CAMPANO, GIOVANNI ANTONIO. - Bishop and man of letters, b. of a humble family at Cavelli (Capua) in 1429, d. at Siena on 15 July 1477. Out of love of study, at the age of fifteen he went to Naples, where he attended the humanistic lectures of Lorenzo Valla. Attacked by Aragonese soldiers while he was on his way to Siena, he took refuge in Perugia, and there, generously received into the house of Nello di Pandolfo Baglioni (1452), he had the opportunity to continue his studies and to write the best part of his works. In 1455 we know that he was a public lecturer in eloquence at that University. In 1459 he was admitted to the retinue of Card. Calandrini, with whom he went to the Congress of Mantua. On that occasion he had the opportunity to win the appreciation of the papal court for his culture and his jovial character, so that, having entered the good graces of Pius II, he obtained the bishopric of Cotrone (1460) and then that of Teramo (1463). Pius II entrusted him with the correction of his Commentarii, which he fortunately did not touch. After having been in Rome and in Germany, he was successively governor of Todi (1472-73), of Foligno, of Assisi and of Città di Castello, then very turbulent. Having taken the side of those citizens against the papal army that was besieging the city, he was immediately replaced by Sixtus IV and never pardoned again (cf. for this episode his letters published in the appendix to vol. XXVII, part 3, fasc. 1, of the Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, Bologna 1922). Having returned to Teramo (1474), he went, perhaps for reasons of health, to Siena, where he was long ill and where he died. He is buried in that Cathedral.
He wrote many works, among them a philosophical treatise: De Jugienda ingratitudine, and a political one: De regendo magistratu, thirteen orations, from which a certain oratorical vis emerges; the life of Braccio da Montone and of Pius II, with profound knowledge of details and chronological exactness, but without critical insight; eight books of poetry, mostly amatory, and nine books of epistles, containing ca. 400 letters. All were printed and translated several times. L'Opera omnia was printed for the first time at Venice by Bernardino de Vianis, probably in 1502.
Bibliography2 works
Renata Orazi Ausenda