Giovanni Tortelli

Giovanni Tortelli, De orthographia , autograph . Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vaticanus lat. 1478, fol. 61r (top) and 256r (bottom)

Page from Vocabularius optimus Gemma vocabulorum merito dictus Quia duobus milibus optimorum vocabulorum maior est priori gemmula et multo correctior .

Giovanni Tortelli (* around 1400 probably in Arezzo ; † before April 26, 1466 probably in Rome ) was an Italian humanist .

Giovanni Tortelli had first contact with the humanistic culture of the city of Florence in his childhood. In particular, he developed an interest in Greek, which he learned with Carlo Marsuppini and Francesco Filelfo . From 1435 to 1437 he stayed with Vittorino da Feltre in Mantua for humanistic studies. In 1433 he was appointed to a professorship at the studio in Florence. From 1435 to 1437 he stayed in Constantinople to study and deepen the Greek language . In 1445 he became a doctor of theology in Bologna . From 1450 to 1455 he was the librarian of the library of Nicholas V , from which the Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana developed. In 1453 he became abbot in comenda of the monastery of San Sebastiano in Alatri . He had the old walls renewed and then spent most of the rest of his life there.

Tortelli was a friend of Lorenzo Valla , both of whom were pioneers in the study of the Latin language. He benefited from the extensive knowledge of the ancient authors known at the time. His main work, dedicated to Nicholas V, was the Commentariorum grammaticorum de orthographia dictionum e graecis tractarum opus , in which he offered a list of Latin words with their origins in Greek. In the Proömium he laid out his view of a desired renewal of language as the basis for a cultural renewal emanating from the papal court. The work had an immense influence and was considered to be complementary to Vallas Elegantiae linguae Latinae . Valla dedicated his writing to Tortelli. He also wrote De medicina et medicis, a small medical paper. His treatise on Cornucopiae sive linguae latinae commentarii Niccolò Perottis, which was published at least 17 times, was also very influential .

Fonts

• Commentariorum grammaticorum de orthographia dictionum e graecis tractarum opus. Rome 1471
• Vocabularius optimus Gemma vocabulorum merito dictus Quia duobus milibus optimorum vocabulorum maior est priori gemmula et multo correctior. 1495
• Aretini Orthographia. Ioannis Tortelii Lima quaedam per Georgium Vallam tractatum de orthographia. 1501
• Catholicon, seu Universale vocabularium ac summa grammatices F. Johannis Genuensis ... nuper a magistro Petro Egidio ex parte auctum et recognitum, ac nunc demum ab Jodoco Badio Ascensio ... Accessit ... quem Cornucopiam dicunt, Calepino. 1514
• Della medicina e dei medici = De medicina et medicis = On medicine and physicians, ed. and translated by Luigi Belloni and Dorothy M. Schullian, Milan 1954.

literature

• Girolamo Mancini: Giovanni Tortelli cooperatore di Niccolò V nel fondare la Biblioteca Vaticana. In: Archivio Storico Italiano . Volume 78, 1920, pp. 1-108.
• Gemma Donati: L'Orthographia di Giovanni Tortelli. Centro Interdipartimentale di Studi Umanistici, Messina 2006, ISBN 88-87541-31-0 ( review in Bryn Mawr Classical Review ).
• Christoph Pieper: Tortelli, Giovanni. In: Peter Kuhlmann , Helmuth Schneider (Hrsg.): History of the ancient sciences. Biographical Lexicon (= The New Pauly . Supplements. Volume 6). Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2012, ISBN 978-3-476-02033-8 , Sp. 1226 f.

Web links

Commons : Giovanni Tortelli  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Tortelli, Giovanni (1400? -1466)