Rome and The Guidebook Tradition

From the Middle Ages to the 20th Century

Anna Blennow, Stefano Fogelberg Rota, Anna Blennow, Stefano Fogelberg Rota

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9783110615784
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

To this day, no comprehensive academic study of the development of guidebooks to Rome over time has been performed. This book treats the history of guidebooks to Rome from the Middle Ages up to the early twentieth century. It is based on the results of the interdisciplinary research project Topos and Topography, led by Anna Blennow and Stefano Fogelberg Rota. From the case studies performed within the project, it becomes evident that the guidebook as a phenomenon was formed in Rome during the later Middle Ages and early Renaissance. The elements and rhetorical strategies of guidebooks over time have shown to be surprisingly uniform, with three important points of development: a turn towards a more user-friendly structure from the seventeenth century and onward; the so-called 'Baedeker effect' in the mid-nineteenth century; and the introduction of a personalized guiding voice in the first half of the twentieth century. Thus, the 'guidebook tradition' is an unusually consistent literary oeuvre, which also forms a warranty for the authority of every new guidebook. In this respect, the guidebook tradition is intimately associated with the city of Rome, with which it shares a constantly renovating yet eternally fixed nature.

Anna Blennow

1 Wanderers and Wonders. The Medieval Guidebooks to Rome

Part 1. The Einsiedeln manuscript

Introduction

When the jurist and historian Gustav Friedrich Haenel arrived at Einsiedeln Abbey in Switzerland on a journey towards Italy in 1825, he had two things on his mind. Armed with the best recommendation letter from the archivist of the Abbey of Saint Gall, he wanted to see if a famous Livy manuscript still was to be found in the Abbey Library after the recent turbulence of the Napoleonic period. And he wanted to take a look at the even more famous Medieval itineraries to Rome in the Einsiedeln manuscript no. 326. The Livy manuscript was easily found, but the itineraries foiled him for some time, until he found the small manuscript tucked away in the corner of a bookshelf. He was allowed to make a thorough transcription of it, which he published in 1837.55 But he was not the first to have made a transcription of this manuscript. The Benedictine monk and scholar Jean Mabillon had published it in the seventeenth century, but even before that, in the early Renaissance, the humanist and manuscript hunter Poggio Bracciolini (1380–1459) had made a copy of the collection of Latin inscriptions from Rome contained in the manuscript, which then came to form the base for his own collection of Roman inscriptions. In Bracciolini’s time, at least half of the inscriptions in the manuscript were already lost, and the Medieval itineraries through Rome had long since been forgotten. No wonder Gustav Haenel was so eager to see the manuscript, and that scholars such as Theodor Mommsen, Giovanni Battista de Rossi and Rodolfo Lanciani later paid the manuscript much attention. As I will show in this chapter, the small manuscript in the Einsiedeln library is one of the oldest preserved guidebooks to Rome. As an invaluable source for the Medieval topography of Rome, the manuscript has gained frequent scholarly attention throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The main aim of this chapter is, instead, to shed light on the singularity of the Einsiedeln manuscript in the tradition of topographical-historical texts and guidebooks of the Middle Ages, and as such, one of the keys to understanding the guidebook tradition to Rome. By studying the Einsiedeln manuscript in a broader historical, cultural and literary context, I will also show how a variety of late Antique and Medieval literary works have contributed to the development of the guidebook tradition over time.

