Flavio Gioja

Who is Flavio Gioja?

Flavio Gioja or Gioia was an imaginary Italian mariner and inventor, who never, in fact, existed. He was supposedly a marine pilot and has traditionally been credited with perfecting the sailor's compass by suspending its needle over a fleur-de-lis design, which pointed north. He also enclosed the needle in a little box with a glass cover. The sailor's compass, however, had been in use long before by Mediterranean navigators.

Flavio Gioia's birthplace is alternately given as Amalfi, Positano, Naples, or ultimately, Gioia, a town in Puglia, hence the derivation of the reputed surname. The historical misunderstanding may be the result of a simple error in syntax: the Italian historian Flavio Biondo wrote that the compass was invented by Amalfitans. This attribution was then passed on as a Flavio dicitur, i.e. "to Amalfitans, as reported by Flavio". An interposition of a comma by mistake would then read a Flavio, dicutur, changing the meaning to "to the Amalfitan, Flavio, so they say." Later, Lilio Gregorio Giraldi attributes the invention of the compass to this "Flavio of Amalfi." A later historian, Scipione Mazzella, a Neapolitan, claimed that Flavio was from Gioia, a town in Puglia. Thus, Flavio Gioia.