GIOVANNI di Conversino da Ravenna. — Educator and writer, b. at Buda in 1343, d. at Venice in 1408. Taken as a child to Ravenna (hence the surname), he had as his teacher Donato degli Albanzani there; he then went to study in Bologna, from which he emerged as a notary. Chancellor of the Carraresi in Padua (1379–82; 1392–1404) and of the commune of Ragusa (1383–87), he took up teaching at various times, 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 contemporary scholars and gave impetus to the humanist movement in the Veneto. In his school he anticipated the renewal of the Veronese and of Vittorino, advocating humane and rational teaching methods, in contrast to the stifling mnemonic mechanism, and railing against the brutal violence then in use. Despite certain moral lapses, his profound religiosity is revealed in his works of Stoic-Christian philosophy (*De fato; De miseria humanae vitae; Ad Augustinum philosophum de Christi conceptu*) and in his hymn to St. John the Evangelist. Particular literary interest attaches to the *Rationarium vitae*, an autobiographical account in harsh, medieval Latin, yet frank and vivid, at times crudely lively, which allows one to know the man and his vicissitudes intimately: the first example of the genre in humanist literature.