The Cronaca di Partenope and the Kingdom of Naples: Contributions of and to Brazilian historiography in the 21st century

Abstract

This article reflects on aspects of Brazilian medieval historiography in the twenty-first century and proposes an analysis of Ms. Italien 301 Cronaca di Partenope (or P₂). This manuscript presents the first narrative about Naples written in the vernacular between 1350 and 1390. It starts with the question: "How can this study contribute to medieval studies in Brazil?" Also mentioned are discussions about digital access to the manuscript and the skills necessary to analyze it. The conclusions show that in thematic dossiers published in Brazil between 2012 and 2015 themes such as power, political tensions, and their ramifications predominate. The contributions of this study point to an expansion of the understanding of the history of the Italian Peninsula and to reflections about tools and criticism of forms of access to documentation.

Keyword:
Cronaca di Partenope; Fourteenth Century; Brazilian Historiography

Resumo

Este artigo faz uma reflexão sobre aspectos da historiografia medievalística brasileira no século XXI e propõe uma análise do Ms. Italien 301 Cronaca di Partenope (ou P₂). Esse manuscrito apresenta a primeira narrativa, escrita em vernáculo entre 1350 e 1390, sobre Nápoles. Parte-se desta questão: "Em que este estudo pode contribuir para os estudos medievais no Brasil?". Também são abordadas discussões sobre o acesso digital ao manuscrito e as habilidades necessárias para a análise. As conclusões apontam que em dossiês temáticos publicados no Brasil entre 2012 e 2015 predominam temas como poderes, tensões políticas e suas ramificações. Assim, as contribuições deste estudo apontam para uma expansão da compreensão da história da Península Itálica e para reflexões sobre os instrumentos de trabalho e uma crítica sobre as formas de acesso à documentação.

Palavras-chave:
Cronaca di Partenope; século XIV; historiografia brasileira

This article deals with the way Brazilian medievalists have related the political and the literary in recent research. According to Almeida e Cândido da Silva, this involves studying power by looking at the basis of social ties, which this includes analyzing "the political dimension in literary sources."¹ In the article published in 2014 in Mélanges de l'École française de Rome an extensive overview of the foundation of research groups and laboratories was presented, as well as about bibliographic production resulting from the intensive process of producing doctorates in the area of medieval studies in Brazil between 2004 and 2014 (Almeida; Cândido da Silva, 2014). However, what can effectively be called 'literary sources' in the Middle Ages and, furthermore, how to locate a document such as Cronaca di Partenope in this classification?

To answer this question a strategy was chosen which can be divided into two paths: the first aims to dialogue directly with the proposed dossier Perspectives and Challenges of Medieval History in Brazil. Based on an analysis of thematic dossiers in reference journals in the area of history it is intended to analyze how Brazilian medievalists, between 2012 and 2015, exposed the construction of their objects of research and their references to analyze "the political dimension of literary sources." It is expected that this path will provide elements to characterize Brazilian historiographic production. This historiography presents instigating questions for the analysis of documents from the medieval period.

The selected bibliography will be collated with an analysis of one of the manuscripts of Cronaca di Partenope, available on-line at the Gallica Portal in the National Library of France. Cronaca, written by Bartholomeo Caracciolo-Carafa, consists of a narrative which runs from Antiquity to the author's present. It is the first work in the vernacular about Naples and was written around 1350.²

This article will take the following path: first, the characteristics inherent to contemporary research in medieval history will be analyzed, including problematizing digital access to the manuscript. What skills are imposed on the researcher by this form of access? What does the Cronaca explain about the Kingdom of Naples in the fourteenth century? How can this study contribute to medieval studies in Brazil?

It is important to highlight that this form of analysis was not constructed with the aim of separating Brazilian historiography from what is produced outside of Brazil. Rather it is intended to contribute to this objective: encouraging the reading of national production and pointing to future projects based on legitimately prepared research problems.

The proposed bibliographic focus covers the following periodicals/dossiers: Revista Brasileira de História/Church and State (2012); Anos 90/The normative universe and relations of power in the Middle Ages: doctrines, rules, laws, and conflict resolution between the fifth and fifteenth centuries (2013); Territórios & Fronteiras/ The faces of Western monachism (2014); Varia Historia/Towards a new history of the medieval Church (2015); Revista Signum/New theoretical and methodological landscapes in contemporary Medieval studies (2015). All of these journals have the merit of making their content freely available online and are well evaluated in Qualis/Capes. Fortunately, Brazilian medieval production is not restricted to these journals and dossiers. Alternative surveys are possible, which consider free and online journals, such as Diálogos Mediterrânicos (UFPR), Acta Scientiarum Educação (UEM), and Brathair (UEMA), just to cite some examples.

WHICH DOCUMENTS, WHICH POWERS, WHICH LITERATURES?

