Borghesi Diomede

Diomede Borghesi was born in Siena around 1540. He was a pupil of Ludovico Meneghini, professor at the local “Studio”. At an early age he was banned from the city for unknown reasons and confined for two years to Portoferraio on the island of Elba. He managed to escape to Mantua, where he gained the protection of Cardinal Federico Gonzaga.

After the latter's death in 1564, he moved to Padua, and completed there his literary apprenticeship under Sperone Speroni, Francesco Piccolomini and Scipione Gonzaga. Although Borghesi had established his home in Padua, he nevertheless did not cease to roam through Italy. Between 1564 and 1587 he visited Venice, Bergamo, Verona, Rome, Viterbo, Perugia, Siena, Florence, Bologna, Ferrara, Reggio Emilia, Correggio, and Turin, where he became particularly known as a poet, composing various occasional poems for Carlo Emanuele of Savoy. Between 1566 and 1571 he published five volumes of Rime.

In 1588 Borghesi entered the service of Ferdinando de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, who established a chair of ‘lingua Toscana‘, the very first in any Italian university. This chair was especially created for Borghesi to teach Tuscan to the many German and North Italian students present in Siena at that time (cf. A. Cappagli, Diomede Borghesi e Celso Cittadini lettori di toscana favella, in: “Tra Rinascimento e strutture attuali. Atti del primo convegno della Società Internazionale di Linguistica e Filologia Italiana, Siena, 28-31 marzo 1989”, Torino, 1991, I, pp. 23-35; and P. Rossi, La prima cattedra di lingua toscana dai ruoli allo studio senese, 1588-1743, Torino, 1910, passim).

“His lecture notes, which are now in the Siena library and his tenure of the chair have been described by Rossi in his paper on the Tuscan language chair [see supra]. There are also two inaugural lectures by him delivered in connection with his academic duties [published respectively in 1589 and 1590], to which may be added an Oratione intorno agli onori della poesia e della eloquenza, printed in Siena in 1596. Most of Borghesi's extant philological works were written by him in epistolary form, and appear to have enjoyed some degree of popularity [...] Borghesi published some Lettere famigliari, the first [and only] volume bears the Padua imprint and the date 1578. In 1868 an edition of Borghesi's [unpublished] correspondence, edited by G. Campori, saw the light in Bologna from the press of G. Romagnoli” (R. Weiss, The Sienese Philologists of the Cinquecento. A Bibliographical Introduction, in: “Italian Studies” 3, 1946, pp. 44-45). From then on until his death on January 28, 1598, he lived in Siena, completely devoting himself to the study of grammar and language.