Agostino Pertusi


Agostino Pertusi was an Italian Classical scholar and Byzantinist, Professor in Byzantine studies at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan.

Biography

Pertusi was born in Piacenza from Ugo and Giovanna Pertusi. His early interest in literature and art was influenced by his family environment — for example, his maternal grandfather, Gaetano, was a violinist who played with Giuseppe Verdi. The Pertusis moved to Milan in 1921. Here he attended the Barnabite Liceo classico "San Zaccaria" and later enrolled at the Università Cattolica. A student of Raffaele Cantarella, he graduated submitting a dissertation in Byzantine studies. He served in the Royal Italian Army from 1941 until the fall of the Fascist regime, which saved him from being drafted and serving on the Eastern Front.
From 1945 he was research assistant at the Università Cattolica. In 1949 he was habilitated to teaching at the Liceo classico in Macerata and won a scholarship to be spent in a foreign university, choosing the Université libre de Bruxelles where he attended classes in Byzantine studies taught by Henri Grégoire. In 1952 he became lecturer in Greek literature at the Università Cattolica, in 1954 he was habilitated to university teaching and assigned to teach Byzantine studies. In 1955 he became "professore straordinario", being promoted to full professorship in 1958, in Byzantine studies, also teaching Greek literature as substitute professor starting from 1957. In 1973 he moved to the chair of Greek literature.
In more than a quarter of century, he held classes in Ancient Greek literature discussing Euripides, Aristophanes, Menander, Callimachus, Apollonius of Rhodes, the Greek novel.
From 1968 to 1971 he served as Dean of the Faculty of Humanities. In 1971 he was nominated Director of the Department of Classics. Outside his university, in 1963 he started collaborating with the Cini Foundation in Venice, in the framework of which he directed the research institute "Venezia e l'Oriente" and founded the byzantine branch of the institute's library. From 1964 he was editor of the scientific journal "Bollettino dell'Istituto di Storia e Società dello Stato Veneziano", which became "Studi veneziani" in 1965. In 1964 he was also nominated Director of the Istituto di Storia della Società e dello Stato Veneziano. He was a member of the scientific boards of both the Centro Italiano di Studi sull'Alto Medioevo and the Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo. He was one of the founders of the Italian series of the Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae and designed the frontispiece of the series.
He married art historian Franca Pucci, whom he had met in Macerata, in 1954. The couple had three daughters. He died in Milan in 1979, from lung cancer.

Research activity

Pertusi wrote his dissertation on the translation activity from Latin to Greek in Byzantine culture, from the Council of Ephesus to the Palaeologan dinasty. His interest for the mutual relationships between the East and the West in Middle Ages continued all throughout his career, and concretised in some studies on the reception of Ambrose and Boethius in Byzantium and in a paper on a previously unknown Latin version of the Odyssey. At the time of his graduation, he already had a significant experience in manuscript studies, and had compiled an handwritten repertoire of catalogues of Greek manuscripts which he used to correct and integrate the one published by Marcel Richard.
On another hand, Pertusi studied the textual transmission of classical texts in Byzantium and the reception in the Renaissance, focusing on Euripides and Hesiod. He studied the textual transmission of the scholia to Hesiod's Works and Days, with focus on specific manuscripts, on the circle of Maximus Planudes and on Proclus' lost commentary, and published the critical edition of the scholia vetera. His student Lamberto Di Gregorio continued his researches and published the scholia vetera to the Theogony.
Pertusi's interest in Ancient Greek theater was influenced by his doctoral advisor Cantarella. Regarding Euripides, Pertusi made him one of his most continuous research topics. He not only investigated the plays as literary products of their time and their reception in antiquity, but also studied his textual transmission and reception in Renaissance and their influence on Italian and Turkish literature.
In the framework of his managerial roles in the Cini Foundation, he organized a series of international congresses focused on the Byzantine-Venetian relations and the history of Byzantine spirituality, including a celebration of the millenary of the Mount Athos. In 1965 he collaborated with other scholars, including Bernhard Bischoff, to an extended study of the Pala d'Oro of the Basilica di San Marco.
In the framework of his interest in medieval history and Byzantine politics, Pertusi studied the Byzantine themata and published a critical edition of the treatise on the subject by Constantine VII Porpyrogenitus. He also encouraged and promoted the same line of research in his students.

Publications

Full lists of publications in,,. Journals are listed according to the sigla established by L'Année philologique, with the addition of "BISIME-AM" = "Bullettino dell'Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo e Archivio Muratoriano".

Books

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Articles

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Fellowships and honors

See. If no end date is specified, Pertusi held the fellowship or the role to his death.

''Gedenkschriften'' and posthumous honors

Pertusi's premature death was met with mourning in Italian academia, particularly in the field of Byzantine studies. His colleagues Adriano Bausola — then Head of the Faculty of Humanities of the Università Cattolica — and Ezio Franceschini — formerly Chancellor of the same university — announced Pertusi's death, and so did Pertusi's students Antonio Carile and Carlo Maria Mazzucchi. The following is a list of Pertusi's obituaries, in chronological order:
Two Gedenkschriften were edited immediately after his passing, one promoted and edited by Carile, the other by his students and successors at the Università Cattolica, Chiara Faraggiana di Sarzana and Mazzucchi. In 1989, a congress in his memory was organised in Bologna, with the proceedings published two years later. In 2015, an entry about Pertusi was printed in the 82nd volume of the ''Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani.''