Writing Ravenna: The Liber Pontificalis of Andreas Agnellus. Recentiores : Later Latin Texts and Contexts.

Lediglich der Schutzumschlag ist leicht berieben. Sonst aber ein sehr gutes und sauberes Exemplar/ Only the dust jacket is slightly rubbed. Otherwise, however, a very good and clean copy. - Writing Ravenna is the first full-length study of the Liber Pontificalis Ecclesiae Ravennatis, written by the priest Andreas Agnellus in the early ninth century. The Liber Pontificalis was intended as a chronicle of the city of Ravenna, which was successively capital of the late Western empire, of the Ostrogothic kingdom of Italy, and of the Byzantine exarchate of Italy. Ravenna constitutes one of the focal points of the late antique and early medieval world, and Agnellus� chronicle offers unique insights into the beliefs, values, and prejudices that informed an early medieval urban society�s view of its past. A central feature of the text is unmatched in the historiography of the period: it reproduces the author�s presentation of his work to its original audience and the lively dialogue with his fellow clergymen that accompanied the readings. Writing Ravenna places Agnellus� book in the historical and political context of ninth-century Italy and approaches it as a major document on the creation and performance of narrative, written and oral, in early medieval Europe. Four sequences from the Liber Pontificalis are translated into English for the first time and analyzed in depth, both as literary productions and as expressions of an urban clerical mentality. The translation and discussion of these sequences illustrate the city�s exceptional cultural position between West and East and on the margins of the Carolingian world, which allowed Agnellus to draw on Latin, Byzantine, and Langobardic legends and chronicles in his narrative performance. Agnellus� Liber Pontificate shows us a historical narrative taking shape, but it also shows its contemporary reception and the various ways in which the author sought to enlist the political sympathies of his audience and to satisfy his own literary ambitions and ideological biases. Writing Ravenna connects the Liber Pontificalis to the local struggles of the Ravennate clergy as well as to broader issues of Italian and European politics. Agnellus was an enthusiastic antiquarian, archaeologist, and epigraphist, and Writing Ravenna traces the impact of his work on the great artistic monuments of the fifth and sixth centuries that surrounded him and his fellow citizens, and of the ancient inscriptions that he collected and preserved. An analysis of Agnellus� conception of oral and written language and of the function of images in art and religion makes it possible to outline his implicit response to eighthand ninth-century iconoclasm. This book will interest all students and scholars of late antique and medieval European history, art, and literature. CONTENTS: Politics Oral and Written Four Stories Attila at the Gates of Ravenna Rosimund Revised The Secret Massacre The Martyred Scribe Conclusion: The Narrator and His Audience. Andreas Agnellus of Ravenna (c. 794/799 � after 846) was a historian of the bishops in his city. The date of his death is not recorded, although his history mentions the death of archbishop George of Ravenna in 846; Oswald Holder-Egger cites a papyrus charter dated to either 854 or 869 that contains the name of a priest named Andreas of the Church of Ravenna, but there is no evidence to connect him with Andreas Agnellus. Though called Abbot, first of St. Mary of Blachernae, and, later, of St. Bartholomew, Andreas appears to have remained a secular priest, being probably only titular abbot of each abbey. He is best known as the author of the Liber Pontificalis Ecclesiae Ravennatis (LPR), an account of the occupants of his native church, compiled on the model of the Liber Pontificalis, a compilation of the lives of the Popes of Rome. The work survives in two manuscripts: one in the Biblioteca Estense in Modena, written in 1413; the other is in the Vatican Library, written in the mid-16th century and breaks off in the middle of the life of Archbishop Peter II. Copies of Agnellus's lives of two saintly bishops of Ravenna, Severus and Peter Chrysologus, exist in independent traditions, copied into collections of saints' lives. The editio princeps of the LPR was published in Modena by Benedetto Bacchini in 1708; a complete English translation of the LPR by Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis was published in 2004. The LPR begins with Saint Apollinaris and ends with Georgius, the forty-eighth archbishop (died 846). Though the work contains "unreliable material" according to the article on Agnellus in the Catholic Encyclopedia, Thomas Shahan (the author of the article) states that the LPR is "a unique and rich source of information concerning the buildings, inscriptions, manners, and religious customs of Ravenna in the ninth century". Deliyannis notes that "two themes recur throughout the LPR: an anxiety for the rights of the clergy in the face of oppression by bishops, and a firm preference for the autocephaly of Ravenna, with a particular dislike of control of [the archbishopric of] Ravenna by the Roman pope".[5] The Catholic Encyclopedia further comments that "in his efforts to be erudite he often falls into unpardonable errors. The diction is barbarous, and the text is faulty and corrupt"(Wikipedia). ISBN 9780472106066