Accademia degli Apatisti

The Accademia degli Apatisti was a scholarly society founded in Florence in 1632 and associated with the Studio Fiorentino. Together with the Accademia degli Umidi and the Accademia della Crusca it was one of Florence’s dominant literary academies of the XVII century.

Accademia degli Apatisti
AbbreviationGli Apatisti
Formation1632 (1632)
Dissolved7 july 1783
PurposeCultivation of Latin and Italian literature
HeadquartersFlorence, Grand Duchy of Tuscany
Official language
Italian
RemarksMotto: Oltre i confini ancor del mondo nostro
("Beyond the confines of this world of ours")

History

The Accademia degli Apatisti was founded by Agostino Coltellini and Benedetto Fioretti under the patronage of Cosimo III de' Medici. The Academy had grown out of meetings held by Coltellini and his young companions in his lodgings in the Via dell'Oriuolo, during and immediately after the plague of 1630-1, for the purpose of mutual assistance and encouragement in their studies. By the year 1638, the Academy had been fully established. Their name derives from the Greek term ἀπάθεια, impassibility, describing the rational, emotionally detached attitude towards life upheld by the Academy members. The Apatisti adopted the sun for their emblem. Their motto was "Oltre i confini ancor del mondo nostro" ('Beyond the confines of this world of ours'), a line by the Italian poet Torquato Tasso.[1] The Academy meetings were held in Coltellini's house.[2]

One of the rules of the Apatisti (and there was a similar custom in most of the Italian academies) was that every member should, in his academic connexions, be known not by his own name but by some anagram or pseudonym. Coltellini adopted the anagrammatic name “Ostilio Contalgeni”.[2]

Such were the attractions of this academy, and so energetic was Coltellini in its behalf, that within ten or twenty years after its foundation, it had a fame among the Italian academies equal, in some respects, to that of the first and oldest, and counted among its members not only all the eminent Florentines, but most of the distinguished literati of Italy, besides cardinals, Italian princes and dukes, many foreign nobles and scholars, and at least one pope.[3] When John Milton visited Florence in 1638-9 he befriended many of the Apatisti, notably Benedetto Buommattei, Carlo Dati and Agostino Coltellini. Not only did he attend meetings of the Academy but more than likely applied for membership.

On 7 July 1783 the new Habsburg-Lorraine Grand Duke, Leopold II, abolished the Florentine Academy, the Accademia della Crusca and the Accademia degli Apatisti and established in their place an amalgam of the three, the Real Accademia Fiorentina.[4]

Notable members

References
  1. Gerusalemme Liberata 14. 35.
  2. Capucci, Martino (1982). "COLTELLINI, Agostino". Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Volume 27: Collenuccio–Confortini (in Italian). Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. ISBN 978-8-81200032-6.
  3. Masson, David (1875). The Life of John Milton: Narrated in Connexion with the Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of His Time. Vol. 1. Macmillan and Company. p. 614.
  4. Maylender, Michele (1926). Storia delle accademie d'Italia. Bologna: Cappelli. pp. 219–226.

Bibliography
  • Benvenuti, Edoardo (1910). Agostino Coltellini e l'Accademia degli Apatisti. Pistoia: Officina tipografica cooperativa.
  • Lazzeri, Alessandro (1983). Intellettuali e consenso nella Toscana del Seicento. L'accademia degli Apatisti. Milan: Giuffrè.
  • Francesco Adorno, ed. (1988). Accademie e istituzioni culturali in Toscana. Florence: Leo S. Olschki.

External Source
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