Cecco d'Ascoli - Bibliography

Poet, physician, and astrologer, born in Ancarano, Abruzzo, EC Italy. He wrote a scientific-philosophical poem in the vernacular, L'acerba, which was supposed to be a scientific equivalent of Dante's Divine Comedy, but it remained unfinished. He was comdemned and burnt at the stake as a heretic.

Cecco d'Ascoli (1257-1327), the popular name of Francesco degli Stabili (sometimes given as Franceso degli Stabili Cichus), a famous Italian encyclopaedist, physician and poet, Cecco (in Latin, Cichus) being the diminutive of Francesco, and Ascoli, in the marshes of Ancona, the place of the philosopher's birth.

He devoted himself to the study of mathematics and astrology, and in 1322 was made professor of the latter science at the University of Bologna. It is certain, however, that, having published a commentary on the sphere of John de Sacrobosco, in which he propounded audacious theories concerning the employment and agency of demons, he got into difficulties with the clerical party, and was condemned in 1324 to certain fasts and prayers, and to the payment of a fine of seventy crowns.

Cecco d'Ascoli left many works in manuscript, most of which have never been given to the world. The book by which he achieved his renown and which led to his death was the Acerba (from acervus), an encyclopaedic poem, of which in 1546, the date of the last reprint, more than twenty editions had been issued.

A man of immense erudition and of great and varied abilities, Cecco, whose knowledge was based on experiment and observation (a fact that of itself is enough to distinguish him from the crowd of savants of that age) had outstripped his contemporaries in many things. Altogether a remarkable man, he may be described as one of the many Cassandras of the middle ages -- one of the many prophets who spoke of coming light, and were listened to but to have their words cast back at them in accusations of impiety and sentences of death.

The least faulty of the many editions of the Acerba is that of Venice, dated 1510. The earliest known, which has become excessively rare, is that of Brescia, which has no date, but is ascribed to ca.

The lunar crater Cichus is named after him.

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

Bibliography

L'Acerba - Acerba etas - Latin Commentary - Vulgar Commentary - Sonnets, edited by Marco Albertazzi, Trento, La Finestra editrice 2002. AA.VV., Studi stabiliani, by Marco Albertazzi, Trento, La Finestra editrice 2002.