Peter of Eboli or Petrus de EbuloIn current medieval Latin; more correctly ''Petrus Eburensis''. (flourished ) was a

didactic Didacticism is a philosophy that emphasizes instructional and informative qualities in literature, art, and design. In art, design, architecture, and landscape, didacticism is an emerging conceptual approach that is driven by the urgent need to ...

versifier and

chronicler A chronicle ( la, chronica, from Greek ''chroniká'', from , ''chrónos'' – "time") is a historical account of events arranged in chronological order, as in a timeline. Typically, equal weight is given for historically important events and lo ...

who wrote in

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

. A

monk A monk (, from el, μοναχός, ''monachos'', "single, solitary" via Latin ) is a person who practices religious asceticism by monastic living, either alone or with any number of other monks. A monk may be a person who decides to dedica ...

from

Eboli Eboli ( Ebolitano: ) is a town and ''comune'' of Campania, southern Italy, in the province of Salerno. An agricultural centre, Eboli is known mainly for olive oil and for its dairy products, among which the famous buffalo mozzarella from the ...

(

Campania Campania (, also , , , ) is an administrative Regions of Italy, region of Italy; most of it is in the south-western portion of the Italian peninsula (with the Tyrrhenian Sea to its west), but it also includes the small Phlegraean Islands and the i ...

, then part of the

Kingdom of Naples The Kingdom of Naples ( la, Regnum Neapolitanum; it, Regno di Napoli; nap, Regno 'e Napule), also known as the Kingdom of Sicily, was a state that ruled the part of the Italian Peninsula south of the Papal States between 1282 and 1816. It was ...

), Peter became a court poet to

Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI (German: ''Heinrich VI.''; November 1165 – 28 September 1197), a member of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, was King of Germany ( King of the Romans) from 1169 and Holy Roman Emperor from 1191 until his death. From 1194 he was also King of S ...

and King of Sicily. His flattering verse ''

Liber ad honorem Augusti The ''Liber ad honorem Augusti sive de rebus Siculis'' ("Book in honour of the Emperor, or on Sicilian affairs"; also called ''Carmen de motibus Siculis'', "Poem on the Sicilian revolt") is an illustrated narrative epic in Latin elegiac couplets, ...

, sive de rebus Siculis'' (''Book to honor the Emperor, or The Affairs of Sicily''), probably written in

Palermo Palermo ( , ; scn, Palermu , locally also or ) is a city in southern Italy, the capital (political), capital of both the autonomous area, autonomous region of Sicily and the Metropolitan City of Palermo, the city's surrounding metropolitan ...

, was his first work; it was dedicated to Henry VI, King of Sicily by right of his wife

Constance Constance may refer to: Places *Konstanz, Germany, sometimes written as Constance in English *Constance Bay, Ottawa, Canada * Constance, Kentucky * Constance, Minnesota * Constance (Portugal) * Mount Constance, Washington State People * Consta ...

, the

Norman Norman or Normans may refer to: Ethnic and cultural identity * The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 10th and 11th centuries ** People or things connected with the Norm ...

heiress and mother of the heir who would be "in every way blessed" according to Peter— Frederick II, ''stupor mundi''— whose birth is described in terms reshaped from

Virgil Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: t ...

's fourth

Eclogue An eclogue is a poem in a classical style on a pastoral subject. Poems in the genre are sometimes also called bucolics. Overview The form of the word ''eclogue'' in contemporary English developed from Middle English , which came from Latin , whi ...

, which Christians read as foretelling the coming of Christ. The book celebrates in glowing terms the victory of Henry over his opponent, the illegitimate usurper

Tancred Tancred or Tankred is a masculine given name of Germanic origin that comes from ''thank-'' (thought) and ''-rath'' (counsel), meaning "well-thought advice". It was used in the High Middle Ages mainly by the Normans (see French Tancrède) and espe ...

, who, though a doughty fighter, was of such short stature that Peter ridicules him as ''Tancredulus'' ("Little Tancred"). The copy from Palermo is illuminated with palace scenes, processions, and battles in tableaux that vie with the text itself and form a precious record of twelfth-century life, as those of the Bayeux tapestry do for the eleventh. Peter of Eboli also wrote a didactic poem, '' De balneis Puteolanis'' ("The Baths of

Pozzuoli Pozzuoli (; ; ) is a city and ''comune'' of the Metropolitan City of Naples, in the Italian region of Campania. It is the main city of the Phlegrean Peninsula. History Pozzuoli began as the Greek colony of ''Dicaearchia'' ( el, Δικα� ...

") that is the first widely distributed guidebook to thermal baths, a weapon in the local economic rivalries that arose over healing, medicinal bathing and the medieval tourist industry in southern Italy during the High Middle Ages. A copy is included in the historical miscellany at the

Huntington Library The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, known as The Huntington, is a collections-based educational and research institution established by Henry E. Huntington (1850–1927) and Arabella Huntington (c.1851–1924) in San Mar ...

, HM 1342. Peter is known to have written three poems because he lists them all at the end of ''De balneis Puteolanis'' in the following

elegiac couplets The elegiac couplet is a poetic form used by Greek lyric poets for a variety of themes usually of smaller scale than the epic. Roman poets, particularly Catullus, Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid, adopted the same form in Latin many years later. ...

: The second poem of the three listed here, the ''mira Federici gesta'' ("remarkable deeds of Frederick") is lost.

Notes

References

"Guide To Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Huntington Library" HM 1342
See folios 176-187.

Baths listed by Peter of Eboli. * Theo Kölzer und Marlis Stähli (Edd.): ''Petrus de Ebulo: Liber ad honorem Augusti sive de rebus Siculis. Codex 120 II der Burgerbibliothek Bern. Eine Bilderchronik der Stauferzeit'', Textrevision und Übersetzung von Gereon Becht-Jördens (Jan Thorbecke Verlag), Sigmaringen 1994 (reproductions in high quality of the entire manuscript)

External links

* Peter of Eboli
''De balneis Puteolanis''
Italian digitized codex, a
Somni
{{Authority control 12th-century births 13th-century deaths People from Eboli Medieval Latin poets Italian poets Italian male poets 12th-century Italian historians 12th-century Latin writers 12th-century Italian physicians 12th-century Italian poets Italian male non-fiction writers Physicians from Naples Court of Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor