Riccobaldo of Ferrara (1246- after 1320) was a medieval Italian notary and Latin writer of the Middle Ages, a chronicler, geographer and encyclopedist. He is sometimes known in the literature as Riccobaldo da Ferrara according to the Italian form, as well as Riccobaldo Ferrarese or as Riccolbaldo.
He was born in Ferrara or in the surrounding area, most probably in 1246, his father being one Bonmercato. On 4 October 1251, as a puer (boy), he was a witness to the passage through Ferrara of Pope Innocent IV; on 17 February 1264, as an adulescens (adolescent), he was present during the funeral at Ferrara of Azzo VII d'Este; he appeared as a witness to a statute of Ferrara of 15 December 1274; in May 1282 he was to be found at Faenza; in 1290 he applied his seal to three documents at Reggio Emilia, where he served as notary to the vicar (deputy) of Obizzo II d'Este, the city’s podestà. He is known to have been at Padua in 1293, at Ravenna in 1297-1300, exercising his profession at Ferrara in 1308, once again in Padua at unspecified period between 1308 and 1313, and at Ferrara in 1310. He died some time after 1318.
The claims that his real name was Gervasio (Gervase), that he belonged to the Mainardi family, and that he was for a time a canon in Ravenna, are doubtless products of somewhat approximate sixteenth- and seventeenth-century scholarship. One thing that is certain, because he himself says so, is that he bore the titles of dominus ("lord") and magister ("master"). Since Riccobaldo refers to himself as an exile, attempts have been made to see such an exile as a result of Riccobaldo's lending his support to Aldobrandino II in the latter’s clash with his brother Azzo VIII, Lord of Ferrara. However, this hypothesis has to date found no evidence to back it up. That he had no love for the Este family can easily be seen in some of his works, but it is not discernible in others, and so important questions remain unclear. As remarked, Riccobaldo was notary to the vicar (deputy) of Obizzo II d'Este and in Ravenna he appears to have lived in the shadow of Obizzo Sanvitale, Archbishop of Ravenna, a known supporter of the Este family. Yet in 1308 Riccobaldo can be found in Ferrara, swearing fidelity to the Church of Rome immediately after the expulsion of the Este family from the lordship of the city. What should be made of these apparent contradictions.
Riccobaldo witnessed, at times at very close quarters, the political events in his city, and was sometimes a witness, too, of what happened in the history of Italy as a whole, even in works of his that were not strictly historical, but more of a geographical character.
Riccobaldo‘s own cultural story is in part fairly clearly established, even if considerable research is underway. Only recently has it been possible to attribute to him a political "carmen" (song) in Latin which celebrates the newly acquired freedom of his city, Ferrara. In this text there are obvious citations of various earlier Latin lyrics, a fact that shows a considerable personal culture for the period. While the lyrics passed off in the seventeenth century as Riccobaldo‘s by Girolamo Baruffaldi are certainly not genuine, we still need once more to take into consideration the fact that he had the title of magister ("master") and that phrase of his in his old age where Riccobaldo says he is now dedicated melioribus studiis ("to the better kind of study" or "to better pursuits").
For this very considerable widening of his learning, Riccobaldo certainly owed a great deal to his mixing in the circles of the pre-humanists of Padua, from whom he learned much, but to whom he probably also gave not a little. In any case, there is no overlooking Riccobaldo nowadays as a figure of first rank in the history of Italian culture, despite his having been neglected even in relatively recent times by historians who were otherwise not without merit.
Other works by Riccobaldo, apart from those listed below, are his geographical compilations, one of which, the De locis orbis, was published for the first time only in 1986, while the other, De origine urbium Italie, had in 2013 still not been published. There are two minor treatises witnessed to by the manuscripts Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Ottob. Iat. 2072, cc. 45-58 e Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, Parm. 331, cc. 45-67 (for the first); and Venice, Biblioteca . Nazionale Marciana, Lat. X, 169 (3847), cc. 2-31 (for the second). While neither can be dated with any precision, the first of these works if fully of his marure period, and the second from his last years.
