CRISTO RAUL.ORG

READING HALL

"THIRD MILLENNIUM LIBRARY"

BLESSED BE THE PEACEFUL BECAUSE THEY WILL BE CALLED SONS OF GOD

EARLY CHRONICLERS OF ITALY.

  CHAPTER IV.

INTELLECTUAL MOVEMENT IN THE ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES — REFORMS IN THE CHURCH AND THE CONTESTS REGARDING THE INVESTITURES — REVIVAL OF ECCLESIASTICAL CULTURE AND OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH IN THE MONASTERIES — MONASTIC REGISTERS AND CHRONICLES — THE MONASTERY OF FARFA AND THE WORKS OF GREGORY OF CATINO — THE “CHRONICON VULTURNENSE” — RENAISSANCE OF ARTS AND LETTERS AT MONTECASSINO PROMOTED BY THE ABBOT DESIDERIUS — THE MONK AMATUS AND HIS HISTORY OF THE NORMANS — LEO OSTIENSIS AND PETRUS DIACONUS, HISTORIANS OF MONTECASSINO — HISTORICAL WRITINGS OF SOUTHERN ITALY — LEGENDARY CHRONICLE OF THE MONASTERY OF THE NOVALESA.

After the narrow defiles through which we have so long been wandering, wider horizons now open out to us. An age of giants begins, and the history of Italy returns to almost epic heights. Many elements were working together at that time. The papacy, having struggled out of the degradation into which it had fallen, begins to assert its power with audacity, and, while exaggerating the Roman traditions of Gregory the Great, claims, under the name of a universal spiritual dominion, the su­premacy of the Church over nations and kings. The empire, jealous of its rights, combats this excessive ambition, defends itself, partly by cavils, partly by violence, against the moral usurpation of the priesthood, and vainly tries to subjugate it. A band of Norman adventurers land in Sicily, and after clearing it of the Saracens, spread themselves over the south of Italy, where they lay the foundation of a kingdom which is sometimes hostile to, sometimes the champion of the popes, while these in the meantime are engaged in maturing with far-reaching care the vast conception of the crusades with which they electrify the world. In the midst of so many changes, the Latin instinct almost imperceptibly awakens, and sows the first seeds of a new life destined to give glorious results for Italy—and this is the life of the Com­munes. Fresh vigour is infused into letters. Church, empire, and people all labour in different ways for the renaissance of learning. The need felt of a reform in the Church, and the efforts made to obtain it, first by the Othos and then continued under the great popes of the eleventh century, bring back intellectual culture and a love of study into the ranks of the clergy. The clashing of parties gives frequent rise to vehement polemical writings, and the wish to find grounds in the past for the rights claimed on each side, leads to a study of Roman law. The renewed vigour of public and private justice inspires an interest in ancient documents; while the rise and growth of municipal life revives in the laity the smouldering traditions of literary activity. The iron age for Italian chronography is ended.

We may therefore infer that the reform which had made its way into the Church at the time of which we now write, was not solely the work either of the popes, the emperors, the minor clergy or the people. It was the result of a complex action. There was a regenerating breath stirring the world, and men’s souls were unconsciously tending by different paths towards a reform which should satisfy their higher aspirations. Such a tendency, at first essentially religious in its tone, had of necessity to seek support from monasticism, which it carried along with it and made one of the principal instruments in this great movement. The second half of the eleventh century and the first half of the twelfth may be looked upon as the golden age of Western monasticism, both for the influence which it exerted on the Church in general and especially in the matter of reform, as well as for the influence and impulse which it received from the Church itself, In the preceding age the corruption of the monasteries was great everywhere, and, as we have seen, very great indeed in Italy. But when all seemed falling to ruin, we are met by a revival in the monastic rule at Cluny, which thence spread the beginnings of a universal improvement. Otho of Cluny, a wise and zealous reformer, did much good in spite of many obstacles, especially at Montecassino, and also, at the request of the famous Alberic, prince of the Romans, in the monasteries of Rome and Sabina. This missionary of monastic reform combined high attainments with his moral virtues, and in France had studied philosophy, grammar, and the art of poetry. Naturally one of his efforts was to bring back a love of study to the convents, and to reform their schools, and though these reforms took root slowly, they produced an abundant harvest within a century. The monastery of Farfa was at the head of this intellectual revival. We have seen in the former chapter how the Abbot Hugo was not content with restoring the abbey to its pristine splendour, but did his best also to perpetuate its records by dictating one of the most remarkable historical writings of his age. Nor was this good example without followers. When Hugo died in 1039, he left behind him in the convent a school capable of continuing his work. In this school was educated the boy Gregory, belonging to the family of the counts of Catino in Sabina. His father, according to the custom of the time, had offered this child to the monastery, as well as another son, who died soon after 1068. Gregory had been living humbly and unnoticed in the abbey for about thirty years, when towards the close of the eleventh century he proposed to the Abbot Beraldus II a work of great magnitude, and was commissioned to carry it into effect. The invasions endured in the former century, the destruction and long abandonment of the monastery, the wastefulness of bad abbots, had necessarily produced great disorder and brought about many changes in the estates of the convent, whence arose frequent contests about rights, and lawsuits in the courts. On this account Gregory proposed to re­arrange the archives, and after collecting all the documents on which the rights of the monastery were founded, copy them in their proper order into one book. This authentic copy would thus facilitate the use of them, and at the same time provide against any possible injury to the originals. Being entrusted with this undertaking, he immediately set to. work, and continued at his fatiguing labour for fifteen years, only relinquishing it when advancing age and enfeebled sight rendered it impossible for him to proceed. But the larger and more difficult part of the work was done, and he could therefore safely confide what remained to a nephew of his called Todinus, also a monk of Farfa, who added the last documents and brought it to a successful termination.

