CAFFARO. – Genoese chronicler, born around 1080, died in 1166. Of noble lineage (he was the son of Rustico, lord of Castrofino) and related to the foremost families of Genoa, C. departed at the age of twenty for the Holy Land in the Genoese expedition of autumn 1100: from then on he took part in many enterprises that enlarged the possessions and renown of the Republic. The maturity he attained in navigation and commerce, and during his long residence in Syria, initiated C.’s political activity. And, always in the service of his homeland, he spent the rest of his life in embassies, offices, and new expeditions.
In 1121, also expending Genoese gold, he championed, before the Curia of Callistus II, and in 1123 before the Council, the claims of the Genoese episcopate—and in reality of the government—against the archbishop and people of Pisa, concerning jurisdiction over Corsica; and he did so with great success, opening the way to Genoa’s political assertion over the island. He then alternated the office of consul in his city with that, on nearby and distant seas, of admiral; supremely skilled in diplomatic dealings as well as in naval and military command, he appears as the most complete representative of that aristocracy of birth, and above all of deeds, which brought greatness to Genoa and Venice.
He had led his men in the capture of Minorca and the siege of Almeria against the Saracens in 1147–48, and had firmly supported the Republic, which had been engaged in a victorious war, when he began to occupy his approaching old age with the work that more than any other secured his fame: the Annales Iannenses, begun in his youth and carried forward amid wars and governmental missions. In them the
history of his homeland is followed with such immediacy and warmth from 1100 to 1163 as only personal, multifaceted experience, identified with Genoa’s own annals, could have made possible. In 1152 the liber was delivered to the consuls and placed in the public archive; thus inaugurating an annalistic tradition, perpetuated almost until the fourteenth century, which restored to history the cult that had once belonged to Rome. C. also composed, drawing upon his memories, two other minor works: the De liberatione civitatum Orientis and the Historia capitonis Almarie et Tortae. He died after recovering, in the defense of his homeland against the designs of Frederick Barbarossa at Roncaglia and, near Genoa, at Bosco, all his energy, revealed almost to the very end in the naïve and vigorous prose of the Annales, particularly in the account of Barbarossa’s deeds.