Marquardi Freheri in Laonici Chalcocondylæ descriptionem Germaniæ commentarius
A if they should not be persuaded of this, he himself would also watch over it together with the Venetians, sending them word that they were erring. Some were persuaded and, secretly returning from the Venetians, remained in their own places; but others, being kept under severe pressure at Tænarum, sent messengers to inquire what might be expected from the Pannonians. For the Venetians ceased not to encourage the Peloponnesians and the others, saying that as soon as the Pannonians had advanced from the Ister, they themselves would sail back into the Hellespont. However, when the king's governor had departed, the triremes of the Venetians sailed up to Lemnos, at the instigation of that Comnenus, an excellent man, who himself held the acropolis in Lemnos and had brought the ancient town of Lemnos under his own sway. When the leading men of Lemnos came to talk of purchasing the place with money, the Venetians were earlier in seizing the acropolis, and they sent this man, having proven himself good, to the Isthmus. Upon his advice, therefore, the Venetians sailed up to Lemnos, and he himself, having pressed on with an army from the mainland, caused everyone to depart from the city. And as they sailed up, they took the city of Cerceda. And they released the magistrates, the Zamplacones, having left behind a garrison, and having provisioned both themselves and the cities in the Peloponnese, they went on their way to the Peloponnese. These things indeed occurred in the Peloponnese during this winter.
Marquardi Freheri in Laonici Chalcocondylæ descriptionem Germaniæ commentarius
(Script. Rer. Germ. See above col. 75 sqq.)This passage of Laonicus the Athenian, as it notably pertains to the honor of the German people, is so filled with so many and such remarkable errors—not so much by copyists (whose faults we have endeavored to remedy as much as possible by the collation of three Palatine manuscript codices), as by the writer himself—a man not only a stranger in our Germany, but speaking of completely unknown matters, which he had received I know not whence by mere hearsay—that I much doubted whether I should admit him into this collection, though I sought and described him anxiously, much less spend any effort in explaining him with scholia. But however much he himself might not seem of such worth, the fatherland of Germany seemed of such value that we ought not defraud it of this commendation, however exotic the man may be: in which, whatever is true, of necessity it proceeded from the most common reputation of matters that are more than well-known (as the common saying goes) and discovered throughout the whole world. In which genre, had I been writing scholia, it would not have been difficult to heap up more, had I not thought it more excellent to maintain moderation. Furthermore, that the foot has stumbled in these rough places here and there is no wonder, especially having been deprived of that guide who alone could have extricated things from there: I mean our Leunclavius, the most expert of these writers; and who, to that extent, had transcribed that entire Laonicus with his own hand with diligent care while he was staying here. At what a price (alas!) would I redeem even one little hour having conferred with him on this passage! But to the matter at hand.
he hoped that the Pannonians would shortly be present with a great army to support him, he summoned the remainder of the tyrants of Asia to revolt. Amurates, the son of Mechmet, having marched out against the latter, began a campaign, and commanded Turachanes, the prefect of Thessaly, to march against the Isthmus of the Peloponnese, to destroy the Isthmus, and to fall upon the land of the Peloponnese, as much of it as happened to be under the rulers of the Greeks, and to drive them A out. He, therefore, taking the army of Thessaly and the region of the lake of Peraibia, arrived at the Isthmus; and finding it deserted, he destroyed it and, making an inroad into the Peloponnese, he ravaged the land itself. And arriving at Sparta, he overran and drove out those in Laconia. The King, having crossed into Asia, marched a second time against the Caramanian, and was ravaging and subduing his land. While these things were happening, George, the ruler of the Triballians, having come to speech with Jango B and the King of the Paeonians, and exhorting each of the nobles of Paeonia, urged them to campaign against Amurates, and promised to provide sufficient funds for this expedition to the Paeonians, which he indeed brought in to him. These things were furthered for him by Jango, who was friendly to the Greeks, as he happened also to be a friend to him. John, moreover, the King of Byzantium, was at war with the Januenses, having fallen