Mario Nizzoli

Marius Nizolius (1498–1576) was an Italian humanist scholar, known as a proponent of Cicero. He considered rhetoric to be the central intellectual discipline, slighting other aspects of the philosophical tradition. He is described by Michael R. Allen as the heir to the oratorical vision of Lorenzo Valla, and a better nominalist. He was born in Brescello and served as a professor of philosophy at Parma and Sabbioneta. His most significant work was the Thesaurus Ciceronianus, first published in 1535. This lexicon of Latin words used in Cicero's works became influential among Renaissance extremists who believed that Latin writing should be restricted to this vocabulary. Nizolius also authored the Antibarbarus philosophicus (originally titled De veris principiis et vera ratione philosophandi contra psudophilosophos), published in Parma in 1553. This work was edited by Leibniz in 1670 and included an important preface. The Antibarbarus was a response to a controversy with Marcantonius Majoragio (1514–1555), which traced back to a dispute in the mid-1540s concerning Cicero's Paradoxes.