HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

MEDIEVAL URBAN HISTORIOGRAPHY 333monies, recorded by Rolandino during his almost uninterrupted presenceas notary of the seal of the commune, which began in 1231and continued through alternating hostile regimes. The Cronica, whichfrom its title would seem to have a regional dimension as its aim,was written in an elegant Latin prose, following a chronology of theconsuls and podestàs of Padua; but this municipal annalistic schemewas overborne by the chronicler, by means of a rather mobile perspectivethat ranged from the illustration of Venetian dynasties andpersons (above all the Da Romano, and among these Ezzelino IIIand Alberico) to general items about the empire of Frederick IIHohenstaufen and the popes of his time. These are themes thatwould seem, in part, to foreshadow contents privileged by later urbanhistoriography, addressed in a courtly sense to lords and princes. Butit is only a question of apparently related contents, because Rolandino’ssiding with the Guelph and anti-Ezzelino faction, even expressedwith prudence post facta, namely from 1260 to 1262—after the fallof the da Romano—when in effect the work was composed, remainsperfectly coherent with communal morale and with its civic valuesof liberty, justice, and peace; values definitely brought back and recognizedin primis in his patria of Padua and also shared by other centersof communal civilization. In fact, from Rolandino’s re-evocation,more anguished than lucid, of the Ezzelinian tyranny—an experiencegrievously endured by the people for nearly thirty years inPadua and on the border—emerges a great sense of the fragility ofcommunal institutions under the blows inflicted by the demonic powerof tyrants, and a grave warning for future generations of cives of anycommunal center. 38If the presence of divine providence floats mysteriously amid thedocuments of Rolandino’s Cronica, not as much can be said of theworks of another notary-chronicler of two generations later, wholived in several centers in the Po basin but, above all, in his ownpatria: Riccobaldo da Ferrara (1246–1318 post). He was largely a witnessand writer of current events, endowed with a remarkable politicalsensibility that, far from being transformed into abstract or38Cronica, ed. Bonardi, vii–xvii; see also n. 37. Since the seventeenth century, thework of Rolandino has enjoyed a notable editorial fortune and, having passedthrough the sieve of erudition of Muratori and his continuators, has given rise todecisive developments, above all in the historic-critical mode, only in the last decadesof the twentieth century.