Vimina, Alberto

Vimina, Alberto (Bellunese or da Ceneda; assumed names of Michele Bianchi), b 1 March 1603 in Belluno, Republic of Venice, d 1667 in Italy. Italian adventurer, priest, diplomat, and travel writer. In 1650 he was engaged by the Venetian consul to Vienna and the papal nuncio to approach Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky in Chyhyryn about forming an anti-Ottoman coalition. In 1656, after returning to Lviv, Vimina prepared several accounts of his journey (one of which was published in 1890 as Relazione dell' origine e dei costumi dei Cosacchi and reprinted in Russian translation in Kievskaia starina, 1899) and wrote a broader survey of the Cossack-Polish War titled Historia delle guerre civili di Polonia, which was published posthumously in Venice in 1671. A Ukrainian translation (by Kseniia Konstantynenko) of Vimina’s Relazione appeared in Kyïvs'ka starovyna in 1999 (no. 5). A Polish translation of Historia delle guerre civili di Polonia (by Krzysztof Żaboklicki, edited by Teresa Chynczewska-Hennel) was published in Białystok in 2017. Vimina’s writings have been analyzed by such scholars as Nykandr Molchanovsky, Myron Korduba, and others.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Korduba, M. ‘Venets'ke posol'stvo do Khmel'nyts'koho (1650 r.),’ Zapysky NTSh, vol. 78 (1907)
Caccamo, D. ‘Alberto Vimina in Ucraine e nelle "parti settentrionali",’ Europa Orientalis 5 (1986)
Picchio, R. ‘E.M. Manoleso, A. Vimina e la Polonia,’ in Venezia e la Polonia nei secoli dal XVII al XIX, ed. Luigi Cini (Venice and Rome 1968)
Pompeo, L. ‘Maiolino Bissacioni i Alberto Vimina: Dwóch historiografów włoskich wobec problemu kozaków w 1648,’ Warszawskie Zeszyty Ukrainoznawcze 4–5 (1997)
Chynczewska-Hennel, T. ‘Venetian Plans with Regard to Poland and Ukraine in the Mid-17th Century: Girolamo Cavazza and Alberto Vimina,’ Journal of Ukrainian Studies 33–34 (2011)
Sysyn, F. ‘Framing the Borderland: The Image of the Ukrainian Revolt and Hetman Khmel'nyts'kyi in Foreign Travel Accounts,’ in Malte Griesse ed., From Mutual Observation to Propaganda War: Premodern Revolts in Their Transnational Representations (Bielefeld 2014)

[This article was updated in 2023.]