Independent
15  AUGUST 2001

Professor Giovanni Aquilecchia
By Diego Zancani

Giovanni Aquilecchia will be remembered mainly for his meticulous work on the Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno and on the poet Pietro Aretino, and for his essays published in Schede di Italianistica (1976) and Nuove Schede di Italianistica (1994). In a frenetic age, his scholarship was marked by meditated, carefully balanced judgment, and by a selective approach to the authors he chose to study.
Gianni Aquilecchia was born near Anzio, in Italy, in a small town grandly called Nettuno (Neptune), in 1923. The combination of the mythological birthplace and his unusual family name of noble origin, reminiscent of an eagle ("aquila"), must have given him from his early years a sense of purpose and of space, as well as the great sense of humour which was to accompany him all his life.
After attending the distinguished Liceo Torquato Tasso in Rome, he enrolled at Rome University, from where he graduated in 1946 in Italian literature with a dissertation on Torquato Tasso and the late Renaissance epic. As was customary at the time for brilliant students, he became an Assistant, probably unpaid, to Professor Natalino Sapegno, an extremely influential figure and a well-known anti-Fascist.
In 1948, after being awarded a graduate diploma, roughly equivalent to an MPhil, Aquilecchia won a scholarship from the French government to carry out research in Paris at the Collège de France in 1949-50. During his graduate studies Aquilecchia became interested in the works of the brilliant, but controversial, Renaissance philosopher Giordano Bruno, a former Dominican who believed in a plurality of worlds, and in the infinity of the universe, and who was a supporter of Copernican views, as well as having an interest in the art of memory and in magic, a combination of beliefs which brought him into conflict with the Roman inquisition and for which he was burnt at the stake in Rome in February 1600.
This deep interest in Bruno's texts and in their publication according to rigorous philological principles accompanied Aquilecchia all his life, and he wrote more than 45 articles, books and reviews dedicated to the philosopher from Nola. In 1950 his first important paper which dealt with newly found texts of Bruno's La Cena de le Ceneri ("Ash Wednesday Dinner") was published by the Academy of the Lincei in Rome, presented by Professor Angelo Monteverdi, the doyen of philological and Romance studies in Italy.
In the same year Aquilecchia also won a British Council scholarship which brought him to London to the Warburg Institute, where he met Frances Yates, a formidable scholar with a strong interest in Bruno whom Aquilecchia remembered with admiration and affection. The experience of that year in Britain was to be decisive for his career: in London he learnt to appreciate the richness of the British Museum Library, with its vast array of early Italian editions, many collected by the astute Sir Anthony Panizzi in the 19th century, and the nearby exceptional collections of the Warburg Institute.
Aquilecchia also made the acquaintance of another Italian expatriate, Carlo Dionisotti, 15 years his senior who, after a short period at Oxford, had been appointed to the chair of Italian at Bedford College, London. In later years they both became pillars of the British Library reading rooms and great models for younger scholars.
In 1951 Aquilecchia was also to sample the valuable collections of the John Rylands Library when he became an Assistant in Italian at Manchester University. But he preferred London and in 1953 he returned to University College as a lecturer and was promoted to a readership in 1959. He was, however, to return to Manchester in 1961 as Professor of Italian and Head of Department.
The department, though small, had been well looked after by Kathleen Speight, and was quite lively, but Aquilecchia was restless and considered the place somewhat "scomodo" ("out of the way"). When Dionisotti retired from the chair at Bedford College in 1970, Aquilecchia was appointed to succeed him.
He was subsequently not very happy when in 1985 Bedford merged with Royal Holloway and had to move to Egham in Surrey: although Aquilecchia retained his chair there, he did his lecturing in central London and he became an Honorary Research Fellow at University College. He enjoyed teaching, especially graduates; the undergraduates found him difficult to follow, partly because of his deep voice, and, if some of them occasionally giggled, he used to say that they would have laughed even more if they had been able to understand him. His witty remarks were often made as if in a strictly confidential manner, in a whisper, during tedious meetings or even during oral examinations, but more often when he felt at ease with friends.
Apart from his fundamental work on Bruno and on other Renaissance authors, Aquilecchia wrote on modern and contemporary authors such as Leopardi, De Sanctis and Montale, but he felt more at ease in the 16th century and his contribution to our knowledge of Pietro Aretino, whose dialogues he edited, and of Renaissance erotic poetry is indeed memorable. He had the ability to deliver even the most embarrassing description of Renaissance illustrations (Aretino's modi illustrated by Giulio Romano are not the only ones) in the most businesslike and scholarly fashion; his commentaries to Aretino's bawdy sonnets, and his explanations of recondite sexual jargon, are the only reliable ones.
Aquilecchia's passion for literature, philosophy and Renaissance thought was a passion for life, which he embraced in many guises. His great modesty prevented him from showing that he was in fact an aesthete and beauty, in all its forms, never failed to attract him.
He travelled extensively and he had endless anecdotes to tell about his journeys, especially the latest ones to the Far East on the occasion of the presentation of Bruno's Oeuvres complètes (1993-99), of which he edited the works in Italian. This edition, which included the result of half a century's labour, gave him much satisfaction but also brought bitterness when it was used without his permission in a well-known Italian series.
When he complained, in a quiet and dignified manner, and other scholars also lamented the new "fast-food philology", Aquilecchia refused to become embroiled in a very public dispute and preferred to write his response in the venerable Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana, stating that "philology, like philosophy, is debated in books and papers, not on a theatre stage".
In 1998 the British Academy honoured him with the Serena Medal, given for outstanding work of Italian interest.