TINUTURILE GERMANE ÎN VIZIUNEA A DOI LITERATI: CORNELIUS TACITUS SI ENEA SILVIO PICCOLOMINI
THE GERMAN DISTRICTS IN THE VIEW OF TWO MEN OF LETTERS: CORNELIUS TACITUS AND ENEA SILVIO PICCOLOMINI

Summary/Abstract: This study has as starting point the papers of two famous writers of the periods in which they activated: Cornelius Tacitus and Enea Silvio Piccolomini. Chronologically, Tacitus was the first who presented a series of considerations on the German tribes in the work De origine et situ Germanorum liber; he was followed at a few centuries distance by Piccolomini, who enriched his historical paper– De ritu, situ, moribus et conditione Germaniae descriptio –beside his knowledge and by a series of information taken over from ancient writers, including Tacitus. Similarity of the two authors seemed beneficial, because both bring into discussion the same region in different periods; by presenting the courage of the German tribes, Tacitus satirizes indirectly the Roman society that was decayed at that time; in exchange Piccolomini gives his writing a polemic character, to argue a letter of Chancellor Martin Mayr, in which he sustained a series of points, that from the point of view of the Germans, are at the base of the economic stagnation of the country caused by the Catholic Church. The position held by Piccolomini in the ecclesiatical apparatus entitled him to criticise the opinion sustained by the chancellor Mayr and to present all the advantages the Germans enjoy because of the Roman Church. We may speak of a similitude between Tacitus and Piccolomini through the monographic, ethnographic and descriptive character of both’s papers, who presented the German districts in different periods; the first did it objectively according to the “sine ira et studio” saying while the second, rather subjectively, according to the politics of the Catholic Church from then.

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