Falco of Benevento

Falco of Benevento (Italian: Falcone Beneventano; Lombardic: Falco Penevent[1]) was an Italian-Lombard twelfth-century historian, notary and scribe in the papal palace in Benevento, his native city, where he was born to high-standing parents.

He is an important chronicler for the years between 1102 and 1139 in the Mezzogiorno. As an historian, he is not only reliable, as he was often an eyewitness to events he recounts, but also partisan, for he was a Lombard by birth and he fiercely opposed the Normans, whom he saw as barbarians. He was an opponent of King Roger II of Sicily, and a supporter of Innocent II against Roger's friend Anacletus II.[2] He was, above all, a patriotic supporter of Benevento. As a supporter of Innocent II, Falco was exiled from Benevento in 1134.[3] T.S. Brown writes that Falco demonstrated "a blazing pride in his city and a vitriolic hate of the Normans."[4]

Parts of his chronicle are now lost, but were apparently used for the years 1099–1103 and 1140–49 in the Chronica Romanorum pontificum et imperatorum ac de rebus in Apulia gestis.

  1. ^ Muratori, Lodovico Antonio (1867). Annali d ́Italia (in Italian). FF.Giachetti.
  2. ^ Mary Stroll (1987). The Jewish Pope: Ideology and Politics in the Papal Schism of 1130. Boston-Leiden: Brill. pp. 72, 87. ISBN 90-04-08590-4.
  3. ^ Dale, p. 38.
  4. ^ T. S. Brown, "The Political Use of the Past in Norman Sicily," in: Paul Magdalino, ed. (2010). The Perception of the Past in 12th Century Europe. Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 198–200. ISBN 978-0-8264-4152-2.