Giovanni Francesco Fara

Giovanni Francesco Fara, religious and erudite, is one of the most illustrious men of the Sardinian culture of the Spanish age. He was a historian, geographer, humanist and all-round scholar of his island. He was born in Sassari in 1543 from one of the most illustrious houses in the city. He completed his first studies in Sardinia, then perfected his training in Bologna, at the Spanish college founded by Cardinal Egidio de Albornoz. Later he moved to Pisa, where for a short time he attended the lessons of the legal consultant Camillo Plozio. In 1567 in Florence, at the Council, he published the treatise “De Essentia infantis”, the only work received to us of his legal production, otherwise handwritten and dispersed. Returning to the island, he embraced church life and obtained important positions.
Fara's literary fame is mainly linked to two works of the late sixteenth-century erudito-historiographic genre: 'De Rebus Sardois' and 'Chorographia Sardiniae', which deservedly earned him the title of 'father of Sardinian historiography'. The first is an annalistic work in four books, of which the first was published in 1580, the other three in 1835. The 'Chorographia' remained unpublished until the 19th century. Fara was a very active promoter of the studies and patron, as attested by the praise in his honor of the Bosano poet Pietro Delitala, who owed to Fara, then bishop of the town of Planargia, the protection from the persecution of the Inquisition. He died in 1591.

Update

23/6/2026 - 15:07