Lorenzo Guilelmo Traversagni

Lorenzo Guilielmo Traversagni (also Wilhelmus Zaphonensis, born May 1, 1425 in Savona ; † probably end of 1503 ibid) was an Italian Franciscan who emerged as the author of rhetorical and spiritual writings.

Life

Lorenzo was the son of the nobleman Giacomo Traversagni. He had at least two brothers, Giovanni Antonio and Aleramo, who were also writers. At the age of about 20 he joined the Franciscans in his hometown. Since 1448 he has been studying in Padua , later also in Bologna with the later Pope Sixtus IV.

A doctrine of letters that he wrote at the University of Vienna , now as a teacher himself, for his student Johannes Zobell, was first distributed by hand and then printed in Cologne, Paris, Leipzig, Lyon and Krakow. In 1460 he preached in Avignon and Toulouse, where he dedicated a text Semita recta ad montem salutis to the archbishop . Apparently he studied canon law at the university there , while teaching rhetoric there himself. In 1468 and 1469 he lived in Noli , Italy , from 1476 to around 1482 he taught in Cambridge , where, among other things, the teaching of Margarita eloquentiae sacrae arose, but in between he also taught at the Collège de Narbonne in Paris in 1480 and worked in Bruges at the end of 1482 , then he lived in London for a long time . It was not until 1487 that he retired to the convent in his hometown, where he was last recorded in September 1503.

Works

His work, which is only partially printed, shows Traversagni as a humanist :

• De conficiendis epistolis (Paris ca.1478)
• Epitoma Margaritae castigatae eloquentiae (Westminster ca.1478)
• Rhetorica nova (Westminster ca.1480)

Before his death, he revised and edited numerous other manuscripts, especially theological ones, for a future print edition, which was omitted. Most of his handwritten estate is in the Vatican , Savona, London , Vienna and Klosterneuburg .

literature

• José Ruysschaert: Lorenzo Guilelmo Traversagni de Savone (1425–1503), un humaniste Franciscain oublié, in: Archivum Franciscanum historicum, Volume 46, 1953, pp. 195–210.
• Karl Großmann: The early days of humanism in Vienna up to Celti's appointment in 1497, in: Yearbook for Regional Studies of Lower Austria , New Series, Volume 22, 1929, pp. 150–325, especially pp. 229–235 ( PDF on ZOBODAT ).