Repertorium Pomponianum

Niccolò Perotti

 

(Nicolaus Perottus Sipontinus). 1429 or 1430 - 1480, from Sassoferrato (Marche). Secretary of Cardinal Bessarion and administrator of various cities in the Papal Territories. Through his school-book Rudimenta grammatices ('The Basics of Grammar', critical edition ed. Percival here) and his encyclopedia Cornu copiae ('The Horn of Plenty', critical edition online here) he became one of the pivotal figures within the development of Latin language learning in the late 15th and early 16th centuries.

 

 

Contacts with Leto:

 

Perotti collaborated with Leto on several projects, e.g. the commentary on Martial written by Leto for the young Fabio Mazzatosta (with notes in the hand of Perotti, now British Library, King's 32; see description here), a commentary on Statius' Silvae by Perotti (Vat. lat. 6835). Perotti expects Leto to be sympathetic to his side in his controversy with Calderini, Leto is also credited with encouraging the commentary on Martial, which was to become the Cornu copiae.

 

 

Testimonia:

 

1) N. Perotti to Pirro Perotti, Preface to Expositio Sylvarum Statii

(ca. 1470)

 

Ms.: Vat. lat. 6835 fol. 54v

 

Ed.: Mercati 156-158

 

Hinc post Rudimenta grammatices, quae tibi nuper, qum Thusciae prouintiae praeessem, dedicaui, omnem hanc hyemem et maximam partem autunni in corrigendo atque exponendo Martiali unà cum Pomponio meo Fortunato consumpsi.

 

After the Rudimenta grammatices, which I dedicated to you not long ago while I was administrator of Etruria, I have used this whole winter and most of the fall to correct and explain Martial together with my Pomponio Fortunato.

 

 

2) Niccolò Perotti, Letter to Leto against Domizio Calderini

(ca. 1472)

 

Ms.: Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana B 131 sup.

 

Ed.: R Sabbadini, Classici e Umanisti da codici Ambrosiani (Florence 1933), 53-65. Id., Studi italiani XI (xx#) 337-39.

 

In work. Will be posted in the section 'Textus'.

 

Latin Text. In Work.

 

 

3) 'Pirro Perotti', Preface to Cornu copiae

(ca. 1479)

 

Ed.: Charlet, (Sassoferrato), prohemium, § 2.

 

... Nam qum iam supra quintum annum Pomponius Fortunatus, uir saeculo nostro doctissimus et Romanae academiae princeps, ac plerique alii studiosi uiri Nicolaum Perottum Siponti pontificem, patruum meum, hortati essent ut M. Valerium Martialem, optimum quidem poetam, sed uitio librariorum infinitis pene erroribus plenum, pro communi studiosorum utilitate emendandum susciperet, aggressus est ille hanc prouintiam libens ...

 

More than five years ago Pomponius Fortunatus, the most learned man of our times and the head of the Roman academy, and many other intellectuals exhorted my uncle, Niccolò Perotti, the bishop of Siponto, to emend for the benefit of the students of antiquity Martial, an excellent poet, but through the fault of the copyists full of a nearly endless number of mistakes. This task he undertook happily ...

 

The authorship of Pirro Perotti (a nephew of P. and the dedicatee of the Rudimenta) is a fiction; the author is the humanist Niccolò Perotti himself.

 

 

Bibliography:

 

Mercati 1925.

 

 

 

 

Johann Ramminger (14 November 2005, 4 August 2008)

 

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