GIOVIO, PAOLO. — Historian, born in Como on 19 April 1483, died in Florence on 10 December 1552. He was bishop of Nocera de' Pagani from 13 January 1528.
His fame rests on: *Historiarum sui temporis libri XLV* (Florence 1550–52); *Commentarii delle cose dei Turchi* (Venice 1531); numerous biographies (of the Visconti, Muzio Attendolo Sforza, Alfonso d'Este, Leo X, Adrian VI, etc.), as well as *Elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium* and *Elogia virorum litteris illustrium*. The image of P. G., spiritual brother of the art of war and a reporter quick to steer between the desires of his patrons and those of the general public, a facile and sometimes blackmailing pen—as Fueter describes him—is abandoned by later criticism: Croce sees in G. a chronicler of military and cultural matters, generally truthful, though not very sensitive to ecclesiastical history because G.'s political sentiments did not concentrate and strengthen into a fervor of political affection, into the cult of an ideal, nor into the anxious interrogation of history to link the desired future to the past (op. cit. in bibliography, p. 31); Croce himself defines G.'s work as “grand anecdotal history.”