Iacopo da San Cassiano

Incipit of Iacopo's Latin translation of Book XI Diodorus Bibliotheca Historica Book XI, dedicated to the Pope Nicholas V. British Library, ms. Harley 4916, f. 3r. At the bottom, the coat of arms of Pedro Ferriz, bishop of Tarragona (Spain).

Iacopo da San Cassiano (between 1395 and 1410 – 1454 ca.), also known as Iacobus Cremonensis, was an Italian humanist and mathematician. He translated from Greek to Latin the writings of Archimedes and parts of Diodorus' Bibliotheca historica.

Biography

Youth and early career

He was born near Cremona, probably in the early fifteenth century. From what can be gathered from various documents and testimonies became regular canon of the church of Cremona. In 1432 or at the most at the beginning of 1433 he entered the "Ca' Giocosa", the school of Vittorino da Feltre in Mantua. During his studies with Vittorino soon assumed the rank of his close associate.

In 1440 he was in Pavia as a student of the Faculty of Arts, where he probably accompanied Gianlucido Gonzaga (son of the Marquis of Mantua Gianfrancesco) who studied law at the same University. In Pavia was able to get in touch with important exponents of the Quattrocento Italian Humanism: Francesco Filelfo, Catone Sacco, Giovanni Marliani, the greek Scholar Teodoro Gaza.

From Mantua to Rome

Portrait of Francesco Gonzaga by Andrea Mantegna, c. 1461.

Back in Mantua in 1446 succeeded Vittorino as master of the "Giocosa", who died in that year, in the direction of the school. The Marquis Ludovico Gonzaga entrusted him with the education of his children Federico (1441–1484) and Francesco (1444–1483), still very young. Iacopo left school and the service of the Marquis in 1449, having to bear to Rome to plead "a certain his cause" in front of Pope Nicholas V. In that same year, however, was back in Mantua, and will move permanently to Rome only after April 1451.

At the court of Nicholas V was entrusted with various tasks, scientific, including the duty to revise the translation and commentary of Almagest performed by Trapezuntius, which caused huge controversy between the two humanists, which ended with the flight of Trapezuntius from Rome. In addition to this, he was entrusted with the translation of some books of the Bibliotheca historica of Diodorus.

It is not clear whether the translation of the corpus Archimedean performed by Iacopo had already done in his years of Pavia and Mantua. D'Alessandro and Napolitani have found the autograph of the translation of Iacopo code Nouv. Acq. Lat. 1538 of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and have shown that the Cremonese humanist used for his translation a Greek antigraph not traceable to any of the Greek manuscripts of Archimedes known today.

It is not known exactly when Iacopo dead, but it seems that we can fix the date of its death between 1453 and 1454.

References