Liudprand of Cremona’s Antapodosis

Liudprand of Cremona’s Antapodosis was a product of the high politics of Germany, the Byzantine Empire, and especially northern Italy in the first half of the tenth century (roughly 888–949). The author was a member of a powerful Lombard family, based in northern Italy whom King Berengar II and his wife Willa had driven into exile in the early 950. As he himself explains, he has named his history the Antapodosis, or ‘Retribution’, because its purpose is ‘to depict, make public, and complain about the deads of this Berengar who nowadays does not so much rule as tyrannize in Italy, and of his wife Willa, who is appropriately called a second Jezabel’ (iii.1). He consistently presents himself as providing the true version of what happened, asserting that he was himself an eyewitness to the events reported from book four onwards. From this point he is explaining events, he claims, ‘just as I witnessed them’ (iv.1), but such claims should not be taken as evidence of a commitment to neutrality or balance.

He began writing in 958 in Frankfurt, in Eastern Frankia where he had taken refuge, completing the first version in 962. Like other medieval historians, Liudprand continued revising the text until his death, and there are grounds for thinking that the work was never properly finished. There are inconsistencies in the narrative; book six is also ‘short weight’. Indeed, the Freising MS, the fullest copy and the copy that has some claim to being the author's autograph, leaves plenty of room for the insertation of more chapter headings than the nine in the list which currently heads book six (fols. 92v–93r). It appears, in other words, as though Liudprand intended to add further material; but Chiesa explains this incompleteness with the suggestion that the death of Berengar II made finishing the book unnecessary.

Manuscript: Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 6388, fols. 1r–85v. A late tenth-century manuscript of the Antapodosis, Clm 6388 is the fullest and seems to record of Liudprand’s latest revisions to his text. It belonged to Abraham, bishop of Freising (d. 994), and remained in the library at Freising (Bavaria) for the remainder of the Middle Ages.

Text: Chiesa, P. (ed.), Liudprandi Cremonensis Opera Omnia, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medieualis 156 (Turnhout, 1998).

Translations: (1) P. Squatriti (trs.), The Complete Works of Liudprand of Cremona, Medieval Texts in Translation (Washington, DC, 2007), pp. 41–202 [PN.DM.L7]; (2) F. A. Wright, The Works of Liuprand of Cremona (London, 1930) [7MBL].

Commentary

  • Squatriti, Complete Works, pp. 3–37. PN.DM.L7.
  • Balzaretti, R. ‘Men and Sex in Tenth-Century Italy’, in D. M. Hadley (ed.), Masculinity in Medieval Europe, Women and Men in History (London, 1999), pp. 143–59. MBM7.
  • Balzaretti, R., ‘Liudprand of Cremona’s Sense of Humour’, in G. Halsall (ed.), Humour, History and Politics in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 114–28.
  • Buc, P., ‘Italian Hussies and German Matrons’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien, 29 (1995), 207–25.
  • Leyser, K., ‘Liudprand of Cremona, Preacher and Homilist’ and ‘Ends and Means in Liudprand of Cremona’, in his, Communications and Power in Medieval Europe, vol. 1, The Carolingian and Ottonian Centuries (London, 1994), pp. 111–24 and 125–42. MBK.
  • Mayr-Harting, Henry, ‘Liudprand of Cremona's Account of his Legation to Constantinople (968) and Ottonian Imperial Strategy’, English Historical Review, 116 (2001), 539–56. Available at JSTOR.
  • Sutherland, J. N., Liudprand of Cremona, Bishop, Diplomat, Historian: Studies of the Man and his Age, Biblioteca degli ‘Studi medievali’ 14 (Spoleto, 1988). 7MBL Ask Enquiries.

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