MANETTI, GIANNOZZO. - Politician and humanist, b. in Florence on 5 June 1396, d. in Naples on 25 Oct. 1459. From commercial studies and banking activity he passed to the life of the humanist world, and because of his qualities as an orator and diplomat he held important offices and embassies to Pistoia, Scarperia, Genoa, Rimini, Venice, Siena.
A man of very vast culture and of profound religious faith, so as to affirm that «the doctrine of the Church is as true as a mathematical axiom», he learned Greek from the Camaldolese A. Traversari and Hebrew from Immanuel ben Abraham of S. Miniato, in order to devote himself to the study of the Holy Scriptures, which he cultivated throughout his life, both at the court of Nicholas V, who had summoned him to Rome in 1453 appointing him apostolic secretary, and at that of King Alfonso of Naples.
Besides the Adversus Induros in 10 books, he left an important translation of the Psalter from the Hebrew - he transcribed in three columns the Septuagint version, that of St. Jerome and his own - and prepared an original version from the Greek of the New Testament, which has remained unpublished (cf. U. Cassuto, I manoscritti palatini ebraici della Bibl. Apost. Vat. e la loro storia [Studi e testi, 66], Città del Vaticano 1935, pp. 44-47; Codices Urbinates latini, edited by C. Stornajolo, I, Rome 1902, p. 160). In the Apologetico, in 5 books, he defended his version: after a general introduction on the Bible he retraced the history of the Greek and Latin translations, commenting extensively on the Hieronymian one, and in the last book he explained the canons «of good translation». He had a cult of the great fourteenth-century writers and for the learned he composed a Specimen historiae litterariae Florentinae saec. XIII ac XIV sive vitae Dantis, Petrarchae, Boccaccii (Florence 1747). He entrusted his humanistic conception of life to the De dignitate et excellentia hominis (Basel 1532). Notable among his historical essays are the Chronicon Pistoiense and the Vita di Nicolò V.