Andrea Alciato (8 May 1492 – 12 January 1550),[1] commonly known as Alciati (Andreas Alciatus), was an Italian jurist and writer.[2] He is regarded as the founder of the French school of legal humanists.
Biography
Engraving of Andrea Alciato
Alciati was born in Alzate Brianza, near Milan, and settled in France in the early 16th century. He displayed great literary skill in his exposition of the laws, and was one of the first to interpret the civil law by the history, languages and literature of antiquity, and to substitute original research for the servile interpretations of the glossators.[3] He published many legal works, and some annotations on Tacitus and accumulated a sylloge of Roman inscriptions from Milan and its territories, as part of his preparation for his history of Milan, written in 1504–05.[4]
Among his several appointments, Alciati taught law at the University of Bourges between 1529 and 1535. It was Guillaume Budé who encouraged the call to Bourges at the time.[5]Pierre Bayle, in his General Dictionary (article "Alciat"), relates that he greatly increased his salary there, by the "stratagem" of arranging to get a job offer from the University of Bologna and using it as a negotiation point [1].
Alciati is most famous for his Emblemata, published in dozens of editions from 1531 onward. This collection of short Latin verse texts and accompanying woodcuts created an entire European genre, the emblem book, which attained enormous popularity in continental Europe and Great Britain.
Andrea Alciato, Il libro degli emblemi secondo le edizioni del 1531 e del 1534, with Introduction, Italian translation and commentary by Mino Gabriele (Milan: Adelphi, 2009; second revised edition 2015) ISBN 978-88-459-2967-0
William S. Heckscher, The Princeton Alciati Companion. A Glossary of Neo-Latin words and phrases used by Andrea Alciati and the emblem book writers of his time, including a bibliography of secondary sources relevant to the study of Alciati's emblems (New York: Garland, 1989) ISBN 0-8240-3715-4
Quotation
Plenitudo potestatis nihil aliud est quam violentia.[7]
References
^Bregman, Alvan (2007). Emblemata: The emblem books of Andrea Alciato. Newtown, Pa: Bird & Bull Press.
^D. Bianchi, 1913. "L'opera letteraria e storica di Andrea Alciato", Archivio storico lombardo, 4th series 20:47–57.
^Roberto Weiss, 1969. The Renaissance Discovery of Antiquity, pp 152f.
^Jenny, Beat R. (1995). Jacob-Friesen, Holger; Jenny, Beat R. (eds.). Bonifacius Amerbach (in German). Basel: Schwabe Verlag. p. 54. ISBN9783796510083.
Phillipson, Coleman (1913). "Andrea Alciati and his predecessors". In Macdonell, John; Manson, Edward William Donoghue (eds.). Great Jurists of the World. London: John Murray. pp. 58–82. Retrieved 9 March 2019 – via Internet Archive.
Alciato at Glasgow – Reproductions of 22 editions of Alciato's emblems from 1531 to 1621
