Guido Panciroli - Misplaced Pages

For the Catholic Cardinal, see Giovanni Giacomo Panciroli. Italian jurist, professor, historian and antiquarian

Guido Panciroli
Guido Panciroli – Oil painting, an artist in the circle of Tintoretto
Born	17 April 1523 Reggio Emilia, Italy
Died	5 March 1599 (aged 75) Padova, Italy
Nationality	Italian
Education	University of Ferrara
Occupation(s)	Jurist, law professor, historian, and antiquarian

Guido Panciroli or Pancirolli (17 April 1523 – 5 March 1599) was a sixteenth-century Italian antiquarian, historian, jurist and law professor at Ferrara, Padua and Turin. In his time he was renowned as a legal scholar, teaching students who came from all around Europe. Posthumously, he was well known for his innovative comparative survey, Rerum memorabilium, iam olim deperditarum, that brought attention to the loss of knowledge since the ancient world.

Biography

Panciroli was born in Reggio Emilia on 17 April 1523, son of the jurist Alberto Panciroli. In his youth he received a humanist classical education and in 1540 he went to Ferrara to study law. He graduated on the 25 October 1547 and held a teaching position in Padua. In 1570 he moved to Turin to teach.

He was patronized by the Duke of Savoy, Emmanuel Philibert, teaching in civil law and receiving a very healthy salary of 1000 scudi. Panciroli distinguished himself by introducing his humanistic and historical knowledge into the study of jurisprudence. Near the end of his life he was requested by Pope Gregory XIV and Clement VIII to be the auditor of the Rota, though he refused.

Panciroli published many works in his lifetime and many of his unpublished manuscripts, such as the Rerum memorabilium, circulated widely in Europe and became very influential. Aside from the Rerum memorabilium, Panciroli's De claris legum interpretibus libri quatuor was an influential and ambitious early history of classical and medieval jurisprudence. Though it was not entirely accurate, it was the most complete history available to a scholar at the time and became very influential in legal circles.

Panciroli died in Padova on 5 March 1599. He had a solemn and well attended public funeral. His nephew, Ottavio, wrote a short biography of him in 1637.

Rerum memorabilium, iam olim deperditarum

The Rerum memorabilium was first commissioned by Panciroli's patron, Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, who commissioned it to show (in Panciroli's words from the book's dedication) "the majesty and grandeur, the glory and greatness of the whole universe versed in those secrets". The Rerum memorabilium was first written in Italian, though it wasn't published in its original language until 1612. It was first published and translated into Latin by Panciroli's student, Heinrich Salmuth, in 1599 and 1602. In this version it received most attention, being that Latin was the lingua franca of Europe at the time. The book spread rapidly through Europe. It was translated into French in 1617 by Pierre de la Noue, partially translated into English by Henry Peacham in 1638, and later fully translated in 1715.

The Rerum memorabilium attempted to catalogue the wisdom and knowledge that had been lost from ancient civilisations which Panciroli named deperdita (things lost). Notably, this survey focused on (in its deperdita) subjects in natural philosophy, alchemy and medicine that had been lost since from the ancient world, focusing less on immaterial philosophical, institutional and, religious ideas that had been lost. This had a great influential on Renaissance writers as it inspired a rebirth of study into classical works of technology and science, rediscovering this deperdita, in opposition to the Medieval focus on ancient philosophy. According to historian of science Vera Keller, this inspired Renaissance writers like Francis Bacon, Jakob Bornitz and Thomas Hobbes into the study of study desiderata (things wanted) such as immortality and universal language - with much of Pancirola's deperdita appearing on popular seventeenth-century 'wish-lists' of desiderata.

Works

De Magistratibus Municipalibus, et Corporibus artificum
De quatuordecim regionibus Urbis Romae, earumdemque aedificiis tam publicis, quam privatis
De Rebus Bellicis
Rerum historicarum patriae suae libri octo
De claris legum interpretibus (in Latin). Venice: Marco Antonio Brogiollo. 1637.
De claris iurisconsultis
Thesaurus variarum lectionum utriusque iuris
Rerum memorabilium, iam olim deperditarum et contra recens atque ingeniose inventarum libri duo
Raccolta breve d’alcune cose più segnalate ch’ebbero gli antichi, e d’alcune altre trovate dai moderni

Livre premier des antiquitez perdues, et si au vif representées par la plume

The History of Many Memorable Things Lost, which Were in Use Among the Ancients
Consiliorum siue responsorum iuris d. Guidi Panciroli Regiensis
Civilium iudiciorum praxis sive Ordo iudiciarius

References

Notes

Also called Guidi, Guidus, Pancirollus and Panziroli in older publications

Citations

"Entourage de Jacopo ROBUSTI, dit le TINTORET, Portrait du jurisconculte Guido Panciroli, tableau" [Circle of Jacopo Robusti, also known as Tintoretto. Portrait of jurist Guido Panciroli, painting]. Cerca Trova: Fine Art. Retrieved 23 February 2019.
^ Rossi, Giovanni (2014). "PANCIROLI, Guido". Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani. Vol. 80.
Woolfson, Jonathan (1998). Padua and the Tudors: English Students in Italy, 1485-1603. James Clarke & Co. pp. 47–50. doi:10.3138/9781442678217. ISBN 9781442678217.
^ Keller, Vera (2015). Knowledge and the Public Interest, 1575–1725. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781316273227. ISBN 9781316273227.
^ Keller, Vera (2012). "Accounting for Invention: Guido Pancirolli's Lost and Found Things and the Development of Desiderata". Journal of the History of Ideas. 73 (2): 223–245. doi:10.1353/jhi.2012.0019. S2CID 53994816.
^ Panciroli, Guido (1715). The History of Many Memorable Things Lost, which Were in Use Among the Ancients. London: J. Morphew.
Panciroli, Guido (1612). Raccolta breue d'alcune cose piu segnalate c'hebbero gli antichi, e d'alcune altre trouate da moderni. Venice: Bernardo Giunti, Gio. Battista Ciotti, & Co.
Panciroli, Guido (1617). Livre premier des antiquitez perdues, et si au vif representées par la plume de l'Illustre Iurisconsulte G. Pancirol. Translated by de la Noue, Pierre. Lyon: Pierre Roussin.
Peacham, Henry (1638). The valley of varietie: or, Discourse fitting for the times containing very learned and rare passages out of antiquity, philosophy, and history. Fleet Street, London: M. Parsons.
Haycock, David Boyd (2008). "Living Forever in Early Modern Europe: Sir Francis Bacon and the Project for Immortality". In Novak, Maximillian E. (ed.). The Age of Projects. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. pp. 166–184. doi:10.3138/9781442687349. ISBN 9781442687349.
Keller, Vera (2014). "Nero and the Last Stalk of Silphion: Collecting Extinct Nature in Early Modern Europe". Early Science and Medicine. 19 (5): 424–447. doi:10.1163/15733823-00195p03. JSTOR 24269398. PMID 25581992.

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