Giovanni Andrea Bussi

Who was Giovanni Andrea Bussi?

Giovanni Andrea Bussi, also Giovan de' Bussi or Joannes Andreae, was an Italian Renaissance humanist and the Bishop of Aleria. He was a major editor of classical texts and produced many incunabular editiones principes. In his hands the preface was expanded from its former role as a private letter to a patron, to become a public lecture, and at times a bully pulpit.

Bussi was a Platonist and a friend of Nicholas Cusanus and Johannes Bessarion, in whose philosophical circle he moved. From 1458 to the Cardinal's death in 1464 he had served Cusanus as a secretary at Rome, where he helped his master edit a ninth-century manuscript of the Opuscula and other works of Apuleius. From 1468 Bussi was the chief editor for the printing house of prototypographers Conrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pannartz after they moved it from Subiaco to Rome. He also heaped praise on Cusanus and Bessarion and used his dedicatory preface to Apuleius to laud Bessarion's Defensio Platonis. He also incorporated an edition of Alcinous translated by Pietro Balbi into his printing of Apuleius. The preface to this version elicited a correspondence with George of Trebizond and his son Andreas.