Poggio Bracciolini

Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini (11 February 1380 – 30 October 1459), usually referred to simply as Poggio Bracciolini, was an Italian scholar and an early Renaissance humanist.

Quotes

• We are terrified of future catastrophes and are thrown into a continuous state of misery and anxiety, and for fear of becoming miserable, we never cease to be so, always panting for riches and never giving our souls or our bodies a moment’s peace. But those who are content with little live day by day and treat any day like a feast day.
  • Letter to Niccolò de' Niccoli, Baden, 18 May 1416 (tr. P. W. G. Gordan, 1974)

• I do not think of the priesthood as liberty, as many do, but as the most severe and oppressive form of service.
  • Letter to Niccolò de' Niccoli, London, 30 November 1421 (tr. P. W. G. Gordan, 1974)

• I am determined not to assume the sacerdotal office; for I have seen many men whom I have regarded as persons of good character and liberal dispositions, degenerate into avarice, sloth, and dissipation, in consequence of their introduction into the priesthood. — Fearing lest this should be the case with myself, I have resolved to spend the remaining term of my pilgrimage as a layman; for I have too frequently observed, that your brethren, at the time of their tonsure, not only part with their hair, but also with their conscience and their virtue.
  • Letter to Julian, Cardinal of St. Angelo, c. 1429 (tr. W. Shepherd, 1837)

• Every man waits his destined hour; even the cities are doomed to their fate. Let us spend our leisure with our books, which will take our minds off these troubles, and will teach us to despise what many people desire.
  • Letter to Niccolò de' Niccoli, Rome, 3 September 1430 (tr. P. W. G. Gordan, 1974)

Facetiae (1470)

• At the Roman Court good Fortune generally prevails, and there is but seldom room for talent or honesty; every thing is obtained through intrigue or luck, not to mention money, which seems to hold supreme sway all over the world.
  • No. 23

• I think I should not omit to mention the place where most of the above tales were related, I might almost say, acted. That place is our Bugiale, a sort of laboratory for fibs.
  • Conclusion

See also

• Lapo da Castiglionchio

External links

• William Shepherd, Life of Poggio Bracciolini (Liverpool: Longman et al., 1837), p. 185
• Frederic May Holland, The Rise of Intellectual Liberty from Thales to Copernicus (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1885), p. 278
• Phyllis Walter Goodhart Gordan, Two Renaissance Book Hunters: The Letters of Poggius Bracciolini to Nicolaus de Niccolis (New York: Columbia UP, 1974)