Giovanni Della Casa

Giovanni Della Casa ( born June 28, 1503 Mugello, † November 14, 1556 in Montepulciano ) was an Italian cleric and poet.

Giovanni della Casa was probably born in 1503 in the province of Mugello in Tuscany in the village Della Casa, of which his family was given the name. He studied in Bologna, Florence and Padua since 1528 when scholars such as Ubaldino Bandinelli ( 1494-1551 ) and Lodovico Beccadelli ( 1501-1572 ). In 1529 he was ordained a priest in Rome. During this time he wrote mostly sonnets, which are characterized by solemnity and seriousness, but reveal no deeper feelings. On March 12, 1537 he was appointed to the apostolic chamber. In 1541 he was in Florence and was a member of the Florentine Academy. After he returned to Rome, he was appointed archbishop of Benevento in 1544, but did not even have the opportunity to visit his new diocese, as he was in the same year papal nuncio in Venice, where he the Council of Trent pursued. In Venice he introduced the Inquisition and provided for the first trials of the Reformation in Italy. In 1548 he introduced an index of forbidden books together. When Pope Paul III. tried to set up a league against the Emperor Charles V in alliance with France, he wrote a Orazione per la lega, to make the Republic of Venice to the Allies of the Pope. After he had fallen at his patron Alessandro Farnese in disgrace, he retired to Nervesa in the province of Treviso, where he and his most famous work, The Galateo ovvero de ' costumi ( " The Galateo or from the customs" ), an educational book, whose name " Galateo " was similar proverbial in Italy as the German " Knigge ". From Pope Paul IV, he was finally appointed as the Vatican's secretary to Rome, where he died in 1556, without having obtained the desired cardinal.

See also: List of Archbishops of Benevento

Works

• Giovanni Della Casa: Vita di Pietro Bembo, ed. Antonino Sole, Fogola, Torino 1997 [ contemporary biography of Bembo; Latin text, Italian translation, introduction ]

German translations

• Giovanni della Casa: The Galateo. Treatise on morality. Translated from the Italian by Michael Hull ( With a note on the translation template, a list of the Life-history Giovanni della Casas and an afterword on pp. 129-148 ). Manutius, Heidelberg, 1988, ISBN 3-925678-07-7