PERTICARI, Giulio. — Man of letters, born at Savi-gnano (Rimini) on 15 Aug. 1779, died at S. Costanzo (Pesaro) on 26 June 1822. Son-in-law and collaborator of Monti, he was close to him in the controversy of the Classicists against the Romantics, which P. developed in the Giornale arcadico of Rome, and in that on the language.
His two most famous works (Degli scrittori del Trecento e dei loro imitatori, 1818, and Dell'amor patrio di Dante, e del suo libro intorno il Volgare Eloquio, 1820) were included in the 7 vols. of Monti’s Proposta (v.). In them P. upheld a composite language not only in space but also in time, advocating with an incipient historicist sense the need to admit into the Italian language those words which had entered it in the course of its scholarly life. The passion for erudition, which is a fundamental characteristic of P., then led him, in contradiction to his proclaimed classicism, to turn his mind to studies of Provençal language and literature, following in the footsteps of Raynouard, and to the collection of Spanish romances edited by Depping, as well as to various studies on the language and literature of Italian of the 12th and 13th centuries.
His attitude towards Catholicism is not a dominant problem in his spiritual life, but in so far as it is an attitude towards the papacy it appears connected with his ideal inclinations as a politician and also as a humanist. Indeed, from the celebration of the return of Pius VII to Rome in the Montian-style cantica Il prigioniero apostolico, he passed to an “amor patrio” of Italian inspiration arising from his disappointment at the failure to realise the ideals he had dreamed of. This national sentiment, which nourished with negative or fruitful results his most famous critical works, also took on an anti-curial character. Traces of this tendency have been seen, besides in explicit declarations by P. and in the testimonies of contemporaries, in certain manifestations of his philological output, as always happened with him, such as his vernacular translations of eclogues and epistles of Petrarch inspired by similar sentiments, and a life of Cola di Rienzo dedicated to Guglielmo Pepe.