Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini (February 11, 1380 - October 30, 1459), was one of the most important Italian Renaissance humanists. He was born at Terranuova, a village in the territory of Florence. February 11 is the 42nd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... Events September 8 - Battle of Kulikovo - Russian forces under Grand Prince Dmitrii Ivanovich defeat a mixed army of Tatars and Mongols (the Golden Horde), stopping their advance at Kulikovo. ... October 30 is the 303rd day of the year (304th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 62 days remaining. ... Events September 23 - Battle of Blore Heath. ... By Region: Italian Renaissance Northern Renaissance -French Renaissance -German Renaissance -English Renaissance The Renaissance was an influential cultural movement which brought about a period of scientific revolution and artistic transformation, at the dawn of modern European history. ... Humanism is a general term for many different lines of thought which focus on common solutions to common human issues. ... Location within Italy Giglio di Firenze - symbol of the city Florence (Italian, Firenze) is a city in the center of Tuscany, in central Italy at 43°46′ N 11°15′ E. The city on the Arno River has a population of around 400,000, plus a suburban population in excess...

Biography

Poggio Bracciolini studied Latin under John of Ravenna, and Greek under Manuel Chrysoloras. His distinguished abilities and his dexterity as a copyist of manuscripts brought him into early notice with the chief scholars of Florence. Coluccio Salutati and Niccolò de' Niccoli befriended him, and in the year 1402 or 1403 he was received into the service of the Roman curia. His functions were those of a secretary; and, though he profited by benefices conferred on him in lieu of salary, he remained a layman to the end of his life. It is noticeable that, while he held his office in the curia through that momentous period of fifty years which witnessed the Councils of Constance and of Basel, and the final restoration of the papacy under Nicholas V, his sympathies were never attracted to ecclesiastical affairs. Latin is the language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ... John of Ravenna. ... Manuel (or Emmanuel) Chrysoloras (c. ... Coluccio Salutati (1331-1406) was one of the most important political and cultural leaders of Renaissance Florence. ... Niccolò de Niccoli (1364 - 1437) was an Italian Renaissance humanist. ... In religious organizations , the laity comprises all lay persons, i. ... Nicholas V, né Tomaso Parentucelli (November 15, 1397–March 24, 1455) was pope from March 6, 1447, to March 24, 1455. ...

The greater part of Poggio's long life was spent in attendance to his duties in the papal curia at Rome and elsewhere. But about the year 1452 be finally retired to Florence, where he was admitted to the burghership, and on the death of Carlo Aretino in 1453 was appointed chancellor and historiographer to the republic. He had already built himself a villa in Valdarno, which he adorned with a collection of antique sculpture, coins and inscriptions. In 1435 he had married a girl of eighteen named Vaggia, of the famous Buondelmonte blood. His declining days were spent in the discharge of his honorable Florentine office and in the composition of his history. He died in 1459, and was buried in the church of Santa Croce. A statue by Donatello and a picture by Antonio del Pollajuolo remained to commemorate a citizen who chiefly for his services to humanistic literature deserved the notice of posterity. For other uses, see number 1435. ... For the basilica in Florence, see Basilica di Santa Croce di Firenze Santa Croce is one of the six sestieri of Venice. ... Statue of Donatello at the Uffizi Donatello (Donato de Betto di Bardi) (1386 - December 13, 1466) was a famous Florentine artist and sculptor of the Early Renaissance. ...

Methods

Nothing marks the secular attitude of the Italians at an epoch which decided the future course of both Renaissance and Reformation more strongly than the mundane proclivities of, this apostolic secretary, heart and soul devoted to the resuscitation of classical studies amid conflicts of popes and antipopes, cardinals and councils, in all of which he bore an official part. Thus, when his duties called him to Constance in 1414, he employed his leisure in exploring the libraries of Swiss and Swabian convents. The treasures he brought to light at Reichenau, Weingarten, and above all St Gall, restored many lost masterpieces of Latin literature, and supplied students with the texts of authors whose works had hitherto been accessible only in mutilated copies. This article needs cleanup. ... Events Council of Constance begins. ... Swabia (German Schwabenland) is a historic region in Germany and a language area. ... Alternate uses: Reichenau island Reichenau is a village in the municipality of Tamins in the canton of Graubünden, Switzerland, where the two Rhine tributaries Vorderrhein and Hinterrhein meet. ... Weingarten (German for vine garden) is the name of several places Weingarten (Württemberg) Weingarten (Baden) This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... St. ...

