Background
Vittorino da Feltre was born in 1378 at Feltre in the north of Italy. He was the son of Bruto di Ramboldini, a notary whose family, once of some social importance, had fallen on hard times. .
Vittorino da Feltre was born in 1378 at Feltre in the north of Italy. He was the son of Bruto di Ramboldini, a notary whose family, once of some social importance, had fallen on hard times. .
When Vittorino da Feltre was 18 years old, he left Feltre for the University of Padua, where he supported himself for a time by teaching grammar to boys. After receiving his degree of doctor of arts in Latin composition and logic, he began the study of mathematics. In 1415-1416 he studied with Guarino da Verona in Venice.
In 1415 Vittorino da Feltre teaching both grammar and mathematics in Padua. After studying in Venice, he rejoined the university in Padua. As was then the custom, he took number of students to live in his house and closely supervised their studies.
Upon his promotion to the chair of rhetoric at Padua in 1422, Vittorino was one of the most popular masters at the university.
In 1422, however, conditions at Padua forced him to move briefly to Venice and then, at the invitation of Gianfrancesco Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, to the city of Mantua, where he opened a school to tutor the marquis's children. Mantua then became Vittorino's home for the rest of his life. He died in Mantua.
Vittorino's school was created with the ideal of educating the Christian boy by using the newly discovered disciplines of classical, particularly Roman, antiquity in moral philosophy and literature.
Vittorino was one of the greatest classical scholars of his day. In his school, a palace provided by the marquis, he trained not only the Gonzaga children but also children from the town and from other cities. He supervised the physical as well as the moral and intellectual development of his students.
The chief direction of Vittorino's school was training in the classics, and Latin was the language of teaching as well as of conversation. Students learned to write Greek, often by the age of 12.
Vittorino collected an exceptionally fine library in Mantua, and he retained the devotion of his patrons and students throughout his life.
Vittorino da Feltre's sympathy with the revolutionary scholarly methods of humanism did not in the least move him from his profound Christian convictions.
Vittorino da Feltre was small, but wiry, and graceful. He was a dedicated teacher.