Publio Fausto Andrelini

[Publio] Fausto Andrelini (Forlì, ca 1462 — 25 February 1518 [Mazzuchelli, "Gli scrittori d'Italia" (Brescia, 1753); Mazzuchelli's ambitious biographical dictionary got no farther than the letter B; Godelieve Tournoy-Thoen, in Thomas Brian Deutscher, ed. "Contemporaries of Erasmus: A Biographical Register of the Renaissance and Reformation," "s.v." Fausto Andrelini".] ) was an Italian humanist poet, an intimate friend of Erasmus in the 1490s, who spread the New Learning in France, teaching at the University of Paris as "professor of humanity" from 1489 [Arthur Augustus Tilley, "The Literature of the French Renaissance. An Introductory Essay" 143.] and becoming a court poet in the circle around Anne of Brittany, the queen to two kings.

Life and work

Andrelini studied law at the University of Bologna and received humanistic polish in the Roman academy of Pomponius Leto. When Leto received from Frederick III a dispensation to grant the laurel wreath, Andrelini was the first to receive it. He left the household of Ludovico Gonzaga, bishop of Mantua in 1488, for France, where he gained a position of the University of Paris teaching poetry, and gained the notice of Charles VII by a reading from his "De Neapolitana Fornoveiensique victoria", and received an annuity.

Publications

He published editions of the Latin poets. His pastoral "Eclogues", full of proverbial expressions, were printed at Paris, 1506; they reflect his readings in Latin poets of the Silver Age, the eclogues of Titus Calpurnius Siculus and Nemesianus.

Criticism

Erasmus, his close friend until 1511, was under no illusions about Andrelini's undeserved reputation as a scholar. [Erasmus, "Dia regnavit Lutetia" 1519, following Andrelini's death.] Of his poems, Erasmus observed, "They want one thing, that which is called νους in Greek, "mens" in Latin". Nous (νους) meaning mind in Greek.

Notes