Few medieval chroniclers are more enjoyable to read than Liudprand of Cremona, the well-traveled Italian courtier, ecclesiastic, and ambassador. Much of what Liudprand reports is first-hand knowledge of the courtly spheres of Italy, Germany, and Byzantium from the 930s to the 970s. Liudprand, born about 920 in Pavia, was of noble Lombard stock. As a boy he lived in the court of King Hugh and his family managed to negotiate the difficult transition of the 940s from which Berengar of Ivrea emerged as Hugh's effective successor. Financed by his stepfather, as Liudprand tells us in the sixth and final book of his Antapodosis, here called Retribution, he set off as Berengar's ambassador to the court of Constantinople in 949. But soon after his return to Italy, Liudprand fell afoul of Berengar. Like other Italian nobles he went north, seeking the favor of the East Frankish king Otto of Saxony. The plan succeeded and furthermore Liudprand had gambled on the right patron, eventually Emperor Otto I, whom he served to the end of his life.
Liudprand's literary career began, it would appear, when he started Retribution in 958 in Frankfurt. He was at work on it in 960 while living on the tiny island of Paxos, off the west coast of Greece, under mysterious circumstances, and completed it in 962 (although he appears to have continued revising it until his death). Retribution is by far the longest of Liudprand's surviving works. Narrating mostly political events, the book begins in the last years of the ninth century and ends with the author's first visit to Constantinople in 949. The outlook is pan-European, with focus on Italian, German, and Greek matters known best to the author; Liudprand begins book four by explaining that everything presented from here forward will be based on eyewitness knowledge. Liudprand accompanied Otto when the latter marched on Italy in 961, removing Berengar of Ivrea from power and accepting the imperial crown in early 962. Just weeks before his coronation, Otto had paved the way for Liudprand to go back to his native region south of the Alps by appointing him bishop of the the Po River town of Cremona. Liudprand returned the favor a few years later by writing a brief account of his righteous patron's triumphs over enemies secular and clerical in Italy, 961-964, Concerning King Otto. Many of these events, too, Liudprand witnessed. He went to Constantinople for a second time in 968, representing the man now known as Otto the Great, and wrote a withering account of life at the Byzantine court, the Embassy, shortly thereafter. A twelfth-century source has Liudprand dying on return from a third trip to Constantinople in early 972.
Paolo Squatriti has done scholars and students an important service by offering fresh translations of the three accounts named above, plus the first rendering in English of a homily written by Liudprand, first identified as his work and published only in 1984. [1] As base, Squatriti uses the new critical editions of all four texts by Paolo Chiesa. [2] The translator has carefully combed the scholarly literature on Liudprand in English, Italian, and German, with emphasis on work done in the last twenty years. A synthesis of sorts appears in a substantial introduction, which first considers the author and then each of the four texts, highlighting Liudprand as self-fashioning "wreaker of Retribution," homilist, imperial apologist/propagandist, and beleaguered emissary. There follow the four texts, in more or less chronological order, with extremely helpful explanatory and bibliographic notes aimed "to ease the task of students in unraveling Liudprand's culture"(viii).
The translation is accurate and faithful, navigating with considerable success the often choppy structure and precious style of Liudprand, an abyss of pagan and Christian learning by one who never missed a chance to slather on quotations by or allusions to everyone from Terence to Sedulius Scottus, via Vergil and Vegetius. To give the full flavor of Liudprand's high-flying composition, Squatriti hit on the happy solution of leaving Greek phrases in the original and translating them in notes; he also offers the verse portions of Retribution as poetry. Translations are a matter of taste, and I found this one to be a little stiff at times, especially in Retribution. There are more graceful ways in English of talking about reproduction than to say that men and women "generated" children; here the literal translation of Latin "genuit" or "genuerat" is too literal. On the other hand, in discussing the reconciliation of King Berengar to his wife Willa after the latter had an affair, Squatriti renders "maritali porrigeret ora capistro" as "placed his head back in the marital muzzle" (194), which is perfect. Writer and translator seem to come fully into their own with Embassy, a total treat to read here.
Liudprand is entertaining because he is a good story-teller, because he is interested in many things, and because his most consistent authorial stance is that of the blunt truth-teller. A striking instance comes near the end of Retribution, when Liudprand tells us that on his first embassy to Constantinople in 949, he was embarrassed that he had brought no presents, only a mendacious letter, from his king Berengar. So, he informs us, he presented the gifts he had brought on his own behalf as if they were from Berengar. This anecdote is absolutely typical of Liudprand, who spends a lot of time delivering and justifying his opinions about the matters he relates and, not infrequently, his own actions.
To the imagined question "Since he demonstrates the deeds of illustrious men, why does he insert the title Retribution?" Liudprand answers that he is paying back King Berengar and his wife Willa for their ill-treatment of his whole family (110-111). Squatriti takes a broader view, positing that the theme of the entire work is "everyone getting his or her just desserts" (10). Liudprand's mockery of Byzantine behavior in Embassy is sometimes laugh-out-loud funny for its sarcastic wit and, by twenty-first century standards, utter political incorrectness about the ways of "the other." Liudprand is offering some payback here, too, since he found that neither his lord Otto nor non-Greeks in general got the respect they deserved at the court of Constantinople. In the three narrative texts, Liudprand ranges across topics including royal and ecclesiastical (including papal) legitimacy; human nature, gender and sexuality (with special attention to the nature and capabilities of human genitalia that will appall and delight undergraduate readers--and their teachers); the use and abuse of trickery and cunning; courtly manners and mores both European and Byzantine; and military equipment and tactics. In the Homily we find a different Liudprand, a grave Christian theologian. In a text that was surely too long to have been the basis of an oral presentation, Liudprand first offers a defense of Christianity against the imagined criticisms of Jewish interlocutors. It is in effect an early instance of Jewish-Christian dialogue, a genre that grew considerably after 1000 AD. As ever presenting himself as a courageous advocate of truth-telling, Liudprand manages to turn Abraham into a Trinitarian before urging on his Christian brethren grateful love of God and charity to the unfortunate.
Students will find much to learn about and chew over in each of these texts and by looking at them as a group. I wish they got a little bit more help in the form of a few genealogical charts to facilitate sorting out Retribution's multiple Adelberts and a map or two to orient themselves on Liudprand's large canvas. A book that costs $30 in paperback should provide such materials, although I was grateful to see notes at the bottom of the page, where they have not always appeared in this series. Squatriti discusses some (not all) of the themes mentioned above in his introduction, but it is as much a learned commentary as an entrée for students unfamiliar with the Middle Ages, Liudprand's tumultuous times, or medieval narrative sources. Little matter; Squatriti has given students and scholars an English Liudprand for the twenty-first century that is an important resource for extending our understanding of the tenth.
-------- Notes:
1. The three narratives were translated into English together eighty years ago: The Works of Liudprand of Cremona, trans. F. A. Wright (London: Routledge, 1930), reprinted in the Everyman's Library under the title The Embassy to Constantinople and Other Writings. In 1993, Brian Scott produced a Latin-English version of Embassy (Liudprand of Cremona, Relatio de Legatione Constantinopolitana, ed. Brian Scott, Reading Medieval and Renaissance Texts (London: Bristol Classical Press, 1993). Neither is in print. The century-old translation of Embassy by Ernest F. Henderson is available, in slightly modernized version, at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/liudprand1.html.
2. Liudprandi Cremonensis Opera Omnia, ed. Paolo Chiesa, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medievalis 156 (Turnholt: Brepols, 1998).