Giovanni Aurispa: Biography Of This Renaissance Humanist

He traveled throughout Europe and visited Constantinople itself on several occasions, one of the most populous and important cities of the time. His objective: to collect as many texts as possible from classical authors and assemble a large library that summarized all the knowledge of Antiquity.

During his 83 years of life, Giovanni Aurispa dedicated himself to practically nothing else. Thanks to his efforts, today we know the work of many Latin and Greek authors. In this biography of Giovanni Aurispa we invite you to take a short journey through the life of this great humanist of the 15th century.

Biography of Giovanni Aurispa, a Renaissance thinker

Our character He was born in Noto, a small Sicilian town, around the year 1376 In those years, the island was under the control of a secondary branch of the Aragonese royal family, and was one of the most important ports in the Mediterranean. In fact, a few years before Aurispa’s birth, the fearsome Black Death had arrived in the Sicilian port of Messina, coming from the East, and from there it spread across the continent.

Thus, Giovanni Aurispa had, from an early age, continuous contact with people who traded with the Byzantine Empire. We can believe that from here came his interest in everything Greek, that he would not abandon it throughout his life.

Giovanni Aurispa He has gone down in history as one of the most important humanists of that period we call the Renaissance Although, unlike other Renaissance authors, his personal work is neither extensive nor of great interest, his feverish activity “collecting” classical texts, especially Greek authors, is. In fact, many of the classic works that were known in the Renaissance era came to Europe thanks to their intense collecting work, which, on the other hand, was not unusual at that time. We will see it below.

Heir to a long tradition of collectors

Giovanni Aurispa has sometimes been treated as a kind of innovator, or as an exceptional figure for his exhaustive compilation of Greek and Latin texts. And, while it is true that this character carried out intense activity in this sense, it is no less true that there were several characters before him who also dedicated themselves to it.

The insistent cliché that during the Middle Ages the classics were forgotten can no longer be sustained anywhere, in light of the studies that experts have been carrying out for decades. It is a fact accepted by the community of historians that, although the humanism of the 15th century was a very specific phenomenon, limited to Quattrocento Italy, the humanist current can be traced back to the central centuries of what we call the Middle Ages, with Neoplatonic schools. like that of Chartres. Even more; We find clear precedents in Charlemagne’s Europe, no less than in the 8th-9th centuries, with figures as important as Heiric of Auxerre (841-876). Heiric is a clear precedent for Giovanni Aurispa, since He acquired a considerable amount of classic works and managed to compile a very important library

However, the exhaustive and, we might call, somewhat obsessive collecting of the Renaissance (whether of works of art or manuscripts) is a special characteristic of Italian humanism. Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374) is not only famous for his Cancionero (dedicated to the “angelicata” lady par excellence, Laura), but he was also a very active figure when it came to collecting works of classical literature. In fact, at the poet’s death, his collection of Latin classics was the largest of the time in the possession of an individual.

A true love for Greek antiquity

Giovanni Aurispa, however, focused his interest on the Greek classics. This is the fact that represents his true innovation. Because Although during the Middle Ages ancient texts were not forgotten, it is true that scholars always expressed greater interest in the Latin classics

This was not only a question of language (no one in Europe at the time spoke Greek), but because, for the most part, Greek texts were introduced through the Muslims of the Iberian Peninsula, who had dedicated themselves to translating them into Arab. Therefore, with the exception of Plato and other authors who had managed to reach Christian Europe through Latin copies, we can say that Greek was practically forgotten in Western Europe.

That’s when Giovanni Aurispa enters the story. After studying at the University of Bologna thanks to a scholarship awarded by the King of Sicily, Martin the young man, Aurispa moved to the island of Chios, very close to the current Turkish coast, which at that time was under the power of the Republic of Genoa. Over there, The young student becomes a tutor for the children of a rich Genoese merchant and, in his free time, learns Greek and is dedicated to the buying and selling of ancient manuscripts. It is then that the feverish collecting activity begins that would never abandon him again.

