HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

328 AUGUSTO VASINAall the way to the Holy Land and the eastern Empire. 20 The Annales,intended to hand down the historical memory of the urban communityin an official version, were composed in Latin and subsequentlyenjoyed a varied fortune, above all from the nineteenthcentury onward. It was precisely from the nineteenth century thatthe peculiarities of the Annales began to be studied and identified, asa product of the almost two-century-long collaboration of its variousauthors, from upper-middle class families and communal professionalsin the notariate and the chancellery. These were conditionsthat already by themselves could secure public dignity and credibilityto the chroniclers, as faithful interpreters of the lay ideology ofthe new communal society, in the continuity of its transmarine andmarine undertakings, in both peace and war. 21From Caffaro to Jacopo Doria, during the prolonged municipalexperience of Genoa, are blended together the succession of compagneand consulates, the initial municipalismo and the early moralistic-pedagogicalburdens, in a perspective more open to the increasing complexityand dispersion of late thirteenth-century life.The Annales Placentini, by a notary of Piacenza, Giovanni Codagnello(ca. 1175–after 1235) invite us to enter into the life of the communalexperience of a city of dry land, of Lombard culture, of great relevancefor transport in the heart of the plain of the Po and, becauseof this, a city of remarkable mercantile vocations. 22 Probably a descendantof the lower nobility, local vassals of the urban church, Codagnelloworked as a notary in Piacenza’s commune, but there is no evidencethat his chronicle production was officially commissioned by urbanmagistrates. Thus, his Annales could be considered a personal expressionof his desire to pass down to contemporaries and to posteritythe memory of the records of Piacenza. The Annales (ca. 1090–1235)seem derived only in their first part from written memory of a familial(his father also was a notary) and communal (archival documentation,especially from the urban commune) character; then theybecome ever more an expression of the direct experience undergoneby the notary-chronicler, a participant in conflicts both internal and20Petti Balbi (1995) has given us one of the most recent and critically up to datestudies of Caffaro, the continuators and their works.21Potthast (1962–98), 2:291–92.22J. Codagnelli, Annales Placentini, ed. O. Holder-Egger, MGH Script. rerum German.in usum scholarum, vol. 23 (Hannover, 1901).