A study of the Italian humanist Gasparino Barzizza, or Gasparinus de Bergamo, a grammarian lecturing on Seneca, Cicero, Virgil and Terence, among others, in early fifteenth-century Padua. Mercer draws on literary sources never previously used by historians, ranging across documents scattered in numerous libraries, to make sense of the sources of Barzizza's teaching.
This book, originally published in paperback in 1979 under the ISBN 978-0-900547-51-5, was made Open Access in 2024 as part of the MHRA Revivals programme.
Contents:
i-viii, 1-169
The Teaching of Gasparino Barzizza: With Special Reference to his Place in Paduan Humanism R. G. G. Mercer Complete volume as single PDF
In regard to these general questions, the teaching of Gasparino Barzizza has a considerable importance. First, it is a way into the Italian schools and universities of the period. Early in his career he was a member of the arts faculty in the University of Pavia, a master of grammar in an elementary school in Bergamo, and then a private tutor in Venice. Between 1407 and 1421 he stayed in Padua, where he lectured in the University as well as running a private grammar school, and it was in Padua that his teaching became fully developed and influential. From 1421 until his death in 1430 he taught in Milan and Pavia, and for a short time in Bologna. He takes us, as it were, through a good cross section of the educational system in northern Italy.
The Grammar Schools and the University c.1200-c.1360: (a) Literacy and Civic Demands, (b) Grammar, Rhetoric, and University Studies. Literary Developments in the Fourteenth Century: (a) The Emergence of Humanist Private Schools in the Later Fourteenth Century, (b) The Impact of Petrarchan Humanism in Padua, (c) Courtly Learning in Padua
Following a common practice of masters in medieval universities Barzizza ran a boarding house and private school or, as he called it, a gymnasium. It was not unlike the hospices found in Bologna in the same period, the halls and hostels in Oxford and Cambridge, or the pedagogies in Paris. Since it was a private school there survive no official records of the numbers of pupils, but from references in Barzizza's letters, from a few university documents, and from occasional signatures in manuscripts, we know of about seventy pupils between 1407 and 1421. Given that the pupils stayed on average between three and five years, it would be reasonable to guess that there were at least twenty pupils in the gymnasium at any given time.
Barzizza's last ten years were spent mainly in Pavia and Milan, in those parts where he had passed his early life. He had left Pavia in 1407 as a little-known master, struggling for teaching appointments, lucky to have a few contacts in Venice and Padua. He returned in 1421 to help disentangle the most important textual discovery of the day, the Ciceronian manuscripts from Lodi and to take up a teaching appointment at the behest of Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan. Barzizza was now something of a grey eminence, paid homage from all sides. His reputation had been made in Padua and he was still to be an active, prominent figure amidst the flourishing humanist studies in Lombardy in the 1420s. It is worth pursuing his career for these reasons alone, but also because the chronology of the last years, like that of the early ones, has not yet been properly established; indeed, it is sometimes hard to be certain of his whereabouts, and even the exact date of his death has not yet been established.
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Bibliography entry:
Mercer, R. G. G., The Teaching of Gasparino Barzizza: With Special Reference to his Place in Paduan Humanism, MHRA Texts and Dissertations, 10 (MHRA, 1979)
First footnote reference:35 R. G. G. Mercer, The Teaching of Gasparino Barzizza: With Special Reference to his Place in Paduan Humanism, MHRA Texts and Dissertations, 10 (MHRA, 1979), p. 21.
Mercer, R. G. G.. 1979. The Teaching of Gasparino Barzizza: With Special Reference to his Place in Paduan Humanism, MHRA Texts and Dissertations, 10 (MHRA)
Example citation: ‘A quotation occurring on page 21 of this work’ (Mercer 1979: 21).
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