ANNIUS OF VITERBO (properly Nanni, Giovanni, in humanist style Annus: «Brother Johannes Annus Viterbiensis»). - Dominican scholar, among the most debated of the Renaissance, b. at Viterbo in 1432, d. at Rome on 13 Nov. 1502. He took the Dominican habit in the convent of S. Maria di Gradi at Viterbo. Besides the philosophical and theological sciences, he learned classical letters and Oriental languages. In 1464 he lectured as bachelor on the Sentences at the University of Florence. In 1498 he was cured of an illness through the intercession of the blessed Colomba of Rieti. Sixtus IV and Alexander VI held him in high esteem. He held the office of master of the Sacred Palace from 1499 until his death; he was buried at the Minerva, in Rome.
His works of exegesis and controversy are: 1) In universa sacra Biblia commentaria (unpublished); 2) Tractatus de imperio Turcarum, a sermon preached at Genoa in 1473; 3) De futuris christianorum triumphis in Saracenos, a «historical» interpretation of the Apoc. (after the editions of Genoa 1480 and Leipzig 1481, there are many others; in particular also under the title Glossa sive expositio super Apocalypsum de statu Ecclesiae ab n. 1481 usque in finem mundi, Cologne 1507). In the first part he explains the Apoc. up to ch. 15 and discusses whether Muhammad was the Antichrist; in the second he continues the commentary from ch. 16 (it runs from the fall of Constantinople to the end of the 15th century); in the third he summarizes his treatise De imperio Turcarum; 4) Quaestiones super mutuo judaico et civili (Cremona 1494).
A. became famous for his alleged discoveries of historians of antiquity, published in the Vetustissimi auctores or Antiquitatum variarum volumina XVII, editions with the commentary Super opera diversorum auctorum, Rome 1498, Paris 1512, Antwerp 1545 and 1552; with only the text of the ancient authors, Venice 1498, Paris 1510, Basel 1530 and 1599, Wittenberg 1612. This collection supplies texts and fragments of Berosus, Myrsilus, Cato, Archilochus, Metasthenes, Philo, Xenophon, Sempronius, Manetho and others.
The admiration and astonishment of the early period were followed by doubts and criticisms, first in Italy. Lefèvre d'Étaples, Vives, Cano (De locis theol. lib. 11, cap. 6), Voss, and, in our century, Pastor (III [It. trans.], pp. 502, 748) and Fueter judged him an impostor and forger. Tiraboschi (VI, part 2, l. III, cap. 1, n. 12 ff.) says: «It can only be disputed whether G. Annio should be regarded as an impostor or should merely be believed too simple and deceived». Leandro Alberti, Antonio de Guevara in Comm. super Habacus 3, 13, Tommaso Mazza (Apologia per Giov. Annio Viterbese, Verona 1673) undertook his defense. Others, such as Taurisano, rule out in him the will to deceive. In any case A. cannot be absolved of excessive credulity (Echard, Stahl, s. v. in Kirchenlexicon, I, 1882). He also accepted false passages, but ones known before him and found in libraries (Le Quien), not inventing from scratch all the documents he published.
A. is remembered in biblical exegesis for having resolutely maintained for the first time (Antiq. var., l. XIV: Chronographia Philonis, fol. 101 ff.) that in Lk. 3, 23 ff. the genealogy of the Most Holy Mary is given, with the aim of resolving the antilogy between the genealogies of Mt. 1 and Lk. 3.