Foto del docente

Berardo Pio

Associate Professor

Department of History and Cultures

Academic discipline: M-STO/01 Medieval History

Curriculum vitae

Berardo Pio was born in Teramo in 1966 and graduated in history at the University of Bologna in 1990 and obtained his research doctorate in Romance philology and medieval culture in 1998.
Between March 1999 and February 2002 he held a research grant at the Department of Palaeography and Medieval Studies at the University of Bologna. He became researcher of medieval history in March 2002 at the same Department.

His research concentrates mainly on the editing and study of sources for the history of the kingdom of Sicily in the Norman, Swabia and Anjou periods and on themes of a political-institutional nature relative to the history of the Papacy in the Low Middle Ages.
The study of southern sources concentrated on the analysis of a hybrid historiography genre, that of chronicles-cartularies, particularly widespread in western Europe but limited in the Italian peninsular to Benedictine centres in central-southern Italy. A large part of his work is now devoted to the reconstruction and study of a Registrum pheudatariorum of 1279, once preserved in file 8 of the Anjou chancellery listing feudal lords of the judiciary of Abruzzo, feudal asset values and lengths of military service due. The study of such a document enables on the one hand, a better understanding of the mechanisms regulating military service of a feudal nature, and on the other to quantify the effects of the introduction of French elements in the feudal geography of a significantly wide region of the Kingdom in the early Anjou period.
Work devoted to events of a political-institutional nature of the papacy, instead, has resulted in a series of works on certain aspects of Boniface VIII: instruments and aims of his propaganda, affirmation of the papal universalism and relations with the German court, aspects of the rule of territories under the apostolic seat, difficulties in relations with the Roman nobility and in particular with the families Colonna and Orsini.
In the same field of research, particular attention has been paid to developments of the papacy of the 1300s (relations with outer urban areas and the Studium of Bologna; war of the Otto Santi; great west Europe schism) and the work of Giovanni da Legnano, famous jurist of the Bologna Studium, brilliant politician and respected pontiff legate, author of a treatise on the schism, il De fletu Ecclesie (1378), which was widely-read in the latter years of the 14th century. It was much discussed and bitterly contested by cardinals from opposing allegiances, jurists from the University of Paris and experts from various European courts.

He teaches History of medieval political thought in the undergraduate course in History (6 credits); Medieval History in the undergraduate course in Humanities, Civilisations of the Late Middle Ages in Second cycle degree programmes in History and Oriental Studie.

Scientific Adviser of the Institute of the Italian Encyclopedia "Giovanni Treccani" for the realization of the Italian biographical dictionary.
President of the Institute for History of the University of Bologna (ISTUB), since February 2015.
Member of the Scientific Committee of the editorial series "Uomini e mondi medievali" (CISAM, Spoleto) since October 2009.
Member of the Scientific Committee of the Magazine Aprutium. Organ of the Abruzzo Institute of Historical Research, since May 2001.
Member of the Scientific Committee of the Bullettino dell’Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo since July 2015.
Director of the Chartularium Studii Bononiensis, edited by Bononia University Press, February 2015.
Director of the Universitatis Bononiensis Monumenta, edited by Bononia University Press, February 2015.
Director of the Studi e memorie per la storia dell’Università di Bologna, edited by Bononia University Press, February 2015.
Director of the Opere dei Maestri, published by Bononia University Press, February 2015.
Member of the Board of CISBaM "Centro italiano per lo studio del basso Medioevo – Accademia Tudertina" of Todi from 11 October 2009.
Member of the Istituto per la Storia del Risorgimento italiano from November 2010.
Member of the CIRSFID Centro Interdipartimentale di Ricerca in Storia del Diritto, Filosofia e Sociologia del Diritto e Informatica Giuridica “G. Fassò – A. Gaudenzi”, since March 2016.
Deputies of the Deputazione di storia patria per gli Abruzzi, since 2016.
Member of the Abruzzo Institute of Historical Research (Teramo) since 2000.
Academic Correspondent Resident of the Academy of Sciences of the Institute of Bologna since 2016.