Marco Lucio or Lucido Fazini Maffei Fosforo (1450-1503) was probably born in Rome in the second half of the 15th century. The scarce biographical information concerning him is mostly related to the alleged conspiracy of the Roman Academy, repressed in February 1468 by Paul II.
According to Zippel, he belonged to a Paduan family who had served Eugenio IV with arms: a Galeazzo and a Nicolò "de Fatinis de Padua" are salaried by the Holy See in 1440. The reference to his young age is present in all sources on the conspiracy, allows you to roughly fix the date of birth after 1450.
From the dispatch of the Milanese speaker Giovanni Bianchi to Galeazzo Maria Sforza, dated February 29, 1468 (cf. Pastor), Fazini is a guest in Rome of a relative who had the office of depositary of the Apostolic Chamber. According to Zippel, he should be identified with the Venetian Giovanni Condulmer, joint in turn with the academic "Glauco" Lucio Condulmer, who escaped arrest following the conspiracy, together with Filippo Buonaccorsi (Calhmaco Esperiente) and with a secretary Petreio by Cardinal Iacopo Ammannati. Giovanni Condulmer lived in the house of Paul II when he was a cardinal and after his election to the throne he obtained the post of depositary.
From Bianchi's letter we also learn that Fazini would not have had an eminent role among the conspirators and would have allowed himself to be involved only out of naivety. However, his distant relationship with the pontiff did not bring him a less harsh treatment: the letter (in Le Lives ) from Agostino Patrizi, master of ceremonies for Paul II, to Antonio Monelli, another family member of the pope, testifies that Fazini was imprisoned among the first together with Bartolomeo Platina, Agostino Maffei, Antonio Settimuleio Campano, Pietro Demetrio Guazzelli, Pietro Marso. The main defendant, Pomponio Leto, at that time in Venice where he was planning a trip to the East, was extradited in March and other conspirators were later imprisoned.
Pietro Marsi also alludes to the youth of Fazini at the time of his arrest in the XVI elegy of the Bembica collection addressed to the "fratres Academicos Romae captivos" where "decus immortale iuventae ... Iliacae" (cod. Vat . Reg . Lat . 1385, c. 27r). And Platina, in the account of the conspiracy inserted in De vita Christi ac omnium pontificum (p. 383), presents it as "homo omnium innocentissimus". However, he suffered torture and ill-treatment in prison like the other arrested, relieved by the possibility of communicating by letter with fellow sufferers. Of these correspondence there remains a short writing sent to him by Platina, in which the Cremonese humanist admires his dignity and fortitude, and two letters (the first of March 30) with related replies to the governor of Castel Sant'Angelo Rodrigo Sanchez de Arevalo, bishop of Calahorra. The latter, humanist and theologian, author of a Speculum vitae humanae printed several times during the fifteenth century, despite the hardness of the case, knew how to entertain a humanistic conversation with the prisoners: the correspondence with Platina and Leto is collected in cod.Marciano lat. XI, 103 (4361), where are also the letters of Fazini (cc. 108v-116v).
At Platina, Fazini must have been linked by rather intimate relationships. In De honesta voluptate (Venetiis 1517, pp. XXX, LX) the Cremonese gives an affectionate portrait of him. Later it was Fazini who introduced into the Roman house of Platina, Paolo Cortesi, still a young man, as the latter recalls in the De hominibus doctis (composed in 1490-91) professing his affection for the Fazini "secunduni fratrem". To the press (Florence 1734) and to two of the three witnesses mss. the eighteenth-century dialogue is premised by a letter from Fazini, followed by one from Angelo Poliziano, in which the Ciceronian style and the objectivity of judgment shown in the work are praised. The Fazini is mentioned again in the De cardinalatuby Cortesi himself (Romae 1510, p. LXXXI) in the chapter on audiences, where he appears as a meek and sensitive man, conversational and a lover of company. However, even before Paul was linked to his elder brother, Alessandro, who in the prints of one of his prayers delivered in the Vatican on the eve of the Epiphany of 1483 ( Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke , 7795, 7796) prefaced a letter to Fazini followed from the answer.
We do not know the date of release, but we can assume that it coincided with that of the other main defendants, and therefore not before the summer of 1469, after the trial had been held in the first months of the year. We have no news of the probable employment in the Curia after this date until the assignment of the bishopric of Segni on 5 November. 1481. In Segni, Fazini resided at least for periods if in the original of a letter sent "ex Hernicis" on 14 May 1486 to the apostolic secretary Giovanni Lorenzo da Venezia ( Vat . Lat . 5641, cc. 114r-115r) he declares that fight boredom with literature.
It is unlikely that Lucidus in the list of apostolic abbreviators reported by Burcardo on 4 June 1493, at the head of which Agostino Maffei with the title of "magister plumbi", is Fazini; however, the fact that in the sources on the bishopric he is indicated by the double surname of Fazini Maffei (Mattei by mistake in Eubel, II, p. 261), or even as "Lucidus gente Maffea" (Jonta), suggests that he had linked his luck in the rise of this family in the Curia.
