Liber pontificalis ecclesiae Ravennatis

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The liber pontificalis ecclesiae Ravennatis (roughly: 'Book of the Ravennater Bischofskirche') is a historical work from the pen of Agnellus , a priest from Ravenna , which was written before the middle of the 9th century. It contains the biographies of the 46 Archbishops of St. Apollinaris to Georg, the archbishop who died in 846. Each chapter is dedicated to a bishop. However, are Lives of the Archbishops Valerius and Petronacius lost. According to Deliyannis (2006), between 831 and 836 the c. 1–79, between 837 and 839 the c. 80-107 / 09, then between 841/842 and 846 the c. 110–135, and only after 846 the c. 136-175.

content

Mosaic of Apollinaris in the apse of Sant'Apollinare in Classe zu Ravenna (6th century)
The Carolingian Empire under the sons of Charlemagne and the division after the Treaty of Verdun (843)

The text consists of introductory verses and a prologue followed by a series of vites of the 46 bishops and archbishops of Ravenna. This series ranges from the alleged disciple of St. Peter, St. Apollinaris, up to the time of the author. At the beginning of the 5th century one of the bishops received the pallium , and by the middle of the century the Ravennate ordained bishops in a wide area. Emperor Justinian instructed the Pope to also formally give Bishop Maximianus the status of archbishop. At the end of the 6th century there were conflicts with Rome, in 666 Emperor Constans II granted the status of autocephaly to Archbishop Maurus. The archbishop was now consecrated by three of his bishops , not by the Pope, who was also no longer authorized to give him orders. But as early as 680 Archbishop Theodor submitted to Roman authority, or Pope Agatho , and gave up autocephaly, which the Emperor also formally revoked in 682. His successors, especially Felix and Sergius, continued to strive for autonomy from Rome, even after Charlemagne had conquered the Longobard Empire. There were parties within the city that were open to external interference. This affected the political level, i.e. Franks, Lombards, Byzantines, and canonical, i.e. pro-papal and pro-autocephalous groups. When the iconoclasm split the church, its exponents and their opponents also played an important role, a conflict that possibly intensified the clashes between Greek and Latin clergy. In these complex conflicts, the author often fails to take a clear position himself, and so he often changes attitudes towards the moral attitude of even individual exponents, such as the exarch or certain popes, kings or emperors.

Agnellus defends the freedoms of deacons and priests threatened by the archbishops and also the traditional rights of the Ravennat bishopric, its independence and its derivation from the apostles. On the other hand, he condemns the moral decline of individual incumbents in recent times and the loss of clerical rights. This is reflected in the fact that his judgment depends primarily on how the incumbents behaved towards the clergy and on how they viewed Rome. In doing so, he fills the lives of the bishops who are good in his eyes with miracles, whereas the evil representatives are unreservedly. The total of 32 miracles are distributed over the work, but five each focus on the bishops Severus, John I, Damianus and Felix. The author is deeply affected by the decline of the city and the diocese.

In order to emphasize the importance of Ravenna in relation to Rome, he builds his work analogously to the structure of the papal Liber Pontificalis , partly imitating its language and structure. In addition, his work is filled with hagiographical and exegetical sections, whose language, style and literary conventions he also incorporated into his work. The author uses different narrative styles of his epoch, including invented dialogues, but also invented miracles (or those that were reported by others), whereby he refuses to lie, because his composition is in this way without gaps, and they should underline the holiness of the bishop. Most of the time the text was used by historians - after comparison with other sources - primarily for the reconstruction of actual events, without the work being given any value of its own.

In addition to manuscripts , the author uses inscriptions on buildings and mosaics as sources (he quotes literally from Book IV of Paulus Diaconus , but only from this book), which often gives his work a thematically erratic character. In his prologue he also names his own views and the stories of older people as sources. For those cases in which he could not find out how they got into their office, he composed their life, but he did not lie, as he believes. However, this is partly due to the fact that he apparently had trouble assigning the facts to the correct bishops. He quotes only one document literally, namely a letter from Pope Felix IV (525-530), which strengthened the property rights of the clergy and which could claim validity up to the time of Bishop Theodor (679-693). For the author, the subordination to Rome was a 'subjugation', accordingly he positively highlighted every bishop who got into a dispute with Rome. The subordination to Rome was accordingly part of a diabolical plan, as described in c. 124 occupied. Petronax, with his good relations with the Pope, lost the church treasure or sent it to Rome, George, whom the author refused for personal reasons, tried to gain influence with the emperor on the occasion of the baptism of a daughter of Lothar I in Pavia (c. 171), which was not possible without appropriate gifts. Overall, driven by the rejection of papal claims, a text emerged in this way that Deliyannis assumes was unique for the early Middle Ages.

The author

There is no information about Agnellus outside of his work. He himself appears in 18 places in his Liber pontificalis , namely in the prologue , then in c. 26, 39, 54, 64, 77 and 83, 110, 113, 119, also in c. 136, 146, 149, 158, 159 and 162, finally in c. 163 and 167. In addition, references in the preceding “versiculi” originate from a contemporary hand, the author of which calls himself “minimus scolasticorum”. No statement can be made about the reliability.

Solidus from the time of the emperors Theophilos and Michael III.

