GHERARDI, JACOPO. – Apostolic secretary. Born at Volterra on 25 July 1434. He went to Rome in 1458, and from ’63 assisted Cardinal Ammannati. At the latter’s death (1479), he was appointed apostolic secretary and, shortly thereafter, honorary chamberlain to Sixtus IV. Having retired to Volterra in 1484, he was recalled from there 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 who, in his name, would challenge the King’s right to punish the rebels and assert the Kingdom’s feudal census. The choice fell upon Pietro Menzi of Vicenza, bishop of Cesena, and G. was specifically assigned to serve alongside him. The mission, however, failed to overcome Ferrante’s unyielding stance (July–August 1487). Then, wishing to surround the Aragonese with a network of hostility, in September of the same year the Pope sent G. first to Florence and then (October 1487) to Milan. Despite the diplomatic skill of the man chosen for this task, the papal aims once again failed, while the balancing policy of Lorenzo de’ Medici triumphed instead. In 1491, at the invitation of Lorenzo de’ Medici, G. began to educate the Magnifico’s son, Giovanni, already a cardinal and destined to ascend the papal throne under the name of Leo X. At the death of Innocent VIII, G. returned to Volterra, where he devoted himself to writing a diary of the events that had taken place from 1479 onward, an extremely important source for the history of this period (it stops at 1434: ed. by E. Carusi in the new reprint of the RIS, XXIII, III). In 1512 he was appointed bishop of Segni. When Cardinal de’ Medici was elected pope, his episcopal see was exchanged for the more important one of Aquino (1513), and three years later, in September 1516, G. died.
Carlo De Frede