GREGORIO da CATINO. – Chronicler, born at Catino in Sabina into a noble family around 1060 and died at the abbey of Farfa around the middle of the 12th century. Entering S. Maria di Farfa as a child, he devoted his entire life to researching the records of his monastery.
Charged around 1092 with reorganizing the archive, he decided to transcribe all its documents in a single volume and thus compiled the Regestum Farfense or, as he called it, the Liber gemmiagraphus sive cleronomialis ecclesiae Farfensis (cod. Vat. lat. 8487, in the author’s hand, except for the last 72 folios, written by his nephew Todino; ed. I. Giorgi and U. Balzani, 5 vols., Rome 1879–1914), a valuable collection of 1,324 documents relating to the history not only of Farfa but also of the Church and of Italy from the Lombard age to the 11th century. Around 1103, G. wrote the Liber largitorius or L. notarius
sive emphitenticus (ed. G. Zucchetti, in Regesta chartarum Italiae, Rome 1931), in which he records all the grants 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, selecting and condensing the contents of the preceding works, he recounts the history of Farfa, comparing traditions with documents. The last of his works, written when he was already seventy, is the Floriger chartarum cenobii Farfensis, an index of the principal documents contained in the other three books, of great interest for the topographical information it provides. The attribution to G. of the Orthodoxa defensio imperialis is doubtful (ed. in MGH, Libelli de lite, imperatorum et pontificum saec. XI et XII conscripti, II, pp. 535–42, cf. p. 702).