The Farfa Register, or, as Gregory calls it, the Liber Gemniagraphus sive Cleronomialis Ecclesiae Farfensis, is certainly one of the documents possessing most importance for the Italian history of the Middle Ages from the Lombard times to the end of the eleventh century. The numerous and extremely ancient charters which it has preserved for us throw a special light on the history of law, and on the problem of the relations existing in the eighth and ninth centuries between the Latin populations and their Lombard and Frank rulers. The Register contains, belonging to these two centuries alone, nearly three hundred and fifty documents, which form one of the principal bases for the studies made in Italy and Germany touching this period of our history. In this collection there are hundreds of charters of popes, emperors, kings, and dukes, mixed with private papers, which also possess great interest for the indirect information they give with regard to history, law, and topography. For the early and remarkable history of the duchy of Spoleto, the Farfa Register is the only source which remains to us, while for the special history of Rome in the tenth and eleventh centuries it may be considered of primary importance.

We cannot, however, dwell long upon this unique document. Hitherto the scantiness of historical records has led to our mentioning collections which were not chronicles properly so called, but now, on the contrary, the great abundance which we meet with will oblige us generally to leave altogether on one side, or only to make passing mention of such indirect sources of history as diplomas and letters. Still we must pause for a moment over the Farfa Register, because it may be regarded as the most ancient collection, both large and complete, of this kind, and to a certain extent as the forerunner of the other registers, which appeared about this period, and which so wonderfully assisted to revive not only a taste for narrative, but also for historical criticism. Then, as a natural consequence to the registers, or rather to the researches made in the archives, followed the monastic chronicles, and the critical spark was fired in those quiet monks poring over the records of their convents. In the meditative silence of their cells, while questioning and comparing these ancient documents, they found in them fragments of the history of their monastery, and were seized with the desire of narrating it to posterity. Gregory of Catino offers us an example of this kind of self-education, combined with a subtle sense of criticism. Alone and without the aid of example, he invented so true and simple a method for the compilation of his work, that we could hardly expect a more correct one in a critic of today. Well aware of the historical value of his work, he devoted himself to it with noble conscientiousness, and with an ideal of what historical aims should be—limited and deficient, it is true, but of a high moral standard. He seems to approach in this respect to Cicero’s definition, when he shows that history should benefit posterity, and cites as examples the just of past generations. “On this account, therefore,” he says in one place, “are the lives of the just especially described, that we may pass ours while they last in a careful happiness like theirs, and free from offence. For it is written that the example of the just should make us more careful; and if we follow in their steps we shall not stumble in the way.” And animated with these thoughts he looked with affectionate diligence for what was true regarding the history of his abbey, rejecting what was merely fable, and verifying his facts by the documents found in the archives. For the first legendary story of the very ancient foundation of Farfa he has no other authority but the Constructio, of which indeed he makes use, and from which he quotes but very cautiously, and without affirming anything touching which he has not exact information. “Let it therefore be enough to know,” he says, “that this holy convent was founded by that most holy man (Lawrence), but not at the public expense. And since we are ignorant of the time of its foundation, we prefer rather to be silent with regard to it than to say something untrue or without sufficient reason. For if it is unlawful to us to listen to a falsehood, how much more is it unbecoming in us to tell one.” A noble maxim, worthy of an historian, and too often, alas, neglected by the writers of ecclesiastical history! But if, on the one hand, he was saved from credulity by the scrupulous fear of being mistaken, he does not hesitate, on the other hand, to seek assistance in his conjectures from critical comparisons, and so in this case, starting from a passage in St. Gregory’s dialogues, and following out a close line of argument, he brings the foundation of the monastery to a date not to be exactly determined, but certainly anterior to that pontiff. However, the path he followed in his work is well indicated in the following page of his preface to the Register, which seems to us valuable if only for the signs it affords of the new intellectual movement which was beginning to make itself felt at that time in the convents :

