Traversari, Ambrogio

Abstract

Ambrogio Traversari was a Camaldulian monk and humanist who lived in Florence during the first part of the fifteenth century. At the age of 14, he entered the monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli, where he devoted his time to studying and translating Greek literature. The peculiarity of Traversari was to choose texts coherents with his Christian vocation, first of all the works of the Church Fathers, and his plan of Latin versions aimed to a didactic and ideological purpose coherent with it. In 1431 Traversari became General of his order and had no more time to devote himself entirely to the patristic translations, but he had the opportunity of putting into practice what he had theorized before. During the few years of his public life (he died in 1439), three fundamental moments can be recognized. From 1431 to 1434, he traveled through the Camaldulian and Vallombrosian monasteries, making all his efforts to restore the original monastic rule. In 1435 he took part as ambassador to the council of Basel to avoid a new schism. Finally, from 1438, he took part to the council in Ferrara and Florence, where he worked to support the union of the Eastern and Western Churches. The consequences of Traversari’s diplomacy would have vanished after few years, but his translations had a different fortune. Read, copied, and later printed, his translations offered to the readers of his time that did not understand Greek the opportunity to read in Latin a huge variety of patristic texts.