Roberto Weiss
Encyclopedia
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
-British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
scholar
Academia
Academia is the community of students and scholars engaged in higher education and research.-Etymology:The word comes from the akademeia in ancient Greece. Outside the city walls of Athens, the gymnasium was made famous by Plato as a center of learning...
and historian
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...
, specialist in Italian-English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
cultural contacts during the period of Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
period and Renaissance humanism
Renaissance humanism
Renaissance humanism was an activity of cultural and educational reform engaged by scholars, writers, and civic leaders who are today known as Renaissance humanists. It developed during the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries, and was a response to the challenge of Mediæval...
.
Early life
Born in MilanMilan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
to a family which originated in the Czech Republic, Weiss began his studies in Italy but moved to England as a young man in 1926 on the advice of his father, Eugenio Weiss, in order to continue his education and prepare for a career in the diplomatic service by studying law. He stayed in England, however, due to his dislike for the fascist
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
regime of Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
and the "insufferably hot" Italian climate. While at Oxford he won the Charles Oldham prize and became close friends with the elder son of John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir
John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir
John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir was a Scottish novelist, historian and Unionist politician who served as Governor General of Canada, the 15th since Canadian Confederation....
, who later acted as his mentor. Roberto was a frequent guest at the Buchan home at Elsfield Manor, where he met T.E. Lawrence and the Mitford family
Mitford family
The Mitford family is a minor aristocratic English family that traces its origins in Northumberland back to the time of the Norman conquest. In the Middle Ages they had been Border Reivers based in Redesdale. The main family line had seats at Mitford Castle, Mitford Old Manor House and from 1828...
girls. At Oxford he met the novelist Barbara Pym
Barbara Pym
Barbara Mary Crampton Pym was an English novelist. In 1977 her career was revived when two prominent writers, Lord David Cecil and Philip Larkin, nominated her as the most underrated writer of the century...
who later used him as the basis for a character called Count Riccardo Bianco in her first novel, Some Tame Gazelle
Some Tame Gazelle
Some Tame Gazelle is Barbara Pym's début novel, first published in 1950. It is considered a remarkable first novel, because of the way in which the youthful Pym - who began the book while a student at Oxford before World War II - imagined herself into the situation of a middle-aged spinster,...
.
After gaining an upper second in law he stayed on to study for a D.Phil. He worked for a short time from 1932-1933 in the Department of Western Manuscripts of the Bodleian Library
Bodleian Library
The Bodleian Library , the main research library of the University of Oxford, is one of the oldest libraries in Europe, and in Britain is second in size only to the British Library...
and obtained his D.Phil from Oxford in 1934.
Weiss was naturalised in 1934. In 1936 he married Eve Cecil. They had four children and settled in Henley-on-Thames
Henley-on-Thames
Henley-on-Thames is a town and civil parish on the River Thames in South Oxfordshire, England, about 10 miles downstream and north-east from Reading, 10 miles upstream and west from Maidenhead...
.
Professor
He taught at University College, London from 1938. He did his military service in the Royal Artillery between 1942-1945. He became ProfessorProfessor
A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...
of Italian in 1946.
A pioneer in the study of early humanism, Weiss's first book (based on his thesis), Humanism in England during the Fifteenth Century (1941, subsequent editions: 1955, 1967, 2009) was the first full-length monograph in English to treat the subject of the pre-Tudor influence of Italian humanism on England. Subsequent lines of research took in Italian pre-humanists and the Renaissance knowledge of Greek.
His last book, the posthumously published The Renaissance discovery of classical antiquity
Classical antiquity
Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...
(1969) was an examination of the antiquarian studies of the renaissance humanists themselves, beginning with Petrarch
Petrarch
Francesco Petrarca , known in English as Petrarch, was an Italian scholar, poet and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch is often called the "Father of Humanism"...
and ending with the sack of Rome
Sack of Rome
The city of Rome has been sacked on several occasions. Among the most famous:*Battle of the Allia – Rome is sacked by the Gauls after the Battle of the Allia*Sack of Rome – Rome is sacked by Alaric, King of the Visigoths...
in 1527. He also made important contributions to the study of individual humanists.
