Liutprand

“ It is worthy of thy wisdom to act as mediator in so great a matter. Thou art the only one of the Franks whom we now love ; but when at thy behest they shall have corrected what is evil, they also shall be loved. And when thou shalt come to us again thou shalt not go away unrewarded."
I said to myself: "If I ever come back here again, may Nicephorus present me with a crown and a golden sceptre !"
"But tell us," they continued, "does thy most holy master wish to close with the emperor a treaty of friend- ship through marriage?" ”

“ But if Adalbert when he came should not bring with him so many thousands of men, he ordered that he was to be taken, bound, and given over to ye when ye came; moreover that the money which was destined for him, Adalbert, should be paid over into your hands! Oh what a warrior, oh what fidelity. He wishes to betray him for whom he prepares a defender; he prepares a defender for him whom he wishes to destroy. Towards neither is he faithful, towards both untrue. He does what he did not need to do, he needed to do what he has not done. But so be it, he acted as one might expect from Greeks! ”

“ From such nobility those are descended whom you call world-rulers, that is, emperors; whom we, namely the Lombards, Saxons, Franks, Lotharingians, Bavarians, Swabians, Burgundians, so despise, that when angry we can call our enemies nothing more scornful than Roman—comprehending in this one thing, that is in the name of the Romans, whatever there is of contemptibility, of timidity, of avarice, of luxury, of lying: in a word, of viciousness. ”

“ The Greeks inveighed against the sea, cursed the waves, and wondered exceedingly how they had been able to transport such an iniquity and why the yawning deep had not swallowed up the ship. "Was it not unpardonable," they said, " to have called the universal emperor of the Romans, the august, great, only Nicephorus: ' of the Greeks ';—a barbarian, a pauper: 'of the Romans '? Oh sky! Oh earth! Oh sea!" "But what," they said, " shall we do to those scoundrels, those criminals? They are paupers, and if we kill them we pollute our hands with vile blood ”

“ The stupid silly pope does not know that the holy Constantino transferred hither the imperial sceptre, the senate, and all the Roman knighthood, and left in Rome nothing but vile minions—fishers, namely, pedlars, bird catchers, bastards, plebeians, slaves. He would never have written this unless at the suggestion of thy king; how dangerous this will be to both—the immediate future, unless they come to their senses, will show." "But the pope," I said, " whose simplicity is his title to renown, thought he was writing this to the honour of the emperor, not to his shame. ”

“ When this had been done they took away from me five most costly purple stuffs; considering yourselves and all the Italians, Saxons, Franks, Bavarians, Swabians—nay, all nations—as unworthy to be adorned with such vestments. How unworthy, how shameful it is, that these soft, effeminate, long-sleeved, hooded, veiled, lying, neutralgendered, idle creatures should go clad in purple, while you heroes—strong men, namely, skilled in war, full of faith and love, reverencing God, full of virtues—may not! ”

“ Ye have heard the interpretation of the Greeks; hear now that of Liutprand, bishop of Cremona. For I say — and not alone do I say, but I affirm—that if the prophecy is to be fulfilled in the present time, the lion and the whelp are the father and the son. Otto and Otto, unlike in nothing only differing in age,—and that they together shall, in this present time, exterminate the wild ass Nicephorus; who not incongruously is compared to the wild ass on account of his vain and empty glory, and on account of his incestuous marriage with his fellow god-parent and mistress. ”

“ Truly, I answer, not men, but only images of men; whose tongue only is bold, but whose right hand is frigid in war. Nicephorus did not look for quality in them, but only for quantity. How perilous this is for him he will learn to his sorrow, when the multitude of unwarlike ones, brave only on account of numbers, shall be put to rout by a handful of our men who are skilled in war—nay, thirsting for it. When ye were besieging Bari only three hundred Hungarians seized five hundred Greeks near Thessalonica and led them into Hungary. ”

