ANNIO da VITERBO (properly NANNI, GIOVANNI, in humanist style Annus: «Frater Ioannes Annus Viterbiensis»). — Dominican scholar, one of the most debated figures of the Renaissance, b. at Viterbo in 1432, d. at Rome on 13 November 1502. He took the Dominican habit in the Viterbese convent of S. Maria di Gradi. In addition to philosophical and theological sciences, he learned classical literature and Oriental languages. In 1464 he lectured as a bachelor on the Sentences at the University of Florence. In 1498 he was cured of an illness through the intercession of beata Colomba di 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His works of exegesis and controversy are: 1) In universa sacra Biblia commentaria (unpublished); 2) Tractatus de imperio Turcarum, a sermon preached at Genoa in 1473; 3) De futuris christianorum triumphis in Saracenos, a «historical» interpretation of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 Apocalypse (after the editions of Genoa 1480 and Leipzig 1481, there were 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 Apocalypse up to chapter 15 and discusses whether Mohammed was the Antichrist; in the second he continues the commentary from chapter 16 (it extends from the fall of Constantinople to the end of the fifteenth century); in the third he abridges his treatise De imperio Turcarum; 4) Quaestiones super mutuo judaico et civili (Cremona 1494).
A. became famous for his alleged discoveries of historiographers 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 provides texts and fragments of Berossus, Mirsylus, Cato, Archilochus, Metasthenes, Philo, Xenophon, Sempronius, Manetho and others.
The admiration and astonishment of the early period were followed by doubts and criticism, first in Italy. Lefèvre d'Étaples, Vives, Cano (De locis theol. lib. 11, cap. 6), Voss, and, in our century, Pastor (III [Italian trans.], pp. 502, 748) and Fueter judged him an impostor and forger. Tiraboschi (VI, part 2, book III, chap. 1, no. 12 ff.) says: «It can only be disputed whether G. Annio should be regarded as an impostor or should merely be considered too simple and deceived». Leandro Alberti, Antonio de Guevara in Comm. super Habacus 3, 13, and Tommaso Mazza (Apologia per Giov. Annio Viterbese, Verona 1673) defended him. Others, such as Taurisano, exclude from him any intention to deceive. In any case A. cannot be absolved from excessive credulity (Echard, Stahl, s. V. in Kirchenlexicon, I, 1882). He also accepted false passages, but ones known before his time and found in libraries (Le Quien), without inventing from scratch all the documents he published.
A. is remembered in biblical exegesis for having resolutely been the first (Antiq. var., l. XIV: Chronographia Philonis, fol. 101 ff.) to maintain that in Lc. 3, 23 ff. the genealogy of Mary Most Holy is given, with the aim of resolving the antinomy between the genealogies of Mt. 1 and Lc. 3.