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Bertram’s Way
Percy
Bysshe Shelley’s Ozymandias speaks of the passing of grandeur;
empires die or are replaced by other empires. My Bertram is a
connoisseur of failures, an amateur expert in ancient secret societies
and texts in outlandish forms of medieval Latin. He is especially
delighted when he comes across a long-ignored text about which he knows
much. The ‘Rabelais / ere his time’ could, for instance, be
Liutprand of Cremona.1
Rabelais:
Francis Rabelais (1493–1553) was the author of Pantagruel and Gargantua,
works of genius in which humanist wisdom is mingled with coarse parody
and weighty satire. His rich and inventive language, ranging over
material from common farce to classical fiction, was designed mainly for
a learned and sophisticated audience. Migne: Jacques-Paul Migne
(1800-1875), the French priest and editor who in 1836 established a
publishing house for religious books. Hegelian twos: an allusion
to the notions of Georg Hegel (1770-1831) about thesis and antithesis,
from which a synthesis is supposed to come. Sesquipedalian:
polysyllabic, long-winded. Paracelsus: Philippus Aureolus
Paracelsus (1493–1541), a German-Swiss doctor, chemist and alchemist.
Alan
Marshfield
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1
Liutprand (c.920–c.972), bishop of
Cremona and chronicler of his times. In 949 Berengar II, ruler of Italy,
sent Liutprand as ambassador to the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII.
After his return to Pavia, Liutprand quarrelled with Berengar, and in
955 joined the German court of King Otto (later Emperor Otto I the
Great).
In
961 Otto made Liutprand bishop of Cremona. In the 960s Liutprand went on
missions to Rome where he was influential in the election of Pope Leo
VIII and Pope John XIII, and in 968 he was sent to Constantinople. He
was succeeded in the episcopal seat of Cremona in 973. A vivid if
prejudiced writer, he wrote A Revenge, which condemns King
Berengar; a flattering History of Otto; and a vituperative Mission
to Constantinople. See The Works of Liudprand of Cremona
(translated by F.A. Wright, 1930). (back)
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