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Florentius Volusenus


Florentius Volusenus (c. 1504 – 1546 or 1547) was a Scottish humanist most noted for his De Animi Tranquillitate. "Florentius Volusenus" is a latinization of uncertain derivation; his first name is variously suggested as Florence or Florens, and surname as Wolson, Wolsey, or Wilson. In his letters written in English he refers to himself as Volusene.

He was born near Elgin, studied Philosophy at Aberdeen, and in the dialogue De Animi Tranquillitate says that the description of the abode of tranquillity was based on a dream that came to him after a conversation with a fellow-student on the banks of his native River Lossie. He was then a student of Philosophy of four years' standing.

Proceeding to Paris, he became tutor to Thomas Wynter, reputed son of Cardinal Wolsey. He paid repeated visits to England, where he was well received by the king, and, after Wolsey's fall, he acted as one of Thomas Cromwell's agents in Paris. He was in England as late as 1534, and appears to have been Rector of Speldhurst in Kent.

In Paris he knew George Buchanan, and found patrons in the cardinal Jean de Lorraine and Jean du Bellay. He was to have gone with du Bellay on his mission to Italy in 1535, but illness kept him in Paris. As soon as he recovered he set out on his journey, but at Avignon, by the advice of his friend Antonio Bonvisi (d. 1558), he sought the patronage of the bishop of the diocese, the learned and pious Paul Sadolet, who made him master in the school at Carpentras, with a salary of seventy crowns. Volusenus paid frequent visits to Lyon (where Conrad Gesner saw him, still a young man, in 1540), probably also to Italy, where he had many friends, perhaps even to Spain. A letter addressed to him by Sadolet from Rome in 1546 shows that he had then resolved to return to Scotland, and had asked advice on the attitude he should adopt in the religious dissensions of the time. He died on the journey, however, at Vienne in Dauphiné, in 1546, or early in the next year.


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