| Birth Name: | Angelo Claudio Tolomei |
| Birth Date: | 1492 |
| Birth Place: | Asciano, Grand Duchy of Tuscany |
| Death Place: | Rome, Papal States |
| Nationality: | Italian |
| Parents: | Pieranselmo di Gabrioccio Tolomei and Cornelia Tolomei (née Sozzini) |
| Alma Mater: | University of Bologna |
| Discipline: | Italian studies |
| Workplaces: | University of Siena |
Angelo Claudio Tolomei (1492 in Asciano – 1556 in Rome) was an Italian philologist. His name in Italian is identical to that of Claudius Ptolemaeus, the 2nd-century Greek astronomer.[1] He belonged to the prominent Tolomei family of Siena, and became a bishop attached to the court of Pope Paul III.
He was born in 1492 to an affluent Senese family, and was a teacher of law at the University of Siena from 1516 to 1518.
He then attached himself to the service of Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici, and is supposed to have had some part in the unsuccessfil military expedition andertaken by Pope Clement VII against Siena, in 1526. At any rate, a sentence of banishment from his native city was passed apon him that year, which was not revoked until 1542. In 1527, he interested himself warmly for the imprisoned pontif, in whose behalf he composed five discourses addressed to the Emperor Charles V.[2]
In 1532, he was sent by Cardinal Ippolito, in his own name, to Vienna. Some time after the death of the cardinal, he entered the service of Pier Luigi Farnese, duke of Parma and Piacenza. He remained in Piacenza, with the title of Minister of Justice, until the tragical death of Pier Luigi, in 1547; he then retired to Padua, where he remained until the following year, when he went to Rome.[2]
In 1549, he was made bishop of Curzola, a small island in the Adriatic Sea. In 1552, he was again in Siena, and had the honor to be appointed one of the sixteen citizens who were entrusted with the conservation of the public liberty. He was also sent with three others to thank the king of France for the protection he had accorded to the republic, and the discourse he delivered to that monarch at Compiègne has been preserved. He returned two years after, and died in Rome on March 23, 1553.[2]
Tolomei was one of those to whom fellow Sienese, Bernardino Ochino, corresponded from exile in Geneva, where he had fled after abandoning his monastic position due to accusations of heresy.[3]
Tolomei was a writer of considerable merit. A famous jurist and philologist, he wrote Lettere and Orazioni, which constituted a lively testimony of his participation in the literary disputes and political events of the time. Tolomei was the defender of the Tuscan vulgate against the pure Florentineity of the language in the works of literary interest, anticipating many concepts of 19th-century scientific linguistics.