Annius of Viterbo ( Latin: Joannes Annius Viterb(i)ensis; c. 1432 – 13 November 1502), born Giovanni Nanni (Nenni) in Viterbo, was an Italian Dominican friar, scholar, and historian. He is now remembered for his fabrications, primarily the Antiquities first published in 1498.

Annius entered the Dominican Order in 1448. ^[1] In 1464, he was admitted to the Magisterium in theology as a capable scholar. He obtained the degree of Master of Theology from the studium generale at Santa Maria sopra Minerva, the forerunner of the College of Saint Thomas and the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum. He served as a lector at the studium sometime before 1466. ^[2] By the 1470s, he had become known for his astrological studies among Genoese aristocratic circles. ^[3] Around the same time, he had started to interpret the Book of Revelation to support his prediction that Latin Christendom would soon conquer the Turks and liberate Constantinople. ^[4]

Seeking sponsorship, Annius briefly worked for the Sforza dukes of Milan, starting to offer them astrological prognostications in 1473. This relation ended when Galeazzo Maria Sforza was assassinated in December 1475. ^[5] Annius returned to Viterbo in 1489, serving as a public teacher and lecturer in his hometown. ^[6]

Annius was highly esteemed by Sixtus IV and Alexander VI. He gained the patronage of the latter after the publication of the Antiquities in 1498. Alexander VI also made him Master of the Sacred Palace in 1499.

As a linguist, Annius spuriously claimed to be skilled in the Oriental languages. Walter Stephens says: “His expertise in Semitic philology, once celebrated even by otherwise sober ecclesiastical historians, was entirely fictive.” ^[7] Annius also claimed to be able to read Etruscan, which also turned out to be fictitious.

In perhaps his most elaborate pseudo-archaeological charade, Annius undertook a well-publicized dig at Viterbo in late 1493, during which marble statues of mythical figures closely associated with the city’s legendarium were unearthed. It was highly likely that Annius had planted them in the site beforehand. ^[8]

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Early Career in Astrology

Though now primarily known for his forgeries, Annius was also an accomplished astrologer. In his 1471 treatise De imperio Turchorum, he used astrology to predict the decline of the Turks and liberation of Constantinople under Latin Christendom. He briefly practiced as a professional astrologer in Milan.

In November 1475, Galeazzo Maria Sforza, the second duke of Milan, asked him to predict the death of King Ferrante of Aragon. Annius responded that the king would soon die of his illness, unsurprising due to his poor health conditions. To avoid blames, Annius cunningly added that if he had known the decubitum (the day and time of the onset of the illness), his response would be more conclusive. However, Annius’s prediction was incorrect, as King Ferrante lived for another 19 years. Sforza seemed to accept that the prognostication was only tentative, and no punishment was incurred on Annius. ^[9]

However, this sponsorship soon ended when Sforza was assassinated, and Annius swiftly shifted to champion King Ferrante as the leader of a new crusade against the Turks. He soon left Milan for Genoa and later Viterbo, where his interest for his hometown’s mythological origin prompted his career as a master forger.

Major Works

Viterbiae Historiae Epitoma

The volume Annius da Viterbo, Documenti e ricerche (Rome: Multigrafica Editrice for CNR, 1981) presents an unpublished work written by Annius: the Viterbiae historiae epitoma in the critical text edited by Giovanni Baffioni. The text is based on the manuscript Codex Vaticanus Latinus 6263 and represents the seventh and only extant book of the former work of Annius’s Viterbia Historia, composed of seven books in which the Viterban theologian writes the history of his municipal town ranging from its mythological origins (newly reinvented by Annius himself) until the times of Pope Innocent VIII. The second part of the book, edited by Paola Mattiangeli, deals with his influence on High Renaissance myth and allegory. In particular, it refers to Annius's esoteric interests and his influence over a number of painted frescoes in the city of Viterbo characterized by Egyptian imagery.

