Famiano Strada

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.{{sfn|Burke|2002}} 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.{{Cite book |last=Scifoni |first=Felice |date=1849 |title=Dizionario biografico universale|volume=5|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hg5BAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA198 |location=Florence |publisher=Davide Passagli |pages=198 |access-date=29 July 2022}} 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.Strada's work was first published in Saint-Omer in 1619. It was reprinted in Oxford in 1745. The work served as a source for many English Renaissance poets (Martin, “Commentary,” Crashaw, Poems, pp. 439-440),See also: {{cite encyclopedia|encyclopedia=The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature|volume=1|title=Richard Crashaw|editor=David Scott Kastan|page=102|quote=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.|isbn=9780195169218|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2006|author=Thomas Healy}} 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.{{cite book|isbn=9780912646657|title=The Emotive Image: Jesuit Poetics in the English Renaissance|author=Anthony Raspa|publisher=Texas Christian University Press|year=1983|page=57}}

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).{{cite book|title=A History of Historical Writing: From the earliest times to the end of the seventeenth century|author1=James Westfall Thompson|author2=Bernard J. Holm|volume=1|publisher=P. Smith|year=1967}} Strada was defended by Protestant scholars of Northern Germany, such as the brothers Andreas and Olaf Borrichius.

• {{cite book |title=Prolusiones academicæ|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FnPLiG6RDYoC|last=Strada|first=Famiano|location=Romae|publisher=Apud Iacobum Mascardum|language=la|date=1617|access-date=29 May 2019}}
• {{cite book |title=Famiani Stradæ Romani e Societate Iesu Prolusiones academicæ|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IJekqdFAWTUC|last=Strada|first=Famiano|location=Lugduni|publisher=sumpt. Iacobi Cardon & Petri Cauellat|edition=seconda edizione riveduta dall'autore|language=la|date=1627|access-date=29 May 2019}}
• {{cite book |title=Famiani Stradæ Romani e Societate Iesu De bello Belgico decas prima|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=upGZZfAO-IQC|last=Strada|first=Famiano|location=Romae|language=la|date=1632|access-date=29 May 2019}}
• {{cite book |title=Famiani Stradæ Romani e Societate Iesu De bello Belgico decas secunda|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oA5hLyfJhzkC|last=Strada|first=Famiano|location=Romae|language=la|date=1647|access-date=29 May 2019}}
• Orationes tres de passione Domini, Romae, 1641.
• {{cite book |title=R.P. Famiani Stradæ Romani e Societate Jesu Eloquentia bipartita|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=I0TWaMR3cmwC|last=Strada|first=Famiano|location=Goudae|publisher=Typis Guilielmi vander Hoeve|language=la|date=1654|access-date=29 May 2019}}

{{Reflist}}

• {{treccani|famiano-strada|Famiano Strada||1936}}
• {{cite journal|title=Latinity and Wireless|author=William Sherwood Fox|journal=The Classical Journal|volume=15|number=1|year=1919|pages=50–52|jstor=3287767|language=en}}
• {{Cite encyclopedia|last=Burke|first=P.|year=2002|title=Strada, Famiano|encyclopedia=The Oxford Companion to Italian Literature|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-818332-7 |access-date=27 June 2023|url=https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780198183327.001.0001/acref-9780198183327-e-3065}}

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Category:1572 births

Category:17th-century Italian historians

Category:Italian male non-fiction writers

Category:17th-century Italian male writers

Category:Writers from Rome

Category:16th-century Italian Jesuits

Category:1649 deaths

Category:Italian Latinists