Il Predicatore di Francesco Panigarola: un nuovo modello di eloquenza sacra per il seicento

The seventeenth century marks the advent of preaching, in both Italy and Europe, as a literary form. Francesco Panigarola (1548-1594) did certainly play a major role in this process thanks to his treatises on sacred oratory and years of preaching activity in several Italian and European cities - during which he developed important relationships and personally experienced some of the most significant events of the century. Panigarolaʼs Il predicatore is a seventeenth-century example of rhetoric that whilst based on classical oratory complies with the precepts of the Counter- Reformation. This treaty, published posthumously in 1609, is structured as a commentary on the pseudo-Demetriusʼs work on eloquence. Il predicatore, besides serving as an Italian/Florentine translation of and commentary on Pier Vettoriʼs De elocutione (the Latin version of Perì Ermeneias), passes on and adapts the rhetorical precepts of classical oratory to the renewed exigencies of the language and of Italian preachers