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Girolamo Frachetta (1558 – 30 December 1619) was an Italian Renaissance philosopher and political writer.

Biography

Girolamo Frachetta was born in Rovigo in 1558, where he studied the humanities with Antonio Riccoboni.^[1] He then studied philosophy with Francesco Piccolomini at the University of Padua.^[1] After graduating in law, he placed himself at the service of Luigi D'Este, Scipione Gonzaga, and Antonio Fernández de Córdoba y Cardona, Duke of Sessa, the Spanish Ambassador in Rome.^[2] For unknown reasons he was forced to leave Rome and he retired to Naples, where he was protected in by the Viceroy, Juan Alonso Pimentel de Herrera, Duke of Benavente, who assigned him a liberal pension. He died in Naples in 1619.

Works

In 1589 Frachetta published the Breve spositione di tutta l’opera di Lucretio, the first paraphrase of Lucretius’ De rerum natura written in a vernacular language.^[3] In Il prencipe (1597) and Della ragione di stato (1623) he dealt with political and economic questions. He proposed taxation of the nobility, believing it contributed to social order and tranquility, and, following many of his contemporaries, thought that political problems should be dealt with pragmatically, not dogmatically. His main work, Il Seminario de' Governi di Stato et di Guerra, contains about 8.000 military and state maxims, and was highly successful.^[1] The best edition is that of Genoa, 1648.

Notes

Bibliography

• Baldini, Enzo (1997). "FRACHETTA, Girolamo". Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Volume 49: Forino–Francesco da Serino (in Italian). Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. ISBN 978-8-81200032-6.
• Chiarelli, F. (2002). "Frachetta, Girolamo". The Oxford Companion to Italian Literature. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 17 June 2023.
• Coleman, James K. (2014). "Translating Impiety: Girolamo Frachetta and the First Vernacular Commentary on Lucretius". Quaderni d'Italianistica. 35 (1): 55–72. doi:10.33137/q.i..v35i1.22352.