GIOVANNI VINCENZO

GRAVINA (1664—1718)  , Italian litterateur and jurisconsult, was born at Roggiano, a small town near Cosenza, in Calabria, on the 2oth of January 1664 . He was descended from a distinguished family, and under the direction of his maternal uncle, Gregorio Caloprese, who possessed some reputation as a poet and philosopher, received a learned education, after which he studied at Naples civil and canon law . In 1689 he came to Rome, where in 1695 he united with several others of literary tastes in forming the Academy of Arcadians . A schism occurred in the academy in 1711, and Gravina and his followers founded in opposition to it the Academy of Quirina . From Innocent YII . Gravina received the offer of various ecclesiastical honours, but declined them from a disinclination to enter the clerical profession . In 1699 he was appointed to the chair of civil law in the college of La Sapienza, and in 1703 he was transferred to the chair of canon law . He died at Rome on the 6th of January 1718 . He was, the adoptive father of Metastasio . Gravina is the author of a number of works of great erudition, the principal being his Origines juris civilis, completed in 3 vols . (1713) and his De Romano imperio (1712) . A French translation of the former appeared in 1775, of which a second edition was published in 1822 .

His collected works were published at

Leipzig in 1737, and at Naples, with notes by Mascovius, in 1756 .