Peter of Ravenna
Peter of Ravenna ( also Tomais Peter, Peter Ravennatus; * to 1448 in Ravenna, † 1508 in Mainz ) was an Italian jurist.
Life
Peter of Ravenna made in Padua attention to himself already in his 20th year when he da Imola, could play the entire law of the time out of your head as a pupil of Alexander. Subsequently, he was appointed lector there to the University of Padua. In his 24th year he received his doctorate in two rights and aroused by his prodigious memory the admiration of his contemporaries. He went to the University of Pisa in 1477 and returned late in 1479 as a professor of canon law at the University of Padua back. In 1491 he published in Venice his technique of knowledge assumption in the book Phoenix, sive artificiosa memoria.
1497 brought Prince Bogusław X of Pomerania scholars to Greifswald to give his young State University the splendor of a famous Italian name. In Greifswald, Peter taught Ravenna five years together with his son Vicentius; also that he held in 1498 and 1501 the Rector of the University of Greifswald. When his daughter Margaret died in October 1502 in Pomerania at the age of 20 years, he intended to return to Italy. Bogislaw X gave him a horse for this purpose as well as 100 ducats, and furnished him with a letter of recommendation, which should facilitate their return journey. When he was on his way back to his home, Frederick submitted to him the way the offer to teach at the newly founded University of Wittenberg, where he gave his inaugural lecture on the topic about the power of the Pope and the Emperor on 3 May 1503. In it, he entered among other things, the right of the emperor to found universities, which the Elector had first practiced in the creation of his foundation of the Wittenberg University.
Peter of Ravenna left Wittenberg because of the plague in the summer of 1506 and was a professor of law at the old University of Cologne. Became known for its local confrontation with Jacob van Hoogstraten, in which he denounced the custom of the German authorities to leave the bodies of executed criminals to the gallows. Thus, they act according to his opinion against the natural and divine law. Because of that dispute, which also was reflected in literature, he gave up his professorship in Cologne and turned to Mainz, where he died soon.
Importance
Peter's book Phoenix, sive artificiosa memoria first offered to a wide audience an effective way to train your memory. He undressed the memory of its religious context in which it was previously moved by Thomas Aquinas and other scholastics. After his first appearance at Choris in Venice on January 10, 1491 the book was translated into many languages and also appeared in 1500 in Erfurt and 1508 in Cologne. From today's perspective, one would speak of an international bestseller.
In 1491 the Republic of Venice, gave Peter of Ravenna and a publisher of his choice, a protective privilege against pirated editions of his book, Phoenix. This privilege is considered the first example of a detectable copyright protection.
Selections
- Phoenix, sive artificiosa memoria, Bernadinus de Choris, Venice 1491 (1500 Erfurt, 1508 Cologne and elsewhere )
- Compendium Juris Civilis & Canonici, Hermann Bungart of Kettwig, Cologne 1507
- De immunitate ecclesiae, Cologne 1503
- Alphabetum aureum utriusque juris, Cologne 1508
- Phoenicem immersive ad memoriam comparandam introductionem, Cologne 1608
- Compendium in consvetudines Feudorum, Cologne 1567
- Liberum sermonum, quos Festis Diebus auditoribus juris pronununciavit, Hermann Cernosin, Wittenberg 1505
- Disp. De corpore suspensions in patibulo dabeat to remanere