Alfonso Ceccarelli

Alfonso Ceccarelli was born in 1532 in Città di Castello, Italy.[1] His father was a notary.[1]

Ceccarelli was a physician and genealogist.[1] He started practising medicine in 1569.[1] Meanwhile, he specialized in writing local histories, highlighting the prominence of whichever family hired him to do so.[1] For example, when he was hired by the Podiani family, he wrote a study about prominent members of this family in the town of Rieti.[1]

Ceccarelli authored a false version of Chronicae Gualdenses, a lost medieval text about Umbria, and used it as a source for his own studies.[1]

Ceccarelli was the author of De familiis illustribus Italiæ ac de earum origine under the pseudonym of Fanusio Campano.[2] The genealogical study suggested the House of Grimaldi descended from Normandy, which was false.[2]

Ceccarelli forged wills and other legal documents.[1] He was sued, arrested and tortured.[1]

Ceccarelli was beheaded for his crimes on July 9, 1583, in Rome, Italy.[1]

In the seventeenth century, Ceccarelli's research was used as a source by Charles de Venasque-Ferriol, a Monegasque courtier who authored Genealogica et Historica Grimaldœ Gentis arbor in 1647 with the aim of linking the House of Grimaldi to the French royal family.[2]

• Petrucci, Armando (1979). "CECCARELLI, Alfonso". Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Volume 23: Cavallucci–Cerretesi (in Italian). Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. ISBN 978-8-81200032-6.