Encyclopedia of the Renaissance and the Reformation

(Bozica Vekic) #1

known novel in this kind is Honoré D’URFÉ’s L’ Astrée
(1607–27).
Besides plays, pastoral also had its uses in court en-
tertainments and MASQUES; rustic characters could be in-
troduced for merriment while more refined shepherds and
shepherdesses could pay delicate compliments to the
powerful and sophisticated audience, and courtiers could
themselves take on bucolic roles and enjoy the game of
pastoral make-believe.
Further reading: Bruno Damiani and Barbara Mujica,
Et in Arcadia Ego (Lanham, Md: University Press of Amer-
ica, 1990); Reinhold Grimm and Jost Hermand (eds),
From the Greeks to the Greens: Images of the Simple Life
(Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990).


Pastor fido, Il See GUARINI, BATTISTA; PASTORAL


Patinir, Joachim (Joachim Patinier, c. 1480–1524)
Netherlands painter
Patinir, who was born at Dinant, is first recorded in 1515
on his admission to the painters’ guild at Antwerp, where
he remained for the rest of his life. In 1521 he met Dürer
who described him as “the good landscape painter.” An
early inventory states that the figures in Patinir’s Madrid
Temptation of St. Anthony are by Quentin METSYS. The
landscape background in Joos van Cleve’s Liverpool Virgin
and Child with Angels is identical with one in a painting by
Patinir in Lugano and may actually have been painted by
him. Accordingly, Patinir emerges as the first landscape
specialist, initiating a trend which flourished in Flemish
painting of the early 16th century. Patinir’s dramatic late
landscapes, such as the Oxford Destruction of Sodom and
Gomorrah, with heaped-up rocks of great size and irregu-
lar shape, strongly influenced subsequent Flemish man-
nerist landscapes.


patristic studies Early humanists made no distinction
between the texts of classical authors and those of the
Church Fathers. PETRARCHcollected texts of CICEROand
St. Augustine with equal enthusiasm and studied both for
their moral content, preferring, as he himself said, to be
made good rather than learned. As philological awareness
advanced, however, scholars realized that there was a dif-
ference between the Latin prose style of Cicero and that of
third- or fourth-century CE writers. Lorenzo VALLA, a
leader in this field of study, observed in his Elegantiae
(1444) that the Church Fathers were indebted to Cicero
for their eloquence and exalted Ciceronian Latin as the
model to be followed. He castigated St. Jerome for defi-
ciencies in his Latin style that he considered deformed the
“truth” of the Greek original text of the New Testament
which Jerome translated. An important early figure to
show an interest in the writings of the Greek Church Fa-
thers was the monk Ambrogio TRAVERSARIwho collected
Greek patristic manuscripts and translated some into


Latin; his version of a work by St. John Chrysostom
(c. 350–407) defending monasticism was issued as early
as 1417.
As the religious controversies of the 16th century got
under way, Catholics and Protestants alike appealed to the
venerable authority of the Church Fathers for guidance on
biblical interpretation and for their teaching on such mat-
ters as JUSTIFICATION BY FAITHand the operation of divine
grace. To do this it was necessary for authoritative texts to
be available. An early leader in the field of patristic printed
texts was Johannes AMERBACHat Basle, whose successor,
FROBEN, was the chief publisher of ERASMUS. Erasmus
showed phenomenal zeal in his patristic publications: his
nine-volume St. Jerome appeared in 1516, his 10-volume
St. Augustine in 1529, and his two-volume Origen, which
had taken up the last months of his life, in 1536; these
were in addition to texts of Sts. Ambrose, Cyprian, Hilary,
Irenaeus, and John Chrysostom.
The Council of TRENTexplicitly endorsed the author-
ity of the Fathers in biblical exegesis, thus giving a further
stimulus to patristic studies in Catholic countries. The
first important printed collection of patristic texts, the
Bibliotheca SS. patrum, appeared in Paris in eight volumes
in 1575, and in increasingly expanded editions over the
next century. Apologists of the Church of England found
the Fathers an invaluable source of doctrine, uncontami-
nated, as they saw it, by Romanist corruptions. Isaac
CASAUBONand Georg CASSANDERwere just two scholars
who were greatly influenced in their theological opinions
by their patristic studies.
Further reading: Charles L. Stinger, Humanism and
the Church Fathers: Ambrogio Traversari (1386–1439) and
Christian Antiquity in the Italian Renaissance (Albany, N.Y.:
State University of New York Press, 1977).

Patrizi, Francesco (Franjo Petri1, Patritius) (1529–
1597) Dalmatian philosopher, mathematician, and scholar
Born at Cherso, Istria, he studied at Padua and Venice
where he developed an interest in Platonism through read-
ing the Theologia Platonica of Marsilio FICINO. After ser-
vice in France, Spain, and Cyprus he became professor of
Platonic philosophy at Ferrara (1578). In 1592 he was
called to Rome by Pope Clement VIII and died there as
professor of philosophy at the university. Pure scholarship
was not his only interest; he also published practical man-
uals of military strategy. He produced a number of works
presenting art, history, and philosophy in a Platonic inter-
pretation challenging the dominant Aristotelianism of his
day, most notably Della historia (1560), Della retorica
(1562), and Nova de universis philosophia (1591). Patrizi
sought to combine Christianity, Platonism, and the her-
metic writings in a metaphysical synthesis but failed
through lack of a sufficiently rigorous method of argu-
ment.

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