Background
He was born of an ancient and noble family at Como, Italy on the 19th of April 1483. His father died when he was a child.
biographer historian physician
He was born of an ancient and noble family at Como, Italy on the 19th of April 1483. His father died when he was a child.
Giovio owed his education to his brother Benedetto. After studying the humanities, he applied himself to medicine and philosophy at his brother's request. He was Pomponazzi's pupil at Padua; and afterwards he took a medical degree in the university of Pavia.
He exercised the medical profession in Rome, but the attraction of literature proved irresistible for Giovio, and he was bent upon becoming the historian of his age.
He presented a portion of his history to Leo X, who read the manuscript, and pronounced it superior in elegance to anything since Livy. Thus encouraged, Giovio took up his residence in Rome, and Attached himself to Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, the pope's nephew. The next pope, Adrian VI, gave him a canonry in Como, on the condition, it is said, that Giovio should mention him with honour in his history. This patronage from a pontiff who was averse from the current tone of Italian humanism proves that Giovio at this period passed for a man of sound learning and sober manners. After Adrian's death, Giulio de' Medici became pope as Clement VII and assigned him chambers in the Vatican, with maintenance for servants befitting a courtier of rank. In addition to other benefices, he finally, in 1528, bestowed on him the bishopric of Nocera. Giovio had now become in a special sense dependent on the Medici. He was employed by that family on several missions-as when he accompanied Ippolito to Bologna on the occasion of Charles V's coronation, and Caterina to Marseilles before her marriage to the duke of Orleans. During the siege of Rome in 1527 he attended Clement in his flight from the Vatican. While crossing the bridge which connected the palace with the castle of S. Angelo, Giovio threw his mantle over the pope's shoulders in order to disguise his master. In the sack he suffered a serious pecuniary and literary loss, if we may credit his own statement. The story runs that he deposited the manuscript of his history, together with some silver, in a box at S. Maria Sopra Minerva for safety. This box was discovered by two Spaniards, one of whom secured the silver, while the other, named Herrera, knowing who Giovio was, preferred to hold the manuscripts for ransom. Herrera was so careless, however, as to throw away the sheets he found in paper, reserving only that portion of the work which was transcribed on parchment. This he subsequently sold to Giovo in exchange for a benifice at Cordova, which Clement VII conceded to the Spaniard. Six books of the history were lost in this transaction. Giovo contented himself with indicating their substance in a summary. Perhaps he was not unwilling that his work should resemble that of Livy, even in its imperfection. But doubt rests upon the whole of this story. Apostolo Zeno affirms that in the middle of the last century three of the missing books turned up among family papers in the possession of Count Giov. Batt. Giovio, who wrote a panegyric on his ancestor. It is therefore not improbable that Giovio possessed his history intact, but preferred to withhold from publication those portions which might have involved him in difficulties with living persons of importance. The omissions were afterwards made good by Curtio Marinello in the Italian edition, published at Venice in 1581. But whether Marinello was the author of these additions is not known.