Venetian Schools and Teachers Fourteenth to Early Sixteenth Century: A Survey and a Study of Giovanni Battista Egnazio

What do we know about the education of boys and young men in Venice in this period? Who dispensed instruction, who received it, and who paid for it? What intellectual baggage did the élite of the young Venetian patricians take with them to the Studium of Padua, the sole center of advanced learning sanctioned by the Serenissima? No comprehensive answer to these questions exists, and most of the scholarly essays concerning Venetian education appeared in the learned journals of Italy many decades ago. For the benefit of future inquirers into this obscure and confusing subject it may be useful to survey the major contributions of Italian scholars from the notes of Bartolomeo Cecchetti in 1886 to the essays of the late Bruno Nardi, and to include some current additions to the subject made by Italian and American scholars incidental to more specialized studies.