“ It would have been right for us, nay, we had wished to receive thee kindly and with honour; but the impiety of thy master does not permit it since, invading it as an enemy, he has claimed for himself Rome; has taken away from Berengar and Adalbert their kingdom, contrary to law and right; has slain some of the Romans by the sword, others by hanging, depriving some of their eyes, sending others into exile; and has tried, moreover, to subject to himself by slaughter or by flame cities of our empire. ”

“ The Roman pope—if indeed he is to be called pope who has held communion and worked together with the son of Alberic the apostate, with an adulterer and unhallowed person—has sent letters to our most holy emperor, worthy of himself, unworthy of Nicephorus, calling him the emperor 'of the Greeks,' and not 'of the Romans.' Which thing beyond a doubt has been done by the advice of thy master. ”

“ Thou hast nothing to bestow on thy brother; bestow something on the emperors who love thy brother by putting their trust in Him who knows all things. Thou knowest with what labour and exertion, with what vigils and at what expense—snatching it from the hands of the godless—they have enriched, honoured, exalted, and brought back to its proper condition, the Roman church of thy brother the apostle Peter. ”

“ The envoys of thy king Otto who were here before thee in the preceding year promised me under oath —and the wording of the oath can be produced—that he would never in any way bring scandal upon our empire. Dost thou wish for a worse scandal than that he calls himself emperor, that he usurps for himself the provinces of our empire? ”

“ Constantine, the august emperor who founded this city and called it after his name, as world-ruler gave many gifts to the holy apostolic Roman church, not only in Italy but in almost all the western kingdoms; also in the eastern and southern—in Greece, namely, Judea, Persia, Mesopotamia, Babylonia, Egypt, Libya: as his own privileges witness, which are preserved in our land. Now whatever there is, in Italy and also in Saxony and Bavaria or in any of the dominions of my master, that belongs to the church of the blessed apostles: he has conferred it on the vicar of those same most holy apostles. ”

“ To call a weakling strong, a fool wise, a short man tall, a black man white, a sinner holy,—is, believe me, not praise but contumely. And he who rejoices in having strange attributes called after him, rather than those that are rightly due to him, is altogether like those birds whose eyes the night illumines, the day blinds. ”

“ But as, on account of thy hardness of heart, thou art not willing to do this: at least bring about this one thing, which thou may'st with perfect right do; — promise, namely, that thy master will lend no aid to the princes of Capua and Benevento, my slaves whom I am about to attack. Since he gives us nothing of his own, let him at least give up what is ours. It is a well-known thing that their fathers and grandfathers gave tribute to our empire, and that they themselves shall shortly do the same,—for that the army of our empire will labour. ”

“ Faith is there not young but old where works do not accompany it; but faith is scorned, as it were, for its age, like a worn-out garment. But I know for certain of one synod that was held in Saxony in which it was decreed and confirmed that it was more fitting to fight with the sword than with the pen, and better to submit to death than to turn one's back to the enemy. ”

“ That member of the body where the infirmity has its seat must be burned with the burning iron. All heresies have emanated from you, have flourished among you; by us, that is by the western nations they have been here strangled, here put an end to.—A Roman or a Pavian synod, although they often took place, I do not count here. A Roman clerk, indeed, afterwards the universal pope Gregory who is called by you Dialogus, freed Eutychius the heretical patriarch of Constantinople from his heresy. ”

“ I said, "is the word of your emperor, where the imperial promise? For when I said farewell to him, I asked him up to what price he would permit me to buy vestments in honour of my church. And he said: 'Buy whatever ones and as many as thou dost wish; ' and in thus designating the quantity and the quality, he clearly did not make a distinction as if he had said 'excepting this and this.' Leo, the marshal of the court, his brother, is witness; Enodisius, the interpreter, John, Komanus, are witnesses. I myself am witness, since even without the interpreter, I understood what the emperor said." ”

“ The Greeks and Saracens have books which they call the Visions of Daniel; I would call them Sibylline Books. In them is found written how many years each emperor shall live; what things, whether peace or war, are to happen during his reign; whether fortune is to be favourable to the Saracens, or the reverse. ”

