Galvano Fiamma e Giovanni da Carignano : una nuova fonte sull'ambasceria etiopica a Clemente V e sulla spedizione oceanica dei fratelli Vivaldi

The Cronica generalis sive universalis written by Galvaneus de la Flamma (\u2020 1345 ca.) includes a section devoted to Ethiopian matter, consequently entitled Ystoria Ethiopie. This section depends on a previous work called Tractatus de mappa Ianuensi quam composuit sacerdos Sancti Marchi de Ianua, which must be identified with a book known so far only by a passage in Giacomo Filippo Foresti\u2019s Supplementum chronicarum (first edition 1483); the author of the Tractatus de mappa is Iohannes de Carignano, a Genoese priest who drew and signed a map of Europe and Mediterranean Sea in the first decades of 14th Century. Quoting the Tractatus de mappa, Galvaneus provides new details about two famous and puzzling events of the years 1290-1315: the Ethiopian legation to the king of Spain (and to the pope), which is supposed to be the first diplomatic contact between Ethiopia and Latin Europa in the Middle Ages; and the voyage of the Vivaldi brothers, who sailed from Genoa in the direction of Atlantic Ocean, searching a new course to reach India. Furthermore, the Tractatus contains a description of politic and religious customs of Ethiopia, as accounted by the ambassadors during their halt in Genoa. This article provides an edition of the Ethiopian section in the Cronica universalis (unpublished and preserved in only one manuscript, now in a private collection), with a first survey of its contents