CHAPTER XII - VITERBO.—SURRINA

Summary

Cernimus exemplis oppida posse mori.

—Rutilius.

Multa retro rerum jacet, atque ambagibus ævi

Obtegitur densâ caligine mersa vetustas.

—Sil. Ital.

Almost every town in Italy and Spain has its chronicle, written generally by some monk, who has made it a labour of love to record the history, real or imaginary, of his native place from the creation down to his own time. In these monographs, as they may be termed, the great object appears to be to exalt the antiquity and magnify the pristine importance of each respective town, often at the expense of every other. It is this feeling which has ascribed to many of the cities of Spain a foundation by Japhet or Tubal-Cain; and to this foolish partiality we owe many a bulky volume replete with dogmatical assertions, distortions of history, unwarranted readings or interpretations of ancient writers; and sometimes even blackened with forgery.

Among those who have been guilty of this foulest of literary crimes, stands foremost in impudence, unrivalled in voluminous perseverance, Fra Giovanni Nanni, commonly called Annio di Viterbo, a Dominican monk of this town, who lived in the fifteenth century. He was a wholesale and crafty forger; he did not write the history of his native place, but pretended to have discovered fragments of various ancient writers, most of which are made, more or less directly, to bear testimony to its antiquity and pristine importance.