''Anonymus Valesianus'' (or ''Excerpta Valesiana'') is the conventional title of a compilation of two fragmentary

vulgar Latin Vulgar Latin, also known as Popular or Colloquial Latin, is the range of non-formal registers of Latin spoken from the Late Roman Republic onward. Through time, Vulgar Latin would evolve into numerous Romance languages. Its literary counterpa ...

chronicles, named for its modern editor, Henricus Valesius, who published the texts for the first time in 1636, together with his first printed edition of the ''Res Gestae'' of

Ammianus Marcellinus Ammianus Marcellinus (occasionally anglicised as Ammian) (born , died 400) was a Roman soldier and historian who wrote the penultimate major historical account surviving from antiquity (preceding Procopius). His work, known as the ''Res Gestae ...

. The two fragments are not related, one being from the fourth century and the other from the sixth. The only connection between the two fragments is their presence in the same manuscript and their history of being edited together.Brian Croke, "Latin Historiography and the Barbarian Kingdoms", in G. Marasco (ed.), ''Greek and Roman Historiography in Late Antiquity: Fourth to Sixth Century A.D.'' (Brill, 2003), pp. 352–358. When Henricus' brother Hadrian re-edited the ''Anonymus'' in an edition of Ammianus Marcellinus in 1681, it was the first time that the two excerpts were clearly separated. The work of the Anonymus Valesianus is a debated issue of historiography for more than one hundred years, all the more so as both the identity of the authors and the circumstances of the compilation of the work are obscure.

Manuscripts

The texts exist only in a single ninth-century manuscript kept in Berlin. When the manuscript turned up in the Jesuit

Collège de Clermont In France, secondary education is in two stages: * ''Collèges'' () cater for the first four years of secondary education from the ages of 11 to 15. * ''Lycées'' () provide a three-year course of further secondary education for children between ...

in Paris in the form of a parchment bundle of 34 flimsy sheets in nine different hands, it was re-ordered according to the hands and re-bound. The collection appeared in the catalogue of the Jesuit college at the occasion of the sale of the library by auction in 1764. The collection was bought by a certain Johannes Meermann and transferred to the Hague (becoming Codex Meermannus 794). Following the death of Meermann, the collection passed to an English collector, Sir

Thomas Phillipps Sir Thomas Phillipps, 1st Baronet (2 July 1792 – 6 February 1872), was an English antiquary and book collector who amassed the largest collection of manuscript material in the 19th century. He was an illegitimate son of a textile manufacture ...

(Codex Phillippsianus 1885). Later, through the heirs, it was taken by the German State Library in Berlin in 1887 where it is accessible today under the

shelfmark A shelfmark is a mark in a book or manuscript that denotes the cupboard or bookcase where it is kept as well as the shelf and possibly even its location on the shelf. The closely related term pressmark (from press, meaning cupboard) denotes only t ...

Ms. Phill. 1885. The ''Anonymus Valesianus'' II was used in a compilation of excerpts in Vat. Pal. lat. 927. This does not derive directly from the Berlin manuscript.

Excerpts

Anonymus Valesianus I

''Anonymus Valesianus'' I (or ''Excerptum Valesianum'' I), sometimes given the separate conventional title ''Origo Constantini Imperatoris'' ("The Lineage of the Emperor Constantine") possibly dates from around 390, and is generally regarded as providing a reliable source. The beginning of Origo already looks like the final sentence of an account on the rule of Diocletian and Maximian. In 1963

Arnaldo Momigliano Arnaldo Dante Momigliano (5 September 1908 – 1 September 1987) was an Italian historian of classical antiquity, known for his work in historiography, and characterised by Donald Kagan as "the world's leading student of the writing of history i ...

summarized the results of scholarship on Origo Constantini in the words that ''“All is in doubt about the first part of the Anonymus Valesianus”.'' There are questions left, with regard to the date of Origo's editions, sources, and revisions, which have not yet found convincing answers.

Anonymus Valesianus II

''Anonymus Valesianus'' II (or ''Excerptum Valesianum'' II), sometimes referred to as the ''Pars Posterior'', written after 526 and probably between 540 and 550. The text is headed ''item ex libris chronicorum inter cetera'', implying either that it was excerpted from several chronicles or from a chronicle entitled ''Libri chronicorum'' (or perhaps a ''Chronica'' in several books). The text mostly deals with the reign of the Ostrogothic king

Theodoric the Great Theodoric (or Theoderic) the Great (454 – 30 August 526), also called Theodoric the Amal ( got, , *Þiudareiks; Greek: , romanized: ; Latin: ), was king of the Ostrogoths (471–526), and ruler of the independent Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy ...

. It is sometimes called the ''Chronica Theodericana''. The identity of the author and the circumstances of the compilation of the Pars Posterior is obscure, however a few scholars think it "based on a no longer extant chronicle by the bishop of Ravenna, Maximianus". The Pars Posterior consists of 60 chapters and it presents the chain of events as a chronicle from Chapter 36 to 59: from the rule of

Emperor Zeno Zeno (; grc-gre, Ζήνων, Zénōn; c. 425 – 9 April 491) was Eastern Roman emperor from 474 to 475 and again from 476 to 491. Domestic revolts and religious dissension plagued his reign, which nevertheless succeeded to some extent in forei ...

, through the decline of the power of Odoacer, up to the succession of

in 493. In the next section, from Chapter 60 to 79, the description of the rule of

– the Italian ruler of Germanic origin – can be found. Besides the description of political events the author dwells on portraying the major virtues of the ruler through different narratives. In the closing section (Chapter 80 to 96) the author describes the tragic years of Theodoric's rule. The work was used by

Edward Gibbon Edward Gibbon (; 8 May 173716 January 1794) was an English historian, writer, and member of parliament. His most important work, '' The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'', published in six volumes between 1776 and 1788, is ...

as a major source for the Roman perspective on the

Ostrogothic The Ostrogoths ( la, Ostrogothi, Austrogothi) were a Roman-era Germanic people. In the 5th century, they followed the Visigoths in creating one of the two great Gothic kingdoms within the Roman Empire, based upon the large Gothic populations who ...

period in his '' History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire''.

External links

''Origo Constantini. Nagy Constantinus császár eredete''
(in Latin-Hungarian).

(in English).

(in Latin). * ttps://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Excerpta_Valesiana/home.html LacusCurtius: Anonymous Valesianus(English and Latin text with notes and commentary).

References