Alciati, Andrea

ALCIATI, ANDREA - Jurist and humanist, b. at Alzate near Como on 8 May 1492, d. at Pavia on 12 Jan. 1550. Having obtained his doctorate at Bologna in 1514, he practiced law at Milan for about four years; then he taught law at Avignon, at Bourges, at Pavia, at Bologna and at Ferrara. Much honored by King Francis I, who summoned him to France and took pleasure in attending his lectures, he was appointed protonotary apostolic by Paul III.

A. is celebrated as the founder of a new method in the study of law, which he sought to link harmoniously with the humanistic movement of his time.

His juridical works, collected in four vols. and published at Basel in 1582, comprise monographs on canon law, commentaries on the Digest and academic orations. A. also left us some literary and historical writings, among which the famous Emblemata (a collection of allegories moral). A critical edition of his epistolary is in preparation. One of his works, Contra vitam monasticam ad collegam olim suum, qui transierat ad Franciscanus, Bernardum Mattium Epistola, in which, to dissuade his friend from becoming a friar, he describes too vividly the abuses and disorders of cloistered life, was placed on the Index on 23 March 1700. He, however, did not intend it for the public; it was instead published, together with other writings not his own, by Antonio Mattio (Leiden 1695).