History and culture in a provincial centre: A universal chronicle from renaissance Rimini

The Cronaca universale of Gaspare Broglio is well known to local historians, who have long used it as a precious source of information about the Malatesta of Rimini and their political adventures. This essay reads it instead for clues to the cultural formation and intellectual interests of its author. In what he read and what he chose to include in his chronicle, this Sienese-born chronicler in the service of a lord of the Romagna displayed an eclectic interest in both classical and chivalric subjects, interests that he shared with his Malatesta masters and the Po valley nobility to which they belonged. Broglio's cultural formation and tastes were broadly characteristic of a class, not narrowly typical of a locale. Like others of his class, Broglio circulated widely in the service of a variety of masters. This circulation loosened any attachment he, and others of his class, might have had to a particular place, while fostering a sense of belonging to a supra-local cadre of people of similar background, experience, duties, and skills. Thus, his training and outlook may fairly be taken as typical of an entire group of people: that cadre of moderately well-educated members of the lesser nobility who served the princes of Italy in military, diplomatic, and administrative capacities and whose most distinguished representative, born right about the time Broglio left off writing his chronicle, was Baldassare Castiglione.