Gianfranco Fiaccadori (16 October 1957 – 24 January 2015) was an Italian historian. By training a

Byzantinist Byzantine studies is an interdisciplinary branch of the humanities that addresses the history, culture, demography, dress, religion/theology, art, literature/epigraphy, music Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination ...

, he also studied and published in

Oriental studies Oriental studies is the academic field that studies Near Eastern and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, peoples, history and archaeology. In recent years, the subject has often been turned into the newer terms of Middle Eastern studie ...

and Ethiopian studies. Fellow historian

Alessandro Bausi Alessandro Bausi (born 1963, Florence) is an Italian philologist working on Ethiopic texts and manuscripts. Career and research Bausi earned his PhD in 1992 from University of Naples "L'Orientale". Formerly Assistant (1995) and Associate Profess ...

called him "one of the last humanists in the broadest sense, intimately familiar with everything from classical to Christian antiquities, through Late Antiquity, Byzantium, the Middle Ages, and beyond".Alessandro Bausi
"Obituary: Gianfranco Fiaccadori (1957–2015)"
''Scrinium'' 11 (2015): 3–4. Fiaccadori was born in

Parma Parma (; ) is a city in the northern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna known for its architecture, Giuseppe Verdi, music, art, prosciutto (ham), Parmesan, cheese and surrounding countryside. With a population of 198,986 inhabitants as of 2025, ...

. By the age of seventeen, when he entered the

Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa The Scuola Normale Superiore (commonly known in Italy as "la Normale") is a public university in Pisa and Florence, Tuscany, Italy, currently attended by about 600 undergraduate and postgraduate (PhD) students. Together with the University of Pi ...

, he was fluent in

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

and

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

. He wrote his dissertation on the life of

Gregentios Gregentios (Greek language, Greek: Γρηγέντιος) was the purported archbishop of Zafar, Yemen, Ẓafār, the capital of the kingdom of Ḥimyar, in the mid-6th century, according to a hagiographical dossier compiled in the 10th century. Th ...

, ''La ‘Vita’ di s. Gregenzio, vescovo dei Himyariti'', under the supervision of Giovanni Pugliese Carratelli and Vera von Falkenhausen, in 1978–79. He received his doctorate in 1983. Beginning in that year, he took part in archaeological excavations in

Bosra Bosra (), formerly Bostra () and officially called Busra al-Sham (), is a town in southern Syria, administratively belonging to the Daraa District of the Daraa Governorate and geographically part of the Hauran region. Bosra is an ancient cit ...

, identifying and publishing numerous Greek and Latin inscriptions.Beatrice Daskas and Agostino Soldati, "In memoriam Gianfranco Fiaccadori (1957–2015)", ''Aethiopica'' 18 (2015): 200–213. Fiaccadori spent some time at

Dumbarton Oaks Dumbarton Oaks, formally the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, is a historic estate in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. It was the residence and gardens of wealthy U.S. diplomat Robert Woods Bliss and his wife ...

before accepting an associate professorship for Byzantine History and the History of Material Culture in the Middle Ages at the

University of Udine The University of Udine (Italian language, Italian ''Università degli Studi di Udine'') is a public university in the city of Udine, Italy. It was founded in 1978 as part of the reconstruction plan of Friuli after the 1976 Friuli earthquake, ear ...

in 1987. From 1988, he was a visiting professor of late antique and Byzantine archaeology at the

Italian School of Archaeology at Athens The Italian School of Archaeology at Athens (; ) is one of the 19 foreign archaeological institutes headquartered in Athens, Greece, with branch offices in Crete, Limnos and Rome. Following earlier Italian research in Greece (as an archaeologic ...

. In 1992, he published a monograph on Theophilus the Indian. In 1994–95, he was a visiting professor of the

Pontifical Oriental Institute The Pontifical Oriental Institute, also known as the Orientale, is a Catholic institution of higher education located in Rome and focusing on Eastern Christianity. The plan of creating a school of higher learning for Eastern Christianity had bee ...

. He was promoted to full professor at Udine in 1995 and started lecturing on

epigraphy Epigraphy () is the study of inscriptions, or epigraphs, as writing; it is the science of identifying graphemes, clarifying their meanings, classifying their uses according to dates and cultural contexts, and drawing conclusions about the wr ...

, Christian antiquities and Ethiopian antiquities. He moved to the

University of Milan The University of Milan (; ), officially abbreviated as UNIMI, or colloquially referred to as La Statale ("the State niversity), is a public university, public research university in Milan, Italy. It is one of the largest universities in Eu ...

in 2001, where he was professor of Late Antique and Medieval Artistic Culture and Byzantine Civilization. He curated several exhibitions in

Venice Venice ( ; ; , formerly ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 islands that are separated by expanses of open water and by canals; portions of the city are li ...

between 1994 and 2009. Although he never visited Ethiopia, his interest in Ethiopian studies grew in later years. He served as coeditor of the second through fifth volumes of the ''

Encyclopaedia Aethiopica The ''Encyclopaedia Aethiopica'' (''EAe'') is a basic English-language encyclopaedia for Ethiopian and Eritrean studies. The ''Encyclopaedia Aethiopica'' provides information in all fields of the discipline, i.e. anthropology, archaeology, ethn ...

''. Fiaccadori died in his home in Parma after a short oncological illness.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fiaccadori, Gianfranco 1957 births 2015 deaths Writers from Parma Italian Byzantinists Ethiopianists Scholars of Byzantine history