“For I hope nothing from my own strength, but from the love of God, and trusting in His assistance through the intercession of our most glorious lady, I attentively studied to carry out as faithfully and truly as I could this very pious and most profitable work. And though I am not equal to correcting the corrupt parts in the matter of rhetoric, yet according to the littleness of my poor knowledge I have tried to correct what was confused beyond measure; not, indeed, too fully, lest it should appear to the simple that the order of the first edition made of the papers had been altered. And especially because I could not sit far aloof from the crowd in order to devote greater attention to this quiet work, but, placed in public, could hardly ever enjoy a little tranquility, whereas this work requires the concession of solitude. Nor do I either consider that I was sufficiently fitted for this work, for I am not trained in the schools of the poets, nor learned in the deep knowledge of the grammarians, but almost from my cradle was brought up to Divine exercises in the school of this holy convent, and fed upon the faithful wisdom of the milk of the mother of God, and therefore would rather refer to it whatever I may have learnt that was useful during my labours. Hence, as it was com­manded to me by the aforesaid abbot, and by my other religious elders, I have diminished nothing of what I have seen in the order of the papers, and have increased nothing in the narrative of the facts, but have tried to transcribe what I saw with my eyes while writing, and could understand to be the true order, except some prolix and useless repeti­tions of words—as, for instance, some terminated obligations—lest, being already wearied by the cor­ruptions in many parts, if kept still longer at my writing I should complete the volume much later, and it should be tedious, unfit for reference, and of immense size. Contenting myself, therefore, only with the truth of the facts and of those causes useful to be known, I have tried to carry out this work with ready and subtle sagacity and free from fraud, under the favour of Christ and assisted by the prayers of His mother, the perpetual Virgin, who is the cause of it. For we have been careful to insert the names of the witnesses into the copy of each charter, as we found them written in the originals. And those which we found worn from their great age, or eaten by worms, and therefore very difficult to decipher, we have left untouched for the same reason, being unwilling to insert into this unpolluted work anything but what we could clearly discern with our eyes, or understand by our truth-seeking intelligence. Thus, as I have striven to make a true and faithful copy, so may I deserve to receive pardon of my sins from Almighty God by the intercession of our lady, and also a perpetual reward for my relatives. For this did we put the name of Gemniagraphus to this book, that is, A Memorial of the Description of Lands, because in it we have inserted the lands of this convent from whomsoever or in whatsoever way they were acquired, and have comprehended them in one volume that they might ever be remembered. It also pleased us to call it Cleronomialis, that is, Book of Heredity of the Farfa Church, since it shows plainly the settled possessions belonging to her from the beginning. And we have prefixed the names of all the places, to each of which we have added its own number, and have noted very exactly in which documents you may find them.”

This passage seems to us clearly to indicate with how much discernment Gregory carried on the compilation of his great work, and the complete dispersion at this day of the originals increases our debt of gratitude to him for his wise forethought. Nor did the learned monk limit all his activity to this collection, but undertook and completed three other works—the Largitorium, the Floriger, and the Chronicon Farfense. The first of these works, like the Register in its arrangement, contains the papers connected with the lands given by the monastery on long leases to those who undertook their cultivation. Thus, while the Register authenticated the fixed possessions of the monastery, the Liber Largitorius, or, as Gregory also called it, Liber Notarius sive Emphiteziticus, registered all its temporary contracts, and decided their circumstances and value. It begins with a document of the year 792 and ends about the beginning of the twelfth century, with documents of the time of the compiler. An index and a preface explain the object of this col­lection, which is still almost unknown, although of great value for the history of landed property and of the state of agriculture in Italy in the Middle Ages. Of the other two works of Gregory, the Floriger Cartarum is a copious topographical index of the Register arranged in alphabetical order, and is of minor account. Very important, on the other hand, is the third book, which was published by Muratori under the name of Chronicon Farfense. This compilation, made half in the form of a register, half in that of a chronicle, recapitulates the contents of the Register, and extracting from it the history of the convent, reproduces its principal documents. Following the guidance of the Construct and Destructio, of which we have already spoken, Gregory of Catino relates in this book the most remote events, critically comparing those two works with the documents found in the archives, and seeking the confirmation of the facts they relate. This book, full of information and papers taken from these archives, can be described in the same words as the Register, of which it may to a certain extent be regarded as both a compendium and a commentary. But the Chronicon Farfense in its scope and order has not really the form of a history; and this might astonish us more were it not evident that, notwithstanding his sufficiently good Latin, Gregory was entirely deficient in the art of composition. His merits are of a different order, and his having before others, and more thoroughly than others, opened the way to a critical examination of documents, his turn for erudition, and his sincere love of truth, give an incalculable value to his work, and render him deserving of a far higher estimation than that in which he has been hitherto held.

About the time that the archives were being put in order at Farfa, the same thing was happening to those of other monasteries, and was giving rise to other chronicles and registers. The monastery of St. Vincent on the Volturno, which had from its foundation a sort of similarity to Farfa, also has its chronicle to show, composed and enriched with documents by a monk called John. John, having been exhorted to the work by his abbot Gerardus, had the satisfaction of showing it when considerably advanced to the Pontiff Paschal II (A.D. 1099­1118), who encouraged him with the words : “Well done, my son; thou hast begun a great work, and study to accomplish still better what thou hast begun so well.” This chronicle, which starts from the narrative of Autpertus touching the origin of the abbey, and continues up to the year 1075, was finished later, when Gelasius II. was already pope (A.D. 1118-1119). It may also be considered more as a register than a chronicle, and its real importance consists in the charters which form the basis and larger portion of the work. The antiquity of these charters—granted for the most part by kings—makes this book very useful, not only for the history of Southern Italy, but also for that of the whole peninsula, as well as for the history of law. John’s Latin is tolerably good in those passages in which he joins one document to another, but he has none of Gregory’s critical discernment, and the valuable information which he gives is often mixed up with fabulous stories of miracles accepted by him without the least hesitation.

