Brancaleone degli Andalò

Brancaleone degli Andalò († 1258 in Rome ) was an urban Roman tribune (Capitano del Popolo) in the 13th century. He came from a knight family from Bologna .

"That year the senator of the Romans, Brancaleone, was captured ...". (Hoc etiam anno [MCCLVI] captus est a Romanis senator eorum Brancaleo, ...) . Matthew Paris illustrated his description of the senator's capture with a lion's paw.

In August 1252, after a riot in Rome, the papal aristocratic party was overthrown by the imperial - Hohenstaufen people 's party ( Ghibellines and Guelphs ). The popular assembly determined a republican order and elected Brancaleone from Bologna as senator, who had already been preceded by a reputation as an enemy of the Pope loyal to the emperor. For the first time in its medieval history, rulership over Rome was entrusted to a foreigner. With the support of loyal administrative officials and notaries, he was able to lead a stable regime in which he curtailed the power of the nobility and the pope in favor of the bourgeois guilds, which earned him the recognition of the people.

In the spring of 1256 he was taken prisoner by the Nobility Party, whereupon civil war-like unrest broke out in Rome. The People's Party, led by a master baker from England , freed Brancaleone from his dungeon in the spring of 1257 and made him a senator again. His actions against the nobility became more radical from now on. The previously installed senator of the opposing party was slain in battle, two sons of the Annibaldi family were hanged in public and the towers of the nobility, allegedly one hundred and forty in number, were torn down. Under these circumstances, Pope Alexander IV felt compelled to flee to Viterbo in the spring of 1258 , whereupon Brancaleone sought an alliance with King Manfred of Sicily . During the siege of Corneto (now Tarquinia) in the summer of 1258, Brancaleone was attacked by a fever. Back in Rome, he designated his uncle Castellano degli Andalò as the new captain of the people and died shortly afterwards. His head, kept in a glass vase, is said to have been venerated by the Roman people like a saint's relic for a long time.

literature

• Emilio Cristiani:  Andalò, Brancaleone. In: Alberto M. Ghisalberti (Ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 3:  Ammirato – Arcoleo. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1961.
• Ludovico Gatto: Il senatorato di Brancaleone degli Andalò, in: Storia di Roma nel Medioevo (2000), pp. 399-416.

source

• Matthew Paris : Chronica majora, ed. by Henry Richards Luard, Matthaei Parisiensis, monachi Sancti Albani, chronica majora, vol. 5 (1880), pp. 358, 373, 417f, 547, 563f, 573, 612, 662-665, 699, 709, 723f.