Ranzano, Pietro - Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. X, p. 314

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

RANZANO, PIETRO. - Humanist and Dominican bishop, b. in Palermo c. 1420–28, d. in Lucera (?) in 1492. He entered the Palermo convent of S. Domenico (c. 1444). He was twice provincial of Sicily (1455–59; 1463–67). Tutor and confessor to Giovanni, son of Ferdinando I d'Aragona, king of Naples, he was elected bishop of Lucera in September 1476. In the years 1488–90 he was Ferdinando I’s legate to Mattia Corvino, king of Hungary.

He wrote the Annales omnium temporum, a geographical, literary, historical, and theological work which encompasses almost all his production and has been only partially published. Particularly noteworthy are the Epitome rerum Hungaricarum (Vienna 1558), the Vita s. Vincentii Ferrarii, in Acta SS. Aprilis, I, Paris 1865, p. 481—the first biography of the Saint—and De auctore, primordiis et progressu felicis urbis Panormi (Palermo 1737).

BIBL.: Quétif-Echard, I, pp. 876–78; [A. Bremond], Bullarium Ordinis Praedicatorum, III, Rome 1731, p. 640; V. Barcellona [A. Lo Presti], Memorie della vita letteraria e dei viaggi di P. R., Palermo 1761; F. A. Termini, P. R., umanista palermitano del sec. XV, ibid. 1915; M. A. Coniglione, La provincia domenicana di Sicilia, Catania 1937, pp. 39–34, 38–41, 176–84, 408–10; id., P. R., O. P., palermitano, in L'eca di S. Domenico, 17 (1941), pp. 13–14, 22–23, 32–33, 46, 55–56, 67–68, 82, 92, 116; 18 (1942), pp. 22, 40, 54, 65–66, 79–81, 97–99. Abele Redigonda