BURLAMACCHI, PACIFICO. - Dominican, cultivator of the memory of Savonarola, b. in Lucca around 1465, he inherited from his father and his mother Angelica Bernardini an affection for the Dominican Order, which he joined on March 18, 1499, at S. Romano in Lucca, leaving the merchant trade to which he had previously dedicated himself and changing his name from Filippo to that of Fra' Pacifico. He received the tonsure in 1500. From 1508 to 1510 he was prior of the convent of La Quercia (Viterbo), where Julius II declared that he would gladly have canonized Savonarola. Having returned to Lucca, he was confessor to the Dominican nuns (1512-18) and subprior in S. Romano (1513-18). Venerated by his contemporaries as a saint, he d. in Lucca on Feb. 13, 1519.
To him was attributed an Italian Vita of Savonarola, published, with revisions by T. Bottoni, in Lucca by Mansi in 1761 and by Di Poggio in 1764; a new ed. by P. Ginori Conti, Florence 1937. However, following the investigations of L. Ranke (Hist. biogr. Studien, Leipzig 1877, pp. 346-357), of P. Villari (Saggi storici e critici, Bologna 1890, pp. 297-326; id., La Storia di G. Savonarola e dei suoi tempi, Florence 1910, introd.) and of R. Ridolfi (La bibliofilia, 37 [1935], pp. 401-18), it is held, against G. Schnitzer (Arch. stor. ital., 3rd series, 28 [1901], pp. 257-95; id., Savonarola, II, pp. 524-46), that the Italian Vita was written by an anonymous author around 1528 and depends upon the Latin Vita.