Ludovico Agostini
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Ludovico Agostini (6 January 1536 – 29 July 1609) was an Italian lawyer and writer of the Counter-Reformation. His most famous work is the utopian Imaginary Republic.
Agostini was born on 6 January 1536 at Pesaro to Giovan Giacomo Agostini and Pantasilea degli Alessandri.[1] His family had been ennobled in the time of his grandfather and namesake.[1][2] In 1544, while studying law at the University of Padua, Agostini killed another student, Giovan Battista Zannoni, in a duel.[2] Forced to leave Padua, he eventually completed his studies at the University of Bologna, becoming a doctor of both laws in 1557.[1][2]
In 1560–1562, Agostini attached himself to the court of Duke Guidobaldo II in an attempt to ameliorate his family's worsening economic situation, brought about in part by the duke's confiscations.[2] In 1565, he fell in love with the singer Virginia Vagnoli and proposed marriage. Although she accepted, her father forced her to break it off.[3]
Agostini became for a time an agent for Paolo Mario della Rovere, the bishop of Cagli.[3] He never married,[3] but fathered two illegitimate children in the period 1570–1582, one named Giulio Cesare and the other who died young. In 1582, his father died and he renounced his hereditary seat on the municipal council, preferring to retire to a villa in Soria, where he began studying the Bible.[1]
In April 1584, Agostini set out on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He returned to Rome in March 1585 to present a report to Pope Gregory XIII. In 1590, he passed a spiritual retreat at Fonte Avellana. In 1599, he moved to Venice, whence he walked as a pilgrim to Rome for the jubilee of 1600. In 1604, he was appointed governor of Gradara Castle. He died at Gradara on 29 July 1609 after a long illness.[1]
