STEUCO, AGOSTINO. - Prelate and scholar, b. at Gubbio (hence the appellation Eugubinus) perhaps in 1497, d. at Venice in March 1548.
He was named 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 Kisamos (Crete) and prefect of the Vatican Library. Having then gone to Bologna to take part in the work of the Council transferred there from Trent, he died during a journey to Venice. A man of very vast culture, he made use of his knowledge of Hebrew in writings on biblical subjects: Recognitio veteris testamenti ad hebraicam veritatem, Venice 1529; Cosmopoeia... expositio trium capitum Genesis, Lyon 1535; Enarrationum in Psalmos pars I, ibid. 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). But his principal work is the 10 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 of Ficinian derivation 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, attempts to channel all the various currents, except Epicureanism, which he feels to be irreconcilable with the Christian faith. The ed. Opera omnia was made for the first time at Paris in 1577-78 and reprinted later at Venice in 1591 and in 1601.