Aleandro, Girolamo, the Younger

ALEANDRO, GIROLAMO, called THE YOUNGER (to distinguish him from the cardinal of the same name, his uncle). - Scholar, b. at Motta di Livenza on 29 July 1574, d. at Rome on 9 March 1629.

After completing his legal and literary studies at Padua, he moved to Rome, where he became secretary to Cardinal Ottavio Bandini and, after twenty years, to Cardinal Francesco Barberini, nephew of Urban VIII. A member and "prince" of the Accademia degli Umoristi, he bore the name l'Aggiato. He was buried in the basilica of St. Lawrence al Verano, where Barberini erected a fine monument for him after a design by Pietro da Cortona: the bust is the work of F. Duquesnoy "il Fiammingo."

A scholar of versatile interests, he took part in the debates of his time on literary and scientific matters. He left some thirty works, a third of them unpublished, concerning literature, law, history and religion. We may recall: 1) Psalmi paenitentiales versibus elegiacis expressi, a youthful work (Treviso 1593); 2) a commentary on the Institutes of Gaius, fragments then known through the Pandects (Venice 1600); 3) the Difesa dell'Adone of Cavalier Marino (Venice 1629); 4) poetic compositions, Carmina, such as the "heroic poem" in honor of the Virgin of St. Luke at Bologna; 5) Dissertazioni varie and Epistolae, four of which, concerning the Samaritans (de characteribus, de siclis, de Pentateucho Samaritano), and addressed to Jean Morin (v.), were reproduced in the Antiquitates Ecclesiae Orientalis, a posthumous work of the celebrated Oratorian, edited by R. Simon (London 1682).

Igino Cecchetti