GIOVIO, PAOLO. - Historian, b. at Como on 19 Apr. 1483, d. at Florence on 10 Dec. 1552. He was bishop of Nocera de' Pagani from 13 Jan. 1528.

He owes his fame to: Historiarum sui temporis libri XLV (Florence 1550-52); Commentarii delle cose dei Turchi (Venice 1531); numerous biographies (the Visconti, Muzio Attendolo Sforza, Alfonso d'Este, Leo X, Adrian VI, etc.) as well as Elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium, Elogia virorum litteris illustrium. The vision of a P. G., a spiritual brother of Aretino, a "reporter" ready to trim between the wishes of his clients and those of the general public, a facile and blackmailing pen, as he is defined by Fueter, is abandoned by later criticism: Croce sees in G. a describer of military matters and of culture, generally truthful, though not very sensitive to ethico-political history because G.'s political feelings "did not convert and strengthen into ardor of political affection, into the cult of an ideal, into the anxious questioning of history in order to link the wished-for future to the past" (op. cit. in bibl., p. 31); the same Croce defines G.'s work as a "grandiose collection of anecdotes."

Bibliography2 works

BIBL.: E. Fueter, Storia della storiografia moderna, Italian trans., Naples 1944, I, p. 61 ff., II, pp. 333-34 (with the preceding bibl.); B. Croce, Poeti e scrittori del pieno e del tardo Rinascimento, II, Bari 1945, pp. 27-55.

Massimo Petrocchi

@incollection{ec6_giovio_paolo, author = {Petrocchi, Massimo}, title = {Giovio, paolo}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {VI}, pages = {647}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1951}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/giovio-paolo} }

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Giovio, Paolo

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