A medieval mystery

Gallus Anonymus is the name by which one has come to refer to the author of Cronicae et gesta ducum sive principum Polonorum. The book is the first written history of Poland, dated to sometime around 1113 AD, and considered of great literary value on account of its Latin style. The author, who calls himself a pilgrim – that is, foreigner – in Poland, has been traditionally referred to as ‘Gallus’ because of a popular theory (on account of some aspects of his literary style) that he might have been French. Professor Jasinski of Poznan University now proposes at length what has been suggested before but without much evidence: that Gallus Anonymus was in fact not French, but Venetian. His argument is based on computer-based textual analysis of Cronicae and another, Venetian text on the translation of the relics of St Nicolo from the Near East to Lido, between which two the professor finds several dozen striking analogies. They include a particular mix of two styles, cursus volux and cursus trispondaicus (on which see a discussion here), use of certain unique literary devices and phrases, use of same prayers, references to same saints, and to same historical and geographical places (in particular, of Via Egnatia) in the same order (traveling south to north).

If taken as proof of common authorship, they would suggest that Gallus Anonym was at one point a monk at the monastery in Lido, that he spoke Greek, and that he was educated in Tours. They may also be taken to suggest that he had participated in the 1st crusade and was present at the taking of Antioch.

For me, one part of the special flavor of this argument lies in the fact that the Venetian origin of Gallus appears to account for many surprising little things, such as his familiarity – and pride at his familiarity – with matters Slavic (which, as a Venetian, he would be); or his reference to the dearth of fresh salt water fish in Poland (a common complaint among Italians residing in Poland today). And another, in the fact that Gallus Anonymus was one of the more global men of his century: we already know from the Cronicae that he was quite familiar with Hungarian realities, and therefore may have lived there for some time; now we know that he had lived in Lido and Tours and been to the Near East. Perhaps more: Professor Jasinski suggests a possible candidate for the Gallus identity: a Venetian scholar named Cerbanus Cerbani, of whom we know that he served as a Greek-Latin translator in Constantinople, and later in Hungary, that he wrote in a style very similar, not to say, plagiaristic of the author of the Translation of San Nicolo, and that he disappeared from view just about the time when Gallus Anonymus may have arrived in Poland.

Other clues have been found to the story. Gallus’ Cronicae become more personal when they reach about the year 1106 (he suddenly writes things like ‘we have seen’ etc.) In that year, a Hungarian refugee prince, Almos, arrived in Poland. Did Gallus arrive in Poland with him? Then the chronicle appears to break off, unfinished, about the year 1113. In that year, Almos was lured back to Hungary, where he was treacherously blinded and some of his retinue put to death by his brother, Coloman I The Book Lover. Was Gallus among those killed? If so, this would be doubly ironic: in Cronicae Gallus praises Coloman as ‘more educated in literary sciences than any of the kings who lived in his age’; and the prince for whom he had written his most famous work, Boleslaw Krzywousty (Wrymouth), had dethroned and blinded his own brother, Zbigniew; and pilgrimaged to holy sites in Hungary to expiate the sin.

Ealier this year I have visited the church and monastery of San Nicolo in Lido, where I have seen documentation of the opening of the San Nicolo casket. Beside the bones of the saint, it contained various items – coins, jewelry, and so forth, and a beautiful bowl in Chinese white and blue, with the Arabic inscription: ‘at first, the science is bitter, but with time it becomes sweeter than honey’. The scholarly commentary for the piece said that it had been executed by someone who was apparently illiterate in Arabic. No word, alas, on whether the painter could have been Chinese. Now here is a real mystery.