Roberto Weiss

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Professor
Roberto Weiss
Roberto Weiss cerca 1916
Born Milan
Died Reading
Cause of death Heart Attack
Nationality Italian, British
Occupation Professor
Title Count[1]
Spouse(s) Eve (née Cecil)
Children 1 boy, 3 girls
Academic background
Education Oxford University
Thesis title Humanism in England during the Fifteenth Century up to 1485
Thesis year Unpublished D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1938
Influences John Buchan
Academic work
Discipline Historian
Sub discipline Rennaissance
Institutions University College, London
Main interests Medals
Notable works Humanism in England during the Fifteenth Century, Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity

Roberto Weiss (21 January 1906 – 10 August 1969) was an Italian-British scholar and historian, specialist in Italian-English cultural contacts during the period of the Renaissance and Renaissance humanism.[2][3]

Early life

Roberto Weiss cerca 1909
File:Roberto Weiss cerca 1911.JPG
Roberto Weiss cerca 1911

He originally camt to Oxford University to study law.[1] He worked for a short time from 1932–1933 in the Department of Western Manuscripts of the Bodleian Library and obtained his D.Phil from Oxford in 1934, the same year as he won the Charles Oldham prize.[4] He gained British citizenship in his late twenties.[1] The author John Buchan was friend and mentor of him.[4][5] At Oxford he met the novelist Barbara Pym, who later used him as the basis for the character Count Ricardo Bianco in her first novel, Some Tame Gazelle,[1][6] which she had begun writing while at Oxford,[7] Weiss was naturalised in 1934 and in 1936 he married Eve Cecil, with whom he settled in Henley-on-Thames and had four children.[4] He served in the British Royal Artillery in a non-combat role during World War II between 1942 and 1945.[citation needed]

Professor

File:Roberto weiss in rome with his sister.jpg
Roberto Weiss in Rome with his sister

He taught at University College, London from 1938 until his death. He became Professor of Italian in 1946.[4][8]

A pioneer in the study of early humanism,[4] Weiss's first book (based on his thesis), Humanism in England during the Fifteenth Century (1941, subsequent editions: 1955, 1967, 2009) was the first full-length monograph in English to treat the subject of the pre-Tudor influence of Italian humanism on England.[9] A reviewer from its first publication said that "young Weiss’s meticulous scholarship had already long been recognised"[10] while it was described as "the best general guide’ to its subject"[11] and as being the work others were still in the shadow of seven decades on.[12] The book was also criticized for adhering too much to Jacob Burckhardt.[1] Subsequent lines of research took in Italian pre-humanists and the Renaissance knowledge of Greek. Weiss cited Rosamond Joscelyne Mitchell in this book[1] and she cited him in her book From Bristol to Rome in the Fifteenth Century.[13][14]

His last book, the posthumously published The Renaissance discovery of classical antiquity (1969) was an examination of the antiquarian studies of the renaissance humanists themselves, beginning with Petrarch and ending with the sack of Rome in 1527. He also made important contributions to the study of individual humanists.[4]

Weiss was known for the conciseness of his writing.[4] He stated that he could have turned each of the last ten chapters of The Renaissance discovery of classical antiquity into its own book.[15] His wife Eve, an English teacher, ensured the correctness of his English grammar and flow.

He was shortly before his death awarded the Serena Medal for Italian Studies by the British Academy.[4] Roberto Weiss died on 10 August 1969 in Reading, Berkshire, having suffered a heart attack in the early hours of 9 August.[4] According to the obituary in The Times, the Italian department at the UCL "developed into one of the most flourishing centres of Italian scholarship outside Italy" under his leadership. The Times also called him "a vital link in Anglo-Italian cultural relations".[4] The obituary in the mediaevalist journal Speculum called him "one of the most learned and productive scholars of his generation". He has had a successful posthumous publishing career.[1]

Published works (selection)

A bibliography of Weiss' works was published by Conor Francis Fahy & John D. Moores: "A list of the publications of Roberto Weiss, 1906–1969", in Italian studies, vol. 29 (1974), pp. 1–11.

