Piccolomini, Alessandro
Piccolomini, Alessandro
Littérateur, philosopher, astronomer, b. 13 June, 1508; d. 12 March, 1578. He passed his youth in the study of literature and wrote several comedies (“Amor costante”, “Alessandro”, “Ortensio”), translated into Italian verse Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”, part of the “Æneid”, Aristotle’s “Poetics” and “Rhetoric”, composed a hundred sonnets (Rome, 1549), and other rhyme. He repudiated in later years “Raffaello” or “Dialogo della creanza donne” as too licentious. In 1540 he became professor of philosophy at Padua, where he wrote “Istituzione di tutta la vita dell’ uomo nato nobile e in città libera”, “Filosofia naturale” in which he followed the theories of ancient and medieval philosophers, while in his “Trattato della grandezza della terra e dell’ acqua” (Venice, 1558), he combatted the Aristotelean and Ptolemaic opinion that water was more extensive than land, thereby provoking, with Antonio Berga, professor at Mondovi, a controversy, in which he was assisted by Giambattista Bennedetti. In astronomy (“Sfera del mondo”, “Delle stelle fisse”, “Speculazioni de’ pianeti”) he adhered to the Ptolemaic theory. He also wrote on the reform of the calendar (1578), and a commentary on the mechanics of Aristotle. To counteract “Raffaella” he wrote his “Orazione in lode delle donne” (Rome, 1549). His fame extended beyond Italy. Gregory XIII, in 1574, appointed him titular Bishop of Patræ and coadjutor to Francesco Bandini, Archbishop of Siena, who survived him.
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FABIANI, Vita di Alessandro Piccolomini (Siena, 1749 and 1759); TIRABOSCHI, Storia della letteratura italiana, VII, pt. i.
U. BENIGNI Transcribed by Thomas J. Bress
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XIICopyright © 1911 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, June 1, 1911. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Piccolomini, Alessandro
one of the most distinguished of Italian prelates of the 16th century, was born at Siena in 1508. He sprang from the same family as pope Pius II (q.v.). and by his piety, modesty, and scholarship gained great renown; but no events of his life are particularly worth recording. He deserves to be remembered for the wide extent of his writings, and the esteem in which they were held by his contemporaries and immediate followers. He died in 1578. He was of an original turn of mind, and his writings are almost all in Italian, so that he is among the earliest of those who endeavored to raise the character of vernacular literature by treating all branches of knowledge in modern tongues. His commentaries on Aristotle were prized for their good sense, and for their abandonment of most of the scholasticisms by which that philosophy was disfigured by commentators. He advocated in 1578 the reformation of the calendar, which was afterwards adopted. In his book on the fixed stars and the sphere he adopts the mode of designating the stars by letters a small matter, but one which makes the greater part of the immortality of Bayer, and to which the diagrams of Piccolomini establish his prior claim. His works are of a most miscellaneous character astronomy, physics, comedies, sonnets, morals, divinity, and commentaries on Aristotle. De Thou speaks in strong terms of the rare union of diversity and depth which his acquirements presented. For a list of his most important works, and an estimate of them, see Fabiani, Vita d’ Aless. Piccolomini (Vienna, 1749, 1759, 8vo); Ughelli, Italia Sacra, s.v.; Tiraboschi, Storia della letter. ital. volume 7, part 1, page 506; Niceron, Memoires, volume 23, s.v. Hoefer, Nouv. Biog. Gen. s.v.