out for the following reason, on account of the customs duties of Galata. There, the Januenses, having filled C the largest ships they had, and thirteen triremes, and having embarked about eight thousand of their hoplites, were sailing against Byzantium, wishing to capture it. And they were also campaigning against the Scythians who were around the Bosporus. For the Scythians were feuding with the people in their city, called Cafa, on the Bosporus, and were raiding and plundering. Because of which, having sent envoys to the King of the Scythians of that region, Atzikarenes, in order to come to an agreement regarding their differences—as nothing of what was required was coming about for them—they surrendered the city to the Italians, as the Januenses felt it to be a terrible D thing that the Scythians should harm their city beyond remedy. It happened that at the same time their discord with the Greeks was also occurring. They were preparing to campaign against both, as though to capture them. Having arrived at Byzantium, and having declared war upon the city of Constantine, they sailed on into the Euxine Sea and reached Cafa. There, then, having disembarked from the ships onto the Chersonese, they set off immediately to join battle with the Scythians. As they were exiting from the city, they advanced. There, the Scythians, as they saw the Januenses so
Vienna, for those traveling toward Tartessus (that is, the Rhine) and its mouths, certainly one must cross Prague of the Bohemians. However, Laonicus here, contrary to the custom of all other authors, makes the length of Germany from south to north, extending from Vienna in Austria as far as the German Ocean; and the breadth, from the extreme coast of Gaul into Denmark along the shores of the German Sea, from west to east. For (to mention this in passing), where the two codices have, the one indeed *Aaxian*, the other truly *Aisian*, the third has more correctly *Dania* (Denmark). A
Col. 77 A. *“Arept subzonon”* (Swift of foot). Not to the men of our time, or certainly scarcely so. Doubtless the ancients, especially the Greeks, Asiatics, and Orientals, excelled in the agility and swiftness of their feet. Concerning whose runners even the things that are read today almost surpass our belief. See Lipsius, Century 3, Epistle 59. B
Ibid. *“Eunomeitai he chora haute malista”* (This country is governed most excellently). He repeats this shortly below: *Eunomeitai malista de ethnon hon hemeis ismen* (governed most excellently of the peoples we know). Aeneas Sylvius in *Germany*, chapter 68: "We have seen your judgments; and we have often taken part in your councils regarding affairs of state. You administer all things both prudently and gravely, and you do not easily turn aside from the straight path. Nor are you lacking in civil laws, nor in pontifical rights; letters, too, and all studies of the liberal arts flourish among you." Yet formerly, there was no matter in which Germany had less praise than in its laws. For the laws of our ancestors that remain, which are plainly to be reckoned among the primary monuments of Germanic antiquity—the Alemannic, Bavarian, Saxon, Frankish, and others—besides the fact that they are harsh in their wording, they also in their very substance deviate farther from that highest equity: as though they had proceeded from warlike nations, which had been accustomed to prefer joining hand with sword rather than with law, and to expend their labor in camp-fortifications rather than in the subtle investigation of law, and (to use an Ennian word) were "War-potent" rather than "Wisdom-potent." Although for this negligence of laws, another and indeed greater praise succeeded them, because (as Tacitus says) good customs were more effective among them than the laws themselves were among others. Until at length, with the Roman orb subdued to the setting sun, they thought that laws, along with the empire, should be received as its instrument, and used as a bridle to rule those provinces. C Hence we see many of the laws of the Goths first, then of the Lombards, and finally of the Franks, translated from Roman ones: which the volume of the Carolingian laws in particular speaks to sufficiently, nor can the Saxon law itself hide it. However, throughout many centuries, Germany did not acknowledge, nor indeed have or see, the entirety of Justinian’s legislation: just as other Western provinces did not, as we have demonstrated elsewhere. The story is that Lothair the Saxon, having discovered the Pandects in the city of Amalfi in Apulia, was the first emperor to recall that law to light and use, at the urging of Irnerius, whom the Urspergensis mentions, and who was himself noted by Sigonius in book XIV, *On the Kingdom of Italy*. Concerning which we have also written more extensively elsewhere.
