The ''Carmen in victoriam Pisanorum'' ("Song on the occasion of the victory of the Pisans") is a poem celebrating the victory of the
Italian maritime republics
The maritime republics ( it, repubbliche marinare), also called merchant republics ( it, repubbliche mercantili), were thalassocratic city-states of the Mediterranean Basin during the Middle Ages. Being a significant presence in Italy in the Mid ...
in the
Mahdia campaign of 1087
The Mahdia campaign of 1087 was a raid on the North African town of Mahdia by armed ships from the northern Italian maritime republics of Genoa and Pisa.
Mahdia had been the capital of Ifriqiya under the Fatimids, chosen due to its proximity to ...
. It was probably written by a
Pisa
Pisa ( , or ) is a city and ''comune'' in Tuscany, central Italy, straddling the Arno just before it empties into the Ligurian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa. Although Pisa is known worldwide for its leaning tower, the cit ...
n cleric within months of the campaign.
[Christopher J. Marshall]
"The Crusading Motivation of the Italian City Republics in the Latin East, ''c''. 1096–1104"
, ''Rivista di Bizantinistica'' 1 (1991). G. H. Pertz
Georg Heinrich Pertz (28 March 17957 October 1876) was a German historian.
Personal life
Pertz was born in Hanover on 28 March 1795. His parents were the court bookbinder Christian August Pertz and Henrietta Justina née Deppen.
He married twi ...
was the first to note the historical value of the text in 1839. It is an important source for the development of Christian ideas about
holy war
A religious war or a war of religion, sometimes also known as a holy war ( la, sanctum bellum), is a war which is primarily caused or justified by differences in religion. In the modern period, there are frequent debates over the extent to wh ...
on the eve of the
First Crusade
The First Crusade (1096–1099) was the first of a series of religious wars, or Crusades, initiated, supported and at times directed by the Latin Church in the medieval period. The objective was the recovery of the Holy Land from Islamic ru ...
(1095–99), and may have been influenced by the contemporary theology of
Anselm of Lucca
Anselm of Lucca ( la, Anselmus; it, Anselmo; 1036 – 18 March 1086), born Anselm of Baggio ('), was a medieval bishop of Lucca in Italy and a prominent figure in the Investiture Controversy amid the fighting in central Italy between Matil ...
and his circle. It seems to have influenced the ''
Gesta Francorum
The ''Gesta Francorum'' (Deeds of the Franks), or ''Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum'' (Deeds of the Franks and the other pilgrims to Jerusalem), is a Latin chronicle of the First Crusade by an anonymous author connected with Bohemon ...
'', an account of the First Crusade composed by someone in the south Italian contingent.
[ All of the later Pisan sources for the Mahdia campaign rely mainly on it: the '' Chronicon Pisanum'' only adds details about the memorial church, the ''Annales Pisani'' of Bernardo Maragone only rewords the former, and the ''Cronaca di Pisa'' of Ranieri Sardo and the '']Breviarium Pisanae historiae
A breviary (Ecclesiastical Latin, Latin: ''breviarium'') is a liturgical book used in Christianity for Christian prayer, praying the canonical hours, usually recited at Fixed prayer times#Christianity, seven fixed prayer times.
Historically, dif ...
'' add only legendary material to the account.
Text and structure
The text of the ''Carmen'' survives in a single copy in MS.
Ms. (American English) or Ms (British English; normally , but also , or when unstressed)''Oxford English Dictionary'' online, Ms, ''n.2''. Etymology: "An orthographic and phonetic blend of Mrs ''n.1'' and miss ''n.2'' Compare mizz ''n.'' The pr ...
3879–919, ff. 63 r–65 v, in the Bibliothèque royale Albert Ier in Brussels
Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...
. The manuscript originated in Italy in the twelfth century and contains 174 folios. The manuscript begins with the words "Here begins the prologue of the book of Guido, composed of various histories for diverse uses for edification of the reader", but there is no reason to believe that Guido of Pisa
Guido of Pisa (died 9 July 1169) was an Italian geographer from Pisa. In 1119 he edited and updated the ''Geographica'', a geographic encyclopedia first created in the eighth century by the Anonymous of Ravenna. It followed in the tradition of e ...
is the author of the ''Carmen''. In fact, the Brussels manuscript is a careless copy of the original ''Liber Guidonis'', which places the surviving ''Carmen'' at least two stages removed from the original.[Cowdrey (1977), 2.] It has come down to us without a title, the conventional title has been supplied by editors.
