Riccobaldo of Ferrara (c. 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 asRiccobaldo da Ferrara according to the Italian form, as well asRiccobaldo Ferrarese or asRiccolbaldo.
He was born in Ferrara or in the surrounding area, most probably in 1246, his father being one Bonmercato. On 4 October 1251, as apuer (boy), he was a witness to the passage through Ferrara ofPope Innocent IV; on 17 February 1264, as anadulescens (adolescent), he was present during the funeral at Ferrara ofAzzo 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 atFaenza; in 1290 he applied his seal to three documents atReggio Emilia, where he served as notary to the vicar (deputy) ofObizzo II d'Este, the city’spodestà. He is known to have been atPadua in 1293, atRavenna 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 ofdominus ("lord") andmagister ("master"). Since Riccobaldo refers to himself as anexile, attempts have been made to see such an exile as a result of Riccobaldo's lending his support toAldobrandino II in the latter’s clash with his brotherAzzo VIII, Lord of Ferrara. However, this hypothesis has to date found no evidence to back it up. That he had no love for theEste 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) ofObizzo II d'Este and in Ravenna he appears to have lived in the shadow ofObizzo Sanvitale,Archbishop of Ravenna, a known supporter of theEste family. Yet in 1308 Riccobaldo can be found inFerrara, swearing fidelity to the Church of Rome immediately after the expulsion of theEste 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 byGirolamo Baruffaldi are certainly not genuine, we still need once more to take into consideration the fact that he had the title ofmagister ("master") and that phrase of his in his old age where Riccobaldo says he is now dedicatedmelioribus studiis ("to the better kind of study" or "to better pursuits").
By his own explicit admission, his first impulse to write came from his contact with the archives firstly ofNonantola and then ofRavenna. In Ravenna he came to know, as he himself recounts, theChronicon, that is to say theHistoria Ecclesiastica ofEusebius of Caesarea, in theChronicon (Chronicle) of SaintJerome, and in all probability also the so-calledRavenna Cosmography; atNonantola he certainly had access to the sequel to Jerome’s work, written this time by SaintProsper of Aquitaine.
Among the numerous works he knew were the dictionaryElementarium doctrinae rudimentum ofPapias, the shortChronicon of SaintIsidore of Seville (attributed by Riccobaldo to a bishop Miletus; then some decades ofLivy’s ‘’Ab Urbe Condita" (History of Rome); theHistoriae adversus paganos (Histories against the Pagans) ofPaulus Orosius, the great encyclopedic work by Marziano Capella entitledItinerarium Antonini,Pliny the Elder’sNaturalis historia (Natural History), theCollectanea rerum memorabilium (Collection of Curiosities) ofSolinus, the work of compilation by theDominicanMartin of Opava, which Riccobaldo cites as theMartiniana, parts of theLegenda aurea (Golden Legend) byJacobus de Voragine, the version ofEutropius drawn up byPaul the Deacon and theHistoria Langobardorum (History of the Lombards), the abbreviated version of thePhilippic Histories ofGnaeus Pompeius Trogus or Pompey Trogue composed byJustin,Florus, thePharsalia ofLucan, something of the writings ofSeneca the Younger (certainly including theDe consolatione ad Helviam andDe clementia (On Clemency),Suetonius’sVitae Caesarum (Lives of the Twelve Caesars), theNavigatio Sancti Brendani (The Sea Voyage of StBrendan),Servius’s commentary on theAeneid, works ofPomponius Mela, the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle(Historia Caroli Magni, theHistoria scholastica byPeter Comestor (a biblical paraphrase written in Latin),Boethius'sDe consolatione philosophiae(The Consolation of Philosophy),Juvenal, the Latin translation byRufinus of Aquileia ofEusebius of Caesarea’sHistoria Ecclesiastica,Agnellus of Ravenna.
After this the list becomes very impressive as to quantity and quality when we find Riccobaldo at grips withJulius Caesar, at least the problematicDe bello Alexandrino, along withDe bello Africo andDe bello Hispaniensi (On the Alexandrine War,On the African War,On the Hispanic War);Cicero’sLaelius de amicitia (Laelius on Friendship’) andRhetorica ad Herennium (Rhetoric: For Herennius), and other works, too. We can add theDistichs of Cato (Catonis Disticha),Einhard,Hegesippus,Horace, certain texts to be found in the so-calledSpicilegium Ravennatis historiae;Virgil, perhaps theDominicanVincent of Beauvais, and the manuscripts of theAbbey of Santa Giustina inPadua, without excluding others still.
For this very considerable widening of his learning, Riccobaldo certainly owed a great deal to his mixing in the circles of the pre-humanists ofPadua, 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, theDe 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.
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