Tracking Down the Forger of a Charter

A seemingly medieval charter in the Diplomatic Apparatus (App. dipl. Meyer 2) has turned out to be a forgery from the 18th century. The document is said to date from the year 1266, but it mentions a church in Pisa that was only built later. This discovery is based on research conducted by Göttingen historian Dr. Boris Gübele and Italian researchers. The Diplomatic Apparatus team was searching for exhibition items for the Forum Wissen, the University of Göttingen’s museum of knowledge. During this process, the charter attracted attention because the text is not written in Latin but in Italian, which is unique within the Göttingen collection. It refers to a Pisan couple who promises their son to a religious order associated with a church in Pisa. However, the church was only built in the 14th century—significantly later. Further inconsistencies in the text eventually led Gübele, a research associate at the Department of Medieval and Modern History at the University of Göttingen, together with Italian researchers, to the conclusion: the charter is in fact the work of the forger Domenico Cicci, who in the late 18th century is believed to have forged up to 200 charters, all supposedly originating from the Middle Ages. In these documents, he portrayed his ancestors as bishops and notaries, as heirs to estates, and even as crusaders and members of religious orders. His aim was to enable his family’s rise into the nobility, which he ultimately succeeded in achieving. The work of this Italian 18th-century forger almost misled historical scholarship, as it could have led to a re-dating of the church. Numerous forgeries by him may still lie undetected in various archives.

Previous press coverage:

NDR: “University collection: medieval charter turns out to be a forgery” (2024)
Domradio.de: “Church exposes charter forger” (2024)
Archäologie24: “Allegedly medieval charter turns out to be the work of an Italian forger” (2024)
Archaeology Online: “On the trail of the charter forger: new document revealed” (2024)
Tagesschau.de: “University collection: medieval charter turns out to be a forgery” (2024)
Evangelische Zeitung: “University of Göttingen: medieval document is the product of a forger” (2024)
Ev.-Luth. Church in Oldenburg: “University of Göttingen: medieval document is the product of a forger” (2024)
Phys.org: “On the trail of an 18th-century master forger: new evidence discovered” (2024)
Archaeology News Online Magazine: “Researchers uncover an 18th-century forgery in medieval collection” (2024)
El Espectador (Colombia): “The document of an Italian forger who wanted his family to enter the nobility” (2024)
Galileu (Brazil): “Man from the 18th century forged texts so his family could enter the nobility—and succeeded” (2024)
Noticias Caracol (Colombia): “By falsifying a document, an Italian almost rewrote history: it went unnoticed for centuries” (2024)
Aventuras na História (Brazil): “Forger forged texts so his family could enter the nobility in the 18th century” (2024)
Medievalists.net: “Medieval document exposed as 18th-century forgery” (2024)
Hakan Baykal: The Secret Passion of Domenico Cicci, in: Spektrum.de (2025)