Giovanni Colonna (historian)

Giovanni Colonna's name in the red rubric of a 15th-century copy of his Mare historiarum. It is spelled Johanne de columpna.

Fra Giovanni Colonna (1298? – 1343/44) was an Italian Dominican friar and scholar. Educated in France, he served as a preacher and vicar in Rome, chaplain in Cyprus and lector in Tivoli. He lived and worked in Avignon for a time and traveled widely in the Near East during his Cypriot period.

An early humanist, he was a friend and correspondent of Petrarch, whose eight surviving letters to him are an important source for his later years, during which he suffered from gout. He wrote two works of history, Liber de viris illustribus ('Book of Famous Men') and Mare historiarum ('Sea of Histories'), the first during his time in Avignon and the second during his final years in Tivoli.