Decembrio, Angelo (1415-after 1467)

Italian humanist author, the younger brother of Pier Candido Decembrio. He entered the intellectual circle around Leonello d'Este in Ferrara and described (or mythologized) it in his De Politia Litteraria/On The Lettered Republic (1462).

He was born in Milan and was educated first by the humanist commentator Gasparino Barzizza, moving to Ferrara to finish his education with Battista Guarino. After Leonello's death he moved first to Naples and then to Spain about 1458, but eventually returned to Ferrara.

Early in Angelo's adult life, the two Decembrio brothers became permanently estranged. In part, this may have been because Angelo considered his brother's translation of Plato's Republic merely a crib of their father's version. In Angelo's eyes, Pier Candido was ‘a most abominable man’ who was attempting to appropriate the honour that should have belonged to their father.