Peter Sabinus

PETER SABINUS. - Humanist, disciple and colleague of Pomponio Leto (1429-98), he was a teacher of Greek and Latin letters in the Archiginnasio Romano, as appears from the roll of professors of 1514.

He is chiefly known as the author of an important epigraphic collection, composed toward the end of the 15th century. He was, one might say, the first to gather together and rescue from oblivion many Christian inscriptions, preserved in churches, public buildings and private dwellings; in a letter to Coccio Sabellico he observes that he had for the most part reproduced epitaphs seen and transcribed by himself and others taken from the collections of Ciriaco da Ancona (1319-1455) and of fra' Giocondo da Verona (1435-1515). The collection was dedicated in 1495 to Charles VIII, king of France, shortly after the invasion of Italy. A copy of the original collection is preserved in a codex of the Marciana (lat. X, 195, fols. 94-324), which contains: inscriptions of fra' Giocondo (fols. 1-93), the Sabinian collection divided into two parts: the first (fols. 94-274) of about twenty Christian inscriptions, besides many pagan ones from Italy and Rome, the second (fols. 235-324) of 245 inscriptions, all Christian. The collection was published by G. B. de Rossi, from a Marcian codex (X, 195), in Inscript. christ. urbis Romae septimo saeculo antiquiores, II, 1, Rome 1888, pp. 407-55.

Gioacchino Mancini