In one of his epistles be describes how he recovered Quintilian, part of Valerius Flaccus, and the commentaries of Asconius Pedanius at St Gall. Manuscripts of Lucretius, Columella, Silius Italicus, Manilius and Vitruvius were unearthed, copied by his hand, and communicated to the learned. Wherever Poggio went he carried on the same industry of research. At Langres he discovered Cicero's Oration for Caecina, at Monte Cassino a manuscript of Frontinus. He also could boast of having recovered Ammianus Marcellinus, Nonius Marcellus, Probus, Flavius Caper and Eutyches. Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (c. ... Gaius Valerius Flaccus (late 1st century AD) was a Roman poet, who flourished under the emperors Vespasian and Titus. ... Titus Lucretius Carus (c. ... Lucius Iunius Moderatus Columella was a Roman author of the first century AD. He was born in 4 AD in Gades in Hispania Baetica. ... Silius Italicus, in full Titus Catius Silius Italicus (AD 25 or 26 - 101), was a Latin epic poet. ... Marcus Manilius (fl. ... Marcus Vitruvius Pollio was a Roman writer, architect and engineer, active in the 1st century BC. He was the author of De Architectura, known today as The Ten Books of Architecture, a treatise in Latin on architecture, and perhaps the first work about this discipline. ... Categories: France geography stubs | Communes of Haute-Marne ... Marcus Tullius Cicero (January 3, 106 BC – December 7, 43 BC) was an orator and statesman of Ancient Rome, and is generally considered the greatest Latin prose stylist. ... The restored Abbey Monte Cassino is a rocky hill about eighty miles (130 km) south of Rome, Italy, a mile to the west of the town of Cassino (the Roman Cassinum having been on the hill) and about 1700 ft (520 m) altitude. ... Sextus Julius Frontinus (c. ... Ammianus Marcellinus, thought by some to be the last Roman historian of worth, was born about A.D. 325‑330 likely at Antioch (the likelihood hingeing on whether he was the recipient of a surviving letter to a Marcellinus from a fellow citizen of Antioch). ... Nonius Marcellus, Latin grammarian and lexicographer, flourished at the end of the 3rd or the beginning of the 4th century AD. He is often called the Peripatetic of Thubursicum (in Numidia, probably his birth-place). ... For the village in Cornwall see Probus, Cornwall. ... Flavius Caper, Latin grammarian, flourished during the 2nd century. ... Eutyches (c. ...

If a codex could not be obtained by fair means, he was ready to use fraud, as when he bribed a monk to abstract a Livy and an Ammianus from the convent library of Bad Hersfeld. Resolute in recognizing erudition as the chief concern of man, he sighed over the folly of popes and princes, who spent their time in wars and ecclesiastical disputes when they might have been more profitably employed in reviving the lost learning of antiquity. This point of view is eminently characteristic of the earlier Italian Renaissance. The men of that nation and of that epoch were bent on creating a new intellectual atmosphere for Europe by means of vital contact with antiquity. Titus Livius (around 59 BC - 17 AD), known as Livy in English, wrote a monumental history of Rome, Ab Urbe Condita, from its founding (traditionally dated to 753 BC). ... Ammianus Marcellinus, thought by some to be the last Roman historian of worth, was born about A.D. 325‑330 likely at Antioch (the likelihood hingeing on whether he was the recipient of a surviving letter to a Marcellinus from a fellow citizen of Antioch). ... Bad Hersfeld is a town in the north-eastern region of Hessen in Germany. ...

Works

Poggio, like Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (Pius II), was a great traveller, and wherever he went he brought enlightened powers of observation trained in liberal studies to bear upon the manners of the countries he visited. We owe to his pen curious remarks on English and Swiss customs, valuable notes on the remains of antique art in Rome, and a singularly striking portrait of Jerome of Prague as he appeared before the judges who condemned him to the stake. It is necessary to dwell at length upon Poggio's devotion to the task of recovering the classics, and upon his disengagement from all but humanistic interests, because these were the most marked feature of his character and career. Pope Pius II. Pius II, né Enea Silvio Piccolomini, in Latin Aeneas Sylvius (October 18, 1405 - August 14, 1464) was pope from 1458 to 1464. ... Jerome of Prague (1379-May 30, 1416) was one of the chief followers and most devoted friends of John Huss; He was born at Prague of a wealthy family; after taking his bachelors degree at the University of Prague in 1398, he secured in 1399 permission to travel. ...

