Re: Historical Events Database
I went ahead and got the Kronk book Volume I which covers the periods we are interested in. It was 123 euro from a marketplace seller so way cheaper than it would be on Cambridge even if volume I were still available there, which it isn't. I'm not sure we need the subsequent volumes since vol II starts with 1800.
MEANWHILE, last night, I continued to go through Paul the Deacon's "History of the Langobards". As I mentioned, it is a rip-off of Jordanes "History of the Goths" which was a rip-off of Cassiodorus' now lost history of the Goths that he "created" at the behest of Theodoric.
Anyway, a couple of interesting things came up when reading Paul the Deacon that may be clues and I'll share them so that those of you who love a good mystery/treasure hunt will get an idea of how I think.
As we learn from our books about textual analysis, there are ways to examine the texts and tell what scriptorium they came from, what time period, and, in some cases, WHO actually copied them. There are ways to tell what author had access to what books. So all of this is useful, kind of like being able to profile a criminal.
Okay, first thing we know - learned quite by accident by compiling a list of environmental events from the late Empire/Byzantine chroniclers - is that there is a big gap of such events in the Byzantine chronicles and that gap is
precisely filled by the events included by Gregory of Tours. That's practically a smoking gun bit of evidence. We know that those chronicles were written in Greek and if those events were lifted from Greek chronicles and dropped into Gregory's text, then in must have happened some time AFTER the events and it must have been at least AIDED by someone who could translate the elements from Greek to Latin.
We know that almost nobody was speaking Greek in the Italian Renaissance because we have read about how Petrarch and his buddies were trying to learn, some of them without success.
Obviously, the siege and capture of Constantinople by crusaders in 1203 and 1204 COULD have brought back Greek texts, but that is a little too late for the Gregory of Tours text which was written more likely around the 9th or 10th century. (It definitely wasn't written when it claims it was written!)
Okay, that's our problem: how did the Gregory
poseur get hold of a Greek text and KNOW WHAT IT SAID??? And WHO then had the ability to make sure that the Byzantine texts that included those elements were truncated or simply never copied? Obviously, the Catholic Church. But can we figure out any more?
Well, here's where we may get a few pointers from Paul the Deacon.
Now, keep in mind that we are concerned with a period of time of catastrophe and destruction in the Western Empire that has been covered up and the general dating we have of this is the 6th century - stuff was going on in the 4th and 5th centuries, (and the third century may have been partly a doublet) but the 6th century was the big Kaboom-Splat. Everything just came to a screeching halt. This was due to multiple Tunguska like events, massive earthquakes, possibly a meteor impact in the Med that buried the coast of Italy (and Rome) not to mention affecting other coastal areas. There is astronomy, archaeology and geology to demonstrate and support this. So, keep that firmly in mind while you read the history. If the historian is NOT talking about it, then he's covering it up.
We have also speculated that, prior to, and at the time of, the disasters, there were wealthy church prelates/officials, who were creating enclaves for survival, retreating to their country estates with their pals, hiding from the pestilence and the wrath of the beleaguered masses dying all around them. Okay, so they preserved some texts and they preserved their elitist idea of education and some literacy etc. So, when the history says: "The survival of traditions of literacy, of antique educational practices, and of physical and cultural legacies from antiquity contributed much to the intellectual conditions of eighth-century Italy and shaped the education of Paul himself"... we can accept that this was certainly the case, though not exactly the way it is presented. The very fact that historians have to talk about this "survival" while avoiding what had to be survived, is telling.
It is not said, though
we may assume, that the Lombards sort of moved into northern Italy and took over after the catastrophes. Here's the short version:
The Kingdom of the Lombards (regnum Langobardorum), later the Kingdom of (all) Italy (regnum totius Italiae) was an early medieval state established by the Lombards, a Germanic-speaking people, on the Italian Peninsula between 568–69. The king was traditionally elected by the highest-ranking aristocrats, the dukes, and all attempts to establish a hereditary dynasty failed. The kingdom was divided into a varying number of duchies, ruled by the semi-autonomous dukes, which were in turn subdivided into gastaldates at the level of each city. The capital of the kingdom and centre of its political life was Pavia. ... The Lombard invasion was opposed by the Byzantine Empire, which retained control of much of the peninsula until the mid-8th century. .... The Exarchate of Ravenna and the Duchy of Rome separated the northern duchies, or Langobardia major, from the two large southern duchies of Spoleto and Benevento, which constituted Langobardia minor. Because of this division, the southern duchies were more autonomous than the smaller northern duchies.
{This explanation cleverly smoothes over the fact that large sections of Italy, particularly Rome, had been laid waste. In the map below, I would suggest that the orange areas, supposedly "controlled by the Byzantines" were the areas that were totally destroyed.
}
The Lombards gradually adopted Roman titles, names and traditions. By the time Paul the Deacon was writing in the late 8th century, the Lombard language, dress and hairstyles had all disappeared.
Initially the Lombards were Arians at odds with the Papacy both religiously and politically. By the end of the 7th century, their conversion to Catholicism was all but complete. The conflict with the Papacy continued, and was responsible for their gradual loss of power in the face of
the Franks, who conquered the kingdom in 774. Charlemagne, the king of the Franks, adopted the title "King of the Lombards", but never managed to control Benevento.