Written some time between 1491 and 1492, Viterbiae Historiae Epitoma was grounded in earlier chronicles of Viterbo. Annius drew from existing founding myths that traced the city’s origin back to Coritus, Iasius, Italus, and Hercules. He then expanded them extensively with works of Greek and Latin authors, heavily referencing Diodorus, Strabo, Varro, Livius, and Pliny. Even his completely imaginative touch that elevated Osiris as the ancestor of Viterbans was clearly guided by the Diodoran spirit. When comparing Viterbiae Historiae Epitoma with the Antiquities forged several years later, we can discern that the strong influence of biblical, orientalizing, and miso-Hellenic history so characteristic of the latter was missing in the former. Even the vision that the Etruscans were descended from Japhet so fundamental to the Antiquities was absent, allowing us to see the development of Annius’ ideas on ancient Viterbo. ^[10]

Antiquitatum Variarum

Annius is best known for his Antiquitatum Variarum, originally titled the Commentaria super opera diversorum auctorum de antiquitatibus loquentium (Commentaries on the Works of Various Authors Discussing Antiquity). ^[11] Published in late 1498, the Antiquities allegedly included writing fragments of prestigious pre-Christian Greek and Latin authors that were considered long lost, seeking to throw an entirely new light on ancient history. ^[12] Annius attached his own commentaries alongside these “rediscoveries,” harmonizing them with contemporary biblical authorities. He claimed to have discovered them at Mantua.

The Antiquities impacted European scholarship for over two centuries. Eighteen known Latin editions were published from 1498 and 1612. ^[13] The texts were later translated into Italian and flourished in France and England through adaptations. When King Charles VIII arrived in Viterbo, the oration delivered to him was also based on Annian ideas. ^[14]

The wide circulation of the Antiquities could partly be attributed to how Annius “had told Europeans what they wanted to hear about the past.” ^[15] He chose his authors carefully, mixing citations and references from Josephus, Diodorus Siculus, Eusebius, Strabo, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, and Lactantius. Annius also accredited his fables by skillfully packaging them in formats similar to Biblical commentaries and other secular classics, evoking scholarly respect from common readers. ^[16] Philologically, Annius broke up the documents to make them complement each other without incurring excessive suspicion on any individual pieces. For the writings he did not forge, Annius used them “as a quarry from which to extract the information he [required],” effectively arranging them in means that fit his narratives. ^[17] He also used fictitious phonemic developments to invent almost any toponym to mean whatever he desired.

Auctores vetustissimi

Annius was notorious for uncovering what he claimed to be Greco-Roman lies. To decentralize Greece from his proto-Christian European history, he explicitly stated in Auctores vetustissimi that “philosophy and letters began simultaneously and did not emanate from the Greeks, but rather from the ancient Phoenicians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Etruscans, Spanish, Gauls and Germans, and Egyptians.” ^[18] To further this narrative, he forged formerly irretrievable works of ancient chroniclers, the most important among them included Berosus the Chaldean and Megasthenes the Persian. He invented descendants of Noah, enabling himself to manipulate genealogies from the Creation onward. He cited authentic and forged sources alike, creating a self-supporting web of evidence to corroborate his fictitious claims. ^[19]

Published in Rome in 1498, his Auctores vetustissimi was an anthology of seventeen purportedly classical texts, all of which he had written himself, with which he embarks in the gigantic attempt to write a universal history of the post-diluvian Western civilization, where the Etruscan people and the town of Viterbo - also called Etruria - guarded the original knowledge of divine nature to rival the Jews. ^[20] Through his books and pseudo-archaeological excavations, Annius constructed the narrative that the Etruscans were descendents of Comerus, Noah’s favorite grandson, and were ruled by Noah himself. They learned magic and science that distinguished them from the rest in antiquity. The Etruscan language was the basis of Hebrew. His hometown Viterbo was unsurprisingly the Etruscan capital, hosting the first pontifex maximus Noah himself. Therefore, Viterbo surpassed even the first postdiluvian city Babylon in its historical richness. ^[21] It was also the host of the first papacy, eclipsing the pagan Rome that became the contemporary host of papal see much later.