In literature he embraced the whole sphere of contemporary studies, and distinguished himself as an orator, a writer of rhetorical treatises, a panegyrist of the dead, a violent impugner of the living, a translator from the Greek, an epistolographer and grave historian and a facetious compiler of fabliaux in Latin. On his moral essays it may suffice to notice the dissertations On Nobility, On Vicissitudes of Fortune, On the Misery of Human Life, On the Infelicity of Princes and On Marriage in Old Age. These compositions belonged to a species which, since Petrarch set the fashion, were very popular among Italian scholars. They have lost their value, except for the few matters of fact embedded in a mass of commonplace meditation, and for some occasionally brilliant illustrations. From the c. ...

Poggio's History of Florence, written in avowed imitation of Livy's manner, requires separate mention, since it exemplifies by its defects the weakness of that merely stylistic treatment which deprived so much of Bruni's, Carlo Aretino's and Bembo's work of historical weight. A somewhat different criticism must be passed on the Facetiae, a collection of humorous and indecent tales expressed in such Latinity as Poggio could command. This book is chiefly remarkable for its unsparing satires on the monastic orders and the secular clergy. Leonardo Bruni (1374 - 1444) was a leading humanist, historian and a chancellor of Florence. ... Pietro Bembo (May 20, 1470 - 18 January 1547), Italian cardinal and scholar. ...

In the way of many humanists of his time, Poggio himself wrote only in Latin, and translated works from Greek into that language. His letters are full of learning, charm, detail, and amusing personal attack on his enemies and colleagues. It is also noticeable as illustrating the latinizing tendency of an age which gave classic form to the lightest essays of the fancy. Poggio, it may be observed, was a fluent and copious writer in the Latin tongue, but not an elegant scholar. His knowledge of the ancient authors was wide, but his taste was not select, and his erudition was superficial. His translation of Xenophon's Cyropaedia into Latin cannot be praised for accuracy. Latin is the language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ... Xenophon (circa 427-355 B.C.) was an Athenian citizen, an associate of Socrates, a Philodorian and is known for his writings on Hellenic history and culture. ...

Among contemporaries he passed for one of the most formidable polemical or gladiatorial rhetoricians; and a considerable section of his extant works are invectives, One of these, the Dialogue against Hypocrites, was aimed in a spirit of vindictive hatred at the vices of ecclesiastics; another, written at the request of Nicholas V, covered the anti-pope Felix with scurrilous abuse. But his most famous compositions in this kind are the personal invectives which he discharged against Filelfo and Valla. All the resources of a copious and unclean Latin vocabulary were employed to degrade the objects of his satire; and every crime of which humanity is capable was ascribed to them without discrimination. Nicholas V, né Tomaso Parentucelli (November 15, 1397–March 24, 1455) was pope from March 6, 1447, to March 24, 1455. ... Francesco Filelfo (July 25, 1398 - July 31, 1481), was an Italian Renaissance humanist. ... Lorenzo (or Laurentius) Valla (c. ... Satire is a literary technique of writing or art which principally ridicules its subject (for example, individuals, organizations, or states) often as an intended means of provoking or preventing change. ...

In Filelfo and Valla Poggio found his match; and Italy was amused for years with the spectacle of their indecent combats. To dwell upon such literary infamies would be below the dignity of the historian, were it not that these habits of the early Italian humanists imposed a fashion upon Europe which extended to the later age of Scaliger's contentions with Scioppius and Milton's with Salmasius. Joseph Justus Scaliger (1540-1609) was the tenth child and third son of Julius Caesar Scaliger and Andiette de Roques Lobejac. ... John Milton John Milton (December 9, 1608 – November 8, 1674) was an English poet, most famous for his blank verse epic Paradise Lost. ... Claudius Salmasius is the Latin name of Claude Saumaise (April 15, 1588 - September 3, 1653), a French classical scholar. ...

Bibliography

Poggio's works were printed at Basel in 1538, ex aedibus Henrici Petri. Dr Shepherd's Life of Poggio Bracciolini (1802) is a good authority on his biography. For his position in the history of the revival, see Voigt's Wiederbelebung des classischen Alterthums, and Symonds's Renaissance in Italy. John Addington Symonds was the name of a father and son, both English writers. ...

External links

Works by Poggio Bracciolini

• Facetiae (http://www.elfinspell.com/PoggioTitle.html) (English translation)
• P. W. G. GORDAN, Two Renaissance Book Hunters: The letters of Poggius Bracciolini to Nicolaus de Niccolis, New York (1974). (English translation of his letters to Niccolo Niccoli).

Works on Poggio Bracciolini

• Tacitus and Bracciolini, The Annals Forged in the XVth Century (http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/9098), by John Wilson Ross (19th century attempt to defamate Tacitus, by way of picturing Bracciolini as a forger)

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ... The Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1911) in many ways represents the sum of knowledge at the beginning of the 20th century. ...