The manuscript

The manuscript no. 326 in the Einsiedeln library (south of Zürich in canton Schwyz, Switzerland), in octave format (17,8 × 12,6 cm), contains 60 pages (67r–97v) written by the same hand in black ink and red minium (Fig. 1.1). The parchment and the ink are of very good quality, though with some occasional holes in the parchment pages. The manuscript (henceforth referred to as the “Einsiedeln manuscript”) was at a later time bound together with some other manuscripts in a Sammelhandschrift totalling 104 parchment pages, probably in the fourteenth century. The author of the manuscript is unknown, but it is assumed that the text was composed around the year 800, and that the extant Einsiedeln manuscript was copied from the original perhaps in the tenth century. Two funerary inscriptions, dated to 799 and 840 respectively, transcribed in the end of the manuscript (fol. 97v), indicate that it may have been written in the Benedictine Abbey of Reichenau in southern Germany. Based on this suggested provenance, Giovanni Battista de Rossi, who studied the manuscript toward the end of the nineteenth century, called the manuscript Sylloge Reichenavensis, and Stefano del Lungo, in his more recent study of the manuscript, named the anonymous author anonimo Augiense, from the Latin name of the Reichenau island, Augia. The palaeographer Bernard Bischoff, who made a study of the manuscript at the behest of Gerold Walser in 1986, stated that the manuscript was similar in style to the Medieval Abbey school of Fulda, which made Walser suggest that the author of the manuscript was a monk from Fulda Abbey who joined Charlemagne on one of his journeys to Rome. Two owners’ signatures from the fourteenth century are preserved in the manuscript: Liber domini Vlrici de Murtzuls, written in the beginning of the book, and at the end of the book, Iste liber est Monasterii fabariensis, “This book belongs to Pfäfers Abbey” (a Benedictine monastery in the canton St. Gallen, Switzerland). Thus, we can assume that the manuscript belonged to Pfäfers Abbey before arriving to Einsiedeln. The manuscript is divided into five thematic parts: a collection of Latin (and some Greek) inscriptions from Rome (fol. 67r–79r), followed by a section with ten itineraries through the city of Rome (fol. 79v–85r). The next part constitutes a brief description of the city walls of Rome (fol. 85r–86r), and after that, the liturgical ceremonies of Easter are described (fol. 86v–88v). The text ends with a small collection of poems and epitaphs (fol. 88v–97v).56

Fig. 1.1: Fol. 81v–82r in the Einsiedeln manuscript no. 326, containing itinerary VI and parts of itineraries V and VII.
Einsiedeln, Stiftsbibliothek, Codex 326(1076), Manuscript of collected works (https://www.e-codices.ch/en/list/one/sbe/0326).

The Einsiedeln manuscript has a long and fascinating reception history. The Renaissance humanist Poggio Bracciolini must have found and examined the manuscript in the Einsiedeln library in the beginning of the fifteenth century, since the first part of his collection of 86 inscriptions – the so-called Sylloge, from 1429 – is copied from the Einsiedeln manuscript (entries number 1–34 in the Sylloge). These inscriptions are not preserved today, and were probably lost already in Poggio’s time, while the rest of the inscriptions in the Sylloge were apparently copied by Poggio directly from the stone.57

The Einsiedeln manuscript was edited in print for the first time by Jean Mabillon in 1685 (only the inscriptions and the itineraries), and later by Gustav Haenel in 1837 (the inscriptions and the itineraries). Giovanni Battista de Rossi, one of the founding fathers of early Christian archaeology and epigraphy in the second half of the nineteenth century, examined the manuscript in the Einsiedeln library in 1856. As an epigraphist, collecting material for his Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae (ICUR), de Rossi focused on the collection of Latin and Greek inscriptions, and also noted the similarities between the Einsiedeln manuscript and the Sylloge of Poggio. De Rossi published the collection of inscriptions, as well as the section on Easter liturgy, in the second volume of ICUR. Karl Ludwig von Urlichs edited the inscriptions, the itineraries and the wall description in his Codex Urbis Romae Topographicus 1871. Theodor Mommsen studied the manuscript from Haenel’s edition, included the ancient inscriptions in his Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, and later wrote a short study of the manuscript. Shortly afterwards, the itineraries of the manuscript were published by Rodolfo Lanciani and Christian Hülsen. In 1987, Gerold Walser made an edition, together with facsimile reproductions, of the itineraries, the inscriptions and the description of the city walls, with detailed reconstructions of the itineraries, and translations and commentary of the inscriptions. Franz Alto Bauer in 1997 and Riccardo Santangeli Valenziani in 2001 presented shorter studies with valuable observations on the manuscript and the itineraries; Stefano del Lungo in 2004 made an edition of the inscriptions, itineraries and wall description together with a topographical and historical analysis.58 A facsimile of the itineraries was published in 2014 in connection with the exhibition Vedi Napoli e poi muori – Grand Tour der Mönche at the Stiftsarchiv St. Gallen.59 In August 2015, I had the opportunity to examine the manuscript on a visit to the Einsiedeln Abbey library together with the participants of the “Topos and Topography” project (Fig. 1.2).60