The poem consists of 73 stanzas, each with four lines of fifteen syllables, for a total of 292 lines. It is written in Lombardic metre
The Lombard rhythm or Scotch snap is a syncopated musical rhythm in which a short, accented note is followed by a longer one. This reverses the pattern normally associated with dotted notes or ''notes inégales'', in which the longer value prece ...
, which was traditionally used in Italy for historical poems and dirges, and which comprises rhyming trochaic
In English poetic metre and modern linguistics, a trochee () is a metrical foot consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one. But in Latin and Ancient Greek poetic metre, a trochee is a heavy syllable followed by a light one (al ...
tetrameter
In poetry, a tetrameter is a line of four metrical feet. The particular foot can vary, as follows:
* ''Anapestic tetrameter:''
** "And the ''sheen'' of their ''spears'' was like ''stars'' on the ''sea''" (Lord Byron, "The Destruction of Sennacher ...
s.[ In the surviving copy the rhyming is imperfect and the metre frequently fails. The author or copyist used a symbol resembling a small closing parenthesis above a dot to indicate the tetrameters and the end of every line, and a period to indicate the end of a stanza. In modern editions these may be replaced by commas, semi-colons, colons or exclamation marks where thought appropriate by the editor.][
]
Date and authorship
The ''Carmen'' was almost certainly composed shortly after the campaign it describes. It has a "ring of triumphant immediacy" that has been compared to that of other celebratory poems of the age: the ''Carmen de Hastingae proelio
The ''Carmen de Hastingae Proelio'' (''Song of the Battle of Hastings'') is a 20th-century name for the ''Carmen Widonis'', the earliest history of the Norman invasion of England from September to December 1066, in Latin. It is attributed to Bish ...
'' (1066), the ''Carmen de bello Saxonico {{italictitle
The ''Carmen de bello Saxonico'' (german: Lied vom Sachsenkrieg; en, italic=yes, Song of the Saxon War) is a Latin Epic poetry, epic in 757 hexameters divided between three books that recounts the first phase of the Saxon Rebellion ag ...
'' (1075) and the Pisan ''Liber Maiolichinus
The ''Liber maiolichinus'' ''de gestis pisanorum illustribus'' ("Majorcan Book of the Deeds of the Illustrious Pisans") is a Medieval Latin epic chronicle in 3,500 hexameters, written between 1117 and 1125, detailing the Pisan-led joint military ...
'' (1115), all of which were composed shortly after the battles they describe.[Cowdrey (1977), 3.] In favour of an early date is the lack of reference to the Crusade, but the poet does refer to the consecration of a church dedicated to Pope Sixtus II
Pope Sixtus II ( el, Πάπας Σίξτος Β΄), also written as Pope Xystus II, was bishop of Rome from 31 August 257 until his death on 6 August 258. He was martyred along with seven deacons, including Lawrence of Rome, during the persecutio ...
, on whose feast day (August 6), the Mahdian suburb of Zawīla was taken. If the date of composition is 1087–88, then the consecration of the church may reflect Pisan intentions rather than a ''fait accomplit''.[ After the poem in the manuscript is the rubric ANNI DOMINI MILLESSIMI OCTUAGESIMO OCTAVO, meaning "in the year of the Lord one thousand and eighty-eight hat is, 1087, which probably reflects the copyist's (or author's) belief as to when the battle occurred and not when the poem was composed.
The author's "fervid tone of urban patriotism" points to his Pisan origin. His familiarity with the Old Testament to his clerical status, and his theme of holy warfare to the theological work of Anselm of Lucca.][
]
Themes and purpose
The ''Carmen'' shows the conception of "crusading as an act of love" in an early form. This includes love of one's neighbour, as when the cleric writes, "The Genoese ... join themselves to the Pisans with great love; they do not care about earthly life, or about their sons; they give themselves to the dangers for love of the Redeemer"[ (''Convenerunt Genuenses virtute mirabili / et adiungunt se Pisanis amore amabili. / Non curant de vita mundi nec de suis filiis, / pro amore Redemptoris se donant periculis.''), and also love of God, as when Bishop ]Benedict of Modena
Benedict may refer to:
People Names
*Benedict (given name), including a list of people with the given name
*Benedict (surname), including a list of people with the surname
Religious figures
* Pope Benedict I (died 579), head of the Catholic Chu ...
urges the warriors, " u must forget everything of the world for Christ" (''pro Christo omnes mundi vos obliviscimini''). The presence of Benedict itself foreshadows the presence of Italian bishops , Maurice of Porto and Henry of Castello">Maurice of Porto">726, Pisan
A special assembly (''conventus'') was held in Pisa ... and the s ...
, Maurice of Porto and Henry of Castello on later crusades.