Ibid. *“Nobergon, Ampergon.”* The names of cities treated miserably, as they are naturally quite difficult for Greek men to say and write. A similar passage comes to mind from Benjamin of Tudela in his *Itinerary*, in the part where he touches upon Germany, which he notes was formerly called Aschenaz among his own people, concerning which see Drusius, 1 *Animadversiones*, chapter 41. "These," he says, "are the regions in Germany where there are colleges of Israelites, near the river Moselle and Komphilinai (he means Confluencia/Koblenz), and Odrancah, and Kuna, and Kotania, and Binga, and Garmezza (I think Germersheim), and Mastheram." And a little later: "There are besides Astranburk (perhaps Strasbourg) and Davirasburk (which M. Velserus, in book VI of his *Rerum Vindelicorum*, most happily explains regarding our Augusta Vindelicorum, as its outstanding pillar and glory), and Mandawah, and Pessinghes, and Bamburk, and Sar, and Rasenburk, which is also the end of the kingdom." From there, however, is the region of the other, Bohemia, which is now called Praga, and is the beginning of the land of Slavonia. Perhaps the names of peoples and cities have also been changed at some time. Who now knows those peoples of Germany whom Pope Gregory III enumerates in a certain epistle: "To all the nobles and the people of the provinces of Germany, the Thuringians, and the Thesis, and the Borthaci, and the Nistresi, the Unedredi, and the Lognais, the Sudnodi, and the Grasselti, or all those settled in the Eastern region." I no longer marvel at the nausea of the panegyrist, trembling even at our names: "Why should I mention," says Nazarius, "the Bracteri? Why the Chamavi, why the Cherusci, the Vangiones, the Alamanni, the Tubantes?" The names thunder with war, and a horror of barbarity finds its way into the very words. D
Ibid. *“Polis eudaimon”* (A blessed/prosperous city). Diodorus writes that certain villages in Hyrcania are called *Eudaimonas* (blessed) on account of the marvelous abundance of figs and other fruits. *Eudaimones chorai* (blessed lands) appear in Appian in his *Parthica*. *Eudaimones* (blessed/fortunate) islands near Arabia Felix are mentioned by Agatharchides. But the Romans also had "Felicem Juliam," "Felicitatem Juliam," colonies, lakes, and "felices" (fortunate) legions. Laonicus gave this epithet of "blessed" to Nuremberg, and to it alone. Hence one can estimate what the celebrity and splendor of the city must have been at that time: which, however, was later increased and amplified in many ways. Closer to our own age, Aeneas Sylvius, Cardinal of Siena, writing to Martin Mayer, J.C., not sparingly explains that "blessedness" to us with praise: "We cannot pass over," he says, "the town of the Noricans, intersected by the river Regnisia (it should be called Pegneso, for it is now given to the Franconians). Tell us, we ask (for you took a wife from here, as chaste as she is beautiful), what is the aspect of this city? what is its splendor, what its amenity, what its delights, what its culture? what is its form of government? what could anyone desire there for a city to be perfect in every respect? Who, to those arriving from Franconia-
A arranged in no order and paying no attention to any of them, turned their course the day before toward a certain river, and in that place in the countryside they were lodging. Nor had they established any guards for the camp, thinking that the Scythians would never reach such a pitch of daring as to wish to risk an engagement. There, as the first of their army did not wait for the rear-guards, so that the army might form in a front, but proceeded into the depths, making their way step by step, they led them against the enemies. The Scythians, therefore, pressed upon their first ranks there, as if fighting against these; they turned them at once by attacking, and pursued them as fast as each man’s feet could carry him. There they fell upon their own men, and turned these also to flight, and thus they reached the rear-guards. Having turned the whole army to flight, they were killing them, sparing no one, and taking everything they could by descending upon them, until they were saved into the city, so as not to be destroyed.
Having thus been freed from the war against the Scythians, the nomads in the Bosporus, they sailed toward Byzantium, reaching the city of Galatia, which is situated opposite Byzantium in Europe. And after deliberating in common about how they might capture the city by fighting, they filled the ships, and having armed themselves against the harbor of Byzantium, they brought the ships to the wall, as if they were going to capture the city from the ships. The Byzantines, for their part, prepared to defend themselves, and from the wall fought against the Januenses in a worthy manner. And as they attacked the wall from the ships, and tried to take it, they were unable to ascend the wall, as the Greeks were defending it with might. B There, as nothing went well for them, they dispersed and sailed back to Italy.