  • Humanism in England during the Fifteenth Century (1941; 2nd ed. 1957, 3rd ed. 1967)
  • The dawn of humanism in Italy (1947; Italian edition: Il Primo secolo dell’umanesimo, 1949), ISBN 0-8383-0080-4
  • Un umanista veneziano: Papa Paulo II (1958)
  • The medals of Pope Sixtus IV (1471–1484) (1961)
  • The Renaissance discovery of classical antiquity (1969) ISBN 0-631-11690-7
  • Medieval and humanist Greek : collected essays (1977)[16]
  • Illustrium imagines: Incorporating an English translation of Nota ISBN 0-934352-05-4

See also

References

Notes
  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Introduction by David Rundle to the 4th edition of Humanism in England during the Fifteenth Century
  2. ↑ C. Fahy in Lettere Italiane, xxii (1970), pp. 252 – 56
  3. ↑ O. Skutch in Italian Studies , xxv (1970), pp. 1 – 5; N. Rubinstein, ‘Roberto Weiss (1906 – 69)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Available on-line at http://www.oxforddnb.com/
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9 Obituary in The Times of London, August 1969
  5. ↑ The colourful life of Roberto Weiss
  6. ↑ B. Pym, Some Tame Gazelle (London, 1950), but first composed soon after Pym finished Finals in 1934: H. Holt, A Lot to Ask. A life of Barbara Pym (London, 1990), pp. 52 – 54, 61 & 143 – 45
  7. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ A Rising Sun, published in the Times Literary Supplement, The Times, 24 January 1948
  9. ↑ Roberto Weiss, Humanism in England during the Fifteenth Century (4th edition), ed. David Rundle & A. J. Lappin
  10. ↑ Gervase Mathew in New Blackfriars, xxiii (1942), pp. 370 – 71
  11. ↑ J. B. Trapp, ‘From Guarino of Verona to John Colet’ in S. Rossi & D. Savoia ed., Italy and the English Renaissance (Milan, 1989), pp. 45 – 53 at p. 45 [reprinted as ch. XIII in J. B. Trapp, Essays on the Renaissance and the Classical Tradition (Aldershot, 1990)]
  12. ↑ D. Rundle, ‘On the Difference between Virtue and Weiss: humanist texts in England during the fifteenth century’ in D. E. S. Dunn ed., Courts, Counties and the Capital in the Later Middle Ages (Stroud, 1996), pp. 181 – 203.
  13. ↑ R. J. Mitchell,John Free. From Bristol to Rome in the Fifteenth Century (London, 1955), p. vii.
  14. ↑ To the citations in Weiss’s bibliography could have been added R. J. Mitchell, ‘English students at Ferrara in the fifteenth century’, Italian Studies, i (1937), pp.75 – 82 and ead., ‘A Renaissance Library: The Collection of John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester’,The Library, xviii (1937), pp. 67 – 83; see also the authorial and editorial addenda at pp. 46, 175 and 180 below. Her John Tiptoft (1427 – 1470) (London, 1938) – a now rare volume as stocks of it were destroyed during the Blitz – was positively reviewed by Cecilia Ady in Italian Studies, i (1938), pp. 177 – 78 (though the journal attributes the work to ‘Ruth J. Mitchell’); cf. E. F. Jacob, EHR, liv (1939), pp. 362 – 63, A. Steel in History, xxiv (1939), pp. 143 – 45; A. L. Rowse in The Spectator, May 6, 1938, pp. 816 – 18, and [D. M. M. Morrah] in Times Literary Supplement, July 2, 1938, p. 445.
  15. ↑ [Introduction to The Renaissance discovery of classical antiquity]
  16. ↑ a bibliography of Weiss’s publications which first appeared as C. Fahy and J. D. Moores, ‘A List of the Publications of Roberto Weiss (1906 – 69)’,Italian Studies , xxix (1974), pp. 1 – 11.
Bibliography
  • Astrik Gabriel, Paul Oskar Kristeller and Kenneth Setton, "Roberto Weiss" (obituary), Speculum 1971, p. 574 f (online with JSTOR subscription).
  • Obituary in The Times, Thursday, 14 August 1969; pg. 10; Issue 57638; col F (online with subscription).
  • Nicolai Rubinstein, 'Weiss, Roberto (1906–1969)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn., Jan 2008 ([1] with subscription).

External links

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