Returning to freedom, Fazini again devoted himself to humanistic studies, intervening in the early seventies in the heated philological dispute between Domizio Calderini and Niccolò Perotti regarding the edition of Marziale.
Around April 1473 Calderini released a Defensio , in which he supported his interpretations and attacked Perottian explanations about some epigrams, heralding a pamphlet in which he would indicate more than 200 errors committed by his rival in Livio's translation and in the corrections by Martial. The Defensioit was so effective that Calderini gave up publishing the libretto: it was advised by Fazini and Giovanni Ludovico Toscano, from Milan, consistorial lawyer and auditor of the Curia causes in the Apostolic Chamber. The Veronese humanist limited himself to a few polemical hints in the dedication to Lorenzo de 'Medici of his commentary on Marziale (Rome and Venice 1474), at the bottom of which is a laudatory epigram by Fazini. Calderini replied to Perotti's new objections with a further Defensio, published the following year together with the commentary on Giovenale, in which he corrected seven interpretations by Perotti on Marziale and Giovenale. Here Calderini always addresses the opponent, but the pamphlet is addressed to Elio and Marco Fosforo, that is, to the Toscano and to the Fazini. The interest of the latter for Martial dates back to years ago, as evidenced by the ms. Vat . lat . 2029, which contains the epigrams of the Latin poet with marginal notes of F. written several times in clear humanistic cursive. From the two epigrams written on the recto of the last sheet it is clear that the annotation was made in Castel Sant'Angelo: "Phosphorus obscuro carcere clausus erat".
The codex, parchment and elegantly illuminated, must have belonged to fellow prisoner Agostino Maffei, whose family weapons appear on the first card. Furthermore, the cod. Maffeiano, now Vat . lat . 5122, contains the Dialogus de amore by Platina by the hand of F. and the Calderinian commentary on the Sylvae of Stazio (Brescia 1476) is dedicated to Maffei . Fazini was linked to Calderini by a warm friendship: cod. 229 of the Chapter of Verona, which contains verses in the death of Dornizio, on cc. 5 bis re 342r has two poems and an epitaph of Fazini in which the deceased is called "amicus incomparabilis". Furthermore, in the cod. Add. 25596 of the British Library, c. 276, a poem by Dornizio al Fazini is found at the end of a short collection of epigrams by Antonio Settimuleio Campano entitled to Fazini and prior to the trial, given that Campano died due to the torments suffered in prison.
Perhaps it was thanks to Calderini that Fazini was able to establish relations with the Florentine environment as early as September 1473, when the Venetian humanist went to Florence to present his comment to Marziale to Lorenzo. A handful of letters published in the Illustrium virorum epistolae collection (Lyons 1499) documents contacts with Laurentian intellectuals after his appointment as bishop. In the letter to Alessandro Cortesi of 12 March 1485, after having praised Poliziano placed in a triunivirate ideal alongside Lorenzo Valla and Calderini, he declared that he had been thinking for some time of entering Lorenzo's circle. Poliziano, to whom Cortesi had shown the letter, replied in his turn with warm offers of friendship and with the promise to intercede for him with Lorenzo. On 13th February 1491 Fazini in a letter written in tumultuaries passing through the house of Paolo Cortesi, manifests his enthusiasm for the Miscellanea correspondent's; on May 14, a little less than a year before the death of the Magnificent, Poliziano wrote again that Lorenzo had received a letter from him and that he would reply as soon as the State commitments allowed, but probably the subsequent negotiations - if ever there were - they led to nothing.
Fazini is also cited in the effigram 54 Ad sodales of the second book by Michele Marullo alongside Sannazaro, Pontano, Donato Acciaiuoli and other Neapolitan academics. Three poems are addressed to him ( Contra insolentiam principum , De fugiendis malis quae in amore sunt , De ponenda maestitia et curis ) by Pietro Crinito ( Poemata , II, in De honesta disciplinum , Lugduni 1508) and in a fourth, to the Venetian patrician P Misenate, Aldus Manutius, Pietro Bembo, a Novatus and the Phosphorus are mentioned as "veteres sodales".
Three letters dated 1491-92 from the Lyon edition are from the patriarch of Aquileia Ermolao Barbaro. The humanist writes of some Plautian imitation octonariolos sent to F., of the interpretation of a passage by Pliny De cometibus and of one by Gellius . The third letter, dated 27 Oct. 1492, announces the forthcoming release of his Castigationes Plinianae , the first volume of which appeared in Rome the following month. As for Pliny, the Cicogna ( Around life ..., p. 413), following a letter from the Pontanian academician Pietro Summonte to the Venetian patrician Marcantonio Michiel from Naples 20 March 1524, reports a code of the Historia naturalisilluminated and annotated by "a docto man of that time, Messer Lucio Phosphoro", who belonged to Cardinal Giovanni d'Aragona. Finally, we have a few convivial verses from F. in the codd. Vat . Ottob . lat . 2860, c. 58v, and C. 61, c. 53, of Bibl. Augusta of Perugia. The Vat . lat . 3351, c. 72v, contains an epigram about him by Evangelista Fausto Maddaleni de 'Capodiferro.
Fazini died in Rome, or in Segni, in 1503.
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