Anacleto Trazzi (Sustinente, 1866 – Mantova, 1940) was a priest of the Catholic Church and a Latin poet. He undertook his ecclesiastical studies at the Seminary in Brescia. From there, his teachers sent him to the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome to attend the Faculty of Philosophy. In 1885, he moved to the episcopal school in Mantua and taught mathematics, physics and natural sciences there. The Catholic Church later appointed him Archdeacon of Mantua Cathedral. In the 1930s, Trazzi established his reputation as a Latin poet. He made his debut with Vergilius redux, a poem commemorating Vergil’s 2000th birthday (Trazzi 1930), which he submitted to the Certamen Hoeufftianum in 1930 (van Binnebeke 2020: 297, No. 19). In 1936, he published a collection of poems in different Horatian metres to celebrate Horace’s 2000th birthday (Trazzi 1936), followed by the Augustalia (1937) in commemoration of Augustus’s 2000th birthday and the foundation of the Fascist empire in Oriental Africa (on this poem, see Tacoma and De Vries 2014). During these years, he participated in the Certamen Hoeufftianum several times, winning the golden medal for his poem Ruris facies vespere in 1933 (see van Binnebeke 2020: 297, No. 17). In 1940 (the year of his death), he obtained laus in the Ruspantinianum (van Binnebeke 2020: 296, No. 15). In terms of poetic language, Trazzi is deeply indebted to his fellow countryman Vergil (Alfonsi 1943; Ziolkowski 1993: 200-203; De Sutter 2019: 79-85). For Trazzi’s biography, see chiefly Mattellini 2012: 170-171.

Bibliography

Latin texts

Trazzi, Anacleto. 1930. Vergilius redux seu de vita recentiore. Asola: Tipographia Scalini et Carrara.

———. 1933a. Ruris facies vespere. Amsterdam: Academia Regia disciplinarum Nederlandica.

———. 1933b. ‘Pio Papae XI. XI annum pontificatus explenti’. Alma Roma 20 (2): 19–21.

———. 1936. Carmina. Singulis quibusque metris horatianis respondentia. Adiectis aliis carminibus. Bologna: Nicola Zanichelli.

———. 1937. Augustalia (Poemation a r. Academia Italica Praemio Ornatum) Con Versione Metrica Del Sac. Giuseppe Ferrari. [Padua]: Typis Seminarii Patavini Gregoriana.

Secondary sources

Alfonsi, Luigi. 1943. ‘Un poeta latino moderno’. Vita e Pensiero 30 (3): 93–94.

Binnebeke, Xavier van. 2020. ‘Hoeufft’s Legacy: Neo-Latin Poetry in the Archive of the Certamen Poeticum Hoeufftianum (1923–1943)’. In Studies in the Latin Literature and Epigraphy of Italian Fascism, edited by Han Lamers, Bettina Reitz-Joosse, and Valerio Sanzotta, 245–325. Supplementa Humanistica Lovaniensia 46. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

Kallis, Aristotle. 2011. ‘“Framing Romanità”: The Celebrations for the Bimillenario Augusteo and the Augusteo-Ara Pacis Project’. Journal of Contemporary History 46 (4): 809–31.

Mattellini, Davide. 2012. Fichi luciferini. Miscellanea di studi. Libro primo. Cologno Monzese: Lampi di stampa.

De Sutter, Nicholas. 2019. ‘Through Virgil’s Eyes: The Certamen Hoeufftianum and the Revival of Figures from Antiquity in the Latin Poetry of the First World War.’ FuturoClassico, no. 5: 45–91.

Vries, Martje de, and Siward Tacoma. 2014. ‘Stralen als gelijken: de Augustalia (1937) van Anacleto Trazzi’. Roma Aeterna 2 (1): 72–77.

Ziolkowski, Theodore. 1993. Virgil and the Moderns. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Nicolò Bettegazzi