Oratio Hieronymi Zopii in Studiorum suorum auspicijs habita Bononiae. X. Kal. Decembris MDLXXXVI

4to (188x135 mm). 16 pp. Collation: A8. Printer's device on the title page. Modern quarter vellum. A good copy.
First and only edition of this oration given by Zoppio on 22 November 1586 when he was called back to his hometown, Bologna, to lecture in humanities. The speech focuses on his return home after a long period in Macerata and draws comparisons with Ulysses; it celebrates Bologna and its illustrious scholars, such as Robertello and Bocchi; and finally outlines the subjects of his course, which will be centered on rhetoric and poetics.
Girolamo Zoppio was born into a noble family of Bologna, where he studied philosophy and obtained a doctorate in 1574. He lectured on rhetoric and poetry at the University of Macerata and founded there the Accademia dei Catenati (cf. M. Maylender, Storia delle Accademie d'Italia, Bologna, 1926, I, p. 511; see also C. Pietrucci, Girolamo Zoppio e i Catenati di Macerata, in: “Schede umanistiche”, XXIX, 2015, pp. 59-71.), which published and staged his only theatrical work, the tragedy Athamante (1579). In 1585 he gave a speech (Oratio habita in primordiis Firmani Studij) for the restoration of the University of Fermo wanted by cardinal Alessandro Peretti, governor of Fermo and nephew of Pope Sixtus V. In 1586 he was invited to lecture on humanities at Bologna. Zoppio was involved in the quarrel over Dante between Jacopo Mazzoni and Belisario Bulgarini, and published Ragionamenti in difesa di Dante, et del Petrarca (1583) and La poetica sopra Dante (1589) (cf. B. Weinberg, A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance, Chicago, 1961, pp. 866-867, 870, 883-885, 895-899, 910-911; see also L. Piantoni, Zoppio, Girolamo, in: “Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani”, 100, Rome, 2020, s.v.).
Edit 16, CNCE53143; USTC, 864443.