STEUCO, AGOSTINO. - Prelate and scholar, born at Gubbio (whence the epithet *Eugubinus*) perhaps in 1497, died at Venice in March 1548.
He was called Guido before entering, as he did in 1513, the canons of S. Secondo. He then moved to the canonry of S. Antonio di Castello in Venice as librarian of the books donated by Cardinal Grimani. In 1529 he was at Reggio; then, after having been at Gubbio as prior of S. Secondo, he came to Rome and Paul III in 1538 appointed him Bishop of Kismaros (Crete) and Prefect of the Vatican Library. Having then gone to Bologna to take part in the Council’s work transferred there from Trent, he died during a journey to Venice. A man of vast learning, he made use of his knowledge of Hebrew in his writings on biblical subjects: *Recognitione veteris testamenti ad hebraicam veritatem*, Venice 1529; *Cosmopoeia... exposition trium capitum Genesis*, Lyons 1535; *Enarrationum in Psalmos pars I*, 1548; *Enarrationes in librum Job*, Venice 1567. He also wrote *Pro religione christiana adversus Luteranos* (Bologna 1530) and *Contra Laur. Vallam de falsa donatione Constantin* (Lyons 1547). But his principal work is the ten books *De perenni philosophia* (ibid. 1540), an attempt to interpret all ancient philosophy in the light of the Christian idea. His initial position is a Neoplatonism deriving from Ficino with some affinities to Pico della Mirandola; in reality he tends toward a broad syncretism which, in the idea of a *pia philosophia* slowly maturing through the centuries and fully realized in Scholasticism, seeks to reconcile all the various currents, except Epicureanism, which he finds irreconcilable with the Christian faith. The first edition of his *Opera omnia* was published in Paris in 1577–78 and then reprinted in Venice in 1591 and 1601.