Benvenuto Rambaldi da Imola

Benvenuto Rambaldi da Imola, or simply and perhaps more accurately Benvenuto da Imola (; 1330 – 1388), was an Italian scholar and historian, a lecturer at Bologna. He is now best known for his commentary on Dante's Divine Comedy.

Life

He was born in Imola, into a family of legal officers. In 1361–2 he was working for Gómez Albornoz, governor of Bologna and nephew of Cardinal Egidio Albornoz.

In 1365 he went on a diplomatic mission on behalf of the city, to Avignon and Pope Urban V. At the time members of the Alidosi family dominated Imola, and other citizens looked to the papacy for a change. The petition brought by Benvenuto and others failed; on the other hand Benvenuto himself had made accusations to the papal legate in Bologna of improper teacher-student relationships of others. While previously in Bologna he may have lectured officially, and did teach some classical authors, his later lectures were in a private house, that of the grammarian Giovanni de Soncino. There he had the protection of Niccolò II d'Este, Marquis of Ferrara, whom he had met in Avignon. His commentary on Dante was known as the Comentum super Dantis Aligherii comoediam. Charles Eliot Norton considered that Benvenuto's commentary on Dante had "a value beyond that of any of the other fourteenth-century commentators". Modern scholars highly regard Benvenuto's glosses for providing precise contemporary context on the regional nobility of Romagna and the Bolognese countryside mentioned by Dante, including the Malatesta of Rimini, the local Alidosi faction, and the Biancuzzi family of Pier da Medicina. It exists in three versions: one published in 1875, one from his time in Ferrara, and a third published in 1887 by William Warren Vernon (edited by James Philip Lacaita). Benvenuto acknowledged influence himself from the tradition of Averroes and Hermannus Alemannus, as well as Boccacio.

Other works were: Romuleon, a Latin compendium of Roman history. It was an extensive compilation in ten books, made in the period 1361–4 for Gómez Albornoz. At the end of the 15th century it was rewritten by Adamo Montaldo. It covered the history from the foundation of Rome to Constantine the Great. This work is not connected to the Gesta Romanorum, but sometimes went under the title De Gestis Romanorum, or in its French version Des fai(t)s des Romains. It circulated in a small number of manuscripts of high quality; the first French translation (1460) was by Jean Miélot, for Philip the Good and it was transcribed by David Aubert. Another followed in 1466 by Sébastien Mamerot, for Louis de Laval, seigneur de Châtillon. Six manuscripts of Miélot's Romuléon are known.

A commentary on Virgil's Eclogues (Bucolics) and Georgics. He also disapproved of the classical commentary of Servius. Commentaries on Lucan, Valerius Maximus, and the tragedies of Seneca the Younger;

He also wrote on Petrarch's Carmen Bucolicum.