Career
Gioia was also said to have introduced the fleur-de-lis design in deference to Charles of Anjou, the French king of Naples.)
Flavio Gioia"s birthplace is alternately given as Amalfi, Positano, Naples, and, Gioia, a town in Apulia, 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, id est (that is)
"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 (in his De Re Nautica from 1540) the invention of the compass to this "Flavio of Amalfi." A later historian, Scipione Mazzella, a Neapolitan, claimed (about the year 1600) that Flavio was from Gioia, a town in Apulia, explaining his use of the name Gioia. The lunar crater Gioja is named after him.