Gregorio Correr (Corraro) (1409 – 1464) was an Italian humanist and ecclesiastic from
Venice
Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges. The isla ...
. In the last year of his life he was elected
Patriarch of Venice
The Patriarch of Venice ( la, Patriarcha Venetiarum; it, Patriarca di Venezia) is the ordinary bishop of the Archdiocese of Venice. The bishop is one of the few patriarchs in the Latin Church of the Catholic Church (currently three other Latin ...
.
Life
He was born into a patrician family of Venice;
Antonio Correr was his uncle.
As a youth he studied in the school of
Vittorino da Feltre
Vittorino da Feltre (1378February 2, 1446) was an Italian humanist and teacher. He was born in Feltre, Belluno, Republic of Venice and died in Mantua. His real name was Vittorino Rambaldoni. It was in Vittorino that the Renaissance idea of the com ...
in
Mantua
Mantua ( ; it, Mantova ; Lombard and la, Mantua) is a city and '' comune'' in Lombardy, Italy, and capital of the province of the same name.
In 2016, Mantua was designated as the Italian Capital of Culture. In 2017, it was named as the Eur ...
.
Correr was created
protonotary apostolic by
Pope Eugenius IV
Pope Eugene IV ( la, Eugenius IV; it, Eugenio IV; 1383 – 23 February 1447), born Gabriele Condulmer, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 3 March 1431 to his death in February 1447. Condulmer was a Venetian, and ...
, a relation. He went with the Curia to
Florence
Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany Regions of Italy, region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilan ...
, where he encountered the humanist circle of
Biondo Flavio. He corresponded with
Lapo da Castiglionchio the Younger.
He then served as secretary to his uncle Antonio at the
Council of Basle. From 1448 he was an abbot at the
Basilica of San Zeno, Verona.
There he received the visit of another pupil of
Vittorino,
Iacopo da San Cassiano
Iacopo da San Cassiano (between 1395 and 1410 – c. 1454), also known as Iacobus Cremonensis, was an Italian humanist and mathematician. He translated from Greek to Latin the writings of Archimedes and parts of Diodorus' '' Bibliotheca historic ...
. He commissioned the celebrated
San Zeno Altarpiece from
Andrea Mantegna
Andrea Mantegna (, , ; September 13, 1506) was an Italian painter, a student of Roman archeology, and son-in-law of Jacopo Bellini.
Like other artists of the time, Mantegna experimented with perspective, e.g. by lowering the horizon in orde ...
. He was nominated as
bishop of Padua in 1459, but lost out to
Pietro Barbo when
Pope Pius II
Pope Pius II ( la, Pius PP. II, it, Pio II), born Enea Silvio Bartolomeo Piccolomini ( la, Aeneas Silvius Bartholomeus, links=no; 18 October 1405 – 14 August 1464), was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 19 August ...
refused to accept the Venetian Senate's choice.
Works
There is a
codex of Correr's works. Around 1428 he wrote a Latin tragedy, ''Progne'', based on the story of
Procne
Procne (; grc, Πρόκνη, ''Próknē'' ) is a minor figure in Greek mythology. She was an Athenian princess as the elder daughter of a king of Athens named Pandion.
Family
Procne's mother was the naiad Zeuxippe and her siblings were P ...
in
Ovid
Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the th ...
, and the play ''
Thyestes
In Greek mythology, Thyestes (pronounced , gr, Θυέστης, ) was a king of Olympia. Thyestes and his brother, Atreus, were exiled by their father for having murdered their half-brother, Chrysippus, in their desire for the throne of Olym ...
'' by
Seneca the Younger
Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger (; 65 AD), usually known mononymously as Seneca, was a Stoic philosopher of Ancient Rome, a statesman, dramatist, and, in one work, satirist, from the post-Augustan age of Latin literature.
Seneca was born in ...
.
He wrote also seven satires as a pupil in Mantua, and poetry, as he mentioned in correspondence with Cecilia Gonzaga.
He wrote about 60 fables, and also a biography of Antonio
Notes
{{DEFAULTSORT:Correr, Gregorio
Patriarchs of Venice
Italian Renaissance humanists
1409 births
1464 deaths
Italian dramatists and playwrights
Gregorio
15th-century Venetian writers