Con una commozione più intensa di quella provata commentando Omero sulle rovine di Micene, ora, io, sull'acropoli di Butrinto, da me scoperta e scavata, leggo Virgilio.
Luigi Maria Ugolini, Butrinto. Il mito d'Enea, gli scavi (1937: 12)Heinrich Schliemann (1822–90) famously began his search for Troy armed with a copy of Homer's Iliad. His excavations at Hissarlik seemed to verify that ancient epics reflect actual historical events. In the same spirit, the Italian archaeologist Luigi Maria Ugolini (1895–1936) launched his excavations in southwest Albania explicitly to find the remains of ‘lofty Buthrotum’ as described in Virgil's Aeneid, and, like Schliemann before him, actively acknowledged the presumed positivistic connection between the ancient epic and the archaeology (Fig. 1).Footnote 2 While ancient epic and archaeology often have walked hand in hand, medieval and renaissance epic are not generally included within the archaeologist's ‘documentary field’. Archaeology, on the other hand, offers an important source for examining the ambiguities, contradictions and attitudes taken by a textual narrative. Being a text created in modern contexts, the archaeological record does more than illuminate the margins of a written source. The material remains, ranging from the text of an epic to animal or fish bones, do more than give a ‘voice to the voiceless’;Footnote 3 these are resources drawn upon by people in the construction of themselves and their communities. In our times, the positivism of Schliemann and Ugolini has given way to a critical understanding of the layers inherent in any text, both material and written. This essay, then, argues that, just as the Iliad may contain significant historical evidence for the site of Troy, so references to Butrint in the neo-Latin epic Carlias are given new meaning by major large-scale excavations of this Epirote port, and vice versa. Although Butrint had featured in Virgil's Aeneid as a place of importance both to Aeneas and to members of Augustus's circle, it is here argued that the port features prominently in Books One and Five of Ugolino Verino's Carlias because of its strategic relevance for the dedicatee, King Charles VIII of France, as he contemplated a new crusade against the Ottomans, and then confronted the Venetians following his triumphal descent through the Italian peninsula (1494) and his conquest of Naples (1495).
Fig. 1. Location of Butrint. (Reproduced courtesy of the Butrint Foundation.)
UGOLINO VERINO'S CARLIAS
The fifteen-book, neo-Latin epic Carlias by the Florentine poet Ugolino Verino (1438–1516) is, for many reasons, an extraordinary poem.Footnote 4 The epic celebrates the career, both real and imaginary, of Charlemagne (742–814), king of the Franks (768) and emperor of the West (800). The historical figure, who had conquered the infidel throughout his empire and whose coronation in Rome on Christmas Day in 800 re-established the Western Roman Empire, is here remade into the hero of a Christian epic, whose deeds excel those of Achilles, Odysseus and Aeneas. The poem is divided into two parts: the first six books recount Charlemagne's mythical exploits in the Holy Land; while in the last books Charlemagne expels the Lombards from Italy.Footnote 5 Verino's epic includes all the classical tropes: he begins in medias res; there are banquets, journeys, storms at sea, great battles and councils of war. In a remarkable piece of invention, the epic katabasis is remodelled in imitation of Dante's Divine Comedy, so that Charlemagne not only travels through the Underworld (Book Six), but also continues his journey to Purgatory (Book Seven) and Paradise (Book Eight), so that this Christian hero's destiny is affirmed directly in the presence of God. The Virgin Mary endorses Charlemagne's victories and encourages him with predictions of future greatness, while the angels applaud. Charlemagne's wars, and his terrestrial and celestial voyages, are thus clearly intended not only to eclipse the achievements of the classical heroes, but also to surpass the fantastic deeds described in the medieval Alexander Romances.