Other Works

Many of Annius’s early treatises were produced in his search for patronage. In February 1491, he published his first Viterban treatise and dedicated it to Ranuccio Farnese, brother of the future Pope Paul III Alessandro Farnese. Analyzing the works of Diodorus Siculus, Annius argued that supposed Isis and Osiris established new colonies in the Mediterranean Sea, and the latter founded Viterbo, thus deriving a divine ancestry for the Farnese from the Egyptian god-king Osiris. ^[22]

Annius’s second treatise was produced in 1492 and dedicated to Pope Innocent VIII, continuing his historical outline of Viterbo based on his Egyptian foundation theory. His third treatise De marmoreis volturrheinis tabulis was addressed to the eight senior magistrates of Viterbo, in which he furthered his miso-Hellenic argument that the Greeks erased the central role the Etruscans played in establishing the Mediterranean civilization and claimed cultural supremacy for themselves. ^[23]

Among Annius’s numerous other writings were De futuris Christianorum triumphis in Turcos et Saracenos (Future Triumphs of the Christians over the Turks and the Saracens), a commentary on the Apocalypse, dedicated to Sixtus IV, and Tractatus de imperio Turcorum (The Empire of the Turks). ^[24] Annius claimed that Mohammad was the Antichrist, and that the end of the world would take place when the Christians would have overcome the Jews and the Muslims in the near future.

One influential suggestion he made - in his commentary on the Breviarium de Temporibus of Pseudo-Philo the Jew - was that the genealogy of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke traced the lineage through the father of Mary. ^[25] In the Breviarium de Temporibus, the Christ's grandfather Eli according to Luke was identified with Eliachim, an alleged variant of St Joachim, the Virgin Mary's father according to the apocryphal Protoevangelium of James. ^[26] According to Annius, the Marian direct descendance from king David testified Christ's inheritance of the throne of Israel in the lineage of His holy mother. ^[27]

Some of his important but unpublished works include:

• Volumen libris septuaginta distinctum de antiquitatibus et gestis Etruscorum;
• De correctione typographica chronicorum;
• De dignitate officii Magistri Sacri Palatii (On the Esteem of the Office of the Master of the Sacred Palace);
• The Chronologia Nova, in which he supposedly corrected the anachronisms in the writings of Eusebius of Caesarea;
• De marmoreis volturrhenis tabulis, which its modern editor Roberto Weiss referred to as "the first epigraphic study in western scholarship" in its preface. ^[28]

Annius's map of Rome as founded by Romulus is a loose interpretation of one of his own forgeries. It prominently features Vicus Tuscus, the home of the Etruscans, whom Annius and his fellow Viterbans claimed as their ancestors. Part of the forgeries were motivated by a desire to prove that Viterbo was the site of the Etruscan Fanum Voltumnae.

In a defense of the papal lending institution, the Monte di Pietà, published c. 1495 under the title Pro Monte Pietatis, Annius contributed the essay Questiones due disputate super mutuo iudaico & ciuili & diuino, arguing against the usury of the Jews. ^[29]

In the Borgia Papacy

Pope Innocent VIII’s prompt death deprived Annius of his potential patron. He responded by quickly seizing the opportunity of Borgia’s arrival to the Vatican. In late 1493, when the papal entourage were hunting near Tuscania and Viterbo, they accidently came across an Etruscan tomb. Annius was conveniently present to identify the statues and decipher the inscriptions. He interpreted them as evidence for his recently published treatise De marmoreis volturrhenis tabulis, recording the marriage between Jasius and Cybele in the presence of Isis. As people constantly stumbled upon authentic artifacts in these regions, the discoveries may be genuine archaeological findings. However, the extremely convenient coincidence of the location, Annius’s presence, and the meaning of the relics strongly suggested that the site was planted by Annius in advance. ^[30]

