Professor Giovanni Aquilecchia, who has died aged 77, was one of the great Italian Renaissance scholars of the second half of the 20th century, known, above all, for his work on the philosopher Giordano Bruno, who was burned at the stake for heresy in 1600.
An uncompromising philological rigour and attention to historical detail characterised Aquilecchia's many editions, commentaries and scholarly studies. The extraordinary vicissitudes of Bruno's life have attracted many interpretations - Bruno, the liberal martyr fighting ecclesiastical oppression; Bruno, the magician; Bruno, the spy working for Queen Elizabeth I - all ultimately insubstantial.
What has prevailed has been Aquilecchia's presentation of Bruno, the fruit of a formidable expertise in disparate historical, philosophical and philological specialisations. In particular, Aquilecchia insisted on interpreting his subject, a renegade Dominican friar forced to live by his wits, in relation to the changing circumstances of his life.
Aquilecchia was born at Nettuno, near Rome, and, in 1946, obtained a degree in Italian literature at the University of Rome, where he also completed a diploma under the supervision of the foremost scholar of Italian letters, Natalino Sapegno.
The interest in Bruno that had developed in Rome brought him to the Warburg Institute, London, as a British Council scholar in 1950-51. Only here, he believed, would he find the materials he needed for interpreting the six philosophical dialogues that Bruno published there some three and half centuries before. A further incentive was the presence of Frances Yates, who had published several important Bruno studies.
During the next three or so years, Aquilecchia reconstructed and reinterpreted the printing history of the Ash Wednesday Supper, Bruno's best known work. His 1955 critical edition, with its detailed commentary, was followed by editions of all Bruno's Italian works, and of several Latin ones, including two hitherto unknown. His editorial work inspired his many studies on Bruno's life and works, among them Giordano Bruno (1971, revised 2001), Le opere italiane di Giordano Bruno (1991) and Il dilemma matematico di Bruno tra atomismo e infinitismo (1992). The most important of his articles were republished in a collection, Schede bruniane (1993).
Aquilecchia also wrote important studies on other authors, both late medieval and Renaissance, notably the historian Giovanni Villani, the satirist and journalist Pietro Aretino, the poet Torquato Tasso, and the philosophers Girolamo Cardano and Gian Battista della Porta. His editions of Aretino's Sei giornate (Six Days, 1969; third edition, with a French translation, 1998-99) and poems (1992) were two particularly important contributions.
Whatever the subject, Aquilecchia set the highest scholarly standards. By nature gentle to a fault, even at an early stage of his career he ventured to correct, always courteously and respectfully, some of the great "barons" of Italian learning, who, according to conventional wisdom, were above criticism.
His scholarly accomplishments were soon recognised. Roberto Weiss appointed him assistant lecturer in the Italian department of University College London in 1953, lecturer in 1955 and reader in 1959. Two years later, he became professor of Italian at Manchester University, before moving back to London in 1970 to take up the chair of Italian at Bedford College.
When, in 1984, Bedford College was merged with Royal Holloway College, Aquilecchia became honorary research fellow at University College, while remaining formally professor of Royal Holloway, and professor emeritus from 1989. After this notional retirement, he still taught, wrote and lectured.
The last 18 months of his life, however, was soured by an Italian academic dispute of such ferocity that it featured prominently in the national press. Even so, he retained a sense of humour and proportion. He had stayed, he said self-deprecatingly, in Britain so as to remain outside the tortuous politics of Italian academic life.
When, in early June, his cardiologist instructed him to discontinue a seminar and go immediately to hospital, Aquilecchia went first to apologise to his audience, commenting that, for the first time in his life, he could not honour a commitment.
In 1951, he married Costantina Bacchetta, by whom he had three children, Adolfo, Vincenzo and Maria Letizia, who survive him. He was divorced in 1973, and also leaves his wife, Catherine Posford, whom he married in 1992.