Sometime after 1481, Cortesi wrote the
Historia vera Hippolyti de Bondelmontibus et Deianirae de Bardis, a Latin prose adaptation of
Leon Battista Alberti's ''Historietta amorosa fra Leonora de' Bardi e Ippolito Buondelmonti'', a telling of the legend of
Dianora and Ippolito. Cortesi came to prominence in 1485 through a dispute with
Angelo Poliziano. He sent Poliziano a collection of Latin letters with the intent to publish and asked the elder humanist his opinion of their quality. Poliziano advised against publication, since the letter's so slavishly imitated
Cicero in style. Cortesi responded with a long, polemical letter in defence of his style. In 1490–1491, Cortesi wrote a dialogue,
De hominibus doctis (On Learned Men), modelled on Cicero's
Brutus and dedicated to
Lorenzo de' Medici. It depicts Cortesi, Alessandro Farnese (the future
Pope Paul III) and a certain Antonio (possibly
Giovanni Antonio Sulpicio da Veroli) on the island of on
Lake Bolsena. The main purpose of their discussion is to provide Cortesi an opportunity to write a literary history. He surveys 93 writers, including
Chrysoloras,
Dante,
Boccaccio and
Petrarch. He ignores contemporary Florentines and assesses all in terms of their adherence to Ciceronian norms. The theories expounded are those of his letter to Poliziano. Although it was used and cited repeatedly in manuscript,
De hominibus doctis was not published until 1729. In 1504, Cortesi published at Rome
In quatuor libros Sententiarum ... disputationes, "an attempt to elimintate the dissidence between theological wisdom and profane eloquence". The apotheosis of the Ciceronianism expressed in the letter to Poliziano, it was dedicated to
Pope Julius II. It was reprinted in 1513 by
Jodocus Badius at Paris and by
Johann Froben at Basel, and again at Basel in 1540 by
Henricus Petrus. One of Cortesi's last works was
De astrologia. It is unpublished and is preserved in single manuscript.
Giovanni Pontano cites it in his
De rebus coelestibus and in
Urania he indicates awareness of Cortesi's astronomical studies. Cortesi's last work and his magnum opus is
De cardinalatu, published posthumously in 1510 by
Simeone Nardi of Siena. It is dedicated to Julius II and has three prefaces by Cortesi, by
Raffaele Maffei and by the monk Severus of Piacenza. It consists of 34 chapters in three books. It is a
mirror of princes for a
prince of the Church. Although Cortesi had expressed a desire to write a secular mirror along the lines of
Xenophon's
Cyropaedia, he may have been influenced to change his scope by his desire for a prelacy. In the first book,
ethicus et contemplativus, Cortesi outlines the virtues and knowledge necessary for a cardinal. In the second,
oeconomicus, he describes the manners and lifestyle appropriate to a cardinal with many anecdotes. He even gives architectural advice concerning cardinalatial palaces. In the third,
politicus, concerns the responsibilities of a cardinal's office, presenting many example problems and solutions.
De cardinalatu was well received in ecclesiastical circles. Besides his Latin writings, Cortesi wrote some works in vernacular Italian, including: • a vernacular sonnet sent to
Piero di Lorenzo de' Medici in 1493 • seven
strambotti published in the
Compendio de cose nove of in 1507 •
Carmina vulgaria, a collection of poems preserved in two manuscripts ==Notes==