Talk:Pope Lucius II

WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one article was rated and this bot brought all the other ratings up to at least that level. BetacommandBot 02:06, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Caccianemici attribution: Very likely a case of forgery

Fiddling around I've found that the attribution to the belonging to the Caccianemici family (cadet of a "De Urso" family) to be likely a forgery.

https://www.wandruszka-genealogie.eu/Literatur/CaccianemiciOrsi2005B.pdf

from https://www.wandruszka-genealogie.eu/Lebenslauf.php

and https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/papa-lucio-ii_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/

and https://www.academia.edu/12243744/I_falsi_nella_storia_di_Bologna_Dal_Privilegio_Teodosiano_a_Lodovico_Savioli

First the Caccianemici surname should appear for the first time a century or so after the death of Lucius II; so that said family name existing during his time to be unlikely. Second Orsi is a common name during the period making thus people attested to be son of a Orsi to be a common enough occurrence in Bologna/Northern Italy.

Then finally the only source for his connection to the "de Ursus" (intended to be a noble family with said surname in Bologna, rather than a generic de Urso of common origins that may have happened to be from Bologna) comes 600 years later, from Ludovico Savioli (Bolognese poet from noble origins, has a small wikipedia page in Italian), who's very notorious for having forged a good amount of documents! (There's a reference on the Treccani link to the text "L. Sighinolfi, Ludovico Savioli e la genealogia della famiglia di Alberto d'Orso")

According to the article I falsi nella storia di Bologna dal Privilegio Teodosiano a Lodovico Savioli (roughly translates to "The Forgeries in the History of Bologna, from the Theodosian Privilege to Lodovico Savioli") mentions that due to his close connections with the senatorial nobility of Bologna had ample access to the city's public archives and where he worked as scholar and main editor of the city's medieval documentations, having transcribed hundreds of documents for the city's public archive, and having inserted various interpolations in these medieval texts that would have been identified as forged later on by historians. Savioli in his later life becomes professor of History for the University of Bologna.

Upon reading on the conflict of interests and the claims from the archives (that have been inserted there and are not part of the original calligraphy) that sound extraordinary in context, I'd say it convinced me that it is very likely forgery. Aside from the quasi-monopoly of the curation of the city archives:

What is known of the Savioli noble family is that they came from Padua to Bologna in the 17th century, and through marriages inherited titles and properties from the Fontana and Coltelli, hence his full surname to be actually Savioli Fontana Coltelli.

The medieval texts with (presumably) strong evidence of forgery by analyzing its writing style build up a case for Savioli to be originating from the bolognese small feudal lord "Alberto di Orso" (to be clear I'm not putting in doubt the actual existence of said "Alberto Di Orso", at least not in this paragraph) who lived during the first decades of the 12th century and sorta family head from whom quite a handful of cadet branches (Caccianemici included) descend from. Then, one of the cadet branches would have been a Savioli cadet branch (which is is very likely forged) claimed to be the last surviving branch of d'Orsi. From said documents they would've apparently been part of the city's Ghibellines and participated in the city's conflicts and got ultimately exiled from the city of Bologna in 1329, migrating to Padua. Yes the way that Lodovico forged the documents made a case for him to be from a very ancient aristocratic bolognese family that got exiled in the 14th century, and coincidentally said family is the same that returned to Bologna upon marrying local nobility and inheriting estates. There was the interest of Lodovico to aggrandize the prestige of his origins by making them more ancient and more bolognese in nature, as well as the fact that the nobility of bologna with very ancient origins was exempt of paying taxes (conflict of interest). Eventually the senate approved his genealogic reconstruction and granted him the due tax exemptions. Regarding the main theme of the wiki page, Lucius II addition's to said Alberto di Orso also have been identified as to be forgeries, added within the medieval documents that ultimately were used to reconstruct Savioli's family, his existence being added into the noble family of di Orso very likely by Savioli, who in the mess of documentations added said figure in his genealogy to further boost the prestige of his ancestry (important to mention that during Savioli's time Bologna was a papal city, making his relatedness to a Pope even more relevant).

Savioli had a very tight control of the handling of the city archives, with conflicts of interests coming from three sides (prestige of ancient bolognese noble origins + tax exemption + making his a family part of the select group of families that had Popes in the family tree in a papal city) and with an oddly coincidental and extraordinary story (Ancient family that got exiled from Bologna to Padua only to return three centuries later due to the unrelated reason of marrying local bolognese nobility), the analysis of the writings indicate forgery including the one of Lucius II's relatedness to the di Orsi. Even if he may have been son of a certain Orsi, there are other cases of son of Orsi in Bologna's archives and not necessarily from the noble family, as the name Orsi was common by consequence son of Orsi was too. And regardless the Caccianemici branch start to appear a century and a half after Lucius II.

Nothing else aside from Savioli's additions to his genealogy mention any noble origin of Lucius II.

In fact, I'm starting to doubt the existence of an Alberto d'Orsi, I've found nothing regarding his existence except

https://www.originebologna.com/torri/alberto-d-dorso/

which are excerpts from Savioli documents and interpolated documents. No source is totally clear about Alberto d'Orsi being a mythological creature from Savioli's creation or not. Or, if there is an Alberto d'Orsi, whether that was actually a nobleman or just some other person (maybe of some relevance). Very notably the claims put Savioli as the only living descendant of one of various many of cadet branches of d'Orsi, that this small otherwise never mentioned feudal family from Bologna would give origin to like more cadet branches than the Capet and why would such a foundational figure for Bolognese society not have other mentions of him? (and also right "how exactly the only branch to thrive went to padua and somehow didn't get absorbed only to return to Bologna centuries later for other pretexts", though I have already mentioned that)

The mentions of Lucius II that come from closest to his existence (if my investigation of the documents is correct) and a bit vaguely and briefly mentioned in the Treccani article is that one source claims he is son of an Orsi and another son of an Alberti, the Alberti line coming from Martino of Opava and likely source commentaries from him, and Orsi from Cardinal Boso and likely commentaries that source him. Cardinal Boso (whose own origins are heavily disputed... lol!) lived during the times of Lucius II whereas Martin's comes a century later

Hence, I'm not sure if d'Orsi is correct rather than Alberti

For Martin's, this comes from Chronicon pontificum et imperatorum by Martin of Opava (what I found was a graduation thesis that I don't know if it's appropriate to link, and scans of the manuscript such as

https://digital.tcl.sc.edu/digital/collection/pfp/id/1180/

but there are others), I found bits from it and it does say he's son of Alberti there.

Meanwhile Boso's addition on the Liber Pontificalis

https://archive.org/details/duchesne02/page/384/mode/2up Does mention him as son of Orsi.

So the two sources are inconsistent, though if anything Cardinal Boso was more correct from living during the same time and indeed Orsi was the father's name.

My guess is that Savioli forged the figure of Alberto d'Orsi as a way to fit in the genealogy of his into the family of Lucius II which is otherwise rather unknown (maybe there's some documentation in some lost forsaken archive in Italy), as a way to increase his own pedigree and not pay taxes. Of course, if there existed an Alberto d'Orsi or Orsi d'Alberto one would wave that as being the explanation for the inconsistency between Martin and Boso, ~2025-36772-66 (talk) 17:45, 27 November 2025 (UTC)