The following short biographies have been reprinted, with permission, from the 139 biobibliographies published in The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, edited by Charles B. Schmitt, Quentin Skinner, Eckhard Kessler, and Jill Kraye (1988). Some minor changes have been made and the bibliographical information included there has been omitted.

acciaiuoli, donato b. Florence, 1429; d. Milan, 1478. Italian humanist and philosopher. Educated in Florence; strongly influenced by John Argyropoulos. Florentine statesman and ambassador. Wrote commentaries on Aristotle’s Ethics, Politics, Physics, and De anima. Translated Plutarch’s lives of Scipio and Hannibal.

agricola, rudolph (Rudolphus Frisius; Roelof Huysman) b. Baflo near Groningen, 1443/4; d. Heidelberg, 1485. Dutch humanist. Studied at universities of Erfurt and Louvain, where he graduated MA, 1465. Traveled to Italy 1469–79 with interruptions, studying at Pavia and Ferrara. Returning to northern Europe in 1479, he promoted Italian humanism and lectured at Heidelberg, 1484–5. Wrote the influential De inventione dialectica (1479), as well as commentaries (Boethius, Seneca the Elder), humanistic orations, poems, letters, and translations from Greek.

agrippa, henricus cornelius (Agrippa von Nettesheim) b. near Cologne, 1486; d. Grenoble, 1535. German philosopher. Studied at University of Cologne. Traveled widely (France, Spain, England, Germany, Italy, Switzerland) as soldier, physician, teacher. Served as doctor and astrologer to queen mother of France in Lyons, 1524; then as historian and librarian to Margaret of Austria in Antwerp, 1528–30. Returned to Cologne, then to France.