If Farfa may be said to have initiated in the eleventh century a new historical movement, Montecassino, on the other hand, must be admitted to have produced the best monastic histories written at that time in Italy. After the Abbot Aligernus (a.d. 949-985) had rebuilt that famous convent which the Saracens had destroyed, its intellectual life gradually revived, and little by little developed and increased, until between 1058 and 1087 it reached its period of greatest vigour under the Abbot Desiderius, afterwards Pope Victor III. This is the most glorious era in the annals of Montecassino up to our present days, and all the more remarkable is this light of renaissance when compared with the dark and stormy period upon which it shone. Descended as he was from the princes of Benevento, aristocratic in all his tastes, of versatile talents, and of even too mild a disposition, the pious, learned, and refined Desiderius seemed born to encourage arts and letters, and to give them efficacious support. To this also contributed the journeys undertaken by him, especially one to Constantinople, whither he was sent as apocrisarius, together with Frederick of Lor­raine, destined also to become pope under the name of Stephen IX. “The Lorraine monk and the Lombard one,” remarks Father Tosti of them with great truth, “when they returned from their Byzantine missions, brought back with them the seed of Greek civilization, and a description of what the St. Sophia of Justinian was like ; and on this account later Desiderius called together colonies of workmen to build and decorate the basilica and the convent, of which he truly became a second founder. And, indeed, it appears to me as if this Desiderius had almost natural leanings towards the East, whence he sought to evoke a beam of sunshine, which should gild and revive the disturbed regions of the West, and should warm the roots of the old Latin trunk into giving forth new shoots of civilization. Hence he was the first of the Roman pontiffs who raised his voice to collect armies against the Moslems of the East. The crusades were a pious folly ; but there is no doubt that from that disordered upheaving of all the West and its pilgrimage to the East, there resulted great benefits to science and art through the exchange of ideas between the long-divided generations.”

Under the influence of these inspirations, Desiderius rebuilt a great part of the monastery and the church, collecting into the latter all the most exquisite creations of the art of those days, and it is most unfortunate that this grand monument was entirely ruined by an earthquake a few centuries later. But it was not only art which was culti­vated at Montecassino. At the same time that all kinds of artists summoned from Lombardy, Amalfi, and Constantinople formed a school of art while working at mosaics, sculpture, and painting, there arose also a school of letters which spread its roots far and wide. The library was enriched with precious manuscripts, which, by order of Desiderius, were written and illuminated in the abbey; the documents in the archives were put in order, and history opened a way for itself among the theological and polemical writings. Just as Farfa sided with the empire in the great struggle of the investitures, Montecassino took part with the pope. Thence, as from a fortress, the monks often sallied forth like champions, and no sooner had they quitted the peace of the cloister, than they threw themselves heart and soul into the whirl of poli­tical and religious warfare, fighting their battles with tongue and pen. The only power which could really give the victory to the papacy was moral force, and the principal means of obtaining it was the learning which the monks instinctively strove to acquire and to keep possession of. Placed not far south of Rome and well secured from imperial violence, Montecassino soon became the headquarters of the most learned and zealous ecclesiastics of the time, and a centre of a political as well as of a literary movement. Among many other men of merit belonging to Montecassino were Pandulphus, of the family of the princes of Capua, who wrote in verse on mathematics and astronomy; Constantinus Africanus, the founder of the medical school at Salerno; Oderisius, belonging to the counts of Marsia, a writer of note and later abbot of the convent; Guaiferius, a poet; and Alfanus, also a poet and a celebrated man, who, when he became archbishop of Salerno, gave hospitality to the fugitive Gregory VII and received his dying breath. Naturally history was benefited by these learned tendencies, and the Abbot Desiderius himself, in composing a book of dialogues on the miracles of St. Benedict, has preserved many most important historical facts, especially in connection with the pontificate of Leo IX, with whom he had lived intimately, and many of whose vicissitudes he shared. In the same way, the poems of Alfanus have not only a literary but also an historical interest, as is also the case with those of Guaiferius, and generally with many other writings coming to us at that day from Montecassino. But we have direct as well as indirect historical testimony, and the monk Amatus, a native of Salerno, dedicated to his abbot Desiderius, in appropriate words, his history of the conquest of Italy by the Normans, and of the earlier period of their rule. This history goes back to the origin of the Normans, and after treating of their invasions in Spain, England, and Italy, concludes with the death, in the year 1078, of Richard, Prince of Capua, one of the sons of Tancredi. The narrative is divided into eight books, and each of these into several chapters, which have short headings containing their respective contents. Unfortunately the manuscript of Amatus is lost, and we only know of it through an ancient French translation discovered in the present century, and published by Champollion Figeac. All search after the original has hitherto proved fruitless, and it may be that it is irrevocably lost; happily this loss is compensated for, not only by the French translation, but also by our knowing that the work of Amatus, a few years after it was written, was drawn largely upon by a far greater historian in the composition of a work which still exists.

About the year 1060, the Abbot Desiderius received into the monastery a lad of fourteen named Leo, intended for the cloister. He was carefully educated in the schools of Montecassino, and among his masters was Aldemarius, who, as he tells us, before being a monk had been “a prudent and noble cleric of Capua and the notary of Prince Richard.” Leo soon attracted the attention of the monks and gained the affection of Desiderius, who before long took him into his confidence, and began to make use of him in the many weighty matters which occupied his thoughts. This daily intimacy bound Leo to Desiderius with affectionate gratitude and veneration, feelings not diminished by the death of Desiderius at Montecassino after having been pope for two years. Urban II succeeded him in the Roman pontificate, and Oderisius in the post of abbot; the latter was probably a relation of Leo’s, and certainly showed him the same confidence and good will as his predecessor. It was the new abbot who commissioned him to write the life of Desiderius, and soon after enlarged the scope of the work by desiring him instead to write the whole history of the abbey from the earliest times. He could not have made a better choice than Leo for such an undertaking. He was specially fitted for it by his office of keeper of the archives, which gave him great facilities for acquainting himself with all the historical documents of the convent; also by his learning, and by his having always lived in the midst of monastic and state affairs, as well as by his intimate acquaintance with all the principal men who lived at Montecassino, or were in the habit of meeting there. He undertook the work at first with hesitation, but continued it earnestly, and related its origin and purpose in a dedicatory letter to the Abbot Oderisius.

