Franciscus Patricius - Life and Family

Life and Family

Franciscus Patricius was born in Cres, today in Croatia, then the territory of the Republic of Venice. By a family legend Patricius family was of noble (patrician) origin from Kingdom of Bosnia and was forced to flee from the crumbling Bosnian kingdom after the Ottoman invasion.

As a young man, he traveled the Mediterranean with his uncle Georgius Patricius, who commanded a galley in the wars against the Ottoman Empire. He gained the patronage of the Greek Orthodox Bishop of Cyprus, who brought him to Venice, where his abilities were immediately recognized. He studied economy in Venice, then he moved to study in Ingolstadt under the patronage of his cousin Matthias Flacius. Then he went to study medicine and philosophy at the University of Padova. Here he was elected twice as a representative of the students from Dalmatia.

After graduation he lived in different cities in Italy: Ancona, Rome, Bologna, Ferrara, Venice. He later moved to Cyprus where he spent seven years. Here he attended upon the Bishop of Cyprus who send him back to Italy, where he traveled to Venice, Padova, Genoa, and even to Barcelona.

He finally went to live in Ferrara, a center of Platonism in Italy, where he was appointed to the chair of philosophy at the University of Ferrara by Duke Alfonso II. He was subsequently invited in Rome by Pope Clement VIII in 1592, where he spent five years as the chair of Platonic philosophy. Here he became a member of the Council of St. Jerome, at the Illyrian College of St. Jerome.

Patricius died in Rome, and he was buried in the church of Sant'Onofrio, in the tomb of his colleague Torquato Tasso.

Read more about this topic:  Franciscus Patricius

Famous quotes containing the words life and/or family:

    The wind sprang up at four o’clock
    The wind sprang up and broke the bells
    Swinging between life and death
    —T.S. (Thomas Stearns)

    When one family builds a wall, two families benefit from it.
    Chinese proverb.