An example from Book One reveals the poet's method of combining classical and Christian motifs. As at the opening of the Aeneid, the hero's fleet is caught in a storm:
(The leader of the Franks raised both hands to the stars and with his head uncovered as a suppliant spoke thus: ‘Look down upon us, Christ, and calm such a storm! […] Allow us, Father, to reach the desired ports of Italy, if I happily follow your commands and expose my life to hazards; under your guidance I am hurrying to restore the reverend fathers, who have been exiled from their Roman home, and your sacred rites to the Tarpeian rock and to expel the savage tyrants!’
He had scarcely uttered these things, when on the left a fiery light gleaming with a harmless flash came down from on high. Immediately as the shadows were dispersed, the royal ship seemed to be on fire and a celestial light shone around the mast, they say that the voice of the Thunderer was heard from a cloud: ‘Behold I am here; put aside your fear, have faith! We have forbidden Satan to rage further with his swift storms’.)
Verino here has combined Aeneas's prayer (Aeneid 1.92–101) with Christ's words to the disciples as he calms the waves on the Sea of Galilee (Luke 8.22–5) to add resonance to Charlemagne's epic mission and Christian destiny.Footnote 6
Verino's epic poem was written over a long period and dramatically recast in the late 1480s/early 1490s when Europe was thrown into turmoil by the decision of King Charles VIII of France to press Angevin claims to the kingdom of Naples by force of arms.Footnote 7 The Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, guaranteed the French army safe passage into Italy, and in spring 1494 the French descent into the Italian peninsula began.Footnote 8 Charles excused and validated his invasion by claiming that his plans for the conquest of Naples and southern Italy were not an end in themselves, but the first step of a crusade eastward, aiming to wrest the Mediterranean from the Turks and to recapture the Holy Land.
Could Butrint have featured in the king's plans? Together with the island and fortress of Corfu, it had belonged originally to the Angevin dynasty of Sicily and southern Italy. It had been purchased by the Venetians a little over a century earlier, in 1386. Moreover, the imperial title of the Byzantine empire had been transferred to Charles. In the wake of the king's decision to march against Naples, Andreas Paleologus, the exiled despot of Morea living in Rome and the last ‘titular’ Byzantine Emperor (1453–1502), sold Charles the rights of succession to the Byzantine crown, before the French king had even arrived in Rome.Footnote 9 This bizarre ceremony took place on 6 September 1494, in the church of San Pietro in Montorio on the Janiculum. As Josephine Jungić has shown, this church was particularly noted for its associations with the Joachite prophecy of the Last World Emperor, who would come to reassert order in the Last Days before the final conflict between the forces of Good and Evil. This medieval prophecy had resurfaced in the late fifteenth century as the French army moved south.Footnote 10
In Florence an atmosphere of almost messianic expectation prevailed. Savonarola proclaimed that the French monarch had been sent by God to triumph in Rome, reform the Church, receive the imperial crown and deliver Constantinople and Jerusalem.Footnote 11 On his accession, Verino had sent the young king a panegyrical ‘brief epic’ in 300 hexameters (now lost).Footnote 12 As Charles VIII busied himself with the Italian campaign, Verino now recast the Carlias with a dedication to the French king. A presentation manuscript of the poem was prepared by the brothers Gherardo (1445–97) and Monte (1448–1532/3) di Giovanni del Fora (di Miniato), who ran a flourishing workshop in Florence from the early 1460s (Fig. 2).Footnote 13 As befitting the royal dedicatee, this book was a deluxe production of the highest quality, expensively bound, gauffered and written in coloured inks on fine white vellum. The elaborate title-page is bordered with exquisite images of Charlemagne, the French royal insignia and a portrait of the poet. The initial letter of each book is enriched in gold leaf, set against a multicoloured background, decorated with fine penwork, and complemented by a border all'antica composed of trophies, cameos and other classical motifs. As the dedicatory epistle makes clear, this volume was intended to inspire Charles VIII to emulate his ancestor Charlemagne, who, the poet says, is ‘without rival in deed or religion’ (see Appendix). At a moment in European history when the eastern empire had collapsed and a crusade seemed increasingly untenable, Charlemagne's eastern victories must have seemed particularly appealing.