Weiss was known for the conciseness of his writing, and was described as not one of those academics who waffles. He stated that he could have turned each of the last ten chapters of The Renaissance discovery of classical antiquity into its own book. His wife Eve, an English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
teacher
Teacher
A teacher or schoolteacher is a person who provides education for pupils and students . The role of teacher is often formal and ongoing, carried out at a school or other place of formal education. In many countries, a person who wishes to become a teacher must first obtain specified professional...
, ensured the correctness of his English grammar
Grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
and flow.
Weiss was a corresponding member of the Istituto Veneto, the Academia Patavina, the Arcadia
Arcadia
Arcadia is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the administrative region of Peloponnese. It is situated in the central and eastern part of the Peloponnese peninsula. It takes its name from the mythological character Arcas. In Greek mythology, it was the home of the god Pan...
, the Accademia Petrarca, the Accademia dei Sepolti, the Accademia degli Incamminati
Accademia degli Incamminati
The Accademia degli Incamminati was one of the first art academies in Italy. It was originally created around 1580 in Bologna as the Accademia dei Desiderosi and was sometimes known as the Accademia dei Carracci after its founders the Carracci cousins , with Annibale heading the institution thanks...
and the Mediaeval Academy of America. He was shortly before his death awarded the Serena Medal for Italian Studies by the British Academy
British Academy
The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national body for the humanities and the social sciences. Its purpose is to inspire, recognise and support excellence in the humanities and social sciences, throughout the UK and internationally, and to champion their role and value.It receives an annual...
.
According to the obituary in The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, the Italian department at the UCL "developed into one of the most flourishing centres of Italian scholarship outside Italy" under his leadership. The Times also called him "a vital link in Anglo-Italian cultural relations". The obituary in the mediaevalist journal Speculum
Speculum
The term speculum, Latin for "mirror", and its plural specula, may refer to:* Speculum , a medical tool used for examining body cavities* Speculum , a journal of medieval studies published by the Medieval Academy of America...
called him "one of the most learned and productive scholars of his generation".
Roberto Weiss died on 10 August 1969 in Reading, Berkshire
Reading, Berkshire
Reading is a large town and unitary authority area in England. It is located in the Thames Valley at the confluence of the River Thames and River Kennet, and on both the Great Western Main Line railway and the M4 motorway, some west of London....
, having suffered a heart attack
Myocardial infarction
Myocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...
in the early hours of 9 August. He left a large collection of Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
medal
Medal
A medal, or medallion, is generally a circular object that has been sculpted, molded, cast, struck, stamped, or some way rendered with an insignia, portrait, or other artistic rendering. A medal may be awarded to a person or organization as a form of recognition for athletic, military, scientific,...
s to his children who loaned them to the Fitzwilliam Museum
Fitzwilliam Museum
The Fitzwilliam Museum is the art and antiquities museum of the University of Cambridge, located on Trumpington Street opposite Fitzwilliam Street in central Cambridge, England. It receives around 300,000 visitors annually. Admission is free....
at the University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
. His personal library now forms an important part of the History of Art collection at the University of Warwick
University of Warwick
The University of Warwick is a public research university located in Coventry, United Kingdom...
library.
Published works (selection)
A bibliography of Weiss' works was published by Conor Francis Fahy & John D. Moores: "A list of the publications of Roberto Weiss, 1906-1969", in Italian studies, vol. 29 (1974), pp. 1–11.- Humanism in England during the Fifteenth Century (1941; 2nd ed. 1957, 3rd ed. 1967, 4th edition to be published on-line at the Medium Aevum website http://mediumaevum.modhist.ox.ac.uk/ 2009)
- The dawn of humanism in Italy (1947; Italian edition: Il Primo secolo dell’umanesimo, 1949), ISBN 0-8383-0080-4
- Un umanista veneziano: Papa Paulo II (1958)
- The medals of Pope Sixtus IV (1471-1484) (1961)
- The Renaissance discovery of classical antiquity (1969) ISBN 0-631-11690-7
- Medieval and humanist Greek : collected essays (1977)
- Illustrium imagines: Incorporating an English translation of Nota ISBN 0-934352-05-4