Giovanni Battista Cantalicio

Who is Giovanni Battista Cantalicio?

Giovanni Battista Valentini, was an Italian humanist, author and Catholic bishop.

Cantalcio was Born in Cantalice, but his origins are obscure., It is known that, 1460s, he became a follower of Cardinal Papiense at Pavia. He then became a master of the school, and for over 20 years he taught grammar, poetry, rhetoric and history, in different parts of Tuscany . In his capacity as teacher, he is known to have been in San Gimignano from 1471 to 1476. He was then in Siena. He was summoned to Florence by Lorenzo de' Medici, to whom he had dedicated a poem in 1472 on the sack of Volterra. The relations between him and the Medici court was encouraged by Cantalicio's friend, the humanist Agnolo Poliziano.

Cantalicio later he taught at Rieti, Foligno, Spoleto, Perugia and Viterbo, where he continued to write. From this period date his Summa perutilis in regulas distinctas totius artis grammatices et artis metricae and Epigrammata published in 1493. Most of his poems are dedicated to the classical Latin authors, among whom Juvenal, Martial, Ovid, Horace and Terence.