Giacomo Filippo Foresti da BergamoAlso known as: Giacomo Filipo Foresti, Giacomo Filippo da Bergamo, Jacobus Filippus Foresti, Jacobus Philippus Foresti (da Bergamo), Jacopo Filippo Foresta, Jacobus Philippus de Bergamo, Jacobus Philippus Bergomensis, Iacobus Philippus Bergomensis, Forestus Bergomensis, Jacopo da Bergamo, Jacopo Filippo Foresti da Bergamo, Jacopo de Foresti, Jacob Philip of Bergamo. (1434–1520) was an Augustinian friar, known as the author of several significant early printed works. He was a chronicler and Biblical scholar.
Biography Giacomo Filippo Foresti was born in 1434 in Solto Collina, near Bergamo, into a noble family. After completing his studies, he entered the Order of the Hermits of Saint Augustine in 1451, receiving the religious habit from Giovanni Nibbia of Novara, one of the founders of the order's Lombard congregation. From then on, Foresti divided his time between his religious duties and the study of historical sources concerning the Middle Ages. He compiled extensive collections of historical material, which later served as an important basis for his own writings. He aimed to bring together the accounts of different historians, reconcile their narratives, and thereby produce a comprehensive universal history.
His Supplementum chronicarum (first printed at Venice, 1483)Page ; in Latin, translated into Italian as Supplemento delle Croniche in 1491 . was a supplement to the usual universal chronicle; it ran to numerous subsequent editions. Though it mixes mythological figures, treated euhemeristically as historical ones, on an equal footing with Christian cultural heroes, with additional chapters on the Sibyls and the Trojan War,Noted by Jean Seznec, The Survival of the Pagan Gods, (B.F. Sessions, tr.) 1995:21. amongst other things, it was thought to contain Giovanni da Carignano's lost work on papal contacts at Avignon in 1306 with Ethiopian visitors.See Encounters Recent research has both drawn attention to the Legenda Aurea and the letter of Prester John as possible sources for Foresti's narration of the episode, casting doubt on the veracity of an Ethiopian embassy to Europe at this date, See Krebs, Verena (2019). Re-examining Foresti’s Supplementum Chronicarum and the “Ethiopian” embassy to Europe of 1306. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 82/3, 493-515. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0041977X19000697 as well as a section in the Cronica Universalis of Galvano Fiamma, indicating conversely that this section of Foresti's account is entirely and directly based, to exclusion of other sources, on the cartographic treatise of Giovanni da Carignano. See Chiesa, Paolo (2018). Galvano Fiamma e Giovanni da Carignano. Una nuova fonte sull’ambasceria etiopica a Clemente V e sulla spedizione oceanica dei fratelli Vivaldi. Itineraria, 17 (2018), 63–107; Bausi, Alessandro and Paolo Chiesa (2019). The Ystoria Ethyopie in the Cronica Universalis of Galvaneus de la Flamma (d. c.1345). Aethiopica, 22, 7–57. https://doi.org/10.15460/aethiopica.22.0.1491
His De claris mulieribusPage; On famous women; later under other titles De claris selectisque plurimis mulieribus, De memorabilibus et claris mulieribus aliquot diversorum scriptorum opera. updated the work of Boccaccio of the same title. It was dedicated to Beatrice of Aragon. ; Queen of Hungary as wife to Matthias Corvinus, see :de:Beatrix von Aragón. This book, as well as the Supplementum, influenced many subsequent publications.
He also wrote a well-known confessional.
Works
Supplementum chronicarum, Bernardino Benali, Venice 1483 De plurimis claris selectisque mulieribus, Lorenzo de Rubeis, Ferrara 1497
Notes