Secondo Lancellotti

Secondo Lancellotti (19 March 1583 – 16 January 1643) was an Italian Olivetan monk and scholar, one of the leading figures in the early Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns.

Biography Born in Perugia, he entered the Olivetans in 1594 and became a preacher. He studied humanities and theology at the abbey of Monte Morcino. Among his teachers was Marco Antonio Bonciari, a fine and witty literate who corresponded, among others, with Baronius. In 1611 he left the order and began a life of wandering around Italy.

Lancellotti lived a restless, unhappy life and expressed iconoclastic opinions that gave rise to a lively debate throughout Italy. In 1623 he published his main work, L’hoggidì, overo il mondo non peggiore né più calamitoso del passato, dedicated to Pope Urban VIII. The book's title refers to a contemporary practice that Lancellotti deplored, that of criticizing the present («oggidì») as inferior to classical antiquity.

Lancellotti was an ardent defender of modernity. Like Paolo Beni and Alessandro Tassoni, he does not dismiss the ancients out of hand, but weighs up the relative merits of ancients and moderns and comes to the conclusion that modern Italian achievements in the humanities and sciences outstrip those of the past, thus signalling the end of the humanistic project that had started in the 14th century. The work was praised by George Hakewill and is considered one of the starting points of the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns.

Lancellotti moved to Rome in the late 1620s, where he became a member of the Accademia degli Umoristi. In 1636 he renewed his modernist thesis with I farfalloni degli antichi historici notati. His work on the fallibility of human wisdom, Chi l’indovina è savio, was published in 1640. At Rome he befriended the famous scholar Gabriel Naudé, who persuaded him to accompany him to Paris, where he died in 1643.

Works

Del Griffone, arme od ingiuria dell'augusta città di Perugia, 1640.