TRISSINO, GIAN GIORGIO. — Man of letters, born at Vicenza on 8 July 1478, died at Rome on 8 December 1550. Combining his studies with the occupations of a courtier, he spent his life among courts and literary circles: at Milan (where in 1506 he studied Greek at the school of Demetrio Calcondila), Ferrara, Florence, Venice, Padua, and finally, in 1545, on the little island of Murano, where he was courted by the learned men of Venice.
A precursor of literary Aristotelianism, T. sought to ennoble the vernacular through the forms of Greek poetry. At Rome, where the Ciceronians and Virgilianists held sway, he wrote Sofonisba in 1515, a pedestrian imitation of Greek tragedy, whose spirit he failed to grasp; historically important, nevertheless, as the first example in Europe of a “regular” tragedy. With the same intention of a learned poet, he set himself to imitate the Iliad in a “regular” heroic poem, L'Italia liberata dai Goti, in monotonous and limp blank verse, which appeared in 1547–48, after twenty years of laborious work. In 1529 he published the first three parts of the Poetica, which were strictly grammatical in character; Part 4, like Parts 5 and 6, published posthumously in 1563, reflects the Aristotelian questions then under discussion. In matters of language, T. dreamed, with Dante, whose De vulgari eloquentia he was the first to publish in 1529, albeit in an inaccurate translation, of an illustrious vernacular: he wished to Hellenize the Italian language also through the introduction of new letters into the alphabet.
«TRISTES ERANT APOSTOLI.» — Hymn of Vespers and Matins for the Common of the Apostles during the Easter season, it derives from the ancient Benedictine tradition and is preserved in hymnals of Irish origin. The oldest manuscripts date from the ninth century.
It is a faithful narrative of the events that followed Christ’s death and are reported by the Evangelists: the Apostles’ despondency, their bewilderment, the message of the devout women, the journey to Galilee, and Christ’s appearance.