POGGIO Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini, Italian scholar of the Renaissance, was born in 1380 at Terra nuova, a village in the territory of Florence. He studied Latin under John of Ravenna, and Greek under Manuel Chrysoloras. His distinguished abilities and his dexterity as a copyist of mss. brought him into early notice with the chief scholars of Florence. Coluccio Salutati and Niccolo de' Niccoli befriended him, and in the year 1402 or 1403 he was received into the service of the Roman curia. His functions were those of a secretary; and, though he profited by benefices conferred on him in lieu of salary, he remained a layman to the end of his life. It is noticeable that, while he held his office in the curia through that momentous period of 5o years which witnessed the Councils of Constance and of Basle, and the final restoration of the papacy under Nicholas V., his sympathies were never attracted to ecclesiastical affairs. Nothing marks the secular attitude of the Italians at an epoch which decided the future course of both Renaissance and Refor mation more strongly than the mundane proclivities of this apos tolic secretary, heart and soul devoted to the resuscitation of classical studies amid conflicts of popes and antipopes, cardinals and councils, in all of which he bore an official part. Thus, when his duties called him to Constance in 1414, he employed his leisure in exploring the libraries of Swiss and Swabian convents. The treasures he brought to light at Reichenau, Weingarten, and above all St. Gall, restored many lost masterpieces of Latin litera ture, and supplied students with the texts of authors whose works had hitherto been accessible only in mutilated copies. In one of his epistles he describes how he recovered Quintilian, part of Valerius Flaccus, and the commentaries of Asconius Pedianus at St. Gall.
Manuscripts of Lucretius, Columella, Silius Italicus, Manilius and Vitruvius were unearthed, copied by his hand, and communi cated to the learned. Wherever Poggio went he carried on the same industry of research. At Langres he discovered Cicero's Oration for Caecina, at Monte Cassino a ms. of Frontinus. He also could boast of having recovered Ammianus Marcellinus, Nonius Mar cellus, Probus, Flavius Caper and Eutyches. If a codex could not be obtained by fair means, he was ready to use fraud, as when he bribed a monk to abstract a Livy and an Ammianus from the convent lib of Hersfield.
Poggio embraced the whole sphere of contemporary studies, and distinguished himself as an orator, a writer of rhetorical treatises, a panegyrist of the dead, a violent impugner of the living, a translator from the Greek, an epistolographer and grave historian and a facetious compiler of fabliaux in Latin. Of his moral essays it may suffice to notice the dissertations On Nobility, On Vicissi tudes of ortune, On the Misery of Human Life, On the Infelicity of Princes and On Marriage in Old Age. These compositions be
longed to a species which, since Petrarch set the fashion, were very popular among Italian scholars. They have lost their value, except for the few matters of fact which are embedded in a mass of commonplace meditation, and for occasional brilliant illustra tions.
Poggio's History of Florence, written in avowed imitation of Livy's manner, requires separate mention, since it exemplifies by its defects the weakness of that merely stylistic treatment which deprived so much of Bruni's, Carlo Aretino's and Bembo's work of historical weight. A somewhat different criticism must be passed on the Facetiae, a collection of humorous and indecent tales expressed in such Latinity as Poggio could command. This book is chiefly remarkable for its unsparing satires on the monastic orders and the secular clergy.
Among his contemporaries Poggio passed for one of the most formidable polemical or gladiatorial rhetoricians ; and a consid erable section of his extant works are invectives. One of these, the Dialogue against Hypocrites, was aimed in a spirit of vindic tive hatred at the vices of ecclesiastics; another, written at the request of Nicholas V., covered the anti-pope Felix with scurrilous abuse. But his most famous compositions in this kind are the personal invectives which he discharged against Filelfo and Valla. All the resources of a copious and unclean Latin vocabulary were employed to degrade the objects of his satire; and every crime of which humanity is capable was ascribed to them without dis crimination. In Filelfo and Valla Poggio found his match ; and Italy was amused for years with the spectacle of their indecent combats. About the year 1452 Poggio finally retired to Florence, where he was admitted to the burghership, and on the death of Carlo Aretino in 1453 was appointed chancellor and histo riographer to the republic. He had already built himself a villa in Valdarno, which he adorned with a collection of antique sculpture, coins and inscriptions. In 1435 he had married a girl of 18 named Vaggia, of the famous Buondelmonte blood. His declin ing days were spent in the discharge of his honourable Florentine office and in the composition of his history. He died in 1459, and was buried in the church of Santa Croce. A statue by Donatello and a picture by Antonio del Pollajuolo remained to commem orate a citizen who chiefly for his services to humanistic literature deserved the notice of posterity.
Poggio's works were printed at Basle in 1538, "ex aedibus Henrici Petri." Dr. Shepherd's Life of Poggio Bracciolini (1802) is a good authority on his biography. For his position in the history of the revival, see Voigt, Wiederbelebung des classischen Alterthums (3rd ed., 1893) and Symonds, Renaissance in Italy (1875-86). (J. A. S.; X.)