Cyriacus, Renaissance Man

By Marina Belozerskaya

When we use the phrase “a Renaissance man” we typically think of someone of cultivated tastes, diverse cultural interests, and multiple talents. Cyriacus of Ancona was a true Renaissance man, but in a very different way. A self-made merchant and traveler, he became a diplomat and spy, hobnobbing with kings, emperors, the pope, and sultan – all thanks to his passion for archaeology, of which he was a founding father.

Cyriacus lived at the time when only a handful of Italian humanists were beginning to study the classical world, and none were interested in or willing to brave the rigors of travel to investigate the monuments of ancient Greeks and Romans outside Italy. Cyriacus, undaunted by the perils of journeys by land and sea, or by the enormity of the task he set for himself, devoted his life to preserving the past for posterity through direct documentation of ancient remains on the ground.

His training as an accountant came in very handy: having taught himself Latin and Greek in his 30’s, he turned his careful eye for details to the examination and recording of the material vestiges of the ancients. And he arranged his mercantile assignments to get to places where he could find such precious relics: Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Greek islands and mainland.

Alas, as happens with people driven by vision, Cyriacus gradually turned from a dreamer into a zealot, stirring up the flames for a new crusade by the Europeans against the Ottomans in order to save his beloved antiquities from destruction. Yet the value of the research he accomplished far outweighed his shortcomings. His life offers a fascinating glimpse at the Renaissance, with its accomplishments as well as shortcomings, and introduces us to one of its remarkable representatives.

Marina Belozerskaya, author of To Wake the Dead: A Renaissance Merchant and the Birth of Archaeology, was an award-winning teacher at Harvard, Tufts, and Boston Universities. To read more about her and the book, go here: W. W. Norton & Company

IMAGE: Cyriacus’s drawing of the Parthenon. After Sangallo, Giuliano da. Il libro di Giuliano da Sangallo Codice vaticanobarberiniano latino 4424 riprodotto in fototipia, ed. Cristiano Huelsen. Lipsia: O. Harrassowitz, 1910.