Bartolomeo Platina

Pope Sixtus IV appoints Platina Prefect of the Vatican Library . Fresco by Melozzo da Forlì

The beginning of Platina's preface to his papal chronicle De vita Christi ac omnium pontificum in the dedication copy for Pope Sixtus IV, the manuscript Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. Lat. 2044, fol. 1r

The beginning of the first book of accounts that Platina wrote as papal librarian (autograph). Rome, Archivio di Stato, Camerale I, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana 1497, fol. 2r

Platina's treatise De honesta voluptate et valetudine in Italian translation in an incunabulum printed in 1494

Von der Eerlichē zimlichen / also permitted Wolust des leibs 1542

Bartolomeo Platina (actually Bartolomeo Sacchi ; * 1421 in Piadena [Latin Platina ] near Cremona ; † September 21, 1481 in Rome ) was an Italian humanist and librarian.

Platina studied in Mantua from 1449 . In 1453 he became the teacher of Ludovico Gonzaga's children . In 1457 he moved to Florence and in 1462 to Rome . Pope Sixtus IV appointed him in 1475 with the bull Ad decorem militantis Ecclesiae as the first librarian of the more modern Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (in the picture by Melozzo da Forlì Platina is shown kneeling).

On behalf of the Pope, Platina wrote a papal chronicle that was later valued by Catholics and Protestants alike, and which has a high source value, especially in the representation of its own time. It first appeared in print in 1479. This chronicle contains, among other things, the incorrect claim that John VIII was not a Pope, but Popess Joan . In 1580 the chronicle was placed on the index of the Catholic Church. It was translated into German by the Strasbourg reformer Kaspar Hedio as early as 1546 and printed on Martin Luther together with the first German translation of Philipp Melanchthon's funeral oration.

His work De honesta voluptate et valetudine , which is considered the first cookbook of the Renaissance, was published in Venice in 1474 and a year later in Rome . The bestseller, which has been translated into numerous languages, contains cooking instructions and recommendations for designing a household.

Editions and translations

• Maria Grazia Blasio (Ed.): Bartholomaei Platynae De falso et vero bono. Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, Rome 1999, ISBN 88-87114-31-5 (critical edition)
• Mary Ella Milham (Ed.): Platina: On Right Pleasure and Good Health. Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, Tempe (Arizona) 1998, ISBN 0-86698-208-6 (critical edition of De honesta voluptate et valetudine with English translation)
• Anthony F. D'Elia (Ed.): Bartolomeo Platina: Lives of the Popes. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Massachusetts) 2008 ff. (Latin text and English translation)
  • Volume 1: Antiquity , 2008, ISBN 978-0-674-02819-7

literature

• Stefan Bauer:  Platina, Bartolomeo. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 22, Bautz, Nordhausen 2003, ISBN 3-88309-133-2 , Sp. 1098-1103.
• Stefan Bauer: The Censorship and Fortuna of Platina's Lives of the Popes in the Sixteenth Century. Brepols, Turnhout 2006, ISBN 978-2-503-51814-5 (with detailed biography)
• Bauer, Stefan (2017), "SACCHI, Bartolomeo, detto il Platina", in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani , 89 (2017), pp. 472-475

Web links

Commons : Bartolomeo Platina  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Bartolomeo Platina in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Bartolomeo Platina  in the German Digital Library
• Digitized by De honesta voluptate from 1517 Bayerische Staatsbibliothek