Anonymous Valesianus

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As Anonymus Valesianus (also Excerptum Valesianum [I and II]) is called a Latin text by the French scholar Henricus Valesius the work of (Henri de Valois, 1603-1676) edition published in his 1636 Ammianus Marcellinus was mitpubliziert.

The name is slightly misleading, as there are two writings (therefore also sometimes referred to as Anonymi Valesiani ), which also have nothing in common in terms of content, except that they both report on sections of late ancient history. The texts come from a medieval manuscript collection that was probably made in Verona in the 9th century .

Anonymous Valesianus I

The so-called Origo Constantini (Chapters 1 to 35 of Anonymus Valesianus ) is a text that deals with the life of Emperor Constantine the Great and describes the period from 305 to 337. The author is unknown, but was evidently a heathen and is likely to have written the script shortly after the emperor's death (337), although a date in the late 4th century was also considered. The few Christian references were added later from the history of Orosius . However, the author's judgment of Constantine is fairly balanced and despite the brevity of the text offers some important information that cannot be found anywhere else. He also treats the often neglected early period of Constantine in this way, otherwise mainly the political history at the time of the dissolution of the Roman tetrarchy and afterwards. Only in this work is the troop strength given at the Battle of Cibalae .

A now lost biography of Constantine (perhaps Praxagoras ), which was later used by Johannes Zonaras , served as a source . Otherwise there are many similarities with other late antique sources, for example with Eutropius or Aurelius Victor . This is very likely due to a common source. It could be the so-called Enmann Emperor's story . Some researchers have even considered that the Origo is a fragment from Enmann's imperial history, which is rather doubtful.

Anonymous Valesianus II

The second work (chapters 36 to 96 of the text; called Chronica Theodericiana by Theodor Mommsen ) deals with the history of Italy from the reign of Julius Nepos to the death of the Ostrogoth king Theodoric the Great (474 to 526). The concise text is a very important historical source on Theodoric's reign. The also anonymous author wrote around the middle of the 6th century and was anti- Arian . Stylistically, the vulgar Latin script is to be rated lower than the Origo Constantini Imperatoris .

Although the author for the most part praises Theodoric's rule and the balancing policy between the Goths and the Romans, in the end he is surprisingly malicious in his judgment of the king; he couldn't write like that. This is mainly due to the Arian creed of Theodoric and his Goths, but hardly to any "anti-Germanic" mood. However, as in other late antique sources ( Prokopios of Caesarea , Liber Pontificalis ), the king has been judged more negatively by the author since the execution of the philosopher Boethius .

The author used various late antique sources such as the Vita Sancti Severini by Eugippius and the Lent of Ravenna. It is possible that the author, evidently a Catholic Roman, wrote his work in Ravenna , which was of great importance in late antiquity. Some researchers already considered in the 19th century that the work was an extract from the now lost Chronicle of Maximianus of Ravenna , but this must remain uncertain; however, the author may have used the chronicle himself. Roberto Cessi suspected for the first time in 1913 that there could possibly even be two different authors, which would explain the different assessment of Theodoric (Chapters 36–78 and 79–96). To this, however, plausible objections have been raised in modern research, which speak in favor of a single author who intentionally wanted to convey a divided picture of Theodoric's rule.

Editions and translations

  • Ingemar König : Origo Constantini: Anonymus Valesianus 1 . Verl. Trier Histor. Researches. Trier 1987 (with German translation and commentary).
  • Ingemar König: From the time of Theodoric the Great. Introduction, text, translation and commentary from an anonymous source . Scientific Book Society , Darmstadt 1997.
  • Samuel NC Lieu, Dominic Montserrat : From Constantine to Julian: Pagan and Byzantine Views. A source history . New York 1996 (on origo Constantini see p. 39ff.).

literature

  • James Noel Adams: The Text and Language of a Vulgar Latin Chronicle (Anonymus Valesianus II) . London 1976.
  • Samuel JB Barnish: The Anonymus Valesianus II as a Source for the Last Years of Theoderic . In: Latomus 42, 1983, pp. 572-596.
  • Andreas Goltz: barbarian - king - tyrant. The image of Theodoric the Great in tradition from the 5th to 9th centuries . Berlin / New York 2008
  • Peter Lebrecht Schmidt : Origo Constantini imperatoris (Excerptum Valesianum I). In: Reinhart Herzog (ed.): Restoration and renewal. The Latin literature from 284 to 374 AD (= Handbook of the Latin Literature of Antiquity , Volume 5). CH Beck, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-406-31863-0 , p. 195 f.
  • Otto Seeck , Ludo Moritz Hartmann : Anonymus Valesianus . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume I, 2, Stuttgart 1894, Col. 2333 f. (outdated).

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ General overview with further literature from Reinhart Herzog (Ed.): Handbuch der Latinischen Literatur der Antike, Volume 5: Restoration and Renewal . Munich 1989, p. 195f.
  2. ↑ See König (1987), pp. 5ff.
  3. ↑ Cf. also briefly the introduction in Lieu, Montserrat (1996), p. 40f.
  4. ↑ Current overview in Goltz (2008), p. 476ff.
  5. ↑ See generally Barnish (1983).