CECCO d'Ascoli. — Francesco Stabili, born in Ascoli in 1269, was a physician, astrologer, naturalist, poet, presumptuous and eccentric. Attached to the medical faculty of Bologna (1324), he was suspended from teaching and fined (16 December 1324) as a heterodox; reinstated and promoted to the higher chair (1325), he left Bologna for Florence (1326), where he was appointed physician to Duke Charles of Calabria; but having incurred the displeasure of the duke, the famous physician Dino del Garbo, and the Church, he was tried and burned as a practitioner of necromancy on 17 July 1327.
He wrote in Latin a *Tractatus in sphaeram*, the *De principiis astrologiae* and the *De eccentricis et epicyclis*; in the vernacular, an unfinished poem in five books, *L'Acerba*, where in singularly rough terza rima (ABA, CBC,... ZZ) he treats of natural and spiritual matters with allegories, obscurities, and polemical barbs, especially against Dante, and rarely stirred by nature or by his distant homeland.
BIBL.: Works: G. Boffito, *Il «De principiis astrologiae» di C. d'A. nuovamente scoperto ed illustrato*, in *Giorn. stor. d. lett. illustr.*, supplem., 6 (1903), pp. 1-73; id., *Il «De eccentricis et epicyclis» di C. d'A. nuovamente scoperto ed illustrato*, in *Bibliofilia*, 7 (1905-1906), pp. 150-67; *L'Acerba* restored to better reading by Prof. Dr. Achille Crespi, Ascoli Piceno 1927. Life: G. Castelli, *La vita e le opere di C. d'A.*, Bologna 1892; G. Boffito, *Perché fu condannato al fuoco l'astrologo C. d'A.* in *Studi e documenti di storia e diritto*, 20 (1899), p. 357 ss.; A. Beccaria, *I biografi di C. d'A. e le fonti per la sua storia e la sua leggenda*, in *Memorie d. R. Accad. d. scienze di Torino*, 2a serie, 58 (1908), pp. 1-94. Studies: N. Sapegno, *Il Trecento*, 2a ed., Milano 1938, pp. 127-29, with the relevant bibliography; E. Allodoli, in chap. 4 (*Opere di divulgazione culturale e religiosa*) of *Storia illustrata d. lett. ital. scritta da un gruppo di studiosi*, Milano 1942, pp. 234-37.
