Muzio, Girolamo

MUZIO, GIROLAMO. - Scholar and polemicist, who proclaimed himself a Giustinopolitan from his native city (Capodistria), b. in Padua on 12 March 1496 to Cristoforo Nuzio (M. also modified the family surname), d. at Paneretta (Florence) in 1576.

The need to provide for himself forced him to enter the service of various lords; he traveled in Italy, Germany, France, Switzerland; he was with Alfonso d'Avalos, Marquis of Vasto, then with Ferrante Gonzaga in Milan, at the courts of the dukes of Urbino in Pesaro and Urbino, in Rome with Pius IV, from whom he received a pension; he took a wife; he was a scholar and polygraph of talent and varied learning. Only around 1550 did he begin to give to the press the first proofs of his talent.

Passionate about chivalric questions, he published a work on the Duello (1550), later three dialogues on the Gentiluomo (1575); he wrote on language, in opposition to the principles of Varchi, on poetry and also composed poems, among them 35 Egloghe in blank verse; he printed an Epistolario (1551) and numerous other letters were published in recent times. To him is also owed the edition of the Dialogo dell'infinità d'amore by Tullia d'Aragona, to whose friendship he had been faithful for twenty years. Greater importance had his religious polemic: almost unique in his time in this field, he was an effective and vigorous polemicist, though sometimes led to go too far both in his judgments and in his suspicions. The flight to Switzerland of Pier Paolo Vergerio, bishop of Capodistria (May 1549), and the excuses that he wished to offer for it, induced M. to publish in 1550, in four books, Le Vergeriane, that is, the correspondence he had had in the preceding years with him and his friends, in order to refute his assertions (cf. P. Paschini, Pier Paolo Vergerio il Giovane, Rome 1925, p. 113 ff.). The outcome of this work induced him in 1551 to publish the Mentite ochinione, gathering together what after 1542 he had written concerning the flight of Bernardino Ochino in polemic with him himself (cf. B. Nicolini, G. M. e Bernardino Ochino, in Biblio. Rivista di bibliografia, Naples 1946, p. 9 ff., where on p. 39 there is also the most recent bibliography on M.). Of lesser importance, on the other hand, is M.'s polemic with Francesco Betti, a Roman gentleman, who, having fled to Basel in 1557 with a public proclamation, had wished to justify his step. Only in 1571 did he publish in Venice four books of Lettere catholiche, written in the preceding years, in which, among other things, he showed that he saw rightly concerning the evils afflicting the Church. He also polemicized with Bullinger and Viret.

Pio Paschini