PATRIZI, FRANCESCO da CHERSO. - Scholar and philosopher, b. 25 April 1520, d. in Rome in February 1597. He studied in Venice, in Ingolstadt and from 1547 in Padua. In Spain he was tutor to the duke of Francavilla, viceroy of Catalonia. In 1577 he was summoned by Alfonso II d'Este to teach Platonic philosophy in Ferrara. In 1592, at the invitation of Clement VIII, his former fellow student, he moved to the University of Rome, where he remained until his death.

An eclectic spirit, with an epic poem, the Eridano (Ferrara 1558), in verses of 13 syllables, he exalted the Este family. As a philosopher he fought Aristotelianism to the point of invoking its condemnation from Gregory XIV. He refuted the distinction between history and poetry in the ten dialogues Della historia (Venice 1560): a notable work in the history of sixteenth-century historiographical theories; the concept of art as mimesis in the Discussiones peripateticae (part 1, Venice 1571; complete edition in 4 vols., Basel 1581) - a close philological and philosophical critique of Aristotelianism - and in the Trattato della poetica (Ferrara 1882), notable also for a polemical appendix against Tasso. He also wrote on the sciences, on military matters and on politics (La città felice, in Utopisti del '500 scelti e annotati da C. Curcio, Rome 1944). But his principal work is the Nova de universis philosophia (Ferrara 1591), a kind of Platonic-naturalistic synthesis that brings him close to Telesio, to Campanella, to Bruno, and where P. elaborates a theory of light of Neoplatonic stamp.

Bibliography7 works

BIBL.: O. Guerrini, Di F. P. e della rarissima edizione della sua «Nova Philosophia», in Il propagatore, 12 (1870), pp. 172, 230; A. Soleri, Lettere autobiner, di F. P., in Arch. stor. per Trieste, l'Istria e il Trentino, 3 (1884-86), pp. 276-80. On his relations with Tasso, v. O. Zenati, F. P., Orazio, Ariosto e Torquato Tasso (per nozze Morpurgo-Franchetti), Verona s. a. On his philosophical thought; F. Fiorentino, B. Telesio, ossia studi storici sull'idea della natura, ecc., I, pp. 364-414; II, Florence 1874, pp. 1-10, 375-91; P. Donazzolo, F. P. di Cherso erudito del sec. XVI, in Atti e memorie della Società istriana di archeologia e storia patria, 28 (1912), pp. 1-147. On the aesthetic problem; B. Croce, F. P. e la critica della retorica antica, in Problemi di estetica e contributi alla storia dell'estetica italiana, 2nd ed., Bari 1923, pp. 299-310. On the political problem: P. M. Arcari, Il pensiero politico di E. P. da Cherso, Rome 1935; L. Firpo, Filosofia italiana e controriforma, in Riv. di filos., 41 (1950), pp. 159-73.

Gioacchino Paparelli

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Patrizi, Francesco da Cherso

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