Poliziano

Angelo Ambrogini, best known as 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.

Early life

Known in literary annals as Angelo Poliziano or Politianus from his birthplace, he was born at Montepulciano, in central Tuscany. His father, Benedetto, a jurist of good family and distinguished ability, was murdered by political antagonists for adopting the cause of Piero de Medici in Montepulciano; this circumstance gave his eldest son, Angelo, a claim on the House of Medici.

At the age of 10, after the premature death of his father, Poliziano began his studies at Florence, as the guest of a cousin. Here he learned Latin and Greek. From Marsilio Ficino he learned the rudiments of philosophy. At 13 he began to circulate Latin letters; at 17 he wrote essays in Greek versification; and at 18 he published an edition of Catullus. In 1470 he won the title of "homericus adulescens" by translating books II-V of the Iliad into Latin hexameters. Lorenzo de Medici, who was then the autocrat of Florence and the chief patron of learning in Italy, took Poliziano into his household, made him the tutor of his children, [CathEncy|wstitle=Politian] and secured him a distinguished post in the University of Florence.

Adulthood and teaching

Among Poliziano's 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. He also educated students from Germany, England, and Portugal.

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 teaching laws, manners, religious and philosophical opinions of the ancients. Poliziano covered nearly the whole ground of classical literature during his tenure, 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. This recension influenced the Roman code.

Poliziano's life and work subtly suggests he was homosexual. A scurrilous story about his death described how he was put to bed with a 'frenzied fever' requiring his friends to watch over him. He managed to elude these friends and was found in the street playing the lute beneath the window of a young Greek boy with whom he had fallen in love (the cause of the fever). He returned to bed where he expired in a 'delirium of love' [Paul Strathern, The Medivi: Godfathers of the Renissance, London, 1993]

Works and influence

At the same time he was busy as a translator from the Greek. His versions of Epictetus, Hippocrates, Galen, Plutarch's "Eroticus" and Plato's "Charmides" distinguished him as a writer. Of these learned labors, the most universally acceptable to the public of that time were a series of discursive essays on philology and criticism, first published in 1489 under the title of "Miscellanea". They had an immediate and lasting effect, influencing the scholars of the next century. Poliziano then devoted himself to the composition of Latin and Greek verses.

His Latin and Greek works include:
*The "Manto", in which he pronounced a panegyric of Virgil;
*The "Ambra", which contains an idyllic sketch of Tuscan landscape and a eulogy of Homer;
*The "Rusticus", which celebrated country life;
*The "Nutricia", which was intended to serve as a general introduction to the study of ancient and modern poetry.

His principal Italian works are:
*The stanzas " [http://natey.com/poliziano La Giostra] ", written upon Giuliano de Medici victory in a tournament. This work was left unfinished following the 1478 Pazzi conspiracy, which resulted in the assassination of its protagonist.
*The "Orfeo", a lyrical drama performed at Mantua with musical accompaniment;
*A collection of Tuscan songs, reproducing various forms of popular poetry distinguished by a roseate fluency.

Final years

In 2007, the bodies of Poliziano and Pico della Mirandola were exhumed from St. Mark's Basilica in Florence. Scientists under the supervision of Giorgio Gruppioni, a professor of anthropology from Bologna, used current testing techniques to study the men's lives and establish the causes of their deaths. A TV documentary is being made of this research, [Citation
title = Medici writers exhumed in Italy
url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6920443.stm
accessdate = 2007-07-28] and it was recently announced that these forensic tests showed that both Poliziano and Pico della Mirandola likely died of arsenic poisoning. The chief suspect is Piero de' Medici, the successor of Lorenzo de' Medici and docent of Florence, but there are others. [Citation
title = Medici philospher's mysterious death is solved, "The Daily Telegraph" (London), 7 Feb 2008
url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/07/wmedici107.xml
accessdate = 2008-02-07]

Lasting effect

Poliziano was well-known as a scholar, a professor, a critic, and a Latin poet at an age when the classics were still studied with assimilative curiosity, and not with the scientific industry of a later period. He was the representative of that age of scholarship in which students drew their ideal of life from antiquity. He was also known as an Italian poet, a contemporary of Giovanni Boccaccio and Ariosto.

ources

References

Further reading

There is no biography of Poliziano in English currently in print, but Stanley Meltzoff, "Botticelli, Signorelli and Savonarola, Theologia Poetica and Painting from Boccaccio to Poliziano" (Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1987) gives an excellent portrait of Poliziano the scholar and his opposition to Savonarola.
* Linda Proud, "A Tabernacle for the Sun" (Godstow Press, 2005), a literary novel set in Florence during the Pazzi Conspiracy features Poliziano as a major character and adheres closely to known facts.
* Linda Proud, "Pallas and the Centaur" (Godstow Press, 2004), deals with the aftermath of the Pazzi Conspiracy and Lorenzo de Medici's strained relations with his wife and with Poliziano. It is partly narrated by Poliziano's sister, Maria.
* Linda Proud, "The Rebirth of Venus" (Godstow Press, 2008), the final volume of "The Botticelli Trilogy", covers the 1490s and the deaths of Poliziano and Pico della Mirandola, a work of fiction corroborated by the latest exhumation.