Scholarly Editions of his Works
Riccobaldo da Ferrara, Chronica parva Ferrariensis, Introduzione, edizione e note di Gabriele Zanella, Ferrara 1983 (Deputazione provinciale ferrarese di storia patria, serie Monumenti, IX)
Ricobaldi Ferrariensis, Compendium Romanae Historiae, cur. A.T. Hankey (FSI 108), Roma 1984
Riccobaldo da Ferrara, De locis orbis, Introduzione, edizione e note di Gabriele Zanella, Ferrara 1986 (Deputazione provinciale ferrarese di storia patria, serie Monumenti, X), Libro I, Libro II
Ricobaldi Ferrariensis, Compilatio chronologica, a cura di A. T. Hankey, Roma 2000 (Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo, R. I. S. 3, 4)
Further reading
Gabriele Zanella, Riccobaldo e dintorni. Studi di storiografia medievale ferrarese, Ferrara, Bovolenta 1980
Gabriele Zanella, Il mondo e l'Italia nelle opere geografiche inedite di Riccobaldo da Ferrara: qualche paradigma di lettura, in "Imago mundi" La conoscenza scientifica nel pensiero bassomedioevale, Todi, Accademia tudertina 1983 (Convegni del Centro di studi sulla spiritualità medievale, XXII) pp.157–81
Gabriele Zanella, Cultura, scuola e storiografia a Ferrara tra XIII e XIV secolo in "Storia di Ferrara" 5 Il basso Medioevo XII-XIV Ferrara, Corbo 1987, pp.241–64
Gabriele Zanella, Equissimus tirannus, in "Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia" dell'Università di Potenza 1987-89 [1990], pp.187–97, vedi il testo
schede di Gabriele Zanella relative a Ferrara in Repertorio della cronachistica emiliano-romagnola (secc. IX-XV) Roma, Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo 1991 (Nuovi studi storici 11), pp.159–205 Schede
Gabriele Zanella, Riccobaldo e Livio in "Studi Petrarcheschi" 6 (1989) [ma 1991], pp.53–69, vedi il testo
Gabriele Zanella, Note cronistiche del cremonese Gasapino Antegnati (sec. XIII-XIV) da un manoscritto del Pomerium Ravennatis Ecclesie di Riccobaldo da Ferrara Cremona, Turris 1991, Introduzione, testo
Gabriele Zanella, Gli Estensi nella storiografia coeva (secoli XIII-XIV) in "Terra d'Este" 2,4 (1992) [1993], pp.59–74, vedi il testo
Gabriele Zanella, Note all'ed. Hankey del Compendium di Riccobaldo in Varietà d'harmonia et d'affetto. Studi in onore di Giovanni Marzi per il suo LXX compleanno Lucca, Libreria Musicale Italiana 1995 (Studi e testi musicali, n. s. 5),pp.63–89
Gabriele Zanella, Riccobaldo e Seneca, "Italia medioevale e umanistica" 36 (1993) [1997], pp.249–64, e in Gli umanesimi medievali a c. di C. Leonardi, Firenze, SISMEL 1998, pp.827–40, vedi il testo
Gabriele Zanella, Federico II, Cremona, le cronache in Cremona città imperiale. Nell'VIII centenario della nascita di Federico II Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi Cremona 27-28 ottobre 1995, Cremona, Ed. Linograf 1999 (Annali della Biblioteca statale e libreria civica di Cremona 49),pp.71–119, vedi il testo
Gabriele Zanella, Note all'edizione Hankey della Compilatio chronologica di Riccobaldo in La norma e la memoria. Studi per Auugusto Vasina a c. di T. Lazzari, L. Mascanzoni, R. Rinaldi, Roma ISIME 2004 (Nuovi Studi Storici 67),pp.213–67, vedi il testo
Ann Teresa Hankey, Riccobaldo of Ferrara: his life, works and influence, Vol. 2 di Fonti per la storia dell'Italia medievale: Subsidia, Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo, 1996
A.F. Massera, L’autenticità della Chronica parva Ferrariensis, in Archivio Muratoriano, volume I, fascicolo 10, 1911, pp.549–565.
A.F. Massera, Note per la biografia di Riccobaldo da Ferrara, in Archivio Muratoriano, fascicoli 19-20, 1917, pp.449–459.
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References
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