“Thy beatitude, O most reverend father, had already commanded me to devote myself to writing for the remembrance of posterity the glorious deeds of thy predecessor, the Abbot Desiderius of holy memory, a man very remarkable, and in these days quite alone of his order. For thou didst judge it unworthy to imitate the sloth of the ancients of this place, who of so many abbots did not think of leaving any literary memorial, either of their deeds or times; and if by chance any one wrote about these things, it was so completely unmeaning and composed in so rude a style as to give more weariness than information to the readers. But thy paternity, striving anxiously to avert this from Desiderius, has been pleased to choose me for this work, imposing on me a burden certainly beyond my strength, so that; overcome by this consideration, I have already shrunk for a year from attempting it. Lately, therefore, when I was accompanying thee, according to my office, on thy return from Capua, thou didst remind me on the way of thy excellent command, asking me with interest whether I had fulfilled thy desire by writing out the deeds of Desiderius. But I, surprised by this sudden inquiry, was forced to answer according to the fact, that I had done nothing whatever. Then, regaining a little courage, I said : ‘And when could I have obeyed thy command, when I have hardly been eight days following in the monastery for almost the whole of this year, sometimes by thy command in the service of our apostolic lord, sometimes occupied with thee in various matters? But does not this work demand no little leisure? nor is it possible for one who is busy to give himself to such a vast matter, but rather for one freed from all cares.’ Then thou, having patiently listened to my arguments, and scolded me very gently for my negligence, didst say: ‘And now take what leisure thou wishest, and add no further delays in writing about Desiderius. Nay, I also desire and command, since this matter has been delayed till this day, that now, making thy beginning from our Father Benedict, thou shouldst diligently inquire into the series, times, and deeds of all the abbots of our place up to this same Desiderius, and that thou shouldst compose a history in the form of a chronicle, very useful for us and for our successors, by scrupulously searching out the charters of emperors, dukes, and princes, as well as the documents of all the rest of the faithful, through which the lands or churches which we now see belonging to the monastery came into its possession, and under what abbots. Besides this, thou wilt not regret to note briefly in their proper places the destruction as well as restoration of this convent, which occurred on two separate occasions, besides whatever noble memories remain as to the works or deeds of distinguished men belonging to these parts? After I began to meditate more attentively the importance of this command, there began also to increase in me many thorny thoughts as to whether or how I might fulfil it worthily, and not well comprehending from the poverty of my understanding, I did not know whether I had better choose to undertake or to decline so great a work, since in accepting it I felt guilty of rashness, and in declining it of disobedience. Besides, I remembered that my aforesaid lord, Desiderius, had formerly imposed this very work on Alfanus, archbishop of Salerno, the most learned man of our times, but that he, understanding well the great labour involved, had saved himself from such a danger. But if he who was incomparably superior in knowledge and eloquence was afraid of submitting to this burden, what was I to do, who possessed neither any knowledge nor any eloquence whatever? Moreover, it grieved my conscience that this work should not be committed by thee to some other of our brethren who are both far more learned than I am, and more accustomed to writing; such, namely, as the diligence of that same holy predecessor of thine had collected together into this place from different parts of the world, or had caused to be most carefully instructed in this same convent. So I was agitated by the uncertainty of these and similar thoughts, since the matter was certainly higher than I could reach, and more abstruse than I was capable of understanding. Yet, since from the attachment which I had always specially felt for thy paternity, I had long decided never to refuse thee anything, I at length made up my mind; and I who formerly had a cowardly fear of attempting only the deeds of Desiderius, now undertook to write in some manner those of all his predecessors, trusting in the assistance of God, and thus hoping to conclude everything by myself. Then I sought out such little writings as seemed to treat of this matter, composed in a ragged style and briefly, and chief of these the chronicle of the Abbot John, who was the first to construct our monastery at Capua Nova; also I collected the books necessary for this task, namely, the history of the Lombards, and the chronicles of the Roman emperors and pontiffs ; likewise searched diligently for privileges and charters as well as concessions and documents with various titles (such as those of Roman pontiffs, of various emperors, kings, princes, dukes, counts, and other illustrious and faithful men), that were left to us after the two destructions by fire of this convent, although I could not find even all of them ; lastly, I questioned scrupulously all who had either heard of or seen any deeds of modern times or of abbots: thus, according as the smallness of my judgment permits, I am attempting to do what thou hast commanded, more certainly from the obedience which I owe to thee as father and lord, than presuming on any knowledge of mine. May God be with me, and the grace of His Spirit, that I may fulfil this as efficaciously as thou didst diligently deign to command me; so may this little book be most pleasing to thee, and profitable to many. In the mean time I have thought it well to mention these things in this sort of little preface, providing for myself lest I should be accused by uninformed people of rashness or presumption, so that if I be accused heedlessly, the authority of him who commanded me may be my excuse.”

