Annibaldi (Annibaldeschi) della Molara, Annibaldi degli

ANNIBALDI (Annibaldeschi) della Molara, Annibaldi degli. - Nephew of Cardinal Riccardo, born in Rome, died at Orvieto in the year 1272. He entered the Order of Preachers at S. Sabina at a very young age. He was soon sent to Paris to perfect his studies, and here he publicly lectured on the Sentences and received, it seems under St. Thomas Aquinas, the title of bachelor. Having returned to his homeland, he taught with great success. He was elected Master of the Sacred Palace and was created cardinal of the title of the Twelve Apostles by Urban IV, in 1262-63. He was given the task of handling very important affairs of the Church and was part of the embassy sent by Clement IV to Charles I to confer upon him the investiture of the kingdom of Naples and Sicily and to exact from him the oath as vassal of the Church (1265). He was a friend of Peter of Tarentaise (Pope Innocent V), of St. Albert the Great and particularly of St. Thomas Aquinas, who dedicated to him the second part of his Catena Aurea, after the death of Urban IV, to whom he had dedicated the first.

Two works of A. survive: Quodlibeta and In quattuor libros Sententiarum. The latter is the same work that was for a long time attributed to St. Thomas under the title: Scriptum secundum in Sententias ad Hannibaldum, and which was published for the first time at Basel in 1492 from the press of Nicola Kessler. The dedication "ad Hannibaldum" influenced the false attribution, but the dedicatee would instead be the writer's own uncle, Riccardo.

Emma Santovito