Famiano Strada

Famiano Strada (1572 – 6 September 1649) was an Italian Jesuit and historian of wars in the low countries (Belgium and Netherlands) during the early part of the Eighty Years' War, starting with the abdication of Charles V in 1556 to the capture of Rheinsberg in 30 January 1590.

Famiano Strada
Portrait of Famiano Strada
Born	1572 Rome, Papal States
Died	6 September 1649(1649-09-06) (aged 76–77) Rome, Papal States
Nationality	Italian
Occupation(s)	Jesuit, latinist, and historian
Employer	Pontifical Gregorian University
Known for	Prolusiones academicæ De bello Belgico

Biography

Famiano Strada was born in Rome in 1572, and entered the Jesuit order as a young man. He taught rhetoric in the Roman College in the first part of the seventeenth century.^[1] In 1617, at the demand of Ranuccio I Farnese, Duke of Parma, he was assigned the task of writing a history of the war in the Netherlands. In order to write this history, Strada was given access to the (now destroyed) private archives of the House of Farnese. He consulted a broad range of sources such as letters written by princes, instructions to ambassadors, notes by spies and so forth. Throughout his history he reminded his readers of this access to ‘state secrets’ by citing and copying reports and letters. Strada’s history was divided in two ‘decades’: the first decade described the period from 1559 to 1579 and the second decade from 1579 to 1589. A third volume is said to have been prevented from publication by Spanish authorities.^[2] The first decade of the De bello belgico was translated into English by Sir Robert Stapylton, with the title The History of the Low-Countrey Warres (London, 1650). There were many editions of the original Latin, and continuations were prepared by G. Dondini and A. Gallucci; Italian translation by C. Papini and P. Segneri (Rome, 1638–49, 2 v.), French by Du Royer (Paris, 1664, 1669), Spanish by Melchior de Novar (Cologne, 1682, 3 v.).

Famiano Strada wrote also Prolusiones et Paradeigmata Eloquentiae, literary commentaries on the classics of ancient literature. The Prolusiones were issued in Oxford by William Turner in 1631.^[3] The work served as a source for many English Renaissance poets (Martin, “Commentary,” Crashaw, Poems, pp. 439-440),^[4] and for Coleridge in Biographia Literaria (London, 1960), p. 32, who described Strada as a leading authority on poetic diction; in 1762 (London), Prolusiones was published with a collection of epigrams for the use of scholars at Eton.^[5]

Strada was violently attacked by Cardinal Guido Bentivoglio in his Memorie (Amsterdam and Venice, 1648; last ed. by Costantino Panigada, Bari, 1934); and by Caspar Schoppe in his Infamia Famiani (1663).^[6] Strada was defended by Protestant scholars of Northern Germany, such as the brothers Andreas and Olaf Borrichius.

Works

• Strada, Famiano (1617). Prolusiones academicæ (in Latin). Romae: Apud Iacobum Mascardum. Retrieved 29 May 2019.
• Strada, Famiano (1627). Famiani Stradæ Romani e Societate Iesu Prolusiones academicæ (in Latin) (seconda edizione riveduta dall'autore ed.). Lugduni: sumpt. Iacobi Cardon & Petri Cauellat. Retrieved 29 May 2019.
• Strada, Famiano (1632). Famiani Stradæ Romani e Societate Iesu De bello Belgico decas prima (in Latin). Romae. Retrieved 29 May 2019.
• Strada, Famiano (1647). Famiani Stradæ Romani e Societate Iesu De bello Belgico decas secunda (in Latin). Romae. Retrieved 29 May 2019.
• Orationes tres de passione Domini, Romae, 1641.
• Strada, Famiano (1654). R.P. Famiani Stradæ Romani e Societate Jesu Eloquentia bipartita (in Latin). Goudae: Typis Guilielmi vander Hoeve. Retrieved 29 May 2019.

References

1. Burke 2002.
2. Scifoni, Felice (1849). Dizionario biografico universale. Vol. 5. Florence: Davide Passagli. p. 198. Retrieved 29 July 2022.
3. Strada's work was first published in Saint-Omer in 1619. It was reprinted in Oxford in 1745.
4. See also: Thomas Healy (2006). "Richard Crashaw". In David Scott Kastan (ed.). The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature. Vol. 1. Oxford University Press. p. 102. ISBN 9780195169218. In 1631, Oxford University Press published an edition of the Jesuit Famianus Strada's Prolusiones Academicae, which contains the Latin original of Crashaw's "Musicks Duell," one of his longest poems. Milton was also likely indebted to Strada's poem in his "L'Allegro" and John Ford notably uses it in his play The Lover's Melancholy.
5. Anthony Raspa (1983). The Emotive Image: Jesuit Poetics in the English Renaissance. Texas Christian University Press. p. 57. ISBN 9780912646657.
6. James Westfall Thompson; Bernard J. Holm (1967). A History of Historical Writing: From the earliest times to the end of the seventeenth century. Vol. 1. P. Smith.

External links

• Famiano Strada entry (in Italian) in the Enciclopedia Treccani, 1936
• William Sherwood Fox (1919). "Latinity and Wireless". The Classical Journal. 15 (1): 50–52. JSTOR 3287767.
• Burke, P. (2002). "Strada, Famiano". The Oxford Companion to Italian Literature. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-818332-7. Retrieved 27 June 2023.