Giuseppe Ripamonti

Giuseppe Ripamonti
Portrait of Giuseppe Ripamonti, engraving by Francesco Gonin, 1840.
Born(1573-07-00)July 1573
Died11 August 1643(1643-08-11) (aged 70)
NationalityItalian
Occupation(s)Historian, renaissance humanist, latinist
Board member ofCollege of doctors of the Ambrosiana Library
Parent(s)Bartolomeo Ripamonti and Lucrezia Ripamonti
Academic background
Alma materArchiepiscopal seminary of Milan
InfluencesTristano Calco[1]
Academic work
EraRenaissance
InstitutionsArchiepiscopal seminary of Milan
Notable worksHistoriarum patriae in continuationem Tristani Calchi libri XXIII (1641-43)
De peste Mediolani quae fuit anno 1630 (1640)
InfluencedAlessandro Manzoni[2]
Ecclesiastical career
ReligionChristianity
ChurchCatholic Church
Ordained17 December 1605

Giuseppe Ripamonti (July 1573 – 11 August 1643) was an Italian Catholic priest and historian. Ripamonti was a prolific writer, to the extent that he can be considered as the most important Milanese writer of the first half of the seventeenth century, alongside Federico Borromeo.[3]

He wrote in Latin Historia Ecclesiae Mediolanensis (1625) ("History of the Church of Milan"). He is perhaps better known for the De peste Mediolani quae fuit anno 1630 (1640) ("About the plague that occurred in Milan in year 1630"), which relates the events occurring in the city during the 1629–1631 Italian bubonic plague. Alessandro Manzoni used this account to describe in detail the effects of the plague in his masterpiece, The Betrothed.[4] In 1841, the latin chronicle of the plague by Ripamonti was published in Italian translation by Francesco Cusani.

  1. ^ Giannini 2016.
  2. ^ Giuseppe Ripamonti entry (in Italian) in the Enciclopedia Treccani, 1936
  3. ^ Zaggia 2014, p. 195.
  4. ^ Manzoni, Alessandro (1972). The Betrothed. Penguin Books. pp. 564, 570–580, 586–592, 595, 598–599, 602, 698. ISBN 9780140442748.