GREGORY OF CATINO. - Chronicler, b. at Catino in Sabina to a noble family ca. 1060 and d. in the abbey of Farfa toward the middle of the 12th century. Having entered S. Maria di Farfa while still a boy, he devoted his whole life to researching the records of his monastery.
Entrusted around 1092 with reorganizing the archive, he conceived the idea of transcribing all its documents into a single volume and thus compiled the Regestum Farfense or, as he himself called it, the Liber gemmiagraphus sive cleronomialis ecclesiae Farfensis (cod. Vat. lat. 8487 in the author's own hand, except for the last 72 folios written by his nephew Todino; ed. I. Giorgi and U. Balzani, 5 vols., Rome 1879-1914), a precious collection of 1324 documents relating to the history not only of Farfa but of the Church and of Italy from the Lombard age to the 11th century. Ca. 1103, G. wrote the Liber largitorius or L. notarius sive emphitenticus (ed. G. Zucchetti, in Regesta chartarum Italiae, Rome 1931), in which he registers all the concessions and leases made by the abbey. Another work of great interest, and the one in which G. best expresses his personal gifts as a historian, is the so-called Chronicon Farfense (ed. L. Muratori, in RIS, II, part 2, pp. 299-678; PL 127, 333-44; U. Balzani, in Fonti per la storia d'Italia, 33-34, Rome 1903), in which, by selecting and condensing the content of the preceding works, he narrates the vicissitudes of Farfa, comparing traditions with the documents. The last of his works, which he wrote when already in his seventies, is the Floriger chartarum cenobii Farfensis, an index of the principal documents contained in the other three books, of great interest for the topographical indications it provides. The attribution to G. of the Orthodoxa defensio imperialis (ed. in MGH, Libelli de lite, imperatorum et pontificum saec. XI et XII conscripti, II, pp. 535-42, cf. p. 702) is doubtful.
Bibliography2 works
Stanislao Majarelli