However, the city of the Januenses, Galatia, carried on a war for a long time with Byzantium, and both the Greeks and those from Galatia hurled cannonballs at one another. At that time, Leontares Joannes, having lunged fiercely at the walls of Galatia, shut it in and, having deprived it of all food and other necessities, and having successfully and bravely broken into many of their ships, he captured them. He brought these bound to King Joannes, who was at that time staying in the residence of Xylla. The captives were three hundred in number, whom he had seized at the rampart of Galatia. After these things, sending ambassadors to and fro concerning the vineyards outside of Galatia, and concerning their trade, so that the king might agree, the Januenses consented, favoring the king even more with one thousand gold pieces on account of the royal tower, which they had shattered with cannonballs during the time of the siege, C as well as the workshops in the middle,
- and from each of the two languages, the letter should match. But I have also sent friends into council. Another, instead of *Boemes* or *Boemias*, would prefer *Boemys*, whom I do not know if Laonicus would have wished to attribute to Germanic; others *Belyes* or *Beylag*, the Germanic name Fleming not sounding unlike this *Bleny*, if that were equally appropriate, as having come from the upper Germany. I, for my part, deposit this vexed passage, which men used to do for those in desperate straits, at the crossroads: and I entrust it to public piety or to its own fortune.
Col. 77 C. *This is a great race.* For all the Triones (as Sidonius speaks) poured into this place: truly the workshop of peoples. Nazarius in his *Panegyric to Constantine the Great*: B *Barbaria lies poured out on the side of the Gauls or in your bosom, an internally powerful nation, and second only to the Roman magnitude on earth.* A signal location, and unique for the honor of Germany, to which a Roman man might attribute a hearth second only to Rome, to which no other provincial, sycophant-like, had said anything similar, nothing second. But I fear to hold a wolf by the ears, and that this praise might be snatched from us by the Persians: to whom a Roman man would have given this eulogy not a little more readily than to the Germans, who, without a just leadership, are distracted into many peoples and are discordant among themselves. And if I am asked according to my own opinion, I do not hesitate to read with the last editor thus: *Barbaria lies poured out on the side of the Gauls in your bosom. But you, Constantine the Great, the Persians, an internally powerful nation and second only to the Roman magnitude on earth, implored your friendship no less timidly than amiably. There is no nation so fierce on earth that does not fear or love you.* In this way, the structure of the words and the sense are beautiful and consistent. But the Germans are also wont to be joined with the Parthians or Persians: both are enemies of the Roman people. *Enemies, 24. Dig. de capt. et postlim.* Themistius, *Oration V*. On coins, C Victoria is visited, inscribing on the shield fixed to the palm branch: *Vic. Ger.* and on others, *Vic. Par.*
Ibid. *Second in order of the Scythian Nomads.* Strabo compares the Germans with these in Book VII: *The greatest part of their food is from their herds, just as it is for the Nomads, so that imitating them, etc.*
Ibid. *And if he were of the same mind, and under one ruler.* Aeneas Sylvius in *Germania*, cap. 72: *Philosophers abhor a plurality of princes: you rejoice in it. For although you confess him to be your emperor and king and lord, he seems to rule only precariously, and no power is his. You obey him only as much as you wish, and you wish for very little. Liberty is pleasing to all in common, nor do the cities or the princes grant to the emperor what is his: he has no taxes, no treasury. Everyone wishes to be the moderator and arbiter of his own affairs. Hence frequent discords arise among you, and constant wars break out: from which emerge plunder, fire, slaughter, and a thousand kinds of evils: just as it must needs occur where many dominate.* Petrus de Andlo, Book I, D *of the Roman empire*, last chapter: *I speak confidently, if the imperial princes would faithfully assist the emperor, as an advocate of the Church, as they were wont to do in ancient times, every contrary power would surely seem small. Then not only Greece, but Egypt and Chaldæa would tremble, and the farthest regions of the Saracens would be terrified. For with the Roman eagle stretching out its wings from Europe, not even the griffins of Asia and Africa would be sufficiently safe.*
Col. 77 D. *The earth shakes.* Pliny writes the same concerning Gaul. Yet the *Annals* frequently note many earthquakes, but they are undoubtedly more frequent and more violent in Asia and the East, where they even overturn entire cities.
