MOLZA, FRANCESCO MARIA. - Man of letters, born in Modena on 18 June 1489, died there on 28 Feb. 1544. In addition to Latin and Greek, he also knew Hebrew to some extent. Despite the excesses of an unbridled sensuality, he loved, with a humanist’s passion, the Rome of Giulio II and his successors. He belonged to almost all the academies, and perhaps took greater pleasure than in any other in that of the Vignaiuoli, together with Fiorenzuola, Berni, and Della Casa himself. He played a leading role in the notorious humanist corruption of Rome. He was one of the most characteristic figures of Rome, and thus of Italy; letters and memoirs attest this.
His Latin and vernacular poetry too was overrated by his contemporaries; yet, apart from the good intentions of Cardinal Farnese, at whose court he had been, it was published only two centuries later, in 1747, by Abbot Serassi. Four of his novellas had been published in 1459. His pastoral poem La nisfa tiberina is praised. In art as well, M. may be compared with his friend Firenzuola. Whether in verse or prose, both needed subjects that engaged nothing in them but the imagination. When something nevertheless had to be demanded of feeling, as in the Stanze per Giulia Gonzaga (not all of which are his) or in those on the death of Alvigi Gonzaga, even the imagination slackens. His epigrams and capitoli lack effectiveness. An unsuccessful humorist, M. is likewise so in his poem in praise of figs, which remained famous among men of letters because of Caro’s note. A genuine humanist, he may have valued his own Latin poems more highly, though in them he was little more than an imitator, especially of Tibullus. When Erasmus, in the Ciceronianus, seemed to admit certain Lutheran arguments against the piety of the humanists, M. reacted with an indignation in which everything may be disputed (perhaps even his right to express it), but not its sincerity.
MOMBAER, JAN (Ioannes de Bruxellis, Ioannes Mauburnus). - Monastic reformer and writer
M.’s external work was lofty and infused with a method of spiritual renewal whose doctrine is found in his printed or manuscript works: Rosetum, Venatorium, etc. A great scholar, essentially eclectic, positive, and practical, very reserved toward every form of mysticism, M. gathered everything that ecclesiastical literature transmitted concerning the practice of prayer, asceticism, and virtue, and formulated it in scalae, divisions, septenaries, diagrams, mnemonic verses, etc. Devotio moderna (v.), deformed by excessively mechanized and schematized tendencies, M. sought to sustain the intense effort of the interior life, but frightened the best intentions away with his rigidity, his verbalism, and his complexity. M.’s greatness lies in his work as an almost forgotten reformer, rather than in his writings, which are cited and praised more than they are savored or read. M. represents the spirituality of his time, with its possibilities and its shortcomings.