Marcantonius Majoragio

Marcantonius Majoragio (1514–1555^[1]) was a writer and philosopher, active in Northern Italy during the Renaissance period.^[2][3][1]

Marcantonius Majoragio

Biography

Majoragio was born Antonio Maria Conti in a place in the proximity of Milan in Italy, known as Majoragio (Mairago).^[3]

Majoragio was professor for a time at Milan, and a scholar who was known to have studied after the ancient Roman philosopher and orator Cicero. During 1542 he attended lectures held within Ferrara, these lectures were performed by Maggi on the subject of philosophy, and by Alciati on jurisprudence. He occupied an intellectual position both in defence of Cicero, in respect to Calcagnini's attack on the work De Officiis and contrary and in some way hostile, in respect to the work Paradoxa Stoicorum, in this case in his own work Antiparadoxon. In Antiparadoxon Majoragio expressed the thought that Cicero's work was composed of dialogues which were un-Socratic, and more over, that Cicero's work was in fact demonstrably untrue.^[2][3]

Majoragio believed in Platonic Christianity, and thought that those who expressed contrary thoughts, that there was no after-life and the present material world was the only world that exists should be righteously condemned to the fate of having themselves burnt alive, and additionally those punished thus, to be in full consciousness during such an act.^[2]

Works

Majoragio produced the following:^[3]

• A 1546 work of criticism against Paradoxa Stoicorum
• A 1547 commentary on Aristotle's - Rhetoric.
• A 1552 commentary on Orator written by Cicero.
• A commentary on the first book of De Oratore written by Cicero, published 1587.

References

1. Bietenholz, Peter G.; Deutscher, Thomas Brian, eds. (2003). Contemporaries of Erasmus: A Biographical Register of the Renaissance and Reformation, Volumes 1-3. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 0802085776.
2. Papy, Jan (2009). MacDonald, A. Alasdair A.; von Martel, Zweder; Veenstra, Jan Riepke (eds.). Christian Humanism: Essays in Honour of Arjo Vanderjagt. BRILL. ISBN 978-9004176317.
3. Sandys, John Edwin (17 February 2011). A History of Classical Scholarship: From the Revival of Learning to the End of the Eighteenth Century in Italy, France, England and the Netherlands. Vol. 2 of A History of Classical Scholarship (reprint, reissue ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1108027076.