Ibid. *It is governed according to these things like the Romans.* Agathias long ago of the Franks: *And they use in most things a Roman form of government, and the same laws, and in other things likewise they observe the same in contracts, marriages, and the worship of the divine.* And to retrace the matter more deeply, Florus, Bk. IV, cap. 12: *They had accepted our customs more than our arms under the Emperor Drusus.* And truly, from the perpetual wars with the Romans, and from the embassies, treaties, and even commercial exchanges that followed, the Germans soon drew a great deal in regard to language and life. What of the fact that Roman colonies were brought to our shores, and blood was mixed through intermarriage, and captives exported to Rome, and slaves serving as soldiers among the Romans, guards to princes, made the language and life common to both peoples? Nor did the Germans begin to mingle with the natives only in the Roman provinces, but truly in Germany itself, especially around the borders, the Romans learned to become accustomed to ours. Whence in the most ancient ancestral laws, *Salica*, tit. 43, § 7: *If a Roman man who is a possessor, that is, who possesses private property in the district where he dwells, has been killed, the one who is convicted of having killed him shall be judged liable for four denarii.* If anyone kills a *Roman tributarius*, etc., and elsewhere: *If a Roman man, etc. If a Frankish man, etc.* In these very ancient laws, besides the fact that they are written in a Latin that is at least somewhat refined, one can observe many traces and lines of justice derived from the Romans. Finally, when the empire was overturned and plundered by the Germanic nations, the Goths, Lombards, Franks, all victors and successors of the Romans, took for themselves their customs, rites, ceremonies, formulas, and everything else. And after these, the true Germans themselves, the Suevi, I say, and the Saxons, when they heard themselves called kings and Cæsars of the Romans, affected that ancient Latial majesty and the *cothurnus* with all their study: as Ditmar writes in Book IV of the Emperor Otto III, that he, recalling the ancient customs of the Romans, which had already in large part been deleted, did many things in imitation of the ancient princes: to such an extent that he would even sit alone at a table shaped in a semicircle (which the ancients called a *Sigma*) and placed in a raised position. Nor for any other reason did he also [affect] the Latin language in
A destroyed, so that they might possess them by image or sign of the King of the Greeks. The war between the Byzantines and the Genoese had such an outcome.
When that war had ended, John, the King of the Greeks, ordered envoys to go to the Roman pontiff named Eugenius, requesting that a council be celebrated, wherein they might decently settle the dispute of religion between both parties. He was attempting in this way to test the minds of the Westerners, to see if very many would make it possible for concord to be established with the Greeks in the religious controversy. The envoys came into Germany. At that time the Germans were gathered at the city of Basel, dissenting in their sentiments against the pontiff Eugenius: whom, rejecting him, they created as pontiff a man by the name of Felix, a man among them of primarily observed probity. Him they declared pontiff by the consent of the council. Both pontiffs therefore outfitted triremes, and they summoned John, the King of Byzantium. For each wished for the council to be conducted under himself, and for the controversy of religion which had intervened with the Greeks to be finished. When triremes had come from both, the king indeed sent away the legation of the Council of Basel with kind words and placidly, saying that he had already previously spoken with the Romans and Venetians and the rest of Italy, who all told him to set out for Rome. Therefore, taking up the priests of Byzantium and the wisest and most learned of the Greeks, he sailed into Italy. When he had come to the Venetians, setting out from there he was borne to C Ferrara, where he had learned that the pontiff Eugenius was tarrying. This city is distant from the Venetians by about three hundred stadia. It has dukes and princes who are of the family of the Estenses; it excels in riches and the multitude of its men. It is washed by the river Po. It is subject to the Roman pontiff. It receives the dukes or princes, whom we have just now mentioned. That man, who at that time held the sum of affairs in the city, was studious of equity and in other matters not imprudent. A calamity of this sort happened to him. He had a wife, the daughter of the Duke of Monferrato, outstanding in beauty and elegance of form. The conduct of the woman, before that had befallen her, glittered with remarkable modesty. She was raging with love for the stepson, who was the illegitimate son of the duke. Who, when he came to her later than is the custom of those who live more luxuriously in Italy, the youth among his pastimes provoked her to love. He, understanding that he was loved by the woman, himself also burned with love for the woman, and for some time had the habit of lechery with his stepmother. But a certain maidservant, as she knew of their love, reports the whole matter to her lover. He indeed was very dear to the duke, and was treated by him D very honorably. He therefore, when he knew of the matter
A *Pépet t' dllà zárta*. Even metals, where Charles Martel, the Frankish mayor of the palace, [found] every kind, which Tacitus once denied existed. But more on these elsewhere. That remark by Dionysius and Solio concerning night-shining birds is worthy of laughter:
Which feeds (a wonder) birds with gleaming wings, By whose guidance the windings of the ways are seen at night.
