MARISILIA, LUGI. - Augustinian, humanist, b. in Florence c. 1342, d. there 21 Aug. 1394. Having obtained a doctorate in theology at Paris, after extensive travels in Italy and France he returned to Florence in 1379, where his confreres elected him superior of the province of Pisa and the Signoria entrusted him with honorable assignments. He twice requested from Boniface VIII the nomination as bishop of Florence, but in vain, as he was disliked because he had written invectives against the customs of the Avignonese court and upheld the rights of national churches.
His broad classical learning made him the guiding spirit of the Florentine revival in the second half of the 14th century. Giovanni da Prato speaks of him in his novel, describing the part he played in the gatherings of Count Carlo di Poppi in Casentino and at the villa Paradiso degli Alberti near Florence (cf. Vessolofsky, op. cit. in bibl.); Petrarch, his friend, addressed a letter to him when he had donned the Augustinian habit (Seniles, XIV, vi) and again in 1373, accompanying the gift of a manuscript of the Confessions of St. Augustine, which had previously belonged to another Augustinian, Dionigi da Borgo S. Sepolcro (Seniles, XV, vii). Florence’s finest minds called him father and master, gathering around him in the convent of S. Spirito to discuss difficult and unusual questions. The Signoria had a monument erected to him in S. Maria del Fiore.