BECCADELLI, ANTONIO detto il PANORMITA. - Humanist, b. in 1394 at Palermo (hence the nickname of P.), of a Bolognese family, d. in 1471. He left his native city very early to attend to legal studies at Siena (1420), at Pistoia, at Florence. He then wandered between studies and diversions at Bologna and Pavia.
To this period belongs his best-known work: Hermaphroditus, two books of Latin epigrams, in a fairly agile Latin (Martial, Catullus, Propertius and Ovid are his principal masters), and of a predominantly licentious tone. The success was great: Guarino himself wrote a eulogy, which was prefixed to the little book; numerous, however, were also the censures and the invectives.
At Pavia B. made friends with various humanists, such as Maffeo Vegio and Lorenzo Valla; he then wrote the four books of the Epistolae gallicae in which he appears to us as a brilliant and carefree writer. And it was on this image of him that Valla drew when he placed him, in the guise of a defender of Epicureanism, among the interlocutors of his De voluptate.
In 1434 Alfonso of Aragon, "great light of letters," as Vespasiano da Bisticci calls him, invited him to the court of Naples, and thereafter gave him continual proofs of his liberality, loading him with gifts and naming him first his counsellor, then ambassador and finally secretary; this office was confirmed to him also by King Ferdinand, Alfonso's successor. At Naples, besides the Epistolae campanare, B. also composed four books De dictis et factis Alphansi regis Aragonum, an abundant collection of anecdotes in praise of the sovereign.
But B.'s best initiative was the founding of an academy, which took its cue from the frequent gatherings of learned friends and young scholars in his house at Naples and in his villa at Resina. This academy, later called Pontanian after B.'s most famous disciple, Giovanni Pontano, was active and flourishing in humanistic studies throughout the rest of the fifteenth century.
B. participated actively in the life of the humanists; he contributed in his own way to the resolution of problems of the Plautine texts. He had no deep aptitudes even in the field of history, and he stopped at anecdote, at the little vignette. There remains to him the merit of having promoted and developed the humanistic studies of the Mezzogiorno of Italy.
Bibliography8 works
For B.'s works: A. B., Epistularum gallicarum Libri quator; Epistularum Campanarum Liber, Naples 1746; A. Panormitae, Hermaphroditus, Coburg 1824 and Leipzig 1908. See also: A. Cinquini and R. Valentini, Poesie latine inedite di A. B. detto il P., Aosta 1907, and R. Sabbadini, Ottanta lettere inedite del P., Catania 1910, pp. 3-167; and ibid.: M. Catalano, Nuovi documenti sul P., pp. 169-209.
Giulio Vallese