NICCOLI, NICCOLÒ

NICCOLI, NICCOLÒ. - Humanist, b. in Firenze in 1364, d. there on 3 February 1437. An indefatigable seeker of manuscripts, he vied with his Florentine friends in reconstructing the heritage of classical culture. He was among the first to copy a rare Plautine manuscript owned by Card. Orsini; among other things, he transcribed Petrarca’s Africa, and succeeded in assembling a library of approximately 800 volumes, which at his death Cosimo de' Medici rescued from the creditors and placed in the convent of S. Marco. He left no writings: he had the singular destiny of living vividly in the works of his humanist friends. Poggio often recalls him («vir in dicendo liber») and chose him as the protagonist of the De nobilitate, to have him assert the true human nobility, which lies in personal virtue. Bruni reported some of his judgments and presented him as an elegant and skilful detractor and admirer of Dante, Petrarca, and Boccaccio in the dialogues Ad Petrum Histrum, almost as though to make him embody the age’s complex attitude toward the three great Trecento writers. But perhaps the most significant task in humanist thought was entrusted to him by Valla in the third book of the De voluptate (1431): here N. passionately indicates in the spirit of the Christian religion the overcoming of pagan philosophies (Stoicism and Epicureanism). On the religious death of N., V. Pastor, I, p. 17.