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 the largest possible number of texts by classical authors and gather a large library that summarized all the knowledge of Antiquity.

During the 83 years of his life, Giovanni Aurispa practically did not dedicate himself to anything else. Thanks to his efforts, today we know the work of a large part of the 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 fifteenth century.

• Related article: "The 8 branches of the Humanities (and what each of them studies)"

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 the birth of Aurispa, the fearsome Black Death had arrived in the Sicilian port of Messina from the East and from there 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 this is where his interest in everything Greek came from, that he would never abandon him in his entire 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, yes it is his feverish activity "collecting" classic texts, especially authors greeks. In fact, many of the classic works that were known at the time of the Renaissance reached Europe thanks to his intense collecting work, which, on the other hand, was not unusual then. We will see it below.

• You may be interested in: "The 5 ages of History (and their characteristics)"

Heir to a long tradition of collectors

Giovanni Aurispa has sometimes been treated as a kind of innovator, or as exceptional for his exhaustive collection of Greek and Latin texts. And, while it is true that this character carried out an 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 cannot be sustained anywhere, in light of the studies that, for decades, have been carried out by the experts. It is a fact accepted by the community of historians that, although XV humanism was a very specific phenomenon, confined to Italy of the Quattrocento, the humanist current can be traced back to the central centuries of what we call the Middle Ages, with Neoplatonic schools such as that of Chartres. Even more; We find clear precedents in the Europe of Charlemagne, no less than in the VIII-IX centuries, with such important figures as Heiric de Auxerre (841-876). Heiric is a clear precedent for Giovanni Aurispa, since he acquired a considerable amount of classic works and managed to put together a very important library.

However, the exhaustive and, we could call, somewhat obsessive collecting of the Renaissance (already outside works of art and manuscripts) yes, it is a special characteristic of humanism Italian. Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374) is not only famous for his Songbook (dedicated to the “angelicata” lady by your Excellency, Laura), but he was also a very active character when it came to collecting works of literature classical. In fact, at the death of the poet, his collection of Latin classics was the largest of the time in the possession of a private individual.

• Related article: "The Renaissance: what it is and what are its characteristics"

A true love of Greek antiquity

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

This was not only a matter of language (no one in Europe at the time spoke Greek), but also because, for the most part, the 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 at Through the copies in Latin, we can say that the Greek was practically forgotten in Europe. Western.

It is then that Giovanni Aurispa enters the story. After studying at the University of Bologna thanks to a scholarship granted 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 the tutor of the sons of a wealthy Genoese merchant and, in his spare time, learns Greek and he is dedicated to the sale of ancient manuscripts. It is then that the feverish collecting activity that would never leave him again began.

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 being "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 assures 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 What is certain 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 served 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 installed in Florence, where he arrives with his collection of classical treasures on his back.

It is very probable that the real motive that prompted Lorenzo the old to provide Aurispa with florins was to attract him to his Florentine court (him and his splendid collection, of course). The Tuscan city was establishing itself as the head of the 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 is forced to flee the city, frightened by the fights between the Medici family and the Albizzi, who were in the midst of a power struggle in Florence.

Aurispa's great discovery

After leaving the Florentine city, Aurispa guides his steps towards Ferrara, the court of the Este. There, Duke Nicholas d'Este hires the humanist as tutor of his natural son, the young Meliaduse. In this city, where he, by the way, takes 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 Knowing about him, he made Il Panormita through Antonio Beccadelli, another of the great humanists of the time.

Giovanni Aurispa spends several years, then, next to Meliaduse. When the Council of Basel (1431) was proclaimed, with the aim of negotiating a possible union with the Eastern Orthodox Church, the preceptor accompanies his former student, who then became abbot, until Mainz. The Council lasted enormously and changed venues 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. Extremely excited with such a discovery, Aurispa declared in a letter that the speech that Pliny the young man had dedicated to Emperor Trajan was the best he had been lucky enough to read. Undoubtedly, 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, who attended the Council, took notice of Aurispa and invited him to Rome to act as apostolic secretary.. His successor, Tommaso Parentucelli (who donned the papal miter with the name of Nicholas V) kept him in office, admiring, like his predecessor, Aurispa's humanistic culture. It should not be forgotten 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 deep 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, already an old man, he definitively retired to the city of the Dukes of Este. There, in 1459, at the not inconsiderable age of 83, Giovanni Aurispa, the humanist who compiled one of the largest collections of classics and which served as an inspiration to the humanists of the Quattrocento.