Following this pseudo-discovery, Annius published a fourth treatise called Borgiana lucubraciuncula dedicated to Pope Alexander VI. He immediately gained papal favor for his scholarship. However, there was no evidence that Alexander VI was truly convinced. Machiavelli noted in The Prince that Rodrigo Borgia was a master of deception and valued plausibility more than authenticity. Therefore, he may simply be recruiting Annius to help legitimize the Borgia autocracy. Annius incorporated pro-Borgia ideals when he published the Antiquities in 1498, devoting an entire section of his magnum opus to the history of Spanish monarchs. This attempt appealed not only to the aristocratic Spanish origin of the Borgia dynasty but also to Spanish royal ambassadors who paid for the publication. ^[31]

In 1499, Alexander VI promoted Annius to the Magister Sacri Palatii, a senior post in the Curia. The latter further requested to serve as supervisor of antiquities for the Viterbo region, yet it was uncertain whether his wish was granted. In 1502, Annius was allegedly poisoned by Cesare Borgia. ^[32]

Detection of His Forgeries

The Antiquities met at once both believers and severe critics who accused Annius of willfu interpolation or even fabrication. Three leading 15th-century humanists, Pietro Ricci (often called Crinitus), Marcantonio Coccio, and Raffaello Maffei, all openly questioned the work’s authenticity. ^[33] They claimed that its content was falsely attributed to Berosus, Fabius Pictor, Cato the Elder, Manetho, and other prestigious classical authors. Before the publication of the Antiquities, people generally believed that these works had been lost for centuries. Scholars like the Portugese humanist Gaspar Barreiros were thus outraged by Annius’s fabrications, lamenting that “the name of a man of such fame [i.e. Berosus the Chaldaean] [was] circulating as the putative author of books written by an empty and unknown writer.” ^[34]

Annius's forgeries began to unravel by the mid-16th century. In 1565-66, the humanist Girolamo Mei was engaged in a historiographical argument with Vincenzo Borghini, who presented a claim, for the occasion of the marriage of Francesco I de' Medici and Giovanna of Austria, that Florence was founded by Augustus. He based his claim on inscriptions reported by Annius da Viterbo. Mei, no friend to the Medici, challenged this opinion and questioned the authenticity of Annius's materials, in a brief Latin treatise De origine urbis Florentiae. ^[35]

At this time, fabrication of antiquities had become increasingly profitable, thus fostering a professional scholarship in identifying counterfeits. In 1587, Archbishop of Tarragona Antonio Agustin published the Dialogues that grounded Annius’s notoriety, citing the eyewitness Latino Latini to debunk his fabrications. Latini claimed to see Annius burying his forgeries in a vineyard near Viterbo. After the public digging started, he rushed to the scene and told the bystanders that he learned from his ancient artifacts that the oldest temple in the world was in the neighborhood. Thus, when the inscriptions he planted were discovered, he used them to convince the municipal elders to monumentalize them as part of the prominent Viterban history. ^[36] Though the authenticity of Agustin’s account was itself contested, it nevertheless incited doubts on the historicity of the Antiquities.

It has become clear that Annius was both a forger and an overly ambitious one. For one, the Antiquities was over 300 pages long, yet it was extremely coherent. All passages served a uniform purpose, though they supposedly came from fragmentary works whose authors ranged from Alexander the Great to the Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius. For another, some of his earlier treatises revealed the process in which Annius knew what he would prove in 1493 and worked hard backwards to structure and refine his forgeries to make them the most convincing. ^[37]

As of today, the spurious character of these "historians" of Annius, which he published both with and without commentaries, has long been admitted. ^[38] The demolition of the forgeries owed much to Joseph Justus Scaliger, who adopted the simple historical doctrine that the earliest source - or the closest one to the events described - should be the most trustworthy one. Though with limitations, this doctrine sufficed to discredit Annian forgeries. ^[39]

References