In 1418 we find Aurispa in Constantinople, the heart of the Byzantine Empire. There he continues his passionate search for Greek manuscripts, and his collection is so intense that he is accused before Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos of “looting” the city’s treasures. Fortunately, Manuel II is a humanist man who sympathizes with Giovanni, so he is authorized to leave Constantinople with his precious cargo.

A loan of 50 gold florins

During his second trip to the East, from which he returned in 1423 (the year he settled in Venice), Giovanni Aurispa managed to collect no less than 238 manuscripts. At least, this is what he claims in a letter to Ambrosius Traversarius, one of his humanist colleagues. Among the authors that he has managed to bring to Europe we find Plato, Plotinus and Proclus

We do not know how much Aurispa paid for such a number of manuscripts or if he was ruined by it, but the truth is that it is known, through Traversarius, that the collector contacted Lorenzo de Medici the old (1395-1440) to lend him 50 gold florins. Some sources claim that the loan was used to rescue his enormous collection, which Aurispa had had to pawn to pay for her return ticket to Europe. Be that as it may, in 1425 we find the humanist settled in Florence, where he arrived with his collection of classical treasures in tow.

It is very likely that the real reason that drove Lorenzo the old The only way to provide Aurispa with florins was to attract him to her Florentine court (him and his splendid collection, of course). The Tuscan city was emerging as the head of nascent humanism, and a library as splendid as the one compiled by Aurispa deserved to be located in the city. Giovanni thus obtains a chair of Greek studies. But two years later, In 1427, he was forced to flee the city, frightened by the conflicts between the Medici family and the Albizzi who were in the midst of a struggle for power in Florence.

Aurispa’s great discovery

After leaving the Florentine city, Aurispa guides her steps towards Ferrara, the court of the Estes. There, Duke Nicholas of Este hires the humanist as tutor to his natural son, the young Meliaduse. In this city, where he certainly takes his priestly vows, Aurispa finally feels at home. In fact, it is documented that he rejected the offer to move to Naples that Alfonso V the Magnanimous, attracted by his knowledge, made to him through Antonio Beccadelli Il Panormita, another of the great humanists of the time.

Giovanni Aurispa therefore spends several years at Meliaduse’s side. When the Council of Basel is proclaimed (1431), with the aim of negotiating a possible union with the Eastern Orthodox Church, the preceptor accompanies his former student, then converted into abbot, to Mainz. The Council was enormously prolonged and changed its headquarters several times (Ferrara in 1438, Florence in 1439 and, finally, Rome in 1445), but the stay in Mainz was fruitful for Aurispa, since In a local monastery he came across nothing less than the last remaining copy of the Latin Panegyrics These texts were a compilation of writings by various Latin authors addressed to some Roman emperors. Very excited with such a discovery, Aurispa declared in a letter that the speech that Pliny the young man had dedicated to the Emperor Trajan was the best thing he had had the good fortune to read. Without a doubt, the discovery of this lost copy of the Panegyrics It was the greatest achievement of Giovanni Aurispa’s humanistic career.

Last years and death

Pope Eugene IV, attending the Council, noticed Aurispa and invited him to Rome to serve as apostolic secretary His successor, Tommaso Parentucelli (who wore the papal miter with the name Nicholas V) kept him in office, admiring, like his predecessor, Aurispa’s humanistic culture. We must not forget that Nicholas V himself had planned an enormous library in Rome, which would emulate, or even surpass, the legendary library of Alexandria. The distinguished collection of manuscripts and the profound knowledge of Greek that Aurispa possessed had to amaze him.

The proof that Ferrara had become the dream home of the restless Aurispa is that, In 1450, as an old man, he retired definitively to the city of the Dukes of Este There, in 1459, at the not inconsiderable age of 83, Giovanni Aurispa died, the humanist who compiled one of the largest collections of classics and who served as an inspiration to the humanists of the Quattrocento.