Having thus begun his history, he carried it from the earliest beginnings of the abbey up to the year 1075, but could not continue it beyond that date, although he did not cease working at it even after being named cardinal bishop of Ostia by Paschal II, from which circumstance he has also been commonly called Leo Ostiensis. However, he was prevented by the interruptions of public affairs and of those troubled times from giving it his continued attention. He was in Rome at the time that Henry . (A.D. 1111), having forcibly seized upon Pope Paschal in St. Peter’s, carried him off as a prisoner into Sabina. Leo and John, cardinal bishop of Tusculum, were able to escape captivity by disguising themselves; and there seems no doubt that Leo, as well as John, sought to arouse the Romans to the determined resistance which they made to Henry’s German troops. But although he was not taken prisoner, and did not sign the convention regarding the investitures extorted by force from the pope, still he found himself obliged by the exigencies of the times to yield, however unwillingly, and to join those prelates who, like the pope, preferred conciliatory measures to the system of “no surrender” upheld by others. Among these latter one of the principal was Bruno, bishop of Segni, and abbot of Montecassino, a man of great learning and of most blameless life, but steadfastly opposed to any reconciliation with the empire. The pope thought it dangerous to have such a centre of opposition at Montecassino, and therefore sent Leo there, who succeeded in bringing about the abdication of Bruno, and his withdrawal to his not distant bishopric of Segni. When Leo returned to Rome he took a great part in the Lateran Council of 1112, after which there remain but few traces of his life. We know indeed that he died on a twenty-second of May, but it is uncertain whether in the fifteenth, sixteenth, or seventeenth year of the twelfth century.

Besides the large supply of documents in the archives, Leo could also use in the compilation of his work the library of Montecassino, which furnished him with a rich supply of writings, bearing in some way on the history of the monastery. The greater part of the writers of whom we have had to speak in these chapters were known to this learned monk, and he made copious use of them, besides drawing sometimes on sources now lost to us; while, in the later period of his narrative, he was able to add his personal testimony of what he had heard and seen of contemporary history. For superiority of mind and natural impartiality, Leo is one of the most trustworthy writers in that age, which was a time of strong partisan tendencies, and if he had had leisure to carry the work on to the last years of his life, perhaps we should today have to regard him as the greatest Italian historian of the earlier Middle Ages, next to Paulus Diaconus. Nor is the work of Leo less remarkable as a literary production, than as a contribution to history. We again quote with pleasure, on this point, the great living historian of Montecassino: “Then as to the form, we think that in the midst of much barbarism this Leo of Montecassino is the first to recall to us the Latin historians, and to give promise of those who would arise in Italy after the renaissance of letters. Neither in Italy, nor out of it, do we find anyone who in those times approaches Leo, either for a certain connecting together of the facts, or for the reasoning and order in his manner of writing, whereby history is distinguished from the rude chronicle, which is nothing else but a material reproduction through writing of successive and incoherent notices of facts, dropping from the mind of the writer without a suggestion as to how or why they entered it. He himself feels that he is not a common writer of chronicles, for when deputed by the Abbot Oderisius to write the deeds of his predecessor Desiderius, he tells how they had thought it blameworthy that there had never been any one in the past who had undertaken to hand down in writing the labours of the ancient abbots, or if there was any one, he did it in so rude and uncouth a style as to cause the reader more weariness than instruction. He goes over the ground from St. Benedict to his own times; prepares himself studiously for the narrative he has undertaken; alludes to the sources whence he drew his information;... and under a veil of religious humility reveals the consciousness of having done more than others in this narrative which the very Alfanus would not undertake when called upon to do so by Desiderius; therefore he considers the title of chronicle unworthy of his work, and ventures to call it historiola. Hence, both for its truthfulness and for its form, this chronicle throws much light upon the history of the Middle Ages.”

This work of Leo’s, which breaks off with the account of the consecration of the restored abbey, was taken again in hand by Petrus Diaconus, and continued up to the year 1138. Peter was a descendant of the illustrious family of the counts of Tusculum, and was born about 1107, son of the Roman Egidius, grandson of the Patrician Gregory, and great grandson of Alberic and Marozia. Offered as a child in 1115 to the monastery under the Abbot Giraldus, he was educated there with care, studying principally under the superintend­ence of the monk Guido—a man, by his pupil’s account, of great reputation, and the author of several historical works now lost, and of a “Vision of Alberic,” which has remained famous from some people finding in it the idea which may first have inspired the “Divine Comedy.” In 1128 the hostility of the counts of Aquino, with whom Peter’s father had joined himself in close alliance, led to the Abbot Seniorectus sending the young monk away from Montecassino. Peter then retired to the neighbouring Atina, where, at the request of Atenolfus, the count of that city, he wrote the history of St. Mark’s martyrdom, that saint having been the first bishop of the see of Atina in the apostolic times. During Peter’s exile, his uncles, from whom his father had separated in order to join the counts of Aquino, wrote asking him to try if he could induce his father to become again their friend. Nothing is known with certainty about it, but it appears that Peter agreed to the wishes of his relations; certainly, not long after, we find him on amicable terms with them, and back at Montecassino in favour with the Abbot Seniorectus, who later deputed him to continue the history of the abbey, giving him many details regarding it of which he had himself been eyewitness. But in the meantime, before being entrusted with this work, he had gained a reputation by other writings. Being nominated, like Leo, keeper of the archives and librarian of the abbey, his quick and versatile talents, combined with his southern vivacity, led him soon to enter on a wide course of literary activity. At different times, and amidst many occupations, he copied a number of manuscripts, wrote lives of saints, stories of miracles, verses and letters, compiled a large register of the documents kept in the archives, related the lives of the more illustrious monks of the monastery, and continued the work which Leo Ostiensis had left unfinished. Peter was less mixed up than Leo in the political events of his day, and his numerous cares were almost all limited to the narrow circle of his convent, which explains both the number of his writings and the considerable size of some of them. The descent of Lothair into the south of Italy (a.d. 1137), constitutes the most eventful period of his life, which he relates to us with boastful self-complacency. In his day, the struggle about the investitures being at an end Montecassino showed, as far as was possible, an in­clination to look to the Empire for support against the frequent pretensions of the Norman princes and the Roman court. The abbey found that dependence on a distant emperor was far less disturbing than her temporal and spiritual relations with powerful neighbours. When Lothair and Pope Innocent II were together near Melfi at Lago Pesole, Peter accompanied his abbot thither, and was there deputed to sustain, in the presence of the emperor, the rights of the monastery against the claims put forward in the Church’s name by the Cardinal Gerardus. His easy and subtle eloquence carried off the victory after a dispute of several days, and the emperor was so astonished at such learning and eloquence, that he took the monk into high favour, heaping honours upon him and expressing a wish to take him back to Germany. This at least is Peter’s account, and it really does appear that he would have followed the emperor, had not many causes combined to prevent it, and to keep him in Italy and in his convent. The date of his death is uncertain, but there is great probability in Wattenbach’s conjecture which would fix it soon after 1140. The fact is that after that year we have no further notice of him, and it does not seem natural that so fertile a writer, who in the course of about ten years had begun and completed so many works, should have suddenly ceased writing and become absolutely silent.

