Landolfus Sagax

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Landolfus Sagax or Landolfo Sagace (sagax meaning "expert" or "scholar") was a Lombard historian who wrote the Historia Romana in the last quarter of the tenth century.

His Historia was first published by Pierre Pithou in Basel in 1569 and, due to its varied content and sources, under the title Historia Miscella. A manuscript called the Palatino (Pal. lat. 909) and preserved in the Vatican Library is written in Beneventan script and shows evidence of having been committed to parchment under the supervision of Landulf himself.

The Historia contains a list of Byzantine emperors until the then-living Basil II and Constantine VIII and another of empresses from Fausta to Eudoxia, wife of Michael IV. There are exhortations to a princeps, perhaps implying that it was written at court, but which court is disputed. Some scholars, like Traube, have favoured Naples and others, like Crivellucci, Benevento, where a prince was then reigning. Surviving manuscripts are littered with marginal notes, many of Landulf's authorship.

Landulf was probably a layman, as his chronicle does not deal with interest in ecclesiastical affairs and he included a copy of De Re Militari, an expressly secular work.

Sources

  • Caravale, Mario (ed). Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani: LXIII Labroca – Laterza. Rome, 2004.