Giovanni Pontano

Giovanni Pontano (Giovanni or Gioviano Pontano, in Latin Pontanus) is a Politician and Italian Humaniste, which was born the May 7th 1429 with Cerreto, not far from Spolète, in Ombrie and died in Naples the September 17th 1503.

Politician, it entered to the service of the dynasty of Aragon to Naples, it was successively to advise, secretary in charge of the education of the son of Ferdinand Ier, Alphonse, then, in 1486, ambassador; this year, it succeeds in alleviating the different ones occurred between the court from Rome and that from Naples and was named Prime Minister (chancellor); it will remain it under the reign of Alphonse, its pupil and under that of his son, Ferdinand II; finally it was discredited by delivering to Charles VIII the keys of the town of Naples, thus forgetting the duties that the recognition and fidelity imposed to him. Later, in 1501, it will try to be rehabilitated while refusing to serve Louis XII, the new occupant.

Eminent man of letters, it had become before, in 1471, director of the academy of Naples which, since, bears its name (Pontaniana). Employing very pure Latin, this humanistic left astronomical, philosophical treaties and the important ones and sour dialogs (in particular Asinus and Charon).

He was regarded a long time as the most elegant writer and most fertile of the 15th century.

Biography

Latin Pontanus, had been born Jean Pontano, probably, with the castle of Laying, close to Cerreto, which gave him its name. Later, it will add to it the first name of Jovianus or Jovien when it is elected president of the Neapolitan academy.

This country was then divided between two factions, which were delivered in turn at worst excesses. Jean saw massacring his father in a riot; and itself had the life only with the vigilance of his/her mother, who managed to withdraw it from research assassins and to lead it to Perugia. This virtuous woman inspired to him by noble feelings and the love of the study. After putbeing put under the direction of three grammairiens more ignoramuses one that the other, it was finally entrusted to skilful teachers, and its progress in the letters and sciences was fast.

When it returned in Cerreto to claim the heritage of his parents, it was very quickly obliged to always flee this city in prey with the fury of the parties; it took refuge then in the camp of Alphonse, king de Naples, who had just declared the war in Florentins. It followed this prince to Naples, where it was accommodated by the humanistic rich person Antonio Beccadelli, said Panormita; this last charmed by its spirit, treated it like his/her son and made him have a place in the offices of the royal chancellery.

Pontano fills the duties of its new employment with more success than would not have obtained any a lengthily tested man. In parallel, he did not neglect the culture of the letters, and a crowd of clever compositions, by attesting her facility, added to her reputation.

|Ferdinand Ier while arriving at the throne chooses Pontano for secretary, and entrusted to him the education of his/her son Alphonse, duke of Calabria.

Pontano accompanied Ferdinand in the war against the duke by Anjou; and it is itself which wrote the history of this countryside, in which it is described like a skilful general and a courageous soldier who was made several times prisoner. He will take part in the battle of Troia against the Anjou, in 1462, at the time which Ferdinand carried it against the condottiere Jacopo Piccinino.

In one as of its writings ( Of sermonizes , lib. 6, p. 89), he tells that the duke Alphonse in meeting with his officers, rose at once, and, made make silence, while saying: “Here the Master. ”

Always it is that the talents that Pontano had developed then, deserved more and more the benevolence of king Ferdinand to him, who filled it honors.

But the courtiers could not forgive him his rise, and it had the pain to find among its enemies the duke of Calabria, his pupil; he was avenged for his calumnies by redoubling zeal for the service of the prince who honoured it with his confidence and by writing a poem which remained very famous: Asinus ( the ass or of ingratitude ) in which it introduces an ass which, nourished delicately by its Master, thanks it only with kicks; in addition, he said to the auction that its best ally was its poverty.

Ferdinand made him marry wealthy heiress, assigned pensions to him on the royal treasure and added two lucrative employment to those of which it was already covered.

Pontanus enjoyed a right celebrity. He was tenderly liked his woman: nothing missed with its glory nor with its happiness.

