Giovanni Francesco Biondi : an Italian historian of the Wars of the Roses

Abstract

'Vive e vivra in eternita de' secoli il suo nome nelle stampe italiane.' This is the solemn conclusion of Giovanni Francesco Biondi' s earliest biography included in Le glorie degli Incogniti, o vero gli uomini illustri dell'accademia de' Signori Incogniti di Venezia. The book is the commemoration of the deceased members of the 'Accademia degli Incogniti', to which Biondi belonged and in which were gathered some of the most important representatives of Italian literature and culture in the first half of the XVIIth century. At that time Biondi was already famous all over Europe for a very successful trilogy of romances (l'Eromena, La Donzella Desterrada and Il Coralbo) published in Venice between 1624 and 1632, reprinted many times, and soon translated into English; the first romance, L 'Eromena, was also translated into French and German. But the optimistic prediction about the survival of his renown did not prove true. In the XVIIIth century he is already practically unknown and no mention of his name is to be found either in Giovanni Maria Mazzucchelli's Scrittori d'Italia, or in Girolamo Tiraboschi's Storia delta letteratura italiana. The reason for this has little or nothing to do with Biondi's intrinsic qualities as a writer, but it is rather to be sought in his being considered a 'heretic', since he had left the Catholic for the Reformed Church. An indirect confirmation is the fact that this important event in his life is completely ignored in Le glorie degli Incogniti.