Peter of Eboli

Peter of Eboli (d. 1221).

Liber ad honorem Augusti (original codex : Burgerbibliothek 120 II, Bern).
De balneis Puteolanis.ulie.

Peter of Eboli was a teacher and physician at the court of Frederick Barbarossa’s son, Henry VI (the work on medical treatment by bathing in mineral springs entitled De balneis Puteolanis may be linked to his professional activity). He wrote the Liber ad honorem Augusti (also known as De rebus Siculis), in the form of a historico-eulogistic poem comprising 837 elegiac distichs. Written in 1195 and dedicated in 1196 to the Swabian emperor, it celebrates the long and victorious war Henry waged against Tancred of Lecce, a descendant of the Hautevilles, which ended in 1194 with the conquest of the kingdom by the Germans. The first two books of the work (remarkable from a stylistic point of view and original in the choice of meter, which is similar to that of the Carolingian court poet Ermoldus Nigellus) are devoted to the account of the emperor’s campaigns in southern Italy, while the third is an enthusiastic panegyric on Henry and his government. The illuminations embellishing the only extant manuscript containing the work - now in Switzerland, it is partly autograph - ‘are perfectly integrated with the poem and were certainly conceived, if not actually executed, by the poet himself. The work has, however, a number of notable defects, such as the systematic - and thus hardly credible - ridiculing of Tancred and his wife, Sybilla of Acerra; this reduces both the reliability of the poem as a historical record and its validity on an artistic level, although it does acquire great satirical power. Moreover, the excessive adulation of the emperor is decidedly cloying. Nonetheless, Peter’s conception of the greatness and necessity of the empire, which is the only power able to govern human society in a satisfactory manner, seems to be sincere, forerunning what was to be Dante’s vision of the empire.’ (Ferruccio Bertini).

 

MODERN EDITION

- Petrus de Ebulo, Liber ad honorem Augusti. Eine Bilderchronik der Stauferzeit aus der Burgerbibliothek Bern, Sigmaringen, 1994.