Raffaele (or Raffaello) Maffei OSM (17 February 1451 – 25 January 1522) was an Italian humanist, historian and theologian; and member of the Servite Order. He was a native of Volterra, Italy, and therefore is called Raphael Volaterranus or Raphael of Volterra; also Maffeus Volaterranus, or Raffaele Volterrano. Raffaele Maffei wrote the Commentaria Urbana, which was an encyclopedia divided into three parts.

During his lifetime, Raffaele Maffei was in contact with many humanist philosophers including Pico della Mirandola, Angelo Poliziano, and Michele Marullo. He had an amicable relationship with the Florentine Lorenzo de' Medici, despite Antonio Maffei's involvement in the Pazzi conspiracy. Raffaele and his brother Mario were close to the first Medici pope, Pope Leo X. When Raffaele left the Papal Curia, he remained aware of Roman events due to his correspondence with family members working in Rome. He was known in the Italian Peninsula and widely in Europe for his humanist writings.

From earliest youth he devoted himself to the study of letters, and in 1466 was called to Rome, with his brothers, by their father Gherardo Maffei, whom Pius II had appointed professor of law at the University of Rome, and had taken later for his secretary, a position he held also under Paul II and Sixtus IV. At Rome Raffaele held himself aloof from the court, devoting his time to the practice of piety and to the study of philosophy of theology and of the Greek language, the latter under George of Trebizond.

In 1479-8, he went to Hungary with Cardinal Giovanni of Aragon, on the latter's mission to King Matthias Corvinus. The trip lasted about a year and provided him with information that he later used in his encyclopedia. Upon his return, Raffaele was persuaded by Gaspare da Firenze not to become a Minor Observant, as Raffaele intended to do; whereupon he married, and established his residence at Volterra.

The remainder of his life was spent in study, in the practice of piety and of penance, and in the exercise of works of charity; in his own house, he established an accademia, in which he gave lectures on philosophy and on theology, while he founded the Clarisse monastery of Volterra. He died in the odor of sanctity; and, contrary to his desire, his brother erected to his memory a splendid monument in the church of San Lino, which Raffaele had endowed.

Raffaele's monument was contracted to Silvio Cosini. In letters from Raffaele's son-in-law, there are several complaints that Cosini left Volterra to work on another commission prior to completing the tomb. Camillo Incontri promoted Stagio Stagi as the artist to take over the project, but Cosini returned to Volterra to finish the commission. Art historian, Rolf Bagemihl argues that Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli worked on Raffaele's tomb as well, based on a distinct shift in style and documents from the time period. Cosini is also tied to a bust of Raffaele that is dated to the same years as the tomb project.

Among the works of Maffei are Commentariorum rerum urbanarum libri XXXVIII (Rome, 1506; Paris, 1516), an encyclopedia of all subjects known at that time. It consists of three parts; in the first, "Geography", he writes a history of the whole known world arranged by location; the second part, "Anthropology", is devoted, more especially, to the contemporaneous history of that time; the third part is devoted to "Philology" which encapsulates all of science and natural history as it was known.

After the Latin treatise Anthropologium de hominis dignitate, published in 1501 by Magnus Hundt, Maffei authored the first work of the Modern era adopting the word Anthropologia in the title.