*Ibid. B On the Bohemians, the Czechs.* That he makes Hungary contiguous to Bohemia stems from the fact that he includes within the Bohemians the Moravians, who, being subject to the kingdom of Bohemia, touch upon Hungary. As for his saying that the Bohemians are called Czechs, this is from their own language and that of the Poles, for whom a Bohemian is *Czech*, just as the Hungarian is called *czéh*; the *CZ* is pronounced like *Tsch* in *Tschudus*. It is said that this name is derived from Czech, the first king and founder of the nation. Just as from Lech, the first leader and author of his own [people], the Poles are called *Lechii* and *Lechitae* by the Ruthenians and other Slavs, as Alexander Guaguinus noted.
I cannot pass over the *Nemitzos* here, whom Zonaras and Glycas write were a Celtic nation and served in the military at Constantinople: *A "They were... near a tower by the city gate which is called the Cairo gate, keeping guard, the Nemitzos (the Nemitzos are a Celtic tribe); these secretly conferred with those around the Comneni regarding the betrayal of the city."*
And immediately, *A "from the Nemitzos"*; and again, *A "by the Nemitzos."* The interpreter translates this as the "Gallic nation," and yet in the index he suspected "Germans," and thus the Nemetes, the inhabitants of the Rhine. But our Leunclavius noted in the margin of Glycas that the Teutons are called *Nemitzos* in the Slavonic language. And Ortelius, too, in his *Thesaurus*, deems that they should be considered *Niemeches*, that is, Germans.
*Ibid. B They agree with the Germans.* It is also a matter of Laonikos's own reliability that the Hungarians use the same arms and customs as the Germans.
*Ibid. C And as for themselves.* What he writes here, that the Hungarians are called Pannonians in their own language—I do not know if that was once true; today it certainly is not. *Nagiar* is said by the Hungarians to be the disyllable for a Hungarian; *Magiarok*, Hungarians.
*Ibid. D Roman High Priest.* Eugenius IV, in whose epitaph this very thing is read:
Before his sacred feet the one offered himself, the second from the East, The other from the West, each in his turn a Caesar. The one that he might receive the Latin proofs of faith, The other that he might bind his head with golden honor.
*Ibid. D To the kings of the Celts.* This ought by all means to be read [as pertaining] to the Franks rather than to the Celts or Gauls. Nor is this so much merit for the liberation of Spain from the Saracens (as Laonikos thinks) as it is for the defense of Italy itself and Rome. For when Luitprand, king of the Lombards, was besieging Rome, Pope Gregory III did not now flee to the customary aid of the Constantinopolitan emperor (whom he had deprived of communion and empire on account of the banished images of the time), but to the princes of the Franks holding the Gauls; at whose request Luitprand lifted the siege. Pippin, son of Martel, after his slothful master Childeric was shut away in a monastery in the year 753, took care to be elected and sent word to Zacharias, the successor of the said Gregory: who, mindful of the benefit received, soon assented and absolved all those bound by oath to Childeric (C. *Alius*, 45, q. 6). Then Charlemagne, son of Pippin, requested by Hadrian (c. *Hortatu*, 23, q. 8), defeated the king of the Lombards, Desiderius, in a distinguished war and destroyed that kingdom in the year 776. Then, many years later, invoked by Leo III, he restored him to his see: by whom, in turn, he was declared emperor, and crowned at Rome on the Lord's Day [Christmas] in the year 801.