Considering only the Brazilian historians who published in the above mentioned dossiers, the bibliographic corpus consists of a total of 19 articles. It is important to consider that the Church and State dossier, from the 2012 RBH, was not exclusively dedicated to the Middle Ages, although it did contain two relevant texts. Moreover, in the five dossiers an institutional diversity is perceptible which corroborates Almeida e Cândido da Silva's argument (2014): of the 19 texts, 14 represented authors from Higher Level Education Institutions (State and Federal) from practically all the regions in Brazil. Something that was perceptible was the dialogue of those who have obtained doctorates during the last ten years with those from the 1990s. Moreover, an internationalization was also found. The dossiers selected for analysis contained 10 articles by non-Brazilian researchers (translated and/or in their original languages, such as Spanish or French).

Furthermore, considering the chronological focus proposed for this article - generically called the 'final centuries' of the Middle Ages -, not all the 19 texts published in those dossiers covered the same choice. For this reason, it is not proposed to present here an exhaustive description of the 19 articles.

Interest falls on analyzing elements identified by Andréia Cristina Lopes Frazão da Silva as 'extra-textual and textual data' from documents with which Brazilian historians work or have worked. This author - who wrote the article "A proposal for the historic reading of textual sources in qualitative research," published in the dossier in Signum - covers one of the stages of the historiographic operation - the collection of data. Moreover, it also covers the search for the 'immediate circumstances' of the production of the analyzed document, with which this document dialogues, in other words, their target/idealized public. According to her, historians should be concerned with the following steps: focus on a theme, attention to the words which appear in the document and which are related to the theme, the argumentation, and the narrative elements (Frazão da Silva, 2015, pp. 131-153).

These concerns or steps taken in empirical research are perceptible in historiography in a general manner. Power is the focus of analysis of most of the articles published in the issue of Anos 90. The proposal of the dossier is to analyze the normative universe and relations of power in the Middle Ages. In this aspect, the texts collected here are not necessarily concerned with the argumentative construction of the legitimation of a certain power, but rather the way groups in dispute, conflict, or organizations act in relation to heterogeneous circumstances. The arguments orbit between themes such as 'public power' (ranging from the process of the 'monachization of the bishopric' to the fight against hunger in the High Middle Ages), 'political culture' (from the constitution of the female cloister in Castile in the thirteen century to the notion of the common good in Italian cities in the Lower Middle Ages) and 'normatization and identity' (from the fight against simony and the holding of councils and the formation of a religious order).

In the text "Relations of power, monachism, and episcopal authority in Provence during the fifth century," Rossana Alves Baptista Pinheiro, defending that there was a process of the monachization of the episcopate in the region of Provence, considers that the election of monks as bishops was not random. To the contrary, it involved a strategy of linking the aesthetic life to the consolidation of episcopal authority. To reach this conclusion she analyzes a diversified set of documents, such as hagiographies, the minutes of councils, and the so called conferences of John Cassian (360-435) (Pinheiro, 2013, pp. 19-42). In the text "The 'Moral Economy' and the fight against hunger in the High Middle Ages," based on the analysis of three Carolingian Capitulares, Marcelo Cândido da Silva points to a progressive process of the adoption of an administrative and governmental awareness by the Frankish kings. Administration and government could not be understood as separate from moral questions which can be seen in the constant reference and determination that masses be said to resolve problems of a material order, such as hunger or the distribution of food. Nevertheless, what the author points to is that the characteristic moralizing of these documents does annul administrative experience aimed at the 'equilibrium of society' (Cândido da Silva, 2013b, pp. 43-74).

These two articles point to an understanding of public power as a sphere of government in which a group is constituted that, once legitimated, acts in order to maintain itself in power and which also involved aspects which extrapolated personalist actions. In other words, for the first case, the transformation of monks into bishops occurred to a great extent because among the monks were educated men who knew how to construct a discourse about themselves as apt to exercise the top hierarchical function. In the second case, although it was another type of power and government, the author identified the use of wide-ranging measures, with the responsibility of feeding the starving or the need to regulate the maximum prices for bread, for example, as an accumulative process of the expression of power and administrative experience.

In the dossier published in 2015 in the journal Varia Historia, there is also reflection that goes well with the attempt established here to think about power in the Middle Ages through Brazilian historiography.³ This is a text by Leandro Duarte Rust. A specialist in the history of the medieval papacy with vast production about the theme, he analyzes the consolidation of Gregory VII (1020-1085, pope from 1073 until this death) as a 'man-monument' though the historiography from the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. Moreover, in counterpart to the enthronement of Gregory VII as the 'ruler' of the eleventh century, Rust shows that texts contemporary to the election of this pope offered possibilities of reading to understand the construction of epithets for this character. Among the analyses present in this article, it interests us how the writer worked with documents and identified elements to problematize power as a territory in dispute, even under the auspices of a narrative. Rust analyzed the text Ad Heinricum IV Imperatorem libri, written by Benzo, Bishop of Alba, who died in 1089. He concludes that the text of Benzo de Alba, produced "in the heat of the death of Gregory VII" (1085), generated the production of 'Gregorian' texts to rebuke his arguments (the cases of Liber Ad Amicum and Vita Papae Gregorii VII). In the political and narrative disputes about how Gregory had won, Rust then identified the characteristics which were used in nineteenth century historiography to transform that pope into a type of historiographic monument of the Middle Ages: reformer, governor, responsible for the centralization of the eleventh century church; which affirmed papal power over temporal power, etc. (Rust, 2015, pp. 21-51).

