Caffaro di Rustico da Caschifellone
Caffaro di Rustico da Caschifellone (c. 1080 – c. 1164) was a statesman, diplomat, admiral and historian of the Republic of Genoa. Between 1122 and 1149 he served eight terms as a consul. His most enduring work was the Annales ianuenses ("Genoese annals"), the official history of the Genoese republic, which he began and which was continued by successors down to 1294. He also wrote Ystoria captionis Almarie et Turtuose, an account of the siege of Almería (1 August – 17 October 1147) and the siege of Tortosa (1 July – 30 December 1148).
Caffaro was born in the village of
Shortly thereafter he began writing his history of Genoa, titled Annales. Though Caffaro's imperfect Latin prevented the Annales from achieving greatness as literature, the chronicle was the first of its kind in Genoa and remains an important historical record.[2] It is an important source of information on the careers of the early Embriaco family.
On the strength of his fame as crusader, Caffaro became a captain in the Genoese navy, and fought in several battles against the
References
- ^ a b c McCormick 1991.
- ^ See, for example, H. E. J. Cowdrey, "The Mahdia Campaign of 1087" (The English Historical Review, Vol. 92, No. 362 1977, 1–29), which notes both the importance and the limitations of Caffaro's chronicle as a record.
- ^ Day, Gerald W., "Manuel and the Genoese: A Reappraisal of Byzantine Commercial Policy in the Late Twelfth Century" (The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 37, No. 2 [1977], 289–301).
Further reading
- Face, Richard D. (1980). "Secular History in Twelfth-century Italy: Caffaro of Genoa." Journal of Medieval History, 6(2): 169–84.
- Williams, John Bryan. (1997). "The Making of a Crusade: The Genoese Anti-Muslim Attacks in Spain, 1146–1148." Journal of Medieval History, 23(1): 29–53.
- McCormick, Michael (1991). "Annales Ianuenses". In Kazhdan, Alexander P. (ed.). The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. Oxford University Press.
- Phillips, Jonathan and Hall, Martin, edd. Caffaro, Genoa and the Twelfth-Century Crusades. Ashgate, 2013.