Raphael Regius

Who was Raphael Regius?

Raphael Regius was a Venetian humanist, who was active first in Padua, where he made a reputation as one of the outstanding Classical scholars, then in Venice, where he moved in the periphery of an elite group composed of a handful of publicly sanctioned scholars, salaried lecturers employed by the Serenissima itself: on the fringes of this elite world also moved the scholar-printer Aldus Manutius. The most famous achievement of Regius is his demonstration that the Rhetorica ad C. Herennium, or Rhetorica secunda, was not written by Cicero, a milestone in the development of textual criticism. His bitter rivalry with other scholars and scorn for the "semidocti" reflect familiar competitive strains in the sometimes vituperative temper of Renaissance humanism.

Regio, or Regius as he signed himself, was doubtless a pupil of Benedetto Brugnolo, a central figure among Venetian humanists, who headed the Scuola di San Marco and delivered daily lectures at the foot of the Campanile from 1466 until he died in 1502, "universally lamented and aged over ninety".