STEUCO, AGOSTINO. — Prelate and scholar, born in
Gubbio (hence the appellation Eugubinus), perhaps in 1497, died in Venice in March 1548.
His name was Guido before he entered, as he did in 1513, among the canons of S. Secondo. He then moved to the canons’ residence of S. Antonio di Castello in Venice as librarian of the books donated by Cardinal Grimani. In 1529 he was in Reggio; then, after having been in Gubbio as prior of S. Secondo, he came to Rome, and in 1538 Paul III appointed him bishop of Kisamos (Crete) and prefect of the Vatican Library. He subsequently went to Bologna to participate in the work of the Council transferred there from Trent, and died during a journey to Venice. A man of exceptionally broad learning, he made use of his knowledge of Hebrew in his writings on biblical subjects: Recognitio veteris testamenti ad hebraicam veritatem, Venice 1529; Cosmopoeia... expositio trium capitum Genesis, Lyon 1535; Enarrationum in Psalmos pars I, there 1548; Enarrationes in librum Job, Venice 1567. He also wrote Pro religione christiana adversus Luteranos (Bologna 1530) and Contra Laur. Vallam de falsa donatione Constantini (Lyon 1547). His principal work, however, is the ten-book De perenni philosophia (there 1540), an attempt to interpret the whole of ancient philosophy in the light of the Christian idea. His initial position is a Neoplatonism derived from Ficino, with some affinity to Pico della Mirandola; in reality, he tends toward a broad syncretism which, in the idea of a pia philosophia slowly matured over the centuries and fully realized by Scholasticism, seeks to bring together all the various currents, with the exception of Epicureanism, which he felt to be irreconcilable with the Christian faith. The ed. Opera omnia was first produced in Paris in 1577–78 and subsequently reprinted in Venice in 1591 and 1601.