Niccolò Rodolico was an Italian historian

Historian

A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...

, a professor in the University of Messina

University of Messina

The University of Messina is a public university located in Messina, Italy, and founded in 1548. The university is organized in 11 Faculties.-History:...

 and the University of Florence

University of Florence

The University of Florence is a higher study institute in Florence, central Italy. One of the largest and oldest universities in the country, it consists of 12 faculties...

.

Born at Trapani

Trapani

Trapani is a city and comune on the west coast of Sicily in Italy. It is the capital of the Province of Trapani. Founded by Elymians, the city is still an important fishing port and the main gateway to the nearby Egadi Islands.-History:...

, a fishing port in Sicily

Sicily

Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...

, after attending the Liceo Ximenes in his home town, where he was a friend of Giovanni Gentile

Giovanni Gentile

Giovanni Gentile was an Italian neo-Hegelian Idealist philosopher, a peer of Benedetto Croce. He described himself as 'the philosopher of Fascism', and ghostwrote A Doctrine of Fascism for Benito Mussolini. He also devised his own system of philosophy, Actual Idealism.- Life and thought :Giovanni...

, Rodolico went on to the University of Bologna

University of Bologna

The Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna is the oldest continually operating university in the world, the word 'universitas' being first used by this institution at its foundation. The true date of its founding is uncertain, but believed by most accounts to have been 1088...

. There, he was a student of Giosuè Carducci

Giosuè Carducci

Giosuè Alessandro Michele Carducci was an Italian poet and teacher. He was very influential and was regarded as the official national poet of modern Italy. In 1906 he became the first Italian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.-Biography:...

, who directed him towards focussing on the study of history

History

History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

. At first his interests centred on the Late Middle Ages

Late Middle Ages

The Late Middle Ages was the period of European history generally comprising the 14th to the 16th century . The Late Middle Ages followed the High Middle Ages and preceded the onset of the early modern era ....

, with particular regard to the social history

Social history

Social history, often called the new social history, is a branch of History that includes history of ordinary people and their strategies of coping with life. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in history departments...

 of Florence

Florence

Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

. Later, he turned his attention towards modern history

Modern history

Modern history, or the modern era, describes the historical timeline after the Middle Ages. Modern history can be further broken down into the early modern period and the late modern period after the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution...

 and above all that of Tuscany

Tuscany

Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of about 23,000 square kilometres and a population of about 3.75 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence ....

 and Southern Italy in the eighteenth century. He took a particular interest in the life and work of the 19th-century monarch Charles Albert of Sardinia

Charles Albert of Sardinia

Charles Albert was the King of Piedmont-Sardinia from 1831 to 1849. He succeeded his distant cousin Charles Felix, and his name is bound with the first Italian statute and the First War of Independence...

.

Rodolico was a close friend of the anti-fascist Gaetano Salvemini

Gaetano Salvemini

Gaetano Salvemini was an Italian anti-fascist politician, historian and writer.- Biography :Salvemini was born in Molfetta, Apulia....

, who left the country during the 1920s.

The former King Umberto II

Umberto II of Italy

Umberto II, occasionally anglicized as Humbert II was the last King of Italy for slightly over a month, from 9 May 1946 to 12 June 1946. He was nicknamed the King of May -Biography:...

, while in exile, nominated Rodolico as a member of the Royal Council of Senators and awarded him the Civil Order of Savoy

Civil Order of Savoy

The Civil Order of Savoy was founded as an order of knighthood in 1831 by the King of Sardinia, Charles Albert, Duke of Savoy. The intention was to reward those virtues not belonging to the existing Military Order of Savoy, founded by Vittorio Emanuele I in 1815. The order has one degree, that of...

, the highest honour available to him.

Rodolico died at Fiesole

Fiesole

Fiesole is a town and comune of the province of Florence in the Italian region of Tuscany, on a famously scenic height above Florence, 8 km NE of that city...

 in 1969. A high school in Florence has been named after him.

Selected publications

• Siciliani nello Studio di Bologna nel Medio Evo (1895)
• Dal Comune alla Signoria (1898)
• Il popolo minuto - Note di storia fiorentina (1343-1376) (1899)
• Cronaca fiorentina di Marchionne di Coppo Stefani
  Cronaca fiorentina di Marchionne di Coppo Stefani
  The Cronaca fiorentina di Marchionne di Coppo Stefani written by Baldassarre Bonaiuti is considered today as one of the best works written on the Black Death in Florence in the year 1348. It is the only known literary work by Bonaiuti. It was written in vulgar Latin...
  
  (ed., 1903)
• La democrazia fiorentina nel suo tramonto (1378-1382) (1905)
• La reggenza lorenese in Toscana (1737-1765) (1908)
• Le condizioni morali della Toscana prima dei lorenesi (1908)
• Stato e Chiesa in Toscana durante la reggenza lorenese (1910)
• La storia d'Italia narrata ai soldati d'Italia del 1916 (1916)
• Gli amici e i tempi di Scipione de' Ricci (1920)
• Il popolo agli inizi del Risorgimento nell'Italia meridionale (1926)
• Carlo Alberto principe di Carignano (1931)
• Carlo Alberto negli anni di regno 1831-1843 (1936)
• Carlo Alberto negli anni 1843-1849 (1943)
• Il popolo minuto in Firenze (1944)
• Lo studio fiorentino in Firenze (1944)
• I Ciompi (1945)
• Libro azzurro sul Referendum 1946' (with V. Prunas-Tola) (1953)
• Storia degli italiani (1954)
• I palazzi del popolo nei comuni toscani del Medio Evo (1962)
• Il Risorgimento vive (1962)