L'huomo di lettere

L'huomo di lettere difeso ed emendato (Rome, 1645) by the Ferrarese Jesuit Daniello Bartoli (1608-1685) is a two-part treatise on the man of letters bringing together material he had assembled over twenty years since his entry in 1623 into the Society of Jesus as a brilliant student, a successful teacher of rhetoric and a celebrated preacher. His international literary success with this work led to his appointment in Rome as the official historiographer of the Society of Jesus and his Istoria della Compagnia di Gesù (1650-1673).

The entire patrimony of classical rhetoric was centered around the figure of the Ciceronian Orator, the vir bonus dicendi peritus of Quintillian as the ideal combination of moral values and eloquence. In Jesuit terms this dual ideal becomes santità e lettere for membership in the emerging Republic of Letters. Bartoli confidently asserts the validity of this model represented in his huomo di lettere. In his introduction Bartoli bases his two part presentation on a quote from Quintillian and offers a cameo of Anaxagoras enlightening the ignorant on the cause of an eclipse of the sun. Part I defends the man of letters against the neglect of rulers and fortune and make him a conduit of an intellectual beatitude, il gusto dell'intendere, that is the basis of his moral and social Ataraxia. He develops his theme of Stoic superiority under two headings, La Sapienza felice anche nelle Miserie and L'Ignoranza misera anche nelle Felicità with regular reference to the Epistulae morales ad Lucilium of Seneca, and exempla taken from Diogenes Laertius, Plutarch, Pliny, Aelian, with frequent quotations, often unsourced, from Virgil and the poets, and headed by Augustine and Tertullian and Synesius among the Christian writers. Part II seeks to emend the faults of the present day writer in 9 chapters under the headings, Ladroneccio, Lascivia, Maldicenza, Alterezza, Dapoccaggine, Imprudenza, Ambitione, Avarizia, Oscurita. He calls on more modern authors in these chapters, such as Oviedo, Erasmus and Cardanus. The final chapter takes particular aim at excesses of the precious baroque style then in vogue and encourages the beginner to profit from the ars rhetorica expounded by Cicero in style and composition. His paraenesis combines a stream of classical exampla with modern instances of the great Italian explorers, such as his heroes in geography, Columbus, and astronomy, Galileo, and lively references to the modern tradition of Italian letters from Dante, his favorite, to Ariosto and Tasso.

...
Wikipedia