Abstract
Antonio Possevino was a Jesuit, diplomat, scholar, college founder and administrator. A very active member of his order in the core phase of its worldwide diffusion, he travelled throughout the Northern and Eastern Europe as a diplomat, trying to prompt conversions and build alliances between Catholic and Orthodox countries against the Protestant Reformation and the Turks. While on the road, he established several Jesuit seminaries and colleges (Lukács, Archivum Historicum S.I. 24:33–94, 1955). Possevino is most renowned for his Bibliotheca Selecta, a two-volume in-folio bibliographic project, listing and commenting on all the works he deemed as fundamental for a complete Christian humanistic culture. Very influential in his time was a pedagogical treatise drawn from the Bibliotheca and translated by him into vernacular Italian, the Coltura degl’Ingegni (“Cultivation of Man’s Wits”), based on a theory of natural talents governed by free will and emphasizing the educational value of real-life experiences.
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References
Primary literature
Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu (ARSI), Opera Nostrorum, 325, 326, 333, 335, 336.
Possevino, Antonio. 1593. Bibliotheca Selecta, qua agitur de ratione studiorum in Historia, in Disciplinis, in Salute omnium procuranda. Romae: ex typographia Apostolica Vaticana
Possevino, Antonio. 1596. Commentarii di Moscovia, et della pace seguita fra lei, e’l regno di Polonia. Mantova: Osanna.
Secondary literature
Balsamo, Luigi. 2006. Antonio Possevino S.I. bibliografo della Controriforma. Firenze: Olschki.
Casalini, Cristiano, and Luana Salvarani, eds. 2008. A. Possevino, Coltura degl’ingegni. Roma: Anicia.
Castaldini, Alberto. 2001. L’incognita marrana. La vicenda del gesuita mantovano Antonio Possevino (1533–1611) nella società del suo tempo. Atti e Memorie dell’Accademia Nazionale Virgiliana LXIX: 129–140.
Colombo, Emanuele. 2016. Possevino, Antonio. In Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani. Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana.
Donnelly, John P. 1986. Antonio Possevino and Jesuits of Jewish Ancestry. Archivum historicum S.I. 55: 3–31.
Dorigny, Jean. 1712. La vie du père Antoine Possevin de la Compagnie de Jesus. Où l'on voit l’Histoire des importantes Négociations ausquelles a été employé en qualité de Nonce de Sa Sainteté, en Suede, en Pologne, & en Moscovie, &c. Paris: Muzier.
Graham, Hugh F., ed. 1977. The Moscovia of Antonio Possevino S.J. Pittsburgh: UCIS, University of Pittsburgh.
Lukács, Lázló. 1955. Die nordischen päpstlichen Seminarien und Possevino (1577–1587). Archivum Historicum S.I 24: 33–94.
Scaduto, Mario. 2001. Possevino, Antonio. In Diccionario histórico de la Compañía de Jesús, ed. E. Charles, O’Neill, and Joaquín María Domínguez. Roma/Madrid: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu/Universidad Pontificia Comillas.
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Salvarani, L. (2018). Possevino, Antonio. In: Sgarbi, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_874-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_874-2
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Possevino, Antonio- Published:
- 12 February 2018
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_874-2
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Possevino, Antonio- Published:
- 07 September 2017
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_874-1