[1] At the age of seventeen, on 18 October 1566, he entered in the Canons Regular of the Lateran, the religious order who held the Santa Maria in Porto Basilica in Ravenna.

Garzoni spent most of his life in the monastery of Santa Maria del Porto, though he had contacts with literary circles and was elected to the Accademia degli Informi in Ravenna just before his death.

He is best known for La piazza universale di tutte le professioni del mondo (1585), which, with its descriptions of unusual professions, shows a fascination with taxonomy and encyclopedic listings evident also in other writings.

He was also the first to write in Italian a complete biographical catalog of women in the Bible (Le vite delle donne illustri della Sacra Scrittura).

Garzoni's eclectic work had a vast European success (numerous translations and reprints), to the point of consecrating him among the most popular Italian authors of the late sixteenth century.