Bernardino Corio

Bernardino Corio (1459–c. 1519) was a Milanese humanist historian from a family that had served the Sforza for two and a half centuries. A chamberlain to Galeazzo Maria Sforza from 1474, he witnessed the duke's murder in 1476 and later entered Ludovico Sforza's circle. Backed by Ludovico, who wanted to justify Sforza rule, he began around 1485 a history of Milan from its origins to 1499. In 1497 the duke ordered archives opened to him.

Corio left Milan after Ludovico's fall. Printed in 1503, his Patria historia was the first scholarly history of an Italian city written in the vernacular rather than Latin.