PANVINIO, ONOFRIO. — Erudite historian, born in Verona on 23 February 1530, died in Palermo on 27 April 1568. He entered the Hermits of St. Augustine in 1544, where he changed his baptismal name, Giacomo, to Onofrio. The superior general Seripando took him with him in May 1545. In 1549–50 he was in Rome, where he wrote: Augustiniani Ordinis chronicon, from St. Augustine to 1550. There he formed friendships with the most distinguished scholars in the erudite circles of his age: Antonio Agustin, Ottavio Pantagato, Pier Vettori, Achille Maffei, Gentile Delfino, Annibal Caro, Guglielmo Sirleto, Latino Latini, and especially Cardinal Marcello Cervini, protector of the Order.
In 1553 he obtained permission to live outside the Order and stayed at the court of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. He left Rome with him in June 1556, travelled through Venice and Verona, and joined him at Parma in September. In August 1559, travelling through Mantua, Verona, and Bressanone, he reached the Emperor Ferdinando at Augsburg. On learning of the death of Paolo IV, he returned to Rome by way of Verona at the beginning of September, but did not enter the conclave as a conclavist until Christmas Eve. In 1568 he accompanied Cardinal Farnese on his journey to Sicily and died in Palermo; a monument in the church of S. Agostino in Rome commemorates him for posterity.
P. is the true type of the scholar who seeks to return to the most reliable documentation of antiquity in both the sacred and profane spheres, gathering an extraordinarily vast body of materials and observations. He compiled a collection of 3,000 inscriptions, a critical list: Romani Pontifices et cardinales S. R. E. ecc. (Venice 1557); Magistratum aliquot populi Romani a Romulo rege ad Carolum V (there 1557 and 1558); In quinque Fastorum libros commentarii (there 1558); Republiose Romanorum libri tres (there 1558); Romanorum principum libri III (Basel 1558); De comitis imperatoris liber (there 1558); De antiquis Romanorum nominibus (Venice 1558), dedicated to Caro. In Rome, in 1565, he published Ornatisimi triumphi... uti imperatores Romani triumphaverunt, and in 1568 the following works appeared at Cologne: De sacrorum cleri Ordinum libri and De ritu sepeliendi mortuos apud veteres christianos eorumque coemeteris. The following remained in manuscript: De varia Romani Pontificis creatione libri X, and numerous notes that he took while studying and visiting the Roman basilicas and churches; among these, those concerning the Lateran buildings were also published (cf. Ph. Lauer, Le palais de Latran, Paris 1911, pp. 410–90). In 1562 his life of Paolo IV appeared, and from 1562 to 1568 that of Pio IV, in successive editions modified by him in accordance with his differing states of mind. De creatione Pii IV papae, together with the life of the Pontiff, is also found in Concilii Tridentini, Diariorum, ed. Seb. Merkle, part II, Freiburg im Breisgau 1911, pp. 575–601. On the historical value of this biography cf. Pastor, VII, p. 652 ff.