The 'Blessed' Galeotto Roberto Malatesti between hagiography and history

By examining the short life of Galeotto Roberto Malatesti (1411-1432) through a set of published and unpublished documents preserved in Fano and in the Vatican Secret Archives, this article attempts to dispel prejudices about his figure and to bring to light a more faithful image of the young lord of Fano and Rimini. The rich hagiographic literature, developed immediately after Malatesti’s death († 1432), had handed down his unequivocal religious vocation, with the result of neglecting his concrete acting as a dominus and, at the same time, accrediting his fame of a young man inclined to contemplative life, but inept to government and politics. The predominantly hagiographic vision highlighted by historiography up until the nineties of the nineteenth century did not convey an objective image of Galeotto Roberto, whose Signoria, as evidenced by the Malatestis Codes of Fano State Archive and by papal documents, was an abrupt interruption between Carlo’s previous government and the subsequent Sigismondo’s patronage