Poggio Bracciolini
A Florentine humanist and papal secretary who searched monastery libraries for lost Latin books, and found Lucretius among them.
1 min read · Updated 11 November 2026 · Last checked 11 November 2026
Life and work #
Poggio Bracciolini was an Italian humanist and calligrapher, and one of the best-known recoverers of forgotten Latin manuscripts in monastic libraries. He worked as a secretary to popes and later as chancellor of Florence.1
In 1417 his searches of monasteries, including Fulda and St Gall, turned up several texts, among them Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura.2,3
He copied the new finds in a clear hand, and invented a humanist script that later served as the model for ‘Roman’ type.4
What to be careful about #
Which monastery held the Lucretius manuscript is uncertain. Popular accounts, including Greenblatt’s, make large claims about the find’s effect on the modern world that specialists dispute.
On this site #
See also: Lucretius, Pierre Gassendi.
Notes
- 'Poggio Bracciolini', Encyclopædia Britannica. ↩
- Britannica, 'Poggio Bracciolini'. ↩
- Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (W. W. Norton, 2011). The exact monastery for the Lucretius find is uncertain; Fulda is often suggested. ↩
- Britannica, 'Poggio Bracciolini'. ↩
Modern works cited
- Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (W. W. Norton, 2011)
A lively popular account of Poggio's find. Some scholars think it overstates the poem's Renaissance impact. - 'Poggio Bracciolini', Encyclopædia Britannica — read online
A reference biography. It gives the years 1380 to 1459, his work as a papal secretary and copyist, the humanist script he invented, and his 1417 searches of monastic libraries that turned up Lucretius among other texts.
Cite this page. The Garden, ‘Poggio Bracciolini’, https://camelmaps.org/garden/person.php, last updated 11 November 2026, last checked 11 November 2026. What has changed.