Pietro Balbi

Pietro Balbi (or Petrus Balbus) (1399–1479), of Pisa,[1] was an Italian humanist, a longtime member of the familia of Cardinal Bessarion who moved in the same circle as Nicolas Cusanus, whom he served with his expertise in Greek. During Pius II's pontificate, Balbi was the most prolific translator of Greek patristics in Rome,[2] probably using the Greek manuscripts in Bessarion's own library. One of the quattrocento defenders of Plato, he translated for Cusanus[3] the epitome of Platonic Philosophy, Disciplinarium Platonis epitome, of the 2nd-century philosopher Albinus[4] and the immense Theologica Platonica of Proclus[5] in 1462, and circulated it in manuscript.[6] Giovanni Andrea Bussi printed his translation of Alcinous, and Cusanus cast Balbi and Bussi as interlocutors in his dialogue De lì non aliud in the winter of 1462.

Balbi played a role in the deconstructing of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, unmasking the dionysian corpus as apocryphal.[7]

In 1463 Balbi, who was bishop of Nicotera, was appointed bishop of Tropea in Calabria.

Notes
  1. His contemporary, the Venetian senator Pietro Balbi, consul at Damascus, died in Damascus 6–7 December 1502 (Andrew A. Paton, Researches on the Danube and the Adriatic [reprinted] 2002:421f).
  2. Irena Dorota Backus, The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West: From the Carolingians to the Maurists (Brill) 1997.
  3. John Monfasani, "Nicholas of Cusa, the Byzantines and the Greek language", in Nicolaus Casanus zwischen Deutschland und Italian, Martin Thurmer, ed. 2002:218f.
  4. Though in Balbi's Latin translation, this was the first Greek work to appear in print, as its modern editor Dillon notes.
  5. H.D. Saffrey, "Pietro Balbi et la première traduction latine de la Théologie platonicienne de Proclus," Miscellanea codicologia F.. (1979), reprinted in Saffrey, L’Héritage des anciens.
  6. At least three manuscripts of Balbi's translation survive, according to James Hankins, Plato in the Italian Renaissance 1990:261 note 245.
  7. Recognised by John Monfasani, in Supplementum Festivum: Studies in Honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller
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