Without taking into account his minor works, we find that the claims of Petrus Diaconus on our attention rest on several historical works full of good and bad points. His books on the illustrious men of Montecassino, and on the lives and deaths of the holy men of that monastery, contain a mixture of miraculous legends and of most valuable historical information, especially concerning the period nearest the author’s lifetime. But his two most important works are the Register of Monte­cassino and the continuation of its chronicle. If the honourable love of truth which distinguished Gregory of Catino and Leo Ostiensis had also animated Petrus Diaconus, certainly the value of these two works, and especially of the chronicle, would be incalculable, but unfortunately this was not so. The doubts which he constantly inspires in us are very different from the security with which we can trust ourselves to the narrative of Leo. This latter is simple, impartial, truthful; Peter vain, passionate, and insincere. His compilation of the Register is a great work and very useful, although most of the original documents still exist in the archives of Montecassino. This book, written in a beautiful Lombard hand, is very nearly as large as the Farfa Register, but differs from it in the arrangement of its contents. The documents do not follow each other simply in the chronological order, but are divided instead into various groups according to their various characters, and, as appears from some words in the preface, according to a plan already initiated by Leo. “But in this work,” says Peter, “the history of the venerable Leo, bishop of Ostia, was of the greatest service to us; for he, beginning from our most blessed Father Benedict, wrote a book most valuable for everything relating to the convent of Montecassino, in which he showed such a profusion of knowledge, that he hardly omits anything which happened in that convent. So that, following in the footsteps of so great a man, I shall not indeed be able to reach to him with my poor faculties, yet have I retained the order of the oblations just as he determined them.” This work of Peter’s has been often and profitably consulted by the learned, and it would be desirable that the monks of Montecassino, when they have finished the splendid description which they are making of their manuscripts, should undertake the publication of a codex diplomaticus, of their original documents, compared with the Register of Petrus Diaconus and completed from it. But if his work is valuable, it is not, however, to be received without much reserve. Both his own disposition and a tendency of his day contributed to render it untrustworthy. The constant contests about monastic property, often also as to the origin and authenticity of relics preserved in the convents, not only led the monks to compile Registers, but led also too often to fabrications and unscrupulous alterations of documents. Nor was Peter free from this fault, to which his vain disposition rendered him specially liable, from the desire to find imaginary nobility of origin and circumstance for his monastery which was already so noble and famous in reality. Even if we cannot affirm that he actually fabricated false documents, there is certainly no doubt that he sometimes wittingly altered with interpolations the originals which he copied into his Register. And the same want of honesty is an ugly blot on his chronicle, which, starting as we said from the point where Leo had stopped (a.D. 1075), continues up to the year 1138, and thus embraces the most remarkable historical period of that momentous age. Moreover, in this latter work, to the vanity of the monk for his monastery, is added the boastfulness of the man with regard to his lineage and himself; so that, wherever his book refers to the interests of the abbey or to his own person, whom he never fails to mention, its authority cannot be ever implicitly relied upon. Nevertheless the importance of the times gives a special value to his narrative, and in spite of these failings, we find it pleasant reading in consequence of the off-hand outspokenness of his style, which is attractive and often lays bare the mind of the writer, who was a strange mixture of ingenuousness and craft. Another thing in which he also differed from Leo was that, while the latter, though taking his information from many sources, always composed the narrative himself, Peter, on the contrary, often copies whole passages from other writers, and transfers them in the very same words to his own book, from which results a great inequality of style. But the original part of his work, though sometimes too hastily and carelessly written, is always graphic, full of life and colour, and, notwithstanding his defects, Petrus Diaconus always remains a curious and entertaining writer, whom any one, anxious to be familiar with the his­torical literature of this age, will find it worth his while to read.