In any event, there was this Christian Lombard king, Liutprand (712-744), who was buddy-buddy with religious figures of the time, patronizing them as teachers and scholars. In short, that was another place that the church was moving itself into positions of power. We already know they were schmoozing with the Anglo-Saxons in Britain and with the Franks in Germany/Francia.
It is said that Paul the Deacon was born in the 8th century, that is, around 720, and was educated by the grammarian Flavianus possibly at the royal Lombard court of Pavia. Paul learned Latin AND GREEK from Flavianus.
(This "Flavianus" claim presents its own set of problems because the well-attested grammarian, Flavianus, belongs to the 4th century. However, I've taken a screen shot of a page from a "Biographical Index of the Middle Ages" and attached it to this post so you can see that there appears to be a number of "Flavianus" types that are modeled on the 4th century guy. The 4th century guy and his son really existed because there is evidence that is discussed here: http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/jod/texts/flavianus.html )
Getting back to Paul the Deacon, let me assemble a few datapoints:
Paul served as tutor to Adelperga, the daughter of King Desiderius (756-774) and she became the wife of Arichis, Duke of Benevento.
With the fall of the Lombard kingdome in 774,
{Enter the Franks} Paul retreated to the monastery of Monte Cassino where he remained until 783.
In 776, Paul's brother, Arichis (Duke of Benevento), and other Lombard nobles revolted against Charlemagne. The revolt was suppressed, and Arichis was imprisoned.
Paul wrote to Charlemagne in 782, pleading for his brother. In 783, he traveled to Charlemagne's court to plead his brother's case in person.
Sometime between 785 and 787, he returned to Monte Cassino where he remained until his death in 799.
So, from 783 to possibly 787, he was at the court of Charlemagne - 2, 3 or 4 years.
It was said that Paul the Deacon greatly impressed Charlemagne who was in the process of surrounding himself with scholars AKA churchmen, such as peter of Pisa, Paulinus of Aquileia, Alcuin from England, Theodulf the Visigoth from Spain, Dicuil from Ireland. All of these surrounded Charlemagne from 775 to 805 or thereabouts.
Charlemagne was definitely up to something. OR, the Church was, and Charlemagne was just their puppet du jour.
During his time at Charlemagne's court,
Paul tutored Charles' daughter, Rotrud, in elementary Greek because she was supposed to marry Constantine VI of Constantinople but ended up not doing so.
Here comes a very interesting tidbit: At the request of
Angilram, Bishop of Metz and archchaplain of Charlemagne's court, Paul composed the "History of the Bishops of Metz."
AND:
After his return to Monte Cassino, Paul worked on an edition of the letters of Pope Gregory the Great (590-604) and, for
his friend Adalhard (Abbot of Corbie), he wrote a "Life" of Gregory, a commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict, and two volumes of "Homilies" that Charlemagne recommended to his own clergy for the Frankish Church. Paul's last work was "History of the Lombards" which wasn't completed because he died.
I find almost nothing easily available on Angilram, not even a Wikipedia entry. However, what catches my eye is that Paul wrote a "History" of the Bishops of Metz... which was probably a load of hooey. (This
Liber de episcopis Mettensibus has been recently edited and translated into English by Damien Kempf (Leuven, 2013))
More interesting is his alleged friendship with Adalhard.
Saint Adalard (or Adalard of Corbie) (c. 751 – 2 January 827) was son of Bernard the son of Charles Martel and half-brother of Pepin; Charlemagne was his cousin.
Adalard received a good education in the Palatine School at the Court of Charlemagne, and while still very young was made Count of the Palace. At the age of twenty he entered the monastery at Corbie in Picardy. In order to be more secluded, he went to Monte Cassino, but was ordered by Charlemagne to return to Corbie, where he was elected abbot. At the same time Charlemagne made him prime minister to his son Pepin, King of Italy, in the Carolingian Empire....
When, in 817, Bernard, son of Pepin, aspired to the imperial crown, Louis le Debonnaire suspected Adalard of being in sympathy with Bernard and banished him to Hermoutier, the modern Noirmoutier, on the island of the same name. After seven years Louis saw his mistake and made Adalard one of his chief advisers.
In 822 Adalard and his brother Wala founded Corvey Abbey ("New Corbie") in Westphalia.
It seems to me that this connection between Adalhard and Paul - who knew Greek - and Adalhard's visit to Monte Cassino, may very well be the link to how a chunk of Byzantine chronicles found their way into the "History of the Franks." Obviously, Adalhard had an interest in the "History of the Franks" itself - that is, actually giving them a nobility that they did not really deserve, and utilizing a real history of the times as the skeleton on which to hang this history was a way of validating it. No doubt, there were still plenty of tales in the Western Empire being handed down about the dreadful catastrophes, so including mention of them in concert with this history would make it seem all that much more real and consequential.
Did Adelhard write the "History of the Franks" with help from Paul the Deacon?
Did Paul the Deacon, and others at the scriptorium at Monte Cassino where there may have been Greek texts, then ensure that the parts of the Byzantine chronicles which included those elements were truncated? I.E. "lost"?
So, you see how a funny incident where Icedesert called my attention to the history of Paul the Deacon may have provided some clues to the problem.