Fig. 2. Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, MS Ricc. 838, fol. 4r. © Biblioteca Riccardiana. (Reproduced courtesy of the Biblioteca Riccardiana.)
CHARLEMAGNE IN FIFTEENTH-CENTURY FLORENCE
The myth of Charlemagne was extremely popular in fifteenth-century Florence.Footnote 14 For the legend of the foundation of the city holds that Charlemagne, returning to France after his coronation in Rome, stopped in Florence to refound and restore the city to its former splendour after the devastation of the Gothic invasions.Footnote 15 Florentine humanists in the fifteenth century certainly exploited the legend to stress a special relationship between the city and France. Donato Acciaiuoli composed a Vita Caroli (‘Life of Charlemagne’) in both Latin and Italian, based largely upon Einhard, for presentation to Charles VIII's father Louis XI of France (1423–83) upon his accession to the throne in 1461.Footnote 16 Verino also exploits this myth to offer a panegyric on the noble origins of many Florentine families by creating for them a fictional ancestor among Charlemagne's paladins:
(Great-hearted Medices, from whom the most worthy progeny of the Medici have derived their family, commands the first squadron of cavalry. As much as Atlas exceeds the Libyan mountains, so this wealthy family surpasses other Italian citizens.)Footnote 17
In addition to this special relationship there is the myth of the Second Charlemagne of millenarian prophecy. Towards the end of the thirteenth century Alexander von Roes (writing c. 1281) had reformulated the old legend of a Last World Emperor with reference to Charlemagne. There is a popular prophecy, he says, which expects an emperor to be raised up from the Carolingian stock who will be princeps et monarcha of all Europe.Footnote 18 A century later an Italian, the so-called Telesphorus of Cosenza, infused this prophecy with new meaning.
He will be crowned in his thirteenth year and at fourteen he will start on a triumphant career that will begin with the destruction of all tyrants in his own kingdom and carry him triumphantly through the subjugation of western Europe, the destruction of Rome and Florence, the conquest of Greece and eastern nations, until at last he reaches Jerusalem.Footnote 19
As Marjorie Reeves showed, Charles VIII was clearly associated with these prophecies of the Second Charlemagne and the Last World Emperor of Joachite thought.Footnote 20 She noted: ‘There has seldom been in western European history a series of events so widely viewed within the framework of prophetic drama as the Italian expedition of Charles VIII’.Footnote 21 For example, in 1494 the vernacular poet Guilloche de Bordeaux had unearthed the Second Charlemagne prophecy and had proclaimed confidently that Charles VIII would conquer Greece and be acclaimed king of the Greeks; conquer the Turks and all barbarians; and that all Christian kings would submit to him.Footnote 22 Alessandro Benedetti similarly places the Italian campaign within the context of the contemporary prophecies. At the beginning of his Diaria de Bello Carolino Benedetti notes:
Charles VIII, king of the French, was seized in the twenty-fourth year of his life with a desire for power, and to lend credence to the affair he feigned religious motives and let it be known everywhere that he was preparing a war against the Turks. He even avowed with still greater boldness that certain prophecies were prophecies concerning himself, so that when Spain, Germany and Italy had been vanquished under his auspices Greece, Asia, Syria and Egypt would without hesitation worship him as a god, and that when he had acquired Jerusalem, and laid his crown on the ground, and venerated the tomb of Christ, he would be borne off to heaven a triumphant victor on his last day.Footnote 23
The reworking and dedication of the Carlias to Charles VIII therefore must be placed within the framework of the millenarian expectation that surrounded Charles VIII's descent into Italy; his march south towards Naples via Florence, and the projected crusade to liberate Jerusalem.Footnote 24
In this context the frequent references to Butrint take on an additional resonance. The Florentine priest Cristoforo de' Buondelmonti (c. 1380/85–c. 1430), braving terrible dangers among the barbarous inhabitants of the Greek world, travelled extensively throughout the