Chapter One: 1676-1692

Therese Ridley completed her Honours degree at both the University of Melbourne and Monash University (Melbourne). She studied History (with the doyen of the Melbourne School), German, Chinese and Japanese, having studied French at high school. She acquired Italian by spending many years in Italy, accompanying her husband (a specialist in Roman History and the History of Rome) on his study leave every fourth year, and for the past twenty years spending every November in Rome, an annual research trip. She spends all her time in the Vatican Library. She is also the translator from German of Friedrich Münzer, Rӧmische Adelsparteien Adelsfamilien, a classic study, originally 1920, listed in every bibliography on Roman politics, but never subsequently referred to. This was instantly published by the oldest American University Press, Johns Hopkins, in 1999. Reviews stated that “Therese Ridley’s remarkable translation of the book and her re-editing of Münzer’s bibliography at last give the English-speaking world access to Münzer’s intellectual legacy” : Ronald Weber, History, reviews of new books 28 (2000). This translation has, in fact, now superseded the original German in references. For the past twenty years Therese Ridley has devoted herself to the life and works of Pietro Giannone, reading and translating his enormous bibliography. She has traced him the length and breadth of Italy. She is well known, of course, to the doyen of Giannone studies, Professor Giuseppe Ricuperati of Torino.