John of Conversino of Ravenna

JOHN OF CONVERSINO OF RAVENNA. - Educator and writer, b. at Buda in 1343, d. at Venice in 1408. Brought as a child to Ravenna (hence the appellation), he had there as his teacher Donato degli Albanzani; he then went to study at Bologna, leaving it a notary. Chancellor of the Carraresi at Padua (1379-82; 1392-1404) and of the commune of Ragusa (1383-87), he devoted himself on various occasions to teaching, and from his school came pupils who later became famous (Guarino Veronese, Vittorino da Feltre, P. P. Vergerio).

An admirer of Petrarch, he had relations with Boccaccio and with learned contemporaries and gave impetus to the humanistic movement in the Veneto. In his school he anticipated the renewal brought about by Veronese and by Vittorino, advocating humane and rational teaching methods, in contrast with the mortifying mechanical memorization, and inveighing against the brutal violence then in use. Despite certain moral lapses, his profound religiosity is revealed in the opuscules of Stoic-Christian philosophy (De fato; De miseria humanae vitae; Ad Augustinum philosophum de Christi conceptu) and in the hymn to St. John the Evangelist. Of particular literary interest is the Rationarium vitae, an autobiographical account, in a harsh, medieval Latin, but frank and colorful, not infrequently crudely vivid, which makes known intimately the man and his vicissitudes: the first example of the genre in humanistic literature.

Italiano Marchetti