Bernardo Davanzati

Bernardo Bostichi Davanzati (born the August 30th 1529 with Florence - died the March 29th 1606) was a Italian writer of the Renaissance.

Biography

Born from a noble and old family, he announced early a great quickness of mind, and made very good studies, not in the intention delivering itself entirely to the humanities but to go more prpche of any civil profession which he wanted to embrace. He chooses that of the trade, which he exerted with Lyon during the first years of his youth, and of which he continued to make his state after his return in his fatherland. It did not cease for that cultivating the letters; after having read all the authors whom an educated man must know, it chooses of it very a small number which it read again unceasingly; it was especially in Latin Horace and Tacite, and Dante in Italian. The fruit of these assiduous readings was not only felt in its writings; covered several magistratures, of which it filled the duties carefully, it was pointed out there by the straightness of its ideas and the property and the brevity of its expressions.

In the Académie of Alterati, of which he was member, he had been made name he Silente (the silencer), like saying that, not very satisfied still with the laconism of his speeches, he had wanted to be made hear without speech. He had taken for currency a circle of barrel with these two words: Strictius, Arctius . Though it was not Académie of Crusca, it often witnessed its work for the drafting of the vocabulary, and the academicians, who were almost all of his/her friends, consulted it on the difficulties of the Tuscan language and benefitted from its councils. It had for the perfection of this language a passion which did not die out with the age, and it professed until the end a species of worship for the first authors who had purely written it.

It had a very old manuscript of the history of Jean Villani, copied from the original by Mathieu Villani, brother of the author, and it put at it if Grand Prix, that by leaving it by his will with his heirs, it required them imperatively that they would never demolish this treasure. It had, by dictating this will, bequeathed sums of money to all its servants. After one moment of reflection, he tells the notary to erase these legacies; he was made bring the money, to at once count with each one the sum that he had bequeathed to them, wanting to enjoy the pleasure of giving itself when he still could it, and of adding to the value of the gift by his celerity. He died in 77 years, the March 29th 1606.

Publications

Most famous of its works is its Traduction of Tacite. Another French translation, published with Paris in 1584, was the cause of his. This first translator, in his foreword, praised much our language, preferred it with all the others, and especially with Italian, that he showed to be verbeuse and languid. Davanzati undertook to prove that it could be more concise, not only that French, but that Latin even. He to this end translated the 1st book of Tacit, and the success of this test then urged it to translate the remainder. Having had itself patience to count the lines and in the lines the letters of the Latin text and the French translation, it found, him which was very good calculator, that Italian was in the ratio from nine to ten with Latin, and from nine to fifteen with French. The question was to know if Italian is always clear and if it does not omit any the ideas which are in the Latin text. The author appears to have had often recourse to this last means, which explains its extreme brevity, but the merit decreases by it. Any comparison with share, this translation is a masterpiece of purity of style, force, precision and elegance.

One reproached, not without some reason, in Davanzati, to have employed there a great number of popular expressions and proverbs florentins; but it did it intentionally, to fix in the language these original and fugitive phrases, and it succeeded there. The 1 edition of the complete translation is that of Venice, in-4°. Comino gave some more beautiful to Padoue, 1755, 2 vol. in-4°, according to which was done that of Bassano, 1790, 3 vol. in-4°. In this one, the editor put at their place the Latin supplements of Brotier, with an Italian translation by the abbot Raphaël Pastore, who tried to imitate, as much as it was possible for him, the style of Davanzati, as Brotier had endeavoured to imitate that of Tacit. He appeared in 1804, in Paris, very good and very pretty edition of the translation alone of Davanzati, given by Mr. Biagioli, at Fayolle, 3 vol. in-12.

The other works of this writer are:

a History of the schism of England : Storia dello Scismo d' Inghiltera , written of this concise and nervous style of which it had taken the practice in its trade with Tacite; Rome 1600, in-8°. Apostolo Zeno known as in its notes on Fontanini (T. 2, p. 306), that it is not, according to some, that a shortened translation of Latin of Sanderus. In the 2nd edition, data with Florence, 1638, in-8°, the editor collected, following this history, the following opuscules: Notizia de Cambi ; Lezione unties monete ; Orazione in dead LED gran duca Cosimo two academic jokes, Dicerie O Cicalate , in which the author treats with serious ironic a charge against the president of his Academy, and a defense of the ironically so marked Provéditeur S by another academician;
finally a small treaty of agriculture entitled: E Coltivazione toscana delle Viti, E of Alcuni Arbori , Firenze, Filippo Giunti, 1600. Initially printed paper form alone with Florence, Giunti, 1600 and in-4°. It is a treaty on the Vigne in Toscane.

All these writings also have the merit of the accuracy of the ideas, the precision, the purity and the elegance of the style. They were reprinted together by Comino, Padoue, 1754, in-8°., LED modo di piantare E custodire unct Ragnaja E di uccellare has ragna , Florence, 1790, in-8°. This curious treaty on the manner of tightening nets with the birds of passage, was remained new and unknown. Targioni recognized the first which it was the work of Davanzati. Mr. the Professor Re speaks about it with praise in his Dictionary about the books about agriculture.

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