Giacomo Filippo Foresti da Bergamo[1] (1434–1520) was an
Augustinian friar,[2] known as the author of several significant early printed works. He was a
chronicler and Biblical scholar.
His Supplementum chronicarum (first printed at Venice, 1483)[3] 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,[4] amongst other things, it was thought to contain
Giovanni da Carignano's lost work on papal contacts at Avignon in 1306 with
Ethiopian visitors.[5] 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,[6] 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.[7]
His De claris mulieribus[8] updated the work of
Boccaccio of the
same title. It was dedicated to
Beatrice of Aragon.[9] This book, as well as the Supplementum, influenced many subsequent publications.
^Also 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.
^ 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
^ 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
^Page[permanent dead link]; On famous women; later under other titles De claris selectisque plurimis mulieribus, De memorabilibus et claris mulieribus aliquot diversorum scriptorum opera.