The great artistic and literary revival at Montecassino was associated with a similar movement in the whole of southern Italy, where, in consequence of its immediate contact with the Greeks and Arabs, the fertilizing influence of two civilizations had succeeded in penetrating. The instincts, resembling those later exhibited by the Medicis, which Desiderius had carried with him into the cloister, were the instincts of the Lombard princes from which he sprang. The great Lombard nobles of that part of Italy, who had already in the times of Paulus Diaconus shown themselves protectors of literature, now having gradually grown into greater harmony with the native tendencies, had, in doing so, imbibed both the virtues and faults peculiar to them, as well as to the elements which remained of Greek rule. This was how it happened that those regions awoke so readily to new civilizing life, and exercised such useful influence for some centuries to come on general civilization. And witness is borne to this first awakening, not only by the monastic labours of Montecassino, but also by various other works of an historical character, which we shall now mention in order to be free to turn to other subjects in the next chapter. Lupus Protospatarius has left us some accounts of the city of Bari on the Adriatic up to the year 1102, and later the Anonymus Barensis has done the same till the year 1152. Benevento possesses annals which reach the year 1130, and a chronicle which unfortunately is in­ complete and rudely written, but of great historical value. In the same way there are the annals of the famous monastery of the Trinity at La Cava, near Salerno, which had been rebuilt about that time, and solemnly consecrated by Urban II—an account of the consecration having also come down to us. We find information about the first Norman invaders in the chronicon normannicum breve of Taranto. Of the monk Amatus, who wrote at more length about the Normans, we have already spoken, and where his work breaks off there comes in to complete it the epic poem of William of Apulia, who celebrates Robert Guichard and the exploits of his Normans. A tolerably good poet for his day, and sufficiently acquainted with the classical writers, he sings the deeds of his hero in hexameters sprinkled with quotations from Virgil. His work, undertaken at the desire of Urban II., and dedicated to Roger the son of Robert, in addition to the merit of having been written at times and in places near the events, shows a good knowledge of preceding writers, and, among these, of a biographer of Robert’s of whom we have today no traces left. A contemporary of the poet William, Godfrey Malaterra composed at the command of the great Count Roger a most valuable history of the Normans in Sicily, written in a fluent style, and full of information, also, regarding the mutual relations of the Normans and Pope Urban. The abbot Alexander of Telese related the deeds of King Roger with great partiality and affected elegance, while showing considerable knowledge of the subject. We see, therefore, that the great Norman epic was not without writers to celebrate it, and the newly awakened historical spirit found in those exploits such wide ground as no longer to yield to the legendary tendencies of a former age.

And it is certain that the imagination began now to turn to human interests, with their living truths and strong ideals, so that the twilight of legendary story gave way to the full daylight of historical research, and took refuge in popular tradition, or in some obscure monastic writing destined to receive unexpected attention centuries later. And so it was that, far distant from the scenes of which we have been speaking, in the valley of Susa on the slopes of the Mont Cenis, a monk belonging to the monastery of the Novalesa was collecting the traditions concerning the descent of Charlemagne into Italy, and so preserved memories of a cycle of legends which later inspired the medieval troubadours and poets, threw a glamour over Ariosto’s fancies, and in our day added grace to the thoughtful muse of Manzoni, who in the tragedy of “Adelchi” combined them with historical facts. The real history of this convent of the Novalesa is the same as that of so many others of that time. Founded in the year 726, destroyed by the Sara­cens in 906 or in 916, restored about the year 1000, it had, towards the middle of the eleventh century, among its monks one belonging to the territory of Vercelli, who wrote the chronicle of the monastery. This strange and fragmentary work has come down to us in the same old parchment roll on which the author wrote it, with interruptions, at long intervals, and without ever completing it. It begins almost immediately, drawing upon popular traditions for its inspiration, with the fabulous legend of a gardener monk of royal birth called Walter, who achieved wonderful exploits in defence of the convent; and this is the same Walter, son of a king of Aquitania, and taken as hostage by Attila, whose story belongs also to the Niebelungen, the Scandinavian Wilkina-Saga, and the whole cloud of heroic traditions which surround Attila. And after these follow other legends concerning Charlemagne, which have this great im­portance that they relate what in less than three centuries the popular imagination had created regarding the facts which had taken place among those very mountains where the monk collected them. The vision of Charlemagne, the hospitality he met with at the Novalesa, the jongleur who taught Charles the pass by which he might cross the Alps and surprise the rear of the Lombards, the taking of Pavia, the sufferings of the Lombard king Desiderius, and the extraordinary prowess of his son Adelchi, are all so many legendary episodes full of poetry and feeling. A special value of this chronicle of the Novalesa, in which it differs from the learned chronicles of the monks of Southern Italy, is that it has preserved the impressions of the people, impressions which long outlast their original causes. Going backwards to the Lombard age where Paulus Diaconus leaves us, we can, by the light of this old parchment, give some colouring to the scanty notices which we succeed in extracting from vast registers and unadorned chronicles; for if this writing, born at the foot of the Alps, is rather poetry than history, it is certainly poetry which recalls the life of past ages, and repeats it to us after centuries of silence, just as the mountains which form a majestic circle round the ruins of the Novalesa, repeat the long and solitary echo of a sound that is hushed.

CHAPTER V.

THE LATER CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE “PONTIFICAL BOOK” — BRUNO OF SEGNI — WIBERT OF TOUL — PAUL OF BERNRIED — “ANNALES ROMANI” — PETRUS PISANUS — PANDULPH — BOSO — POLEMICAL WRITINGS — ST. PETER DAMIANI — BONIZO’S “ LIBER AD AMICUM ” — THE LIFE OF ANSELM OF LUCCA — DOMNIZO’S LIFE OF THE COUNTESS MATILDA — THE LETTERS OF GREGORY VII.