It will also take part in the reconquest of Otranto in 1481.

In 1482, it had pacified by its wisdom Italy disturbed by the debates of the Duc of Ferrare, son-in-law of Ferdinand, with the Venetian ones (1484).

Four years afterwards, he was appointed towards the pope Innocent VIII to alleviate the different ones occurred between the court from Rome and that from Naples. He succeeds in reconciling the pope Innocent VIII with the duke Ferrare.

It is itself, once again which tells in the sermonizes liv. 2, p. 30. This negotiation was, according to him a success and the pope, warned against Ferdinand, would have answered: “ But, it is with Pontanus that I treat: he will not mislead me; the bona fide and the truth will not give up it, him which them forever abandoned . ”

In any case, on his return to Naples, the skilful ambassador was high in the place of Prime Minister, Antonio Petrucio which had been discredited. He would have filled this load as a man whose fortune could change neither manners nor the principles. Ferdinand died in 1494, and his/her son Alphonse while going up on the throne, making conceal his preventions, filled it honors, entrusted to him all its authority and made him set up a bronze statue in one of its palates. Alphonse will yield it soon the crown to his son |Ferdinand II, which maintained Pontano in all its employment.

At this point in time Pontano made a serious error which discredited it with the eyes of its contemporaries: when Charles VIII expressed his intention to seize the town of Naples; Pontano offered the keys of them to him, forgetting the duties which the recognition and fidelity imposed to him; it went until making in front of all the people a speech in which it meanly insulted the king his Master and his benefactor.

Once returned, Ferdinand, was satisfied to strip it of all its employment. But Pontano convainquit that it did not deserve its disgrace, which it had acted well while having its thought no longer for its king, but for itself.

When Louis XII had seized again the Royaume of Naples (1501), it offered to Pontanus to restore it in all its dignities: the scientist answered that he did not seek has to make his old age richer, but more occupied.

He devoted the time which remained to him to be lived to polish the edition of most of its works. He died in 1503 and was buried in the church which he had made build, where one still sees his tomb decorated with an epitaph composed by itself.

Humanistic Pontano

Pontanus rendered immense services to the Philosophie and the Lettres: it must be looked like the true founder, in 1471, of the academy that Antonio Beccadelli says the Panormita had established in Naples, according to the orders of king Alphonse; it was him which wrote the statutes of this company, whose first members declared it the chief by acclamation; moreover, one then knew it under the name of Academia Pontaniana. The pupils ran as a crowd in this new college, where large Pontano taught (which they called Tirasboschi ); he is regarded as the first poet of the rebirth which knew to reproduce in its works the elegance and the grace of the former poets Latin; by its lessons, it traced the road which they were to follow.

In addition to the merit of an elegant and natural style, the philosophical works of Pontanus offer the first example in a manner of philosophizing free and released from the prejudices, which follows other lights only those of the reason and truth.

The Abbé Draghetti says that Pontanus is the first among the modern ones which placed happiness in an equal distance of the extremes, and which, in his treaties of physics, it seems to have seen the famous law of continuity, ignored until him (voy. Physiol. specimen , T. 1, p. 37).

Bailly ( History of modern astronomy , T. 1st, p. 693) and before him Weidler ( Hist. astron. , p.323) noticed that Pontanus appears to be the first which renewed the opinion of Démocrite, which allotted the light of the Milky Way to an infinite number of small stars.

But it is as poet especially that Pontanus enjoys an undeniable reputation: in all its compositions, it is also spiritual, elegant, gracious, worthy in a word of all the praises with which honoured it its contemporaries, that it exceeded by its fruitfulness, the purity of its style and the variety of its knowledge.

However one reproaches him with reason for not having less imitated the Obscénité of old in his poetries in love than their elegance.

Epigram S, of the Hendécasyllabe S, eclogue S, Anthem S and worms lyric
a poem in five books on astronomy ( Urania )
another on the meteors
on the culture of the orange trees and the lemons ( Of hortis Hesperidum ).

