The noble
Italian family of Ramusio (also spelled Ramnusio, Rhamnusio, Rannusio) was worth of note for literary and official ability during at least four generations.
Its original home was in
Rimini
Rimini ( , ; or ; ) is a city in the Emilia-Romagna region of Northern Italy.
Sprawling along the Adriatic Sea, Rimini is situated at a strategically-important north-south passage along the coast at the southern tip of the Po Valley. It is ...
, and the municipality of that city has set up a tablet on the town hall bearing an inscription which may be thus rendered:
:''The municipality of Rimini here records the claim of their city to the family of the Ramusios, adorned during the 15th and 16th centuries by the illustrious jurist and man of letters
Paolo the elder, who rendered the work of Valturius, our fellow-citizen, into the vernacular; by the physician
Girolamo, a most successful student of
Oriental tongues, and the first to present Europe with a translation of
Avicenna
Ibn Sina ( – 22 June 1037), commonly known in the West as Avicenna ( ), was a preeminent philosopher and physician of the Muslim world, flourishing during the Islamic Golden Age, serving in the courts of various Iranian peoples, Iranian ...
; and by Giovanni Battista,
cosmographer to the
Venetian republic and secretary to the
Council of Ten
The Council of Ten (; ), or simply the Ten, was from 1310 to 1797 one of the major governing bodies of the Republic of Venice. Elections took place annually and the Council of Ten had the power to impose punishments upon Venetian nobility, patric ...
, who bequeathed to the world that famous collection of voyages and travels, regarded in his own day as a marvellous work, and still full of authority among all civilized nations.''
The best known of the Ramusio was
Giovanni Battista Ramusio, who published ''Delle navigationi e viaggi'', a collection of travellers’ accounts and biographies, including the accounts of
Marco Polo
Marco Polo (; ; ; 8 January 1324) was a Republic of Venice, Venetian merchant, explorer and writer who travelled through Asia along the Silk Road between 1271 and 1295. His travels are recorded in ''The Travels of Marco Polo'' (also known a ...
,
Niccolò Da Conti,
Magellan and
Giosafat Barbaro, as well as the ''
Descrittione dell’ Africa''. He also published an excerpt of
Tomé Pires' work on the Indies, which had come into his hands, though he did not know the name of its author.
[Armando Cortesão, ''The 'Suma Oriental' of Tomé Pires: An Account of the East, from the Red Sea to China,'' 2 vols, (1944) 1990:xviii.]
Notes
References
*{{1911, wstitle=Ramusio, volume=22, pages=882–884
Italian families
Roman Catholic families