BARZIZZA, GASPARINO. — Born at Barzizza in the Bergamo area, according to Sabbadini, in 1359. After obtaining his degree at Pavia in grammar and rhetoric in 1392, he taught in that same city from 1400 to 1407. From 1408 to 1420 he taught at the University of Padua, whence, in 1421, he moved to Lombardy with the support of Filippo Mario Visconti. In 1430 he returned to Pavia, but only briefly, for death overtook him there in 1431. At Padua B. also obtained his doctorate in arts, and in 1414 was appointed apostolic secretary. In this office he subsequently took part in the Council of Constance in 1417, while Francesco Filelfo replaced him in the Paduan chair.
B. exerted a considerable influence on the culture and humanistic education of the scholars of his time. Among others, Vittorino, Francesco Barbaro, Filelfo, and L. B. Alberti were formed at his school. B. was a friend of Guarino Veronese. B. is credited with establishing the boarding school in the fifteenth century. Indeed, he kept boarders in his own home, some of them from noble families, such as three nephews of the Piacenza cardinal Branda Castiglioni. The boarders paid a fee of 40 scudi and were entrusted to the care of good tutors, sometimes to B.’s own sons, while B. supervised the general administration: ego—he used to say—ad gubernaculum sedeo.
His correspondence reveals the care and paternal solicitude B. devoted to the education of his pupils and boarders. L. B. Alberti called him “father and tutor,” and, when B. resigned, the Venetian Senate was to reply, “nostri nobiles non possunt pati te a filia eorum divelli.” Following B.’s example, Guarino V. later also opened a boarding school in his own home. B. had the merit, during the revival of classical studies in the fifteenth century, of affirming the Ciceronian tradition. Guarino was able to say of him, “cuius ductu et auspiciis Cicero amatur, legitur et per Italorum gymnasia summa cum gloria volitat.” B. was—as Woodward says (Vittorino da Feltre, Florence 1921, p. 20)—the first to approach Cicero in a truly scholarly spirit, applying to the text an analytical and comparative method to which no ancient author had until then been subjected. B. is the author of a treatise on “orthography” that established the new foundations of humanist orthography. Works: G. B., Opera, Rome 1728.