Marcus Antonius Coccius Sabellicus or Marcantonio Sabellico (1436–1506) was a

scholar A scholar is a person who pursues academic and intellectual activities, particularly academics who apply their intellectualism into expertise in an area of study. A scholar can also be an academic, who works as a professor, teacher, or researc ...

and

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the st ...

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 ...

. He is known for his

universal history A universal history is a work aiming at the presentation of a history of all of mankind as a whole, coherent unit. A universal chronicle or world chronicle typically traces history from the beginning of written information about the past up to t ...

, ''Enneades sive Rhapsodia historiarum''.

Life

Born in

Vicovaro Vicovaro ( la, Varia, Romanesco: ) is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Metropolitan City of Rome in the Italian region Lazio, located about northeast of Rome. History The area of Vicovaro was inhabited as early as the Neolithic period, as tes ...

, his surname was originally Cocci; he took his Latinised name as a pupil of Pomponius Laetus. He studied also with Porcelio Pandone (1405–1485) and Gaspar Veronese.Peter G. Bietenholz, Thomas Brian Deutscher, ''Contemporaries of Erasmus: a biographical register of the Renaissance and Reformation'', Volumes 1–3 (2003), pp. 181–2
Google Books
Sabellicus became professor of eloquence at

Udine Udine ( , ; fur, Udin; la, Utinum) is a city and ''comune'' in north-eastern Italy, in the middle of the Friuli Venezia Giulia region, between the Adriatic Sea and the Alps (''Alpi Carniche''). Its population was 100,514 in 2012, 176,000 with t ...

in 1473, but was dismissed in 1482. After a short period at

Verona Verona ( , ; vec, Verona or ) is a city on the Adige River in Veneto, Italy, with 258,031 inhabitants. It is one of the seven provincial capitals of the region. It is the largest city municipality in the region and the second largest in nor ...

, he went to

, with the Venetian history he had written speculatively. He was given a teaching position as deputy to

Giorgio Valla Giorgio Valla (Latin: ''Georgius Valla''; Piacenza 1447–Venice 1500) was an Italian academic, mathematician, philologist and translator. Life He was born in Piacenza in 1447. He was the son of Andrea Valla and Cornelia Corvini. At the age of ...

. In 1487 he was appointed as a

curator A curator (from la, cura, meaning "to take care") is a manager or overseer. When working with cultural organizations, a curator is typically a "collections curator" or an "exhibitions curator", and has multifaceted tasks dependent on the parti ...

of the

Biblioteca Marciana The Marciana Library or Library of Saint Mark ( it, italic=no, Biblioteca Marciana, but in historical documents commonly referred to as ) is a public library in Venice, Italy. It is one of the earliest surviving public libraries and repositori ...

Works

Sabellicus while at Udine wrote an antiquarian work on Aquileia that appeared in 1482. He then produced a Latin history of Venice, ''Historiae rerum venetarum ab urbe condita'', with official encouragement; but it proved unpopular with the citizens. He wrote further works concerned with Venice, and as a humanist scholar wrote commentaries on classical authors. The ''Enneades sive Rhapsodia historiarum'' appeared in 1498. His collected works were published in 1560 at

Basel , french: link=no, Bâlois(e), it, Basilese , neighboring_municipalities= Allschwil (BL), Hégenheim (FR-68), Binningen (BL), Birsfelden (BL), Bottmingen (BL), Huningue (FR-68), Münchenstein (BL), Muttenz (BL), Reinach (BL), Riehen (BS ...

. The ''Historiae rerum venetarum'' had a first continuator, Andrea Navagero, who died having asked for his work to be destroyed. A second continuator, Pietro Bembo, was appointed in 1530, and he brought it up to 1513. An early poem in

hexameter Hexameter is a metrical line of verses consisting of six feet (a "foot" here is the pulse, or major accent, of words in an English line of poetry; in Greek and Latin a "foot" is not an accent, but describes various combinations of syllables). It w ...

s, ''De rerum et artium inventoribus'', was an influence on

Polydore Vergil Polydore Vergil or Virgil (Italian: ''Polidoro Virgili''; commonly Latinised as ''Polydorus Vergilius''; – 18 April 1555), widely known as Polydore Vergil of Urbino, was an Italian humanist scholar, historian, priest and diplomat, who spent ...

, whom Sabellicus had helped with Guidobaldo of Urbino. It derives from the '' Historia Naturalis'' of

Pliny the Elder Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/2479), called Pliny the Elder (), was a Roman author, naturalist and natural philosopher, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic ' ...

, book VII, on the history of inventions. It was also quoted verbatim by Otto Heurnius, writing in 1600 a pioneering history of "barbarian philosophy". He also wrote "De Venetis magistratibus", Venice: Antonius de Strata, 1488, on the duties of various Venetian magistrates; it has a dedication letter of the author to the doge Augustinus Barbadicus and letter to the reader of Petrus Benedictus Venetus BSB Munich

Notes

External links

WorldCat page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sabellicus, Marcus Antonius Coccius 15th-century Italian historians Italian Renaissance humanists 1436 births 1506 deaths