BARTOLOMEO DA LUCCA. - In the world Tolomeo Fiadoni, Dominican historian and theologian, b. at Lucca ca. 1236 into a family of merchants and d. at Torcello in 1327. In 1272 we find him at Naples with St. Thomas Aquinas, with whom he had close relations. Between 1285 and 1302 he was five times prior of the convent of S. Romano in his native city. He took part in the elections of the masters general between Alberto da Chiavari (1300) and Bernardo de Jusix (1301). In 1303 he was ambassador to Benedict XI to obtain the lifting of the interdict that had struck the whole clergy of Lucca. His fellow citizens often wanted him as arbiter in their disputes. He was counselor to Countess Copoana, second wife of Count Ugolino della Gherardesca. From 1309 to 1318 he was at Avignon. On 5 March 1318, at the age of 82, he was entrusted with the diocese of Torcello. Over a question of law being agitated in a monastery of Benedictine nuns he had clashes with the patriarch of Grado, who went so far as to excommunicate him (1321). But, following his appeal, John XXII recognized his innocence and reinstated him in his rights (1323). As regards ecclesiastical politics, B. is one of the earliest defenders of the potestas directa.
In his many travels in Italy and abroad he gathered much archival material. His first work of a juridical character (Determinatio compendiosa de iurisdictione imperii, ed. by G. Mathes, Turin 1924) contains ideas later developed in the second part of the De regimine principum of St. Thomas, certainly due to him. He also wrote: Tractatus de iurisdictione Ecclesiae super regnum Apuliae et Siciliae (ms.); Exaemeron (Siena 1888). But his principal works are those of a historical character: Historia Eccl. nova (in Ref. Ital. Script., XI, Milan 1727, pp. 740-1242) and the Annales (in MGH, Scriptores rerum germanicarum, new series, VIII, Berlin 1930).
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Alfonso D'Amato