Cesarini, Virginio

, a very accomplished Italian scholar, was born at Rome in Oct. 1595, the son of Julian Cesarini, duke of Citta Nuova, and of Livia Ursini. Such was his application to study, that at an age when most scholars are but beginning, he was acquainted with languages, philosophy, theology, law, medicine, mathematics, and sacred and profane history. Cardinal Bellarmin compared him in knowledge, personal character, and accomplishments, to Picus de Mirandula, and such was the general esteem in which he was held, that a medal was struck with the heads of Cesarini and Picus crowned with laurel, and on the reverse two phenixes. His modesty and probity were not less conspicuous than his learning. Pope Urban VIII. intended to have made him a cardinal, but he | died in the flower of his age, in 1624, then a member of the academy of the Lyncei. His Latin and Italian poems were printed in the collection entitled “Septem illustrium virorum poemata,” Antwerp, 1662, 8vo, and since reprinted. He wrote also a treatise against astrology, and on other subjects, which have not been published. Augustin Favoriti, secretary of the college of cardinals, wrote his life in Latin, which is in the “Memoria philosophorum, &c. curante Henningo Witten, decas prima,” Francfort, 1677, 8vo. Bianchi also, in his account of the academicians of the Lyncei, Milan, 1744, notices Cesarmi. ¹