In c. 54 the author states that he was 32 years and 10 months old at the beginning of his work. Since he probably wrote this section between 827 and 836, his year of birth can be determined as 794-804. The information about his ancestry is contradictory, in each case he came from a family of noble judges of the city, one of whom died in prison in Rome. The deacon Sergius came from his father's relatives and left him a monastery (c. 110). Since Gina Fasoli , this has been considered a consciously chosen analogy to the self-portrayal of Paulus the deacon , who also listed his ancestors, but also of Gregory of Tours . Agnellus came from a wealthy, influential family, either mastered Greek, or he wanted to give his opus the aura of special education by inserting the etymology of Greek terms. For 200 gold solidi , Bishop Martin gave him the monastery of S. Maria ad Blachernas. The said monastery, given by his relative Sergius, was San Bartolomeo; there too he became abbot . In 833, Agnellus describes himself as the tenth priest of the diocese, so he apparently ranked among the important clergy of the episcopate. He owned a house that was located near the Agneskirche and that he had built himself, as he seems to have played an essential role in other building measures in the city. Agnellus reports only one trip, namely on the occasion of Archbishop George's trip to the baptism of a daughter of Emperor Lothar in Pavia (c. 171) - it must have been Rotrud, the fifth daughter of the Carolingian. He also saw the palace built by Theodoric in the city (c. 94). His journey must have been between 837 and 839. He mentions only one more trip, to Argentea, barely 40 km from Ravenna. Ironically, that George, whom he had accompanied to Pavia, withdrew the monastery of San Bartolomeo from him, as the author complains, for no reason. After 846 we learn nothing more about Agnellus, even if Holder-Egger discovered an identical name in a donation from 854 or 869. The identity of the people could not be proven.

Tradition and editions

The original handwriting is lost. The work is late, namely in the Codex Estensis saec made around 1413 . XV (also Modena, Bibl. Estense, VF 19, sec. 15 °), as well as in a Vatican fragment from the 16th century (Vat. Lat. 5834, f. 117r-137v saec. Xvi). It is mentioned in the 13th century. The Vatican fragment breaks with cap. 48 from. But the Codex Estensis was hardly noticed either , although Flavio Biondo used it. He was rediscovered by Gian Pietro Ferretti († 1557), who came from Ravenna and became Bishop of Lavello . But his history of the Church of Ravenna also remained in manuscript and was lost before 1589. Part of a copy came to Rome, where it survived as the said fragment. Hieronymus Rubeus, born Girolamo Rossi, stands out among the Ravennat historians with his ten-volume Opus Historiarum Ravennatium libri decem , published in 1572 by Aldo Manuzio and again in Venice in 1589, then again in 1590 and 1603 . With a view to the early history of Ravenna, it was mainly based on the Codex Estensis .

The exclusive basis of the first edition, the editio princeps by Bacchini, the then librarian of the Biblioteca Estense in Modena , was the manuscript located there. A total of four further editions followed. The editions of Muratori (1723) and Migne (1868) were based on this first edition. Oswald Holder-Egger used the Vatican manuscript for his edition published in 1878, but only to correct clear errors in the Estense manuscript. In 1924 Alessandro Testi-Rasponi only edited chapters up to n. 104 out of a total of 175 chapters. He called the Modenese manuscript "l'infelicissimo codice Estense" because of its poor quality. Deborah Deliyannis provided a translation of her dissertation in 1994 and a critical edition in 2006, which can be considered a standard work.

Editions, translation

  • Benedetto Bacchini (Ed.): Agnelli Liber Pontificalis, sive; Vitæ Pontificum Ravennatum , Typis Antonii Capponii, Mutinæ (Modena) 1708. ( digitized version )
  • Oswald Holder-Egger (eds.): Agnelli qui et Andreas Liber pontificalis ecclesiae Ravennatis , Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum Langobardorum, Hannover 1878, pp. 265-391. ( Digitized version )
  • Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis: The "Liber Pontificalis Ecclesiae Ravennatis". Critical edition and commentary , PhD, University of Pennsylvania, 1994.
  • Claudia Nauerth (publisher and translator): Liber Pontificalis - Bischofsbuch (in Latin and German) (= Fontes Christiani, 21/1 and 21/2), Herder, 1996.
  • Agnellus of Ravenna. The Book of Pontiffs of the Church of Ravenna. Translated with an introduction and notes by Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis (Medieval Texts in Translation), The Catholic University of America Press, Washington 2004.
  • Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis (Ed.): Agnellus Ravennas. Liber pontificalis Ecclesiae Ravennatis (= Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 199), 2006. ISBN 978-2-503-04991-5

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis (Ed.): Agnellus Ravennas. Liber pontificalis Ecclesiae Ravennatis , 2006.
  2. ↑ Gina Fasoli: Rileggendo il Liber pontificate 'di Agnello Ravennate in: Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull'alto medio evo 17 (1970) 457-495 and 711-718, here: p 463rd
  3. ↑ Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis: Ravenna in Late Antiquity , Cambridge University Press, 2010, p. 8.
  4. ↑ Deliyanni, pp. 5-9.
  5. ↑ So Hieronymus Rossi: Nicolai IV Pontificis Maximi vita, cum observationibus et dissertationibus variis Antonii Matthaei. Additur dissertatio Benedicti XIV cum notis pro vindicanda Nicolai Pontificis memoria contra Magdemburgenses, Robertum Barns, Jo. Lidium, Crantzium, Goldastum, Mornaeum, Heydeggerum, Bruysum, Auctorem Gallicum Historiae Pontificum aliosque per plures , Pizzorno, Pisa 1766, p. XXXI.
  6. ↑ Alessandro Testi-Rasponi: Note marginali al Liber pontificalis di Agnello Ravennate , in: Atti e memorie della R. Deputazione di Storia Patria per le province di Romagna ser. 3, vol. 28 (1908/9) 86-104, here: p. 91.