GHERARDI, Jacopo. - Apostolic Secretary. Born in Volterra on 25 July 1434. In 1458 he went to Rome, and from 1463 he assisted Cardinal Ammannati. Upon the latter’s death (1479) he was appointed apostolic secretary and shortly thereafter made chamberlain of honour to Sixtus IV. Retiring to Volterra in 1484, he was recalled thence three years later.
Indeed, when war broke out between Innocent VIII and Ferrante I of Aragon following the famous “Barons’ Conspiracy,” the Pope felt the need to send a diplomat to Naples to contest in his name the King’s right to punish the rebels and to reclaim the feudal census of the Kingdom. The choice fell upon Pietro Menzi da Vicenza, Bishop of Cesena, and Gherardi was assigned to accompany him. Yet the mission failed to sway the unyielding stance of Ferrante (July–August 1487). Desiring then to encircle the Aragonese with a web of hostility, in September of the same year the Pope dispatched Gherardi first to Florence and then (October 1487) to Milan. Despite the diplomat’s skill, papal aims once more came to naught, and the balancing policy of Lorenzo de’ Medici prevailed.
In 1491, at Lorenzo de’ Medici’s invitation, Gherardi began to educate the Magnificent’s son, Giovanni—already a cardinal and destined to ascend the papal throne as Leo X. Upon Innocent VIII’s death, Gherardi returned to Volterra, where he composed a diary of events from 1479 onward, an invaluable source for the history of this period (it ends in 1434: ed. by E. Carusi in the new reprint of the RIS, XXIII, 111). In 1512 he was appointed Bishop of Segni. When the Cardinal de’ Medici became pope, his episcopal see was transferred to the more important Aquino (1513), and three years later, in September 1516, Gherardi died.
Carlo De Frede