Gentile Stefaneschi Romano O.P.(† 1303) o Gentile Orsini? Il caso singolare di un Domenicano nel Regnum Siciliae tra ricostruzione storica e trasmissione onomastica

Abstract The atmosphere of great political instability which was dominating Sicily between the end of the thirteenth century and the beginning of the next, is evident in the historical events that are linked with the city of Catania in this period. The city had a strategic importance in the political chess-board of the Mediterranean Sea thanks to its geographic position and consequently it knew different conquerors: first Frederic III of Aragon (1296-1298), then Robert of Anjou and again it went under the control of the Aragonese (March 1302). But the fight for the control of the city was led not only with the force of arms: in the second half of 1296 Dominican monk Gentile Romano was appointed bishop of Catania by Bonifacio VIII. This appointment reveals the attempt of the Pope to influence the autochthonal population to support the Angevin, faithful to the papal directives, against the Aragonese remained in the island. But who was Gentile Romano that coeval sources describe clever diplomat endowed with a great power in communication? And above all, how is that a historical personality of such an importance, famous, amongst other things, for his courses at the University in Paris between 1292 and 1293, is named Gentilis Romanus o Gentilis de Stefaneschis Romanus, in the coeval sources while he is mentioned as Gentile Orsini from the 16th century to these days? The Author reconstructs the biographical events of Gentile Stefaneschi Romano in an essay through a meticulous historical research work developed on unpublished archival sources and on historical studies about the Dominican bishop from the Early Modern Age to nowadays. In the essay he illustrates the deep connection among the unusual biographical route followed by a member of two noble families of late-medieval Rome, the consequences of the curial policy in the changes of the political balance of power in the insular part of the Reign and the unusual performance of the mother’s surname in opposition to the trend of the standard of the intellectual production of Southern Italy during the centuries XVI ̶ XX.