Poetries of Pontanus were published by Alde at Venice, 1505-1518, 2 vol. in-8°. The first volume was reprinted in 1513 and 1533; but the second was printed only once (voy. yearly of the Alde , by Mr. Renouard) (3).

The Giunti of Florence gave of it one second edition in 1514,2 vol. in-8°; it is more common, but less complete than that of Alde.

Its works have prose were published by the same printers, Venice, 1518,1519,3 vol. small in-8°, rare, and Florence, 1520,4 small vol. in-8°.

All the works of Pontanus were printed in Naples, of 1505 to 1314,6 vol. in-fol. The library of Besancon had a specimen of it on vellum, which is today with the library of Paris.

There is an edition of Basle, 1556,4 vol. in-8°. This edition, though most complete, is not very required. One will find in volume 8 of the Memories of Nicéron the titles of the works of which it is composed. One must restrict oneself to quote the principal ones here: Of obedientia libri 5, and Of principle liber unus ; - Of fortitudine libri duet . It is one of the best works of Pontanus. - Of liberalitate ; - Of splendore ; - Of aspiratione libri duet (1); - Of Sermonizes libri 6. It composed these works at the age of soixante-treize years. - Five dialogs filled of obscenities and satirical features against the ecclesiastics; - Belli quod Ferdinandus senior, Neapolitanorum rex, cum Joanne Andegacensi duce gessis, libri 6. This history is written with as much elegance than of impartiality (2); it was translated into Italian by an anonymity, Venice, 1536, in-8°, and by Jacques Mauro, Naples, 1590, in-4°.

It is in Pontanus that one is indebted discovery of the Commentaires of Donat on Virgile (voy. DONAT)) and of the Grammar of Q. Rhemnius Palaemon , (Fano, 1503, in-4°; finally it has, says one, corrected the text of poetries of Catulle, disfigured by the ignorance of the copyists.

Tiraboschi regretted much that one had lost the Life of Pontanus, that Pierre Summonte, his friend, had composed with the prayer of Jacques Sannazare; that loss was repaired by Robert de Sarno, oratorien, which gave the life of this Latin writer, Naples, 1761, in-4. One finds of it an analysis well done, by Suard, in the volume 1st of the literary Varieties. One can still consult the Dictionnaire of Chaufepié, them Dissertas. Vossiane of Apostolo Zeno. T. 2, and Tiraboschi, Storia beyond letteratur italiana , T. 6 (3). W-s.

He was recognized, already Sannazzaro like one of well-read man most fertile of the Fifteenth century and perhaps the principal absolute of humanism Neapolitan, by intertwining oltretutto , his work, many aspects of the cultural life, not only literary, of his time: astrology, with ethics, the analysis of the company, rhetoric, botany.

It was a large specialist in traditional antiquity and it had great gifts of Latin poet, while also excelling in prose and while often succeeding in synthesizing the traditional language with neologisms and terms in vulgar language, as it showed in his works Amorum books of 1455-1458, Lyra, Versus jambici, Hendecasyllabi, Of marital love, Sépultures, Neniae, Of hortis Esperidum of 1501.

Principal works

Works of Pontano, often of difficult dating, they are numerous and heterogeneous for covered subjects and they were collected of Pietro Summonte and Sannazzaro. In them it prevails the use of the Latin language without fault, that is to say in the production in worms that in that one in prose, but always with a glance with reality and a reference to the facts of the contemporary age. Between them they cannot not be mentioned:

Amorum libri (1455-58)
Charon (1467-91)
Urania (1476)
Asinus (1486-90)
Antonius (1487)
Meteororum libri (1490)
Hendecasyllabi seu Baiarum libri (1490-1500)
Of principle (1493)
Of liberalitate (1493)
Lepidina (1496)
Actius (1499)
Aegidium (1501)
Of hortis Hesperidum (1501)
Of fortuna (1501)

Sources

old and modern universal Biography

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