His international literary success with this work led to his appointment in Rome as the official historiographer of the Society of Jesus and his monumental Istoria della Compagnia di Gesu (1650–1673).

The entire patrimony of classical rhetoric was centered around the figure of the Ciceronian Orator, the vir bonus dicendi peritus of Quintilian as the ideal combination of moral values and eloquence.

In his introduction Bartoli constructs his two part presentation out of a maxim of oratory, that recalls Quintilian, but is of his fashioning: "Si qua obscuritas litterarum, nisi quia sed obtrectationibus imperitorum vel abutentium vitio" And he effectively dramatizes a tableau of the archetypical Anaxagoras enlightening the ignorant by demystifying the cause of a solar eclipse through his scientific understanding.

Part I defends the man of letters against the neglect of rulers and fortune and make him a conduit of an intellectual beatitude, il gusto dell'intendere, that is the basis of his moral and social Ataraxia.

He develops his theme of Stoic superiority under two headings, La Sapienza felice anche nelle Miserie and L'Ignoranza misera anche nelle Felicità with regular reference to the Epistulae morales ad Lucilium of Seneca, and exempla taken from Diogenes Laërtius, Plutarch, Pliny, Aelian, with frequent quotations, often unsourced, from Virgil and the poets, and headed by Augustine and Tertullian and Synesius among the Christian writers.

Part II seeks to emend the faults of the present day writer in 9 chapters under the headings, Ladroneccio, Lascivia, Maldicenza, Alterezza, Dapoccaggine, Imprudenza, Ambitione, Avarizia, Oscurita.

During the process of her conversion to Roman Catholicism at the hands of the Jesuits in the 1650s Christina, Queen of Sweden specifically requested a copy of this celebrated work be sent to her in Stockholm.

Through its gallery of exemplary stylizations and picturesque moral encouragements it defends and emends not only the aspiring letterato, but also an updated classicism open to modernity, but diffident of excess.

In 1769 his Bartoli translation appeared with critical notes L'Homme de lettres, ouvrage traduit de l'italien augmenté de Notes historiques et critiques[7] In Nürnberg in 1654 a German version appeared anonymously under the title, Vertheidigung der Kunstliebenden und Gelehrten anstandigere Sitten, The translator, Count Georg Adam von Kuefstein (1605–1656) in his preface signs himself Der Kunstliebende, his moniker as a member of the prestigious language academy, the Fruitbearing Society (Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft) under whose name and auspices the book was issued.

[10] During Cromwell's Protectorate in the 1650s many English notables, such as Sir Kenelm Digby gravitated to Rome and were caught up in the vogue of Bartoli's L'huomo di lettere.

(1590–1672) began as a teacher of classical style in France and spent 15 years in Rome as Latin secretary for the French Assistancy at Jesuit headquarters before he returned to Lyons.

[16] In 1704 this Latin translation was partially reprinted by the Jesuit Faculty of Theology at University of Wroclaw (Breslau), recently founded by Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor.

[17] To Janin's version was added a second translation into Latin by the Lutheran pastor in the service of Frederick I of Prussia in Prussian Kűstrin, Johann Georg Hoffmann, (1648–1719) Homo literatus defensus et emendatus.

Amsterdam's enterprising and productive man of letters, Lambert Bidloo (1638–1724) was, like the Ferrarese Bartoli's father, Tiburzio, an apothecary by profession.

He goes on to recall his first introduction to Bartoli's opuscula as a literary nec plus ultra through his acquaintance with Aloysius Bevilacqua who arrived in the Netherlands to represent pope Innocent XI as nuncio at the Congress of Nijmegen (1677/78), seeking peace for the United Provinces against the invading Louis XIV.

As was the custom, the book is decorated with a garland of laudatory poems by noted literary contemporaries, Pieter Langendijk, Jan van Hoogstraten.

2018 @Amazon.com Dell'uomo di lettere difeso ed emendato The modernized text comes from the complete Opere (Marietti, Torino) vol.