Poliziano

Angelo Ambrogini Poliziano (July 14, 1454 – September 24, 1494) was a Florentine classical scholar and poet, one of the revivers of Humanist Latin. He used his didactic poem Manto, written in the 1480s as an introduction to his lectures on Virgil.

Adulthood and Teaching

Before he reached the age of thirty, Poliziano expounded the humanities with almost unexampled lustre even for that epoch of brilliant professors. Among his pupils could be numbered the chief students of Europe, the men who were destined to carry to their homes the spolia opima of Italian culture. Not to mention Italians, he educated students from Germany, England, and Portugal.

Related Topics:
Europe - Spolia opima - Italian culture - Germany - England - Portugal

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Poliziano did not have the good looks that could survive him in Italy, yet his voice was rich and capable of fine modulation; his eloquence, ease of utterance and copious stream of erudition were incomparable. It was the method of professors at that period to read the Greek and Latin authors with their class, dictating philological and critical notes, emending corrupt passages in the received texts, offering elucidations of the matter, and pouring forth stores of acquired knowledge regarding the laws, manners, religious and philosophical opinions of the ancients. Poliziano covered nearly the whole ground of classical literature during the years of his professorship, and published the notes of his courses upon Ovid, Suetonius, Statius, Pliny the Younger, and Quintilian. He also undertook a recension of the text of the Pandects of Justinian I, which formed the subject of one of his courses. However, this recension, though it does not rank high in the scale of juristic erudition, gave an impulse to the scholarly criticism of the Roman code.

Related Topics:
Modulation - Erudition - Laws - Manners - Opinions - Ovid - Suetonius - Statius - Pliny the Younger - Quintilian - Pandects - Justinian I - Roman

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