Francesco Vimercato of Milan: A Bio-Bibliography

Among Renaissance commentators on Aristotle, an honorable place must be given to Francesco Vimercato of Milan, whose translations and commentaries cover almost the entire corpus of Aristotelian writings. During his lifetime, this hard-working sixteenth-century scholar achieved a solid reputation for his erudition and unrivaled grasp of Aristotelian philosophy. He was honored by the King of France and by the Duke of Savoy, and his works found their way into the libraries of many lands. But he belongs to that tribe of pedants whose indispensable merits tend to be appreciated today only by editors of Aristotle who must struggle with textual details. The casual reader or sweeping philosophical critic has no patience for the sort of word-by-word examination of the text that editors still find useful.