*Col. 80 D. The vote was changed.* Laonikos received [this information] from the Latins by hearsay regarding the translation of the empire and the institution of the electors; which I do not wonder at, since Photius also puts the Donation of Constantine into his Nomocanon. However, the empire was hereditary in the line of Charlemagne for one hundred and twenty years, up to Conrad I, who, dying in the year 920, voluntarily transferred the empire to Henry the Fowler, Duke of the Saxons, with whom he was waging an unjust war. In the family of this Henry I (concerning whom is the constitution in dist. 63), the empire was hereditary up to Otto III, his great-grandson, who, lacking sons, instituted seven electors in the imperial diets of the princes, and [decreed] that the election should take place at Frankfurt, with the approval of Pope Gregory V, who was a Saxon by nation. Thus, in the year 1300, Henry, Duke of Bavaria, was the first to be elected according to that constitution, and was the second of this name. This is from C. M. in the *Additions to the Gloss* on c. *Venerabilem, De election.* and c. *1, De jurejur.*
But now (for it is pleasing to attach this slight digression to the foregoing), even if Charlemagne had been made an old and legitimate emperor, if ever one was, not only by the right of war which he had waged against the Lombards, *amunomano*, and by the will of the S.P.Q.R. and the coronation of the pontiff, but had, moreover, abundantly confirmed his right by a transaction with the Empress Irene and a division of the empire made on sure terms between them—to which the subsequent emperors Nicephorus and Basil also subscribed—and therefore the Byzantine legates had openly saluted him as *basileus*, and it was generally agreed and long observed between them that the Byzantines and our own [emperors] should call each other Augusti and indeed brothers; nevertheless, that envious and ambitious nation gradually tried to strip our Caesars of that title, and to write only themselves down as *basileis* and *autokratores Romaion* in diplomas and on coins, and to boast themselves lords of the world. And our own people, they designated only as Latins and Alemanni and Franks, and our Caesar—with a fiction no less inept than it is novel—as *riga Alamanias e Frangrias*. Whence it happened that our people, in turn, repaying like with like, would call them nothing other than kings of the Greeks and emperors of Constantinople, as we see in Helmoldus, Otto of Freising, Petrus de Vineis, and others. And who could read without indignation the Greek
A and had learned it for himself, speaks to his master: "O master, I wish that I might rather be buried in the earth than see such lawless deeds being done in your house. For I beheld your lady consorting with your illegitimate son in intimacy, committing abominations. Take care, then, how you might be rid of this woman, so that you no longer dwell with her, and send the young man away as well." When he heard this, the duke was struck with astonishment at what had occurred. He desired to know in what manner he had learned of the event, and he himself said that he wished to see it and be an eyewitness. Thereupon, having made a small hole in the chamber ceiling from above, so that they might not be aware of the opening, he watched from above his wife consorting with his son in the bed. When he had seen and learned what was occurring, he first sent for his wife; and when she was present, he spoke as follows: "O woman, what kind of demon has driven you to such madness, that you should consort with my son, most unholy of all the women we have known, and how do you think that this is proper for me and for you in our marriage?" B She replied, "But, O master, I do not deny that I have committed such things in our marriage, but I confess that these things are true. I alone became the cause of this, I myself harboring most unholy deeds in my mind, having been led [to it] by a greater necessity, I know not how, arriving at this, and drawing the young man along, against his will, into that most unholy love. And I myself would justly pay the penalty. I beseech you, however, not to plot irreparable things against the young man, who is in no way the cause of this." Then, having immediately sent for the youth after this, he asked if the things he had caught him in the very act of doing were just. And as he could not deny it, being struck with terror, he turned to seeking forgiveness. C Following the youth was a man who was also privy to their love, and knew of it, and who continued to serve them both; he was a mimic who had also from the beginning spurred the youth on toward this love. And having summoned him, the master asked him whence he had brought himself to do so most unholy a work. He said that [the master] had taken the beloved of his son and consorted with her. Because of this, it was just that he had done such things. For the son of the master did indeed love a woman in the city, but he had not yet consorted with this woman. And when the father learned that she was most beautiful, he later forced her and consorted with her. The mimic had urged on the young man toward the love of that woman. Having learned these things, then, as each one was, he ordered them to cut off the head of the son, and after this immediately that of the woman, and later that of the mimic. D In such a misfortune did the ruler of the city fall, and by such a calamity.