Based on what has been presented until now, it is possible to perceive that in the research carried out by Brazilian historians disputes and/or political legitimation are the focus of analysis both based on normative documentation, such as the Carolingian capitularies, and on narrative documentation, such as texts about the ascension of Gregory VII. In relation to the last aspect, this article dialogues more closely with two authors: Adriana Zierer and André Miatello.

In the Signum dossier, Adriana Zierer published a text in which it is possible to identify how working with a narrative text, one that is eminently political and commissioned to promote a dynasty in its initial phase of being established, that of Avis, can assume multiple contours of reading. In presenting the starting points to analyze the chronicle written by Fernão Lopes in the fifteenth century, Zierer highlighted the "immediate circumstances" of the text by pointing to "the motive of the production of a document at a determined epoch, to whom it was addressed, to whom it was destined, and with what purpose" (Zierer, 2015, pp. 102-130). In summary, Zierer lists a series of elements to support her argument, which consists of stating that Fernão Lopes always associates D. João I with good and with God in order to legitimate and strengthen a political group. She treats this political dimension of the chronicle through references to the so-called history of the imaginary and the 'political imagination.' By highlighting how diabolic and Christian forces were characterized, and with whom they were associated in the document, Zierer proposed an analysis of power based the symbols attributed to this power.⁴

In addition to Adriana Zierer, it is important to add the synthesis proposed by Marcella Lopes Guimarães in her article "Chronicle of a historical genre," published in 2012 in the journal Diálogos Mediterrânicos. According to her, the Iberian chronicles of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries presented the following characteristic traits: "perspectives of the past, the Reconquest, translations, memory of a kingdom, and a narrative justification, [and] we can add: succession, tradition, and truth" (Guimarães, 2012, p. 68). She also points to the relationships which 'later medieval' chronicles establish with the Christian literary tradition, "readopted and recreated by votaries, aimed at the truth, even though they incorporated fictional elements which serve this truth" (ibidem, p. 70).⁵

André Miatello, who analyzes another peninsular space, the Italian cities of the Lower Middle Ages, proposes distinct directions for understanding politics through narrative documents. His reflections about the actions of the mendicant friars in the thirteenth century conflicts give great importance to rhetoric as an expression of political ideals.

In an article published in the 2012 RBH dossier, he analyzes not only the political dimension of literary sources, but also political writings intentionally published as such, as is the case of the work Tractatus de morali principis institutione [About the moral instruction of the prince]. This treatise written by the Dominican Vicente de Beauvais, finished around 1263, discusses, amongst other subjects, the origin of royal power and the functionality of the position of the king, privileged themes in Miatello's analysis. A thematic focus which circumscribes the article under the auspices of reflections on Christian royalty in the thirteen century and on public power through the moral instruction of rulers (Miatello, 2012, pp. 225-246).

This approach is part of wider and more diversified reflections which he makes about the relationship between the common good/politics and rhetoric in Italian cities in the thirteen and fourteenth centuries.⁶ In an article published in Anos 90 Miatello states:

the historical understanding of the expression common good and common utility offers us the chance of overcoming, or at least, surpassing the limits of erudite sources, strikingly theoretical, and considering the sources of practice, in which are contemplated systems of government, the social actions of various historic actors, discourses of power, and the practices which call into question power, establish it, and remodel it. (Miatello, 2013b, p. 182)

Based on this statement it can be considered that, for this author, there is a division between theoretical sources - such as treatises prepared within universities, the case of the work of Boaventura de Bagnoreggio analyzed by the author in question in 2010⁷ - and practical sources - the case analyzed by the same author in an article published in the journal Territórios & Fronteiras in 2014. In the latter article, Miatello follows a path to analyze the limits or the reach of sermons in the context of the actions of mendicants in Italian cities. For this reason, he looked at some facets of the problems caused and/or faced by the emergence of these new subjects - preachers - in relation to pastoral activities in an urban environment. Highlighted among these aspects are the characteristics of the "authority of pastoral office" and also "the social reach of preaching" (Miatello, 2014, pp. 112-131).

Is it possible to understand and classify royal chronicles, such as the one analyzed by Adriana Zierer and Cronaca di Partenope, as 'sources of practice'? Considering them as discourses of power (in other words, texts which were prepared in Palace environments and/or under royal commission) and which aimed, at least in the case of Crônica de D. João I, to legitimate a newly born dynasty, it was believed that it was possible to understand the work written at the command of King Robert as a 'source of practice.'

