Giovanni Antonio Battaglia was a notary and a secular priest of the diocese of Aquileia. He was active between the late fifteenth and the first four decades of the sixteenth century in Gemona, his place of birth, in the castle of Porcia and the city of Udine. A register he compiled (Udine, Archivio notarile antico, n. 2247), contains two documents which are worthy of attention. The first one is a funeral lauda in Italian vernacular which completes the rather short list of the religious laude repertoire of the Friulian region between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The second document is the text Dolce Regina, dona la tua pace. This work can be placed within the framework of the brotherhoods of the Battuti, which Battaglia served as a priest and as a teacher. A rather composite Latin text also appears on the same page of the notarial register. It includes an invocation to the Magi, a quote from the Scriptures and an adapted liturgical oration. The presence of this exorcism, unusual if compared to the local context of traditional beliefs and therapeutic practices, requires wide-ranging comparisons. The figure of Battaglia himself also deser- ves further analysis especially in order to understand his cultural background as well as clarifying his relationship with the humanists whom he was corresponding with.
