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. His history of Florence from 1350 to 1455 is much less interesting.
PoggioBracciolini was born at the village of Terranuova, since 1862 renamed in his honour Terranuova Bracciolini, near Arezzo in Tuscany.
Poggio, like Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (who became 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.
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.
The De Varietate Fortunae of around 1430 by the leading Renaissance humanist, researcher of ancient texts and Apostolic secretary Gianfrancesco (or Giovanni Francesco) PoggioBracciolini (1380-1459), better known as Poggius, starkly contrasting the fates of two prominent warring rulers.
In Poggio’s words, Tamerlane ‘took the ruler alive and lugged him all over Asia Minor enclosed in a cage like a wild beast as a public spectacle and to show what Fortune can do.’ He died shortly afterwards.
Feeds |
Contact