Fig. 1.2: The Einsiedeln manuscript, demonstrated by Pater Justinus Pagnamenta, Stiftsbibliothekar of the Einsiedeln Abbey library, in 2015. Photo: A. Blennow.

The main scholarly interest has hitherto focused on the itinerary part of the manuscript, due to its utmost importance for the reconstruction and understanding of the topography of Medieval Rome. Thus, no truly comprehensive study of the manuscript in its entirety has been performed, and neither has the relevance of the text in the context of the guidebook tradition been satisfactorily investigated.

In the following, I will describe and analyse each of the four Rome-focused parts of the Einsiedeln manuscript, and discuss the functions and aim of the text. In the second part of the chapter, I will give a short overview of geographical texts and itineraries to Jerusalem and Rome from the early Middle Ages, in order to present a historical background for the development of the textual elements of the Einsiedeln manuscript and shed light on its cultural and literary context. I will also give an example of an actual pilgrimage to Rome in the tenth century which may have used the Einsiedeln itineraries, or a similar work, as the basis for the tours through the city. The third part of the chapter will be devoted to a brief overview of the further development of the guidebook tradition in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

The inscriptions

The collection of inscriptions contains 73 Latin inscriptions and one Greek inscription from Rome, and 11 Latin inscriptions and one Greek inscription from Pavia in northern Italy (Latinized in the manuscript as Papia). The inscriptions from Pavia caused Gerold Walser, among others, to suggest that the inscription collection was made by a monk from north of the Alps, perhaps having joined Charlemagne on his journey to Italy, who would have passed by Pavia on the way to Rome. The inscriptions are not numbered in the manuscript, but each inscription or group of inscriptions is preceded by a heading indicating the location of the inscription.61

More than half of the inscriptions transcribed by the anonymous author are lost today, and almost all of the lost inscriptions had gone missing already in the Renaissance period. Furthermore, the Einsiedeln manuscript is the only source for about 40 of the inscriptions, many of them of great importance, such as the inscription on the triumphal arch of old St. Peter’s.62

The inscriptions date from Antiquity, late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, with a preference for inscriptions from classical antiquity (around 40 inscriptions), closely followed by late Antique inscriptions (around 30 inscriptions). Only a few inscriptions date from the Middle Ages. All the above-mentioned editors agree that the texts of the inscriptions are very accurately reproduced, something which leads to the conclusion that a person very well versed in Latin and Greek made the tran...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• The authors
• Introduction
• 1 Wanderers and Wonders. The Medieval Guidebooks to Rome
• 2 Two Sixteenth-Century Guidebooks and the Bibliotopography of Rome
• 3 Architects, Antiquarians, and the Rise of the Image in Renaissance Guidebooks to Ancient Rome
• 4 Fioravante Martinelli’s Roma ricercata nel suo sito and his “lettore forastiero”
• 5 “Authors of degenerated Renaissance known as Baroque”. The Baedeker Effect and the Arts: Shortcuts to Artistic Appreciation in Nineteenth-Century Rome
• 6 Mental Maps and the Topography of the Mind. A Swedish Guide to the Roman Centuries
• 7 Ellen Rydelius’ Rom på 8 dagar (Rome in 8 Days). A Story of Change and Success
• 8 Codifying the Genre of Early Modern Guidebooks: Oskar Pollak, Ludwig Schudt and the Creation of Le Guide di Roma (1930)
• Appendix I: Must-See Monuments – the Colosseum in Guidebooks through the Centuries
• Name Index
• Place Index