During the birth of humanism, Dionigi di Borgo San Sepolcro O.S.A. (c. 1300 – 31st March 1342) was the priest who at one time taught Boccaccio at the beginning of his education in the humanities, and was the confessor of Petrarch. He later was Bishop of Monopoli in Apulia, Italy.
He was surnamed, not uncommonly for the 14th century, for the town in which he was born, now called Sansepolcro - a small town in the mountainous regions of Tuscany. His family surname was de' Roberti. (Dionigi is the Italian form of Dennis, which in Latin is Dionysius.)
He joined the Augustinian Order at Borgo San Sepolcro at an early age; this convent had been founded in 1281. He was sent to the Augustinian studium generale in Paris in order to study theology, and graduated as a bachelor in 1317-18, and a doctor of theology in 1324.
This was still an era when education was as yet totally based in the Scholastic tradition. The universities did not yet approach antiquity in such a way as to put Greco-Latin philosophy consciously at the service of Christian thought. Instead, in these birth years of humanism, they sought simply to increase the authority of the ancient writers.
Thereby they paving the way for future humanistic orientation. Likewise they sought to know classical literature through the original text, eschewing secondary sources or florilegia.
After he left the University of Paris, Dionigi travelled widely. In 1329 he went on an unspecified diplomatic mission for Cardinal Napoleone Orsini, in 1332 he was in Venice, in 1333 he spent much time in Avignon and taught at the studium (Augustinian house of study) that the Augustinian Order conducted there. The information available about his life shows the great esteem in which he was held within the order, at the Papal curia in Avignon, and later at the court in Naples.
