Angelus Geraldini

Angelus Geraldini , also Angelo Geraldini (born March 28, 1422 in Amelia , † August 3, 1486 in Civita Castellana ) was an Italian Roman Catholic clergyman. He was a diplomat in the service of the Popes and the Crown of Aragon, Bishop of Sessa Aurunca and temporarily Bishop of Cammin .

Life

Geraldini was a son of Matteo Geraldini, a lawyer and administrator. He studied at the University of Perugia , the liberal arts , and at the University of Siena for Francesco Filelfo poetry and rhetoric. From 1436 he turned to law, in which he completed his studies as a doctor decretorum in 1445 . Then he went to the Roman Curia . He entered the service of Cardinal Domenico Capranica , from whom he had been extensively promoted since 1443. In 1449 Geraldini was appointed auditor of the apostolic penitentiary and the following year he was appointed Abbreviator de parco maiori.

Under Pope Calixt III. he was the papal war commissioner against the Condottiere Jacopo (Giacomo) Piccinino and during this time he established close ties to the court of the Sforza in Milan . For his services he was eventually appointed papal secretary. Pope Pius II made him an apostolic protonotary in 1458 . In the same year he was appointed Rector of the Comtats Venaissin in southern France, where he also served as a diplomat. He regularly sent political information to the Duke of Milan, including about an impending French invasion of Italy. In 1461 Geraldini returned to Rome and did minor diplomatic tasks. He entered the service of King Ferrante of Naples and represented his interests at the papal court. In 1462 he took over an embassy to Florence . In addition, in the same year he received the office of Bishop of Sessa Aurunca , which he held until his death. From 1462 to 1464 he was papal war commissar and governor of the province of Romandiola , where he made great contributions in the fight against the rule of the Malatesta . However, he failed when trying to become Archbishop of Genoa with the support of Milan .

He left the Curia during the pontificate of Pope Paul II, who was envious of him, and worked as a diplomat in the service of the Crown of Aragon in Italy and Spain from 1468 to 1471 , but returned to the Curia under Pope Sixtus IV . In 1473 at the latest he was appointed papal trainee lawyer. From 1476 he was entrusted with administrative and diplomatic tasks in France, first as governor of Avignon until 1478, then from 1480 to 1482 as vicar general and diplomat at the court of King Louis XI.

In 1482 he was sent to the empire by Pope Sixtus IV to take action against Andreas Jamometić , who was trying to hold a new council in Basel . However, he did not succeed in delivering the church rebel imprisoned in Basel to the curia. It was probably in this context that he was appointed Bishop of Cammin by the Pope , as the successor to the controversial Marinus de Fregeno , who also came from Italy . However, he never visited his new bishopric on the Baltic Sea. Under Pope Innocent VIII he then had to choose one of the two bishoprics, kept his Italian diocese Sessa Aurunca and in 1485 waived Cammin in exchange for compensation. The Pope appointed Benedict von Waldstein as his successor in Cammin .

In 1484 Geraldini negotiated as envoy of the Curia in Spain in the dispute over the occupation of the Archdiocese of Seville . In 1485 and 1486 he was governor in Perugia .

He died in 1486 as Commander of the papal troops in the war against Naples in Civita Castellana in the Papal States . His epitaph in his family's burial chapel in Amelia has been preserved to this day.

During his social advancement, Angelo Geraldini endeavored to secure and expand the social position he had achieved for the whole Geraldini family. In the 1450s he purposefully acquired property in and around Amelia. In 1473 he donated a scholarship for his relatives. The "Oliva de Geraldini", which he founded in 1477, was supposed to offer help in emergencies for his relatives and their descendants and to secure their education. In addition, his memory of the dead should be preserved. In 1469 he brought his nephew Antonio Geraldini (* 1448/1449; † 1489) to the court of Argon and thus enabled him to pursue a career as a diplomat in the Aragonese service; in addition, Antonio Geraldini made a name for himself as a neo-Latin poet. Later also followed his brother Alessandro Geraldini (* 1455, † 1524), the prince tutor and later Bishop of Santo Domingo in the new world.

literature

• Martin Früh: Antonio Geraldini († 1488). Life, poetry and social network of an Italian humanist at the Aragonese royal court. With an edition of his “Carmina ad Iohannam Aragonum”. (= History and Culture of the Iberian World. Vol. 2), Lit Verlag, Münster 2005 (Dissertation University of Marburg 2003), ISBN 3-8258-8233-0 , pp. 142–144 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
• Jürgen Petersohn : Geraldini, Angelo . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 4, Artemis & Winkler, Munich / Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-7608-8904-2 , Sp. 1296 f.
• Jürgen Petersohn : The Kamminer bishops of the Middle Ages . Thomas Helms Verlag, Schwerin 2015, ISBN 978-3-944033-09-9 , pp. 83-84.

predecessor	Office	successor
Giacomo Martini	Bishop of Sessa Aurunca 1462–1486	Pietro Ajossa
Marinus de Fregeno	Bishop of Cammin 1482–1485	Benedict von Waldstein