SALIMBENE  , or more usually SALIMBENE OF

PARMA (I22I-c . 1290), the name taken by the Italian writer, Ognibene di Guido di Adamo . The son of a crusader, Gui di Adamo, and born at Parma on the 9th of October 1221, Ognibene entered the order of the Minorites in 1238, and was known as brother Salimbene . He passed some years in Pisa and other Italian towns; then in 1247 he was sent to Lyons, and from Lyons he went to Paris, returning through France to Genoa, where he became a priest in 1249 . From 1249 to 1256 he resided at Ferrara, engaged in writing and in copying manuscripts, but later he found time to move from place to place . His concluding years were mainly spent in monastic retirement in Italy, and he died soon after 1288 . Salimbene was acquainted with many of the important personages of his day, including the emperor Frederick II., the French king St Louis and Pope Innocent IV.; and his Chronicon, written after 1281, is a work of unusual value . This covers the period 1167-1287 . Salimbene is a very discursive and a very personal writer, but he gives a remarkably vivid picture of life in France and Italy during the 13th century . The manuscript of the chronicle was found during the 18th century, and passed into the Vatican library, where it now remains . The part of the Chronicon dealing with the period between 12I2 and 1287 was edited by A . Bertani and published at Parma in 1857 .

This edition, however, is very defective, but an excellent and more

complete one has been edited by O . Holder-Egger, and is printed in Band xxxii. of the Monumenta Germaniae historica . Scriptores (Hanover, 1905) . See U . Balzani, Le Croniche italiane nel medio evo (Milan, 1884); L . Cledat, De fratre Salimbene et de ejus chronicae auctoritate (Paris, 1878); E . Michael, Salimbene and seine Chronik (Innsbruck, 1889); A . Molinier, Les Sources de l'histoire de France, tome iii . (1903); D . W . Duthie, The Case of Sir John Faslolf and other Historical Studies (1907) ; G . G .

Coulton, From St

Francis to Dante (1906) .