Crinitus
Italian humanist
Pietro Crinito (22 May 1474 – 5 July 1507), known as Crinitus, or Pietro Del Riccio Baldi (derived from riccio, 'curly', translated into Latin as crinitus), was a Florentine humanist scholar and poet who was a disciple of Poliziano.
He is best known for his 1504 commonplace book, De honesta disciplina. This has been taken to be a source for the work of Nostradamus.
Biography
He studied Grammar in Florence i.e. Latin language, with the priest Paolo Sassi da Ronciglione with whom he remained until May 22, 1487 when he went to the school of Ugolino di Vieri. Then in 1491 he joined the circle of Poliziano disciples.
Just following his master's example he also decided to change his Patronymic inherited from his father's thick hair, which he translated Latinically into crinito (curly). From Pietro Baldi del Riccio (that is, “son of the curl”) he became for everyone Pietro Crinito or Petrus Crinitus.
After Poliziano's death, he gave lectures in Santo Spirito, Florence Studio and then began a long series of peregrinations that took him to Bologna, Ferrara, Venice, Padua, Rome and Naples. He finally returned to Florence where, under the patronage of Bernardo Rucellai, he joined the Platonic Academy that met at the Orti Oricellari.
“Crinitus” enters the record as italian humanist. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Crinitus, Italian and humanist can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1158784. VIAF identifies the subject as 100217442. The Library of Congress control number is n86113627. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1474, 1507, 1504 and 1487.
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This entry incorporates text from “Crinitus” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.