A lord of lords has established himself and been proclaimed king of kings, in order to envelope himself in a monarchy and be lord of the surrounding powers, imagining the Antonines and Augusti in his mind, and extending his desire toward their authority, and speaking almost like Alexander, 'all these things here and there are mine'? Is this Nicetas Choniates.
What, then, of the fact that when Emperor Frederick was seeking passage for his army (which our own Godfrey of Cologne noted under the year 1187), the Byzantine Emperor signified through his envoys that he was, after God, the lord of lords? And that if he wished to place the Roman Empire into his hands, and receive it from that place as a man, he would grant him passage through his lands and sufficient market access. As if our people did not derive the name of their principate and the succession of the Antonines and Augusti rather from old Rome than from his new Constantina (which, as Jornandes asserts in his *Getica*, did not even arise without the aid of the Goths)! And if, even leaving Rome—which ancient princes not infrequently did, preferring Milan, Trier, or Paris to Rome—they had preferred to live elsewhere, and had even ceded Rome to another for habitation, just as Emperor Zeno once did to Theodoric the Goth; should not the court and following of the Caesar, and where he holds his curia, as our writers say, and in short, where the Caesar is, be considered Rome? For so it seemed enough, that B Germany, after it was from that point an enemy to the auspices of the city, and having been spared by the beautiful, when Henry, the son of Frederick Barbarossa, had exercised Roman virtue—no less than Carthage—in continuous wars, and as it had always remained so insuperable to the Romans, who greedily sought the title of German, preferring it to others—a land triumphed over rather than conquered—and having fixed for them a limit of victories beyond which they could no more pass than they could the Parthian or Persian, at the flows of the Rhine and the Danube; then on the other hand, it itself, of its own accord, attacked Romania by sending in countless thousands of people like a storm; and not only did it wrest all the western provinces from the Romans, over which, as colonies led out from itself, it dominates to this day under the various names of Franks, Lombards, Goths, Angles, Burgundians, and Normans, so that all of Europe now seems to be nothing other than a certain Great Germany; but it also occupied Italy itself and the city, the mistress of the empire and its seat, with force and arms more than once; and at length it legitimately obtained the title and dignity of the empire.
So it is that the Roman Empire, which could not capture the Germans, was captured by their virtue; and those who were once enemies to the Romans are now the victors; and what was once Barbaric to the Romans, as they themselves proclaimed, an object of contempt—but in truth a source of fear—is now, by its arts and customs, the most cultivated and is the seat and citadel of the empire. But if it should also please one to examine the amplitude of the dominion of both, although that pertains not to this question (for what if the empire were to be reduced to such straits, I will not say as C the Roman provinces, all of which, from Epidamnus to Thessalonica, he demanded, and ordered that naval auxiliary forces be sent to the Germans fighting in Palestine, declaring present war if they did not do what was commanded—which Choniates describes at length). What of the fact that not many years later the empire itself and its royal seat, Constantinople, was occupied by the Germans under Baldwin, Count of Flanders; while the Greeks were meanwhile forced into the straits of Nicaea and Trebizond; and it was possessed by his posterity for more than fifty years? I shall not add that they were eventually stripped of their empires—Nicene, Trapezuntine, and Byzantine—by the Turks all the more quickly, and were utterly destroyed and wiped out; whereas German virtue, hitherto unconquered, not only kept its own country safe, but also served as a wall and bulwark for the other provinces of the West against the deluge of that most savage race; a fact which we recognize depends not on the display of human strength, but on divine aid alone.
Since, however, empires and kingdoms, if they are not just, are nothing but great robberies, it will be easy to judge which of these better maintained the name of a legitimate prince: whether he who, for the most part, has no just succession or election, but sometimes through magical lots and other evil arts, with an usurped tyranny, destroys a true prince (if he be even a brother) by dagger or poison, or (to speak more mildly) blinds or castrates him, or (to speak most mildly) tonsures him and thrusts him into a monastery, and thus wickedly seizes the empire, governs it worse, and, having done the worst, loses it again with a similar outcome; or