MUZIO, GIROLAMO. — A man of letters and polemicist, who proclaimed himself Giustinopolitan after his place of origin (Capodistria), b. in Padua on 12 March 1496 to Cristoforo Nuzio (M. also altered the family surname), d. at Paneretta (Florence) in 1576.
The necessity of providing for himself compelled him to enter the service of various lords; he travelled in Italy, Germany, France, and Switzerland; he was with Alfonso d’Avalos, marquis del Vasto, then with Ferrante Gonzaga in Milan, with the dukes of Urbino at Pesaro and Urbino, and in Rome with Pius IV, from whom he received a pension; he married; he was a man of letters and a polymath of talent and varied learning. Only around 1550 did he begin to publish the first fruits of his abilities.
Passionate about questions of chivalry, he published a work on the Duel (1550), and later three dialogues on the Gentleman (1575); he wrote on language, in opposition to the principles of Varchi, and on poetry, and also composed poems, among them 35 Eclogues in versi sciolti; he printed an Epistolary (1551), and numerous other letters were published in recent times. He was also responsible for the edition of Tullia d’Aragona’s Dialogue on the Infinity of Love, to whose friendship he had remained faithful for twenty years. His religious polemic was of greater importance: almost unique in his time in this field, he was an effective and vigorous polemicist, although at times inclined 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 he wished to offer for it, led M. to publish in 1550, in four books, the Vergeriane, that is, the correspondence he had had with him and his friends in previous years, in order to refute his assertions (cf. P. Paschini, Pier Paolo Vergerio il Giovane, Rome 1925, p. 113 ff.). The outcome of this work led him in 1551 to publish the Mentite ochinione, collecting everything he had written after 1542 concerning Bernardino Ochino’s flight, in polemic with Ochino himself (cf. B. Nicolini, G. M. e Bernardino Ochino, in Biblio. Rivista di bibliografia, Naples 1946, p. 9 ff., where on p. 39 the most recent bibliography on M. is also found). Less important, however, was M.’s polemic with Francesco Betti, a Roman gentleman who, having fled to Basel in 1557, had sought by public proclamation to justify his action. Only in 1571 did he publish in Venice four books of Catholic Letters, written in previous years, in which, among other things, he showed sound judgment concerning the evils afflicting the Church. He also engaged in polemics with Bullinger and Viret.