in front of a heap of shattered spears, points
to the sti11glessking bee at the center of his swar1n. The title, Panacrides apes,
refers to the bees of Mou11t Panacres on Crete, who according to the Greek
lyric poet Callimachus nourished the infant Jupiter with their honey.
Callimachus and another poet who wrote of Jupiter's infa11cy,Virgil, are seated
to the left and right of the title, each l1olding a snapped weapon.
38
Leuscl1ner, op. cit. at note 33, p. 501.
39
Ai11eiastl1eTactician, On the Defence of Fortified Positions, XXXVII.4 (Loeb
Classical Library, Cambridge MA and Lo11don, 1928, pp. 186-87); Adrienne
Mayor, Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs: Biological a11dChemical
Warfare in the A11cient World, Ne,VYork, 2003, p. 181.
40
Herodia11, History of the Empire, III.ix.4-6 (Loeb Classical Library,
Ca1nbridge MA a11dLondon, 1969, I, pp. 317-19): ''...the people of Batra vig-
orously defended the1nselves by firing down 1nissiles and sto11eon the arn1y of
Severus below a11dcausi11gthe1n a good deal of damage. They made clay con-
tainers filled with little flying insects tl1athad poisonous stings, which were then
fired off. When these missiles fell on Severus's ar111y,
the insects crawled into the
eyes and exposed parts of the skin of the soldiers without being 11oticed and
stung the111,causing severe injuries.''
41
For the following and nun1erous additional examples, see Eva Crane, The
World History of Beekeeping and Ho11eyHitnting, New York, 1999, pp. 540-41.
42
Walter de Milemete, ins. 92, ff. 74-75, Christ Church, Oxford (illustrated in
Crane, op. cit. at 11ote41, p. 541, fig. 50.3a).
43
Crane, op. cit. at note 41, pp. 542-43.
44
See, in pa1·ticular, T!JeIllustrated Bartsch, II, ed. Sebastian Buffa, New
APES PHILOSOPHICAE: BEESAND THE DIVINE DESIGN IN BARBERINI THESISPRINTS 193
'

14. York, 1984, p. 100, no. 1216; p. 102, no. 1218. Ten1pesta produced three differ-
ent sets of Tasso illustrations; but significa11tlythe 011escited here are from an
edition dedicated to Taddeo Barberini. Te1npesta, in fact, had close ties with the
Barberini and appears on their payroll in 1625 as drawit1gn1aster to Antonio, the
youngest of the papal nephews. See Karin Wolfe, Cardinal Antonio Barberini the
Younger (1608-1671). Aspects of his Art Patronage, PhD diss., Courtauld
Institute of Art, 1998, p. 5; Leuschner, op. cit. at note 33, pp. 500-08.
45
Thadaeo Barberino Urba11iVIII Pont. Max. Fratris Filia Arcis Aelianae prae-
fecto etc. MEJ.f};J;ONJJ{JONinter Philosophicas Antonii Deodati Ragusini
Disputationes e1nodulatu1n 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. llv;
Emmanuel Rodocanachi, Le Chdteau Saint-A11ge,Paris, 1909, pp. 198, 203-204.
The post of castellano of Castel S. Angelo, which the pope typically assigned to
a nephew or brother, was largely honorary; the actual running of the fortress
was in the hands of a vice-castellano. For more on the position, see Gaetano
Moroni, Dizionario di erudizione storico-ecclesiastica da San Pietro sino ai nostri
giorni, Venice, 1840-79, X, pp. 201-209.
48
Sue Welsh Reed and Richard Wallace, Italian Etchers of the Renaissance &
Baroqite, ex. cat., Boston, 1989, pp. 163-65. The arms carried by an eagle at the
foot of the arch are those of the Guidi di Bagno fan1ily;it is likely that the stu-
' '
194
dent was a younger relative of Giovanni Francesco Guidi di Bagno, who was
made a cardinal by Urban VIIIin pectore in 1627 and openly in 1629, precise-
ly the years when Capitelli was active in Rome. The identification of the central
personification as Justice stems from her attribute, an ostrich, which Ripa con-
nects with Justice because ''le cose, che vengono in giuditio, per intricate che
siano, non si deve mancare di strigarle, & isnodarle, con animo patiente, come
lo struzzo digerisce il ferro, ancorche sia durissima materia'' (Cesare Ripa,
Iconologia, Padua, 1618 [facs. ed., Turin, 1988], p. 188). The presence of
Justice and the fact that the artist includes, on the near side of the Tiber, a view
of the precinct where executions took place in Rome suggests that the print was
made 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] ''exter11umcernin1us," [inquit]/ ''adventare virum et
partis petere ag111en
easdem/ partibus ex isde1net summa don1inarier arce.''
50
The word arx to refer to Castel S. Angelo appears also in the title page to
Deodati's libretto; arx Aeliana, or the Aelian fortress, is the fortress of the
emperor Hadrian (Publius Aelius Hadrianus).
51
Although dedicated to Taddeo, the print was evidently enjoyed by other
members of the family as well. A copy printed on turquoise satin and displayed
in a gilded fra111ewent with Cardinal Francesco when he moved to the
Cancelleria in 1633. See Marily11 Lavin, Seventeenth-Century Barberini
Documents and Inventories of Art, New York, 1975, pp. 34, 83, 105.
•
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•
LOUISE RICE