VEGIO, MAFFEO. – Humanist, born in Lodi in 1407, died in Rome before 29 June 1458; he was buried in the chapel of S. Monica in the church of S. Agostino.
At Pavia, where he had gone to study law, he met Valla and Panormita and turned to the study of the classics. Among the poets he preferred Virgil and even wrote a Supplementum to the Aeneid (1427), which ended with the Trojan hero’s assumption into Olympus. He also composed epigrams, elegies, mythological and epic poems (Astyanax, 1430; Velleris aurei libri IV, 1430, etc.), as well as an important little dictionary of legal terms elucidating the Digest (De verborum significatione, 1433). Unable to find a position in Lombardy, he entered the service of the Papal Curia and followed its peregrinations in the offices of datary and abbreviator. At Bologna, in 1437, he completed the poem Antoniados libri IV, begun already at Pavia and inspired by episodes from the life of s. Antonio abate; it is a typical example of that recreation of ancient epic in a Christian sense, which constitutes one of the most fervent themes of humanist literature, and at the same time a foreshadowing of the conversion that was to take place in him, above all through the influence of the Confessioni of s. Agostino. In 1443 he was appointed by Eugenio IV a canon of S. Pietro. In 1455 he entered the Augustinians, and devoted his final years to the cult of the Saint of Hippo and of s. Monica, years made serene by the reading of the Psalmi, which in his youth he himself had judged suitable for old age. Documents of the religious fervor that
The educationalist. - The pedagogical work of V., in 6 books, one of the finest and most Christian produced by Humanism, De liberorum educatione clarisque eorum moribus, written between 1445 and 1448, reflects all the beneficial effects of his conversion, which had taken place about 10 years earlier.
Indeed, while it embraces the entire educational process, from the prenatal period and the physical care of rearing up to the higher levels of instruction, he aims at forming the perfect and complete citizen; he therefore insists not only on the humanistic element, insofar as he wants it to be adorned with the culture drawn from the classics, but also, and more emphatically, on the spiritual and Christian element, in which, better than other humanists, he recognizes the principle of a higher moral requirement and the consequent respect for the human person. His sources are therefore the classics: Quintilian and Plutarch, but also s. Girolamo’s letter to Leta, and teachings drawn from Scripture and the Fathers, especially s. Agostino.
In Book I V. speaks of the duties of parents: physical care during pregnancy and nursing, which should not be entrusted to a wet nurse except in cases of extreme necessity; possession and practice of the principles of sound eugenics toward children, so that they may grow strong, hardened to toil and pain, sensitive to duty, stimulated more by love than by fear, although punishments too, when necessary, have their own beneficial efficacy; good example and restraint in words and conversation. In Book II he deals with teachers (public schools are to be preferred to private ones because of the stimulus of emulation; study of the character and abilities of the pupils for a better adaptation of the
materials; recourse from time to time to the method of mutual instruction) and the subjects of study (among the pagan classics, Homer, Cicero, Sallust, Aesop, with preference given to Virgil; the lyric and elegiac poets, which are too suggestive, excluded; certain books of Holy Scripture, especially the Psalms, Proverbs, and Wisdom; but above all self-instruction and creativity through declamations, oral and written critical expositions of the authors, and memory exercises). Book III deals with education (study of inclinations toward the various branches of knowledge; the dangers of self-sufficiency; the educational value of music, drawing, gymnastics, which provides relief and development for the body; games; and philosophy, understood as moral philosophy). Particularly noteworthy is V.’s thinking concerning female education: the more gifted girls should be encouraged to pursue the higher studies; and for them too, as for young men, music, drawing, gymnastics, play, and philosophy have formative value. The final 3 books speak of «verecondia», regarded as a fundamental virtue, which embraces at once modesty and decorum in conduct, reverence toward God, and tact and delicacy toward one’s neighbor.
The second part of his life is dominated entirely by the De perseverantia religionis, composed in 1448 for a nun sister, and the De rebus memorabilibus Basilicae S. Petri (1453-57), which applies to Christian archaeology the methods followed by Poggio and Biondo for ancient Rome.
V. is an outstanding representative of that humanistic current which, fusing the classical ideal with the Christian ideal, finds in the accord between sacred and profane letters the secret of every higher spiritual formation.