Stefano Infessura

Stefano Infessura (* around 1440 in Rome ; † 1499 or 1500 there) was an Italian lawyer, magistrate and chronicler during the Renaissance .

Infessura's date of birth is vacant. The date of his death can be roughly determined by the fact that on January 2, 1500, two of his sons ordered a perpetual weekly funeral mass in the St. Nicholas Chapel of the Church of Santa Maria in Via Lata . This suggests that Infessura died in late December 1499 or early January 1500.

Infessura came from a middle-class Roman family and was related by marriage to the de Fredi family, who later became known in connection with the discovery of the Laocoon group in 1506.

After studying law, he became a municipal official Podestà (1478) in Orte , a small town about 80 kilometers north of Rome. In 1481 he became lecturer in law at the University of Rome.

His first signature as a Senate clerk ( scribasenato ) is handed down on a document from January 1487. This important and extensive Roman office also gave him access to credible and official sources.

Infessura begins his Diario della città di Roma ( Diarium urbis Romae ) in 1303 with the death of Pope Boniface VIII (authentic beginning, today's beginning of the Diario begins in 1294 with the election of this Pope, but this part was added later). It describes the events in Rome up to April 26, 1494, in particular the pontificate of Paul II , Sixtus IV , Innocent VIII and the beginning of the pontificate of Alexander VI. including all the associated scandals and those stories that an official historical work would not mention.

Infessura's writing style is not objective, he often uses scorn and derision as well as open annoyance. His political line is clearly anti-papist, he is a radical Ghibelline . In his Diario he uses partly bad Latin, partly Italian with Roman dialect.

The Diario , the only surviving work of his, is a rich and important resource both on the history of the Renaissance and the events of Rome at the time, and on understanding the political maneuvers and the reaction of the "simple" Romans to them.

In Rome a street was named after him ( Via Stefano Infessura ).

Editions and translations

• Oreste Tommasini (Ed.): Diario della città di Roma di Stefano Infessura scribasenato. Roma 1890, (= Fonti per la storia d'Italia , 5). Reprints Turin 1960 and 1966.
• Hermann Hefele (translator): Stefano Infessura: Roman diary. Diederichs, Jena 1913 (= The Age of the Renaissance , Series 1, Volume 8). New edition: Diederichs, Düsseldorf / Cologne 1979, ISBN 3-424-00667-X .

Web links

• Publications on Infessura in the Opac of the Regesta Imperii
• Literature by and about Stefano Infessura in the catalog of the German National Library