“ Nicephorus, being a man who scorns all churches, on account of the wrath in which he abounds towards ye, has ordered the patriarch of Constantinople to raise the church of Hydronto to the rank of a bishopric, and not to permit any longer, throughout all Apulia and Calabria, that the divine mysteries be celebrated in Latin, but to have them celebrated in Greek. He says that the former popes were traders and that they sold the Holy Spirit—that Spirit by which all things are vivified and ruled; which fills the universe ”

“ Ennodius, moreover, bishop of Pavia, was, on account of a certain other heresy, sent here, that is to Constantinople, by the Roman patriarch. He repressed it, and restored the orthodox catholic teaching.—The race of the Saxons, from the time when it received the holy baptism and the knowledge of God, has been spotted by no heresy which would have rendered a synod necessary for the correction of an error which did not exist. Since thou declarest the faith of the Saxons to be young, I am willing also to affirm the same ”

“ With our money, which gives us our power, we will arouse all the nations against him; and we will break him in pieces like a potter's vessel, which, when broken can not be brought into shape again. And as we imagine that thou, in his honour, hast bought some costly garments, we order thee to bring them before us. ”

“ For, rising from the ends of the earth and coming to Rome, he removed the impious and gave back to the vicars of the holy apostles their power and all their honour. But afterwards those who had risen against him and the lord pope, according to the decrees of the Roman emperors Justinian, Valentinian, Theodosius and the others he slew, strangled, hung, and sent into exile as violators of their oath, as sacrilegious men, as torturers and plunderers of their lords the popes. ”

“ Do ye in the meantime, most potent emperors, continue to labour as ye have done; bring it about that, if Nicephorus be unwilling to obey us when we arrange to proceed against him canonically, he will hear ye, whose forces this half-corpse will not dare to meet. This, I say, is what the apostles, our masters and fellow fighters, wish us to do. Rome is not to be despised by the Greeks because Constantine went away from it ”

“ A numerous multitude of tradesmen and low-born persons, collected at this festival to receive and to do honour to Nicephorus, occupied both sides of the road from the palace to St. Sophia like walls, being disfigured by quite thin little shields and wretched spears. ”

“ And so it reads, that, in the time of this Nicephorus, the Assyrians will not be able to resist the Greeks, and that he, Nicephorus, will only live seven years; and that after his death an emperor shall arise worse than he—only I fear that none such can be found—and more un warlike; in whose time the Assyrians shall so prevail, that they shall bring all the regions as far as Chalcedon, which is not far from Constantinople, under their sway. For both peoples have regard for their favourable seasons ”

“ If," he said, " thy master shall be friendly to the holy emperor, he will give him many such; and it will be no little glory to him himself to possess what no one of his distinguished predecessors has ever seen." But believe me, my august masters, my brother and fellow bishop, master Antony (of Brixen) can furnish ones that are not inferior, as is witnessed by the markets which are held at Cremona; and there they walk about not as wild asses but as tame ones. But when my escort had announced the above words to Nicephorus, he sent me two goats, and gave me permission to go away. ”

“ And when it had continued to do this for several days and nights: on the day before the Calends of December (Nov. 30) —on the very day, namely, of His passion—I recognized that this had happened to me of my own fault. Trouble alone taught me to give ear to its meaning. Famine, indeed, had begun to violently oppress us. The inhabitants of the land thought to kill us, in order to take our goods from us. The sea, to hinder our flight, was raging high. ”

“ They themselves sell and buy; they themselves close and open their doors; they are their own stewards, their own ass-drivers, their own "capones"—but ha! I was going to write "caupones," but the thing itself is so true that I was compelled to write the truth even when I did not wish to—for really, I say, they are "caupones"—that is, eunuchs—which is against the ecclesiastical law ”

“ They are at the same time poor and rich; rich in gold, with which they play from full coffers; poor in servants and implements. Alone they seat themselves at their bare little tables, placing before themselves their ship-biscuit ”

“ And you have no right to compel me here to change the custom of my country, considering that we permit your envoys who come to us to keep to the custom of theirs. For with long sleeves, swathed, spangled, with long hair, clad in tunics down to their ankles, they ride, walk and sit at table with us ”