ZENO, Apostle. - Historian, poet, b. in Venice on 11 Dec. 1668, d. there on 11 Nov. 1750.
He lived entirely devoted to his studies. Famous in Venice were his Library and his Museum, where he gathered the fruit of his erudite research. From 1719 to 1731 he resided in Vienna, succeeding Pietro Pariati as "poet and historian to His Imperial Majesty" the emperor Charles VI. In 1710 he had founded the Giornale dei letterati d'Italia, gathering around himself poets, scholars and erudites. Testimony to his vast learning are the 4 vols. of history that he added to the work of Fr. Antonio Foresti: the Mappamondo istorico, the biographies of Sabellico, of Guarino, of Davila, of the three Manuzi; the corrections, observations and additions to the Dissertazioni Vossiane on the Italian historians who wrote in Latin, the most useful notes to the Biblioteca dell'Eloquenza italiana of Archbishop G. Fontanini, his researches in numismatics and literary history, his Lettere (edited by J. Morelli, Venice 1785, 6 vols.). To Muratori he ceded the material he had collected on the Italian historians of the Middle Ages. He composed 60 musical dramas: Andromaca, Temistocle, Merupe, Eumene, Alessandro Severo (Poesie, Drammi, Melodrammi, edited by G. Gozzi, ibid. 1744, 10 vols.), drawing inspiration from the Greek, Spanish and French tragedians, and he reduced melodrama within fixed rules. To his poetic output belong the Poesie sacre drammatiche (ibid. 1735), sung in the imperial chapel of Vienna: 16 oratorios, intended not for staging but for singing alone, among which: Sisara, Tobia, Giuseppe, Davide, Isaia, Il Battista, Gionata, Daniello, La Gerusalemme convertita, Gesù presentato nel Tempio. Benedetto Marcello set the Giooz to music; Alessandro Scarlatti made use of his "librettos".
Z. is buried in Venice, beside the church of S. Francesco della Vigna; the epitaph, placed by the Dominican Fathers, expresses gratitude to the poet and the historian, "religione, morum suavitate, eruditione multiplici praestantissimo".
Bibliography6 works
Giovanni Fallani