Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/790

 756 J V- news of the loyalty of the western legions gladdened him while still on the march through Asia Minor. After issuing a decree by which Christianity was restored as the state religion, though paganism was recognized, the emperor assumed the consulship at Ancyra, on January 1, 364, with his infant son as colleague. Within two months, on February 17, 364, Jovianus was found dead in his bed at Dadastana, a small town of Galatia. A surfeit of mush rooms or the fumes of a charcoal fire have been assigned as the causes of death. The suspicion of foul play is unsupported by evidence. He was succeeded by Valen- tinian and Valens, after an interregnum of ten days. Besides the ancient historians of the period, see Gibbon s Decline and Fall ; Le Beau s Bus-Empire ; Finlay s Greece under the Romans ; and the Abbe de la Bleterie s Histoire de Jovien, Amster dam, 1740. In Syriac literature Jovian (lobinianos) became the hero of a Christian romance, published by George Hoffmann (Julianus der Abtrunnigc, 1880). Compare the account of this work by Noldeke, Z.D.M.G., vol. xxviii. JOVINIANUS, or JOVIANUS, a Roman monk and reputed heretic who flourished during the latter half of the 4th century. All our knowledge of him is derived from a passionately hostile polemic of Jerome (Adv. Jovini- anum Libri II.}, written at Bethlehem, and without any personal acquaintance with the man assailed, in 393 A.D. According to this authority he in 388 was living at Rome the celibate life of an ascetic monk, possessed a good acquaintance with Scripture, and was the author of several minor works, but, undergoing an heretical change of view, afterwards became a self-indulgent Epicurean and unrefined sensualist. The doctrinal heresies which had provoked the wrath of Jerome were mainly these : (1) he held that in point of merit, so far as their domestic state was concerned, virgins, widows, and married persons who had been baptized into Christ were on a precisely equal footing ; (2) those who with full faith have been regenerated in baptism cannot be overthrown (or, according to another reading, tempted) of the devil ; (3) to abstain from meats is not more praiseworthy than thankfully to enjoy them ; (4) all who have preserved their baptismal grace shall receive the same reward in the kingdom of heaven. Jerome s bitter polemic was chiefly provoked by those views of Jovinian as to fasting and marriage in which the entire Protestant world has declared itself substantially at one with the so- called heretic. He was, however, condemned by a Roman synod under Bishop Siricius in 390, and afterwards excom municated by another at Milan under the presidency of Ambrose. The year of his death is unknown, but he is referred to as being no longer alive in Jerome s Contra Vigilantium, which was composed in 406. JOVIUS, PAULUS, or PAOLO GIOVIO (1483-1552), an Italian historian and biographer, was born of an ancient and noble family at Como, April 19, 1483. His father died when he was a child, and Giovio owed his education to his brother Benedetto. After studying the humanities, he applied himself to medicine and philosophy at his brother s request. He was Pomponazzi s pupil at Padua ; and afterwards he took a medical degree in the university of Pavia. But the attraction of literature proved irresistible for Giovio, and he was bent upon becoming the historian of his age. Some time, probably in or after 1516, he went to Rome, with a portion of his history already finished. This he presented to Leo X., who read the MS., and pro nounced it superior in elegance to anything which had been produced since the decades of Livy. Giovio, encouraged by the success of his first step in authorship, took up his residence in Rome, and attached himself to the court of the cardinal Giulio de Medici. The next pope, Adrian VI., gave him a canonry in his native town of Como, on the condition, it is said, that Giovio should mention him with honour in his history. This patronage from a pontiff who -J O V was averse to the current tone of Italian humanism, proves that Giovio at this period passed for a man of sound learn ing and sober manners. After Adrian s death, Clement VII. assigned him chambers in the Vatican, with main tenance for servants befitting a courtier of rank. In addition to other benefices, he finally, in 1528, bestowed on him the bishopric of Nocera. Giovio had now become in a special sense dependent on the Medici. He was employed by that family on several missions, as when he accom panied Ippolito to Bologna on the occasion of Charles V. s coronation, and Caterina to Marseilles before her marriage to the duke of Orleans. During the siege of Rome in 1527 he attended Clement in his flight from the Vatican. While crossing the bridge which connected the palace with the castle of S. Angelo, Giovio threw his mantle over the pope s shoulders in order to disguise his master. In the sack he suffered a serious literary loss if we may credit his own statement. The story runs that he deposited the MS. of his history, together with some silver, in a box at S. Maria Sopra Minerva for safety. This box was discovered by two Spaniards, one of whom secured the silver, while the other, named Herrera, knowing who Giovio was, preferred to hold the MSS. for ransom. Herrera was so careless, however, as to throw away the sheets he found in paper, reserving only that portion of the work which was transcribed on parchment. This he subsequently sold to Giovio in exchange for a benefice at Cordova, which Clement VII. conceded to the Spaniard. Six books of the history were lost in this trans action. Giovio contented himself with indicating their substance in a summary. Perhaps he was not unwilling that his work should resemble that of Livy, even in its imperfection. But doubt rests upon the whole of this story. Apostolo Zeno affirms that in the middle of the last century three of the missing books turned up among family papers in the possession of Count Giov. Batt. Giovio, who w rote a panegyric on his ancestor. It is therefore not improbable that Giovio possessed his history intact, but pre ferred to withhold those portions from publication which might have involved him in difficulties with living persons of importance. The omissions were afterwards made good by Curtio Marinello in the Italian edition, published at Venice in 1581. But whether Marinello was the author of these additions is not known. After Clement s death Giovio found himself out of favour with the next pope, Paul III. The failure of his career is usually ascribed to the irregularity of the life he led in the literary society of Rome. We may also remember that Paul had special causes for animosity against the Medici, whose servant Giovio had been. Despairing of a cardinal s hat, Giovio retired to his estates at Como, where he spent the wealth he had acquired from donations and benefices in adorning his villa with curiosities, antiquities, and pictures. He died upon a visit to Florence in 1552. Giovio s principal work was the History of his own Times, from the invasion of Charles VIII. to the year 1547. It was divided into two parts, containing altogether forty-five books. Of these, books v.-xi/of part i. were said by him to have been lost in the sack of Rome, w r hile books xix.-xxiv. of part ii. , which should have embraced the period from the death of Leo to the sack, were never written. Giovio supplied the want of the latter six books by his lives of Leo, Adrian, Alphonso I. of Ferrara, and several other personages of importance. But he alleged that the history of that period was too painful to be written in full. His first published work, printed in 1524 at Rome, was a treatise De Piscibus Romanis. After his retirement to Como he produced a valuable series of biographies, entitled Elogia Virorum Illustrium. They com memorate men distinguished for letters and arms, selected from all periods, and are said to have been written in illustration of portraits collected by him for the museum of his villa at Como. Besides these books, we may mention a biographical history of the Viseonti, lords of Milan ; an essay on mottoes and badges ; a dissertation on the state of Turkey ; a large collection of familiar epistles ; together with descriptions of Britain, Muscovy, the Lake of Como, and Giovio s own villa. The titles of these miscellanies will be found in the bibliographical note appended to this article. Giovio preferred Latin in the composition of his more important works. Though contemporary with Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and Varchi, he adhered to humanistic usages, and cared more for the Latinity than for the matter of his histories. His style is fluent and sonorous, rather than pointed or grave. Partly owing to the rhetorical defects