Given the analysis of the Ms Cronaca di Partenope, it is necessary to systematize information obtained so far in the bibliographic survey proposed in this article:

• 1. Academic journals of reference in Brazilian historiography, such as Varia Historia, Anos 90, and Territórios & Fronteiras recently opened space to Brazilian historiographic production about the Middle Ages. This opening is crowned at the moment with Revista Brasileira de História's proposal and the dossier about medieval studies in twenty-first century Brazil:

• a. These spaces showed dialogues between researchers from distinct generations and between national and foreign production;

• b. The themes have considerably orbited around political questions.

• 2. In relation to approaches which are considered as political phenomena:

• a. There is significant interest in themes which deal with the political dimension of narrative documents, such as chronicles and hagiographies;

• b. There are approaches which consider the constitution of political spheres in very circumscribed spaces, such as monasteries and religious orders, or wider ones such as the Frankish kingdoms and the Italian 'cities' and 'communes;'

• c. There is a geographic predominance: the Iberian Peninsula and France.

• 3. The authors who have published texts in the dossiers listed here have produced frequently and to an extent together: this is influenced by and, at the same time, the consequence of the expansion of networked research laboratories, such as the laboratory of Medieval Studies, or research networks, such as the recently founded Latin-American Network of Medieval Studies. In this aspect, authors such as André Miatello, Andréia Frazão, Cláudia Bovo, Leandro Duarte Rust, Marcelo Cândido da Silva, Maria Filomena Coelho, and Néri de Barros Almeida are recurrent names in dossiers about medieval history published in Brazil recently.⁸

Based on the findings here we consider that for the study in question, the Brazilian historiography cited here contributes significantly to endorse the analysis of Cronaca di Partenope as a narrative/literary document in light of its characteristics and political motivations. As a result, on the horizon of this text is an attempt to explain intra and extra-textual questions, identifying categories which can be analyzed and explaining the construction of a research problem, and principally paying attention to the expression of an intended government through a text. Nevertheless, in spatial-chronological terms, only the approaches made by André Miatello approximate the object of study of this research. In this case there is a significant difference in terms of political phenomena observed/observable: the political and urban conurbations of the North of the Italian Peninsula. Thus it is worth repeating the question: 'How can this study contribute to Medieval Studies in Brazil?' At the beginning, it is possible to answer by stating that this study throws light on a region that is little studied by Brazilian historians. However, the present proposal aims to go beyond a response using the argument of the 'absence.'

THE CRONACA DI PARTENOPE AND DIGITAL ACCESS TO TEXTS OF THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD

Returning to the brief information provided until the moment about the document, it is possible to identify its author, when it was written, and, based on the studies of Samantha Kelly (2011), to trace the history of the manuscript of Cronaca di Partenope. Kelly summarizes what is known about Bartholomeo Caracciolo-Carafa as follows: he was an official of the king and the son of an official of the king; he also enjoyed political and ecclesiastical importance due to the participation of his family in the Naples community. She also highlights that Bartholomeo read texts in Latin and translated them in order to incorporate them in the Cronaca. Moreover, he was someone more familiar with hagiographic and liturgical texts than with the classic texts of Antiquity (Kelly, 2011, p. 26 and 75).

In relation to the history of the work, Kelly informs us that it is possible to find the text (or fragments of it) in at least 12 copies and some manuscripts adaptations based on older ones, as well as the first print editions of the work (principally from the sixteenth century). The oldest manuscript is that of the central library of the Sicilian region (Palermo, I D 14), copied around 1400 on parchment. It is a manuscript which contains only the text of the Cronaca. In the National Library of France there exist at least three manuscripts of the work, which in chronological order of the copies are identified as 'Italien 304,' 'Italien 301,' and 'Italien 303,' or as proposed by Samantha Kelly, P₁, P₂, P₃, respectively.⁹ All of these copies are on paper and were made between the beginning of the fifteenth and the end of the sixteenth century. There also exist manuscripts in the United States (2), while the others are scattered in Italian libraries and archives (Florence, Modena, Naples, and the Vatican) (Kelly, 2011, pp. 103-125).

The manuscript analyzed here (P₂) has the following characteristics: it is available on-line at the Gallica portal of the National Library of France, as already mentioned. It consists of a total of 161 295 x 220 mm folios. It was copied in Naples by Bernardinos de Turricella¹⁰ and is divided into two columns and is in cursive script. The codex consists of the Cronaca (1r-24v) and another four texts, which are not analyzed here.

Digital access to the manuscript is undoubtedly one of the characteristics which marks research in medieval history (not only Brazil) in the twenty-first century. Practically all national libraries - with constant funding for this - has invested in digitalization projects for its archives, principally for their oldest collections.¹¹ This type of access imposes a set of reflections which extrapolate the contemporary understanding of the text to the extent that, for the medieval period, various phases of the composition process (preparation of discourse, mise en page, development of the abbreviation procedures, indexation, pecia, copies and decoration), the finalization of the material object roll/codex/'book,' its circulation and its functions are absolutely different.

Pierre Chastang (2012, p. 238) even proposes the use of the expression 'medieval textuality.' This expression should make researchers be aware of the distinct dimensions of documentation: anthropological, sociohistorical, and written culture. Considered in these dimensions are aspects such as the provision of support information, the motives which generate the production and copying of determined information, and its enunciation potential at a given time. Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet also problematizes the reading of what to do in the twenty-first century with medieval documents using the contemporary idea of the text. Her driving question is relatively simple in relation to formulation, but with complex comprehension and responses: how to locate a text in the manuscript culture which makes each code unique? (2014, pp. 151-160).

In the already mentioned article by Andréia Frazão (2015), she warns that research based on the reading of copies of manuscripts does not necessarily result in a higher quality than research based on critical/commented editions, often the fruit of work that takes years of preparation and research. In a recent talk, the Italian philologist Giovanni Paolo Maggioni questioned if the work and time necessary to invest in editions, such as has already been published about the Golden Legend, or as Samantha Kelly proposes for the Cronaca, should not be directed at other investigations (Maggioni, 2015). In summary, these reflections point to multiple paths in relation to research with medieval documents in the twenty-first century: the expansion of access is, without a doubt, an unprecedented merit. However, the necessary qualification for this is the fruit of investments necessary at an undergraduate level.

'Necessary qualification' involves the offering and monitoring of specific formations in paleography (the abbreviations, the preparation process and the material treating of the hide as a support for writing, the extraction of pigments, transformations of scripts, etc.) in Latin (bearing in mind that the majority of courses in Latin offered in Brazilian universities offer Classical Latin, not necessarily the same that is found in medieval documents), and the dominion of technological resources. One of the contributions which this article intends to offer in the reflections on medieval studies in Brazil in the twenty-first century is related to the encouragement of the technical formation of researchers to carry out research more effectively given the advantages and disadvantages which technology provides.

CRONACA DI PARTENOPE AND THE SOUTH OF ITALY BETWEEN THE THIRTEEN AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES

E primo de la sua orige[n] et pr[in]cipio de la i[m]positio[n]e de lo nome i[n] lo t[em]po de Solone philosopho de Athene et de Dragone de Lacedemonia (P₂ 1r)

The words chosen as the epigraph of this item are the ones with which the Cronaca starts in P₂. Its purpose is to explain the imposition of the name on the region:

Dalo quale havuta resposta fo consiglyato che recercheno pa[r]tenope: et in q[ue]llo loco se fo[r]massero li loro habitazioni: in p[er]cio che de loro medesmo se multiplicaria la cita da bene in meglio et che sera m[u]lto honorata in tra laltre cita famosissi[m]e: la qual cosa fo fa[c]ta ma no[n] [com]munam[e]nte...Ma uma gran pa[r]te de Ge[n]tili ho[m]ini et de signiuri co[m] loro cose mobile si ce[r]carono pa[r]tenope et ali [sic] la com[m]ecarono ad edificare[m]ciascuno secu[n]do sua pote[n]tia et stato de sua [con]ditione[m]. (P₂.1v/2r)

Partenope, thus, emerges out of a revelation by the oracle of Apollo as a place for the development of a Cumae community ravaged by successive plagues. After identifying the place, the Cumae, each with their own conditions and 'goods,' began to build the city of Partenope. Cronaca also states that the name Partenope is related to the name of a virgin, daughter of the king of Sicily. Over time, the inhabitants of the city began to fight among themselves and a young knight, Tiberius Julius Tarus, pacified the region and built there a new city, called Neapolis - in Greek; in Latin it was New City.¹² Bartholomeo Caracciolo-Carafa dedicates a good part of the beginning of Cronaca to explaining how, progressively, the name Partenope was replaced by Neapoli and how this territory was the subjects of disputes with knights from Benevento, Nola, and Roma (P₂.3r/3v).

According to Samantha Kelly, the Cronaca can be divided into four parts: I - about the relationship of the place (Naples) with the first Greeks; II - about the lords from the South of the Peninsula and Sicily under Norman dominion, and later the Staufens and also the Angevines, until the ascension of Queen Joanna I, in 1343; III (which is subdivided into two parts) - a more chronological perspective, of the thirteenth to the fourteenth centuries, and a universal history until 1296; IV - 'Anecdotes' or a 'Late Angevine chronicle,' which covered the reigns of Charles II (king between 1285 and 1309) and Robert of Naples (king between 1309 and 1343). Kelly also highlights that these four parts were not compiled at the same time and not by the same person. She also points to the possibility that they had never circulated together. Moreover, she states that part IV circulated in two versions in the fourteenth century: one with 75 chapters; another with 96. Cronaca had been completed around 1382 (2011, pp. 11-26).

Bartholomeo Caracciolo-Carafa informs his references, principally to write about ancient times: names such as Virgil, Ovid, and Livy are recurrent and predominate in the first part identified by Samantha Kelly. References to other authors, however, do not occupy the same space when talking about the author's present.

To maintain the dialogue proposed with Brazilian historiography cited above, the focus of the analysis of Cronaca will be on aspects which cover more the period close to when author was writing. Can Cronaca be considered a narrative which covers fictional elements to serve the truth aimed at by the author? Can it also be considered as a text legitimating a dynasty, such as Crônica de D. João I? Is Cronaca a document which allows questions related to the common good be discussed?

THE ASCENSION OF ROBERT OF NAPLES TO THE THRONE AND THE NARRATIVE ABOUT THE 'AUTHOR'S PRESENT'

Li quale Re Ca[r]lo [secundo] succede El Re Robe[r]to et visse nel domínio an[n] i XXXIII et misi VIII et di XV. Li q[ua]le mori ad napuli et fo sepellito ne la [ecclesia] de [sancta] Chiara de napuli da l'o[r]dene de la domenica i[n]ca[r] natio[n]e MCCCXLIIII del io[r]no de domenica Inst XI i[n] nel an[n]o de sua ea LXVIII. (P₂ 24r)

This passage deals with the ascension of Robert after the death of Charles II. Following the numbering of the 'chapters' of the Cronaca in Samantha Kelly's edition, it is the penultimate chapter (74). It has to be taken into account that the Cronaca is placed between folios 1r and 24v and that the closest past of the author, understood here as the years of the fourteenth century that had already lapsed, starts on 24r. Moreover, Cronaca was a work commissioned by King Louis I of Naples. Is it legitimate to ask what is the interest of the king in the more ancient past (distant from the time of his reign)? As it not possible to state that its commissioning by the king was made in these molds, what motives led Bartholomeo Caracciolo-Carafa to write Cronaca in this manner?

The hypothesis worked with in this research is that in the Cronaca there is an attempt to approximate the present time to ancient times. Perhaps this explains the insertion of passages about the arrival of the first Greeks, from the modification of the name of the old city to the new city, etc. In other words: covering the past more than the present serves as a rhetoric of power¹³ for King Louis I, removing information about kings closer in time, such as Charles II and Robert of Naples.

This hypothesis guides the reading of the Cronaca through its absences. In other words: since there is almost nothing about the immediately prior kings and much less about the reign of Louis I, how to understand this chronicle as an instrument to understand the author's present?

Jean-Paul Boyer (1995, 1998, 2000) and Samantha Kelly (2003 and 2005) offer a set of reflections about the sermons of King Robert between 1309-1343 going beyond the administrative decisions. Boyer emphasizes the action not only of the king, but also officials with important positions in the kingdom (Boyer, 2005, pp. 47-82). In other words, these authors identify the political action of this king in literary manifestations, such as sermons.¹⁴

An indication about this characteristics of the kingdom of Robert of Naples can be read in the final 'chapter' of Cronaca. This involves the passage which occupies the last three lines of 24r, the first column and half of the second column of 24v:

Fo el Re Rob[er]to el piu savio ho[mo] i[n] sapie[n]tia che fosse i[n] terra da la ip[s] o da Salamone: fo strenuissi[m]o i[n] arme de la sua juve[n]tude e mostrolo ta[n] to nel Renne qua[n]to in Cicilia, Tuscana, Genua. E dove fo i[n] i[n]vaduto lo Renme per i[n]p[re]ssure[m] de i[m]p[er]atori e si se repro i[n] tal manera che se esse [sic] se[n]za da[m]pno. Fece far[e] i[n] suo t[em]po molta [ecclesia] i[n]ter le quale fo f[ac]ta la [ecclesia] de [sancta] chiara de napuli e fece far[e] lo Castello de [sancto] heramo e la cappella laquale e i[n] Castello novo excelle[n]teme[n]te pe[n] ta e lo Arzelano de napuli, et augme[n]to culto divino i[n] so t[em]po. Et aume[n] to li re[n]diti et le tabelle del Renme... (P₂ 24v and 24r)

In this passage the author of Cronaca attributes to Robert's reign some characteristics which extrapolate the present dates at the beginning of the narrative about the succession of King Charles II. Robert was the wisest man who existed who had existed since the beginning of the time (going back to the origin of Partenope). In his government churches were built, such as Santa Clara in Naples, and also St. Heramo Castle. He was also the protagonist of military expeditions to the north of the peninsula and expanded the numbers of kingdom's workers. In this aspect, although it deals with the wisdom of King Robert in the superlative, the deeds are not necessarily completed or ornamented with fictional elements. Not for the near present.

Cronaca (P₂) closes with a list of names of nobles and people who are the kingdom's grandees, including here Tomas Aquinas, who died in 1274 and was canonised in 1323, in other words during the reign of Robert. Moreover, it is in the passage following the citation in which the explicit is found. In it is the information about the commission - which resulted in the writing of the Cronaca - of Bartholomeo Caracciolo-Carafa at the order of Louis I of Naples, king between 1382 and 1384.

However, as well as erasing the deeds of the kings of the recent past, Bartholomeo Caracciolo-Carafa could also have used rhetoric which was not strange to his time. For example, a few years before the end of the thirteen century, the Genoese Dominican archbishop Iacopo da Varazze, in addition to having written a Chronicle about the City of Genoa, finalized his most famous work, the Golden Legend. Although it is not the central focus of this article, it is possible to read Cronaca di Partenope through what Iacopo da Varazze wrote in the chapter De Sancto Pelagio papa, the penultimate of his legendary work. Unlike what he wrote in the other narratives of the Golden Legend, the chapter does not cover the deeds of the Pope Pelagius, a pope from the beginning of Christianity, while he was alive or his miracles. To the contrary, the Dominican wrote a type of history of the occupation of the Italian peninsula from the sixth to the thirteen centuries, paying special attention to the region of Lombardy. And, perhaps following a type of proportion in relation to the other chapters of his work - in which there appear only four chapters about thirteenth century saints -, Iacopo da Varazze deals with his own time in a few lines at the end of the chapter (Mula, 2001, pp. 75-95).

This perspective (of covering more the ancient past than the recent) opens a wide path for the increasing problematization of the writing of history in the Middle Ages. Moreover, it also legitimizes the insertion of the Cronaca in contemporary discussions about the concept of authorship in the Middle Ages (D'Angelo; Ziolkowski, 2014): both because it considers that in the text there is a concern with referencing previous texts, such as Virgil and Livy, as well as to not necessarily draw on 'official' documents or references to provide authority to testify the veracity of what Bartholomeu Caracciolo-Carafa wrote.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

The aim of this article was to propose a reflection about the treatment given by Brazilian historiography of questions related to power and politics in the Middle Ages. The path presented and analyzed here consisted of a precise focus on thematic dossiers published in reference periodicals in the area of history between 2012 and 2015. The Brazilian journals opened considerable space to medieval studies, which is an important step to stimulate national production about the period traditionally seen as running from the fifth to the fifteenth centuries. Among the dossiers analyzed, out of a total of 19 articles published by Brazilian historians, some themes were focused on, such as: public power and political authorities in different periods and regions of the West, the literalization of forms of government in rhetoric treatises and the legitimation of dynasties through literary texts. Moreover, even though it was not classified in the proposed focus for the periodicals analyzed, Marcella Lopes Guimarães' text points to important characteristics in dealing with medieval chronicles and, principally, looks at the reference in relation to the understanding of how this type of document has been widely used in research here in Brazil, at least for the Portuguese case.

Based on these references a proposal was prepared which constituted of dialoging with this historiography and tried to establish a broader reflection about how Brazilian medievalists have constructed their objects of study. The dialogue was based on a proposal of an analysis of a chronicle written in the final decades of the fourteenth century, Cronaca di Partenope, by Bartholomeo Caracciolo-Carafa, a work commissioned by King Louis I of Naples.

To propose this reflection a digitalized copy of the manuscript was used, codified here as P₂. One of the items above problematized the question of digital access to the documentation of the medieval period and the need for technical training and the improvement of forms of reading improved by those who venture through these fields. It is important to highlight that this is not only a characteristic of Brazilian production, as can be noted in the reflections of Pierre Chastang cited in this text.

At the end of the article it is possible to conclude that Cronaca di Partenope was not prepared to legitimate a king through his association with (good) Christian models in opposition to previous kings (associated with bad models). However, considering the reading made by Adriana Zierer of the Crônica de D. João I and also what Andréia Frazão listed as procedures for the reading of medieval documents, the choice of categories for the internal analysis of Cronaca di Partenope was found to be fruitful to understand the ways the ancient and the near past are intertwined.

In relation to one of the questions made in this article ('what is the contribution of the present research to medieval studies in Brazil?') it is possible to respond stating that looking at the kingdom of Naples in the thirteen and fourteenth centuries offers an unequaled opportunity to dialogue with the studies of André Miatello, for example. The latter has dedicated a large part of his trajectory to the analysis of urban and political phenomenon in the cities in the north of the Italian Peninsula. These phenomena, such as the question of political and judicial autonomy and the rhetorical manifestations about the distinct forms of government, are sensitively different to those observable in the South. Also in relation to this aspect, it is a fact that the geographic focus - Naples - limits the most specific dialogue with Brazilian historiography to the extent that it deals with a region not studied in the country until then. In this aspect, what can be considered as one of the merits of this research is also one of its problems: the difficulty of closer dialogues.

Moreover, as highlighted in the final topic of the text, the process of writing the Cronaca - revealed here by the references cited by the author - and the manner in which Bartholomeo Caracciolo-Carafa deals with the ancient past and events closer to his time reveal the great potential of this document for the dialogue with the most important proposals of contemporary historiography, not only Brazilian, such as the idea of authorship for texts of the medieval period.

It is worth noting that the Kingdom of Naples was a constant institution in the troubled political history of Italy, remaining as an administrative unit until 1860. The history of this region, which is mixed with that of Sicily, was marked by constant tension between the Western world, the Byzantine world, and the Arab world; between the pope, with the territories of the 'patrimony of St. Peter,' and the monarchy which was becoming increasingly 'secular;' between the disputes of the Staufen, the Aragonese, and the Angevines.

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Notes

• 1
  In another article Cândido da Silva mentions the questioning which the actual notion of 'sources' came to be based on the renovation of the perspective of politics. Cf. CÂNDIDO DA SILVA, 2013a, pp. 92-102.
• 2
  Paris, BNF, Ms. Italien 301. 161f. Copy dated between 1470-1480. Available at: http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8438680g.r=cronaca%20di%20partenope; Accessed in Dec. 2015. For this research the first critical edition of the text was also used, in KELLY, 2011.
• 3
  In the same journal in 2010, the dossier Medieval History: sources and historiography was published. The dossier consists of five articles, three of which are by Brazilian historians and two by foreigners. In this dossier the following two texts stand out: CÂNDIDO DA SILVA, 2010, pp. 29-48, and ALMEIDA, 2010, pp. 49-70.
• 4
  Fernão Lopes is widely studied in Brazilian historiography. Certainly the number of studies is related to his circulation and involvement with the Portuguese Court, since "he held the functions of clerk, notary, chronicler, and chief guard of Torre do Tombo." But not only the texts of Fernão Lopes. See the survey in: GUIMARÃES, 2012, pp. 67-78.
• 5
  Although she deals with the general characteristics of late medieval chronicles, paying attention to the study of Portuguese history, what predominates in her analysis is how research done with this type of document appear in events of the Brazilian Association of Medieval Studies, and in the CAPES database of theses and dissertations.
• 6
  Theme of his doctorate, defended in USP in 2010, for example (MIATELLO, 2013a).
• 7
  As in the previous note.
• 8
  For example, a basic survey of summaries of the dossiers listed here is enough.
• 9
  We use this nomenclature in references to the manuscript: P₂ and the respective folio.
• 10
  As indicated by the colophon P2 .161v (I Latin): "Libe riste inceptus fuit die XV Januarii p[er] me Bernadinum de Turicella de capitulo tunc temporis cancellarium M[agnifi]ci d[omi] ni Thomasii de Chiavellis de Fabriano, expletus v[er]o die XVII martii currente milleno CCCCLXXVIIII in Villa Brende comitatus Sena[rum]..." (The brackets indicate the occurrence of abbreviations in the manuscript).
• 11
  The National Library Foundation, in Rio de Janeiro, provides free online access in BN-Digital to the documents from the medieval period which it holds. Cf. http://bndigital.bn.br/.
• 12
  P2 2v: "Et da po ip[s]o e tucti l'altri la chiamo napolis i[n] grec[c]o che in latino vol dire cita nova".
• 13
  The notion of the 'rhetoric of power' is borrowed from Benoît Grévin's doctorate (2008). Analyzing the 'style of the Letters' of Pierre de la Vigne (1190-1249) he argues that between 1150 and 1350 there emerged an (institutional and cultural) 'political language' in Europe. Although he privileges pontifical and lay chancelleries, and not necessary narratives, such as the Cronaca, he believed that among documents of this type it was possible to identify the political use of chronicles.
• 14
  "Les Angevins ochestrèrent directement et sur une vaste échelle l'utilisation du sermon à leur avantage. Quelques índices confirment ce sentiment. Nous les voyons rechercer, depuis Charles II, les indulgences papales pour ceux qui assitaient à des sermons em leur présence. Ils n'hésitèrent pas à 'subventionner' des prédicateurs pour exercer cet office à leur profit: Jeanne agit ainsi, em 1349. L'ambition de tant d'efforts était une vie publique étroitement associée à la prédication. L'expression la plus évidente de cette volonté venait, toutefois, des sermons de Barthélemy de Capoue et de Robert eux-mêmes" (BOYER, 1998, p. 137). What Jean-Paul Boyer states is that the Angevines used the word in their favor in political terms as well. And for this the king's own officials, or the king himself, preached, producing 'self-propaganda.'

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  01 Sept 2016
• Date of issue
  May-Aug 2016

History

• Received
  31 Jan 2016
• Accepted
  29 Feb 2016