Everything about Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini totally explained
(Gian Francesco) Poggio Bracciolini (
February 11,
1380 –
October 30,
1459) was one of the most important Italian
humanists. He recovered a great number of classical texts, mostly lying forgotten in German and French monastic libraries, and disseminated copies among the educated world.
Biography
Poggio Bracciolini was born at the village of Terranuova, since 1862 renamed in his honour
Terranuova Bracciolini, near
Arezzo in
Tuscany.
He 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; at the age of twenty-one he was received into the Florentine
guild of the
Arte dei giudici e notai 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
Konstanz and of
Basel, and the final restoration of the papacy under
Nicholas V, his sympathies were never attracted to
ecclesiastical affairs.
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 he finally retired to Florence, and on the death of
Carlo Aretino (Marsuppini) in 1453 was appointed chancellor and historiographer to the Republic. On the proceeds of a sale of a manuscript of Livy in 1434, he'd already built himself a villa in the
Valdarno, which he adorned with a collection of antique sculpture (notably a series of busts meant to represent thinkers and writers of Antiquity), coins and inscriptions, works that were familiar to his friend
Donatello. In 1435-36 he'd married a girl of eighteen, Selvaggia dei
Buondelmonti, of the noble Florentine family. His declining days were spent in the discharge of his honorable Florentine office, editing his correspondence for publication and in the composition of his history of Florence. He died in 1459, and was buried in the church of
Santa Croce. A statue by Donatello and a portrait by
Antonio del Pollaiuolo remain to commemorate a citizen who chiefly for his services to
humanistic literature deserved the notice of posterity.
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
Konstanz in 1414, he employed his leisure in exploring the libraries of
Swiss and
Swabian
abbeys. 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.
In his epistles he describes how he recovered
Quintilian,
Statius'
Silvae, part of
Valerius Flaccus, and the commentaries of
Asconius Pedanius at
St. Gallen. 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 in the summer of 1417 he discovered
Cicero's
Oration for Caecina and nine other hitherto unknown orations of Cicero's, at
Monte Cassino a manuscript of
Frontinus. In 1415 at
Cluny he found Cicero's complete great forensic orations, previously only partially available. He also could boast of having recovered
Ammianus Marcellinus,
Nonius Marcellus,
Probus,
Flavius Caper and
Eutyches.
If a codex couldn't 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 library of
Hersfeld Abbey. 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 new contact with the texts of antiquity.
Works
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. 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.
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.
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. Bracciolini's
Facetiae, a collection of humorous and indecent tales expressed in the purest Latin Poggio could command are the works most enjoyed today: they're available in several English translations. This book is chiefly remarkable for its unsparing
satires on the monastic orders and the secular clergy.
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 wasn't select, and his erudition was superficial. His translation of
Xenophon's
Cyropaedia into Latin can't be praised for accuracy.
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
Amadeus VIII, Duke of Savoy, the Antipope Felix V with inventive scurrilous abuse. But his most famous compositions in this kind are the personal invectives which he discharged against
Francesco Filelfo and
Lorenzo 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.
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.
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