Agnolo Monosini (Pratovecchio 1568 – Florence 1626) was an

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance languag ...

scholar and cleric of the 16th and 17th centuries, who played a key role in the development of the Italian language two hundred years prior to the

risorgimento The unification of Italy ( ), also known as the Risorgimento (; ), was the 19th century political and social movement that in 1861 ended in the annexation of various states of the Italian peninsula and its outlying isles to the Kingdom of ...

. He was a native of Pratovecchio and studied with the

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, where he contributed to its first '' Vocabolario della lingua italiana'', published in 1623, in particular adding an index of Greek words.

A passion for words

Monosini had one craze which consumed all his intellectual energies: that of proving the Greek origins of the Florentine idiom, which would one day develop into modern Italian. He was reacting to French writers of the period who took great pains to relate their own language directly with Ancient Greek, bypassing the inheritance of Latin and Italian and Alpine Humanism. The relationships that Monosini develops between Greek and his contemporary vernacular rather suffer from his unconditional enthusiasm, with the result that the associations proposed are often cumbersome and sometimes quite bizarre.

''Floris Italicae''

In his key work, '' Floris Italicae linguae libri novem'' (''The Flower of Italian Language in a nine books'') published in 1604, he collected many vernacular Italian proverbs and idioms, and compared and contrasted them with Greek and Latin. ''Floris Italicae'' particularly concentrated on proverbs and language from

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and the high Maremma, and thus included many aspects of the ‘vulgar’

vernacular Vernacular is the ordinary, informal, spoken language, spoken form of language, particularly when perceptual dialectology, perceived as having lower social status or less Prestige (sociolinguistics), prestige than standard language, which is mor ...

language which were to become part of the official Italian language at the time of the

Risorgimento The unification of Italy ( ), also known as the Risorgimento (; ), was the 19th century political and social movement that in 1861 ended in the annexation of various states of the Italian peninsula and its outlying isles to the Kingdom of ...

. ''Floris Italicae'' was re-publishedPignatti, F; Monosini, A. (2011). ''Etimologia e proverbio nell'Italia del XVII secolo - Floris italicae linguae libri novem'', Rome: Vecchiarelli Editore. in 2011, with a companion volume of etymology and proverbs from the period.

Notes

External links

Treccani Encyclopedia entry

Italian language article and book review

Entry in website of re-publisher Vecchiarelli Editore

Virtual library
of the La Crusca Academy (registration required) {{DEFAULTSORT:Monosini, Agnolo Grand Duchy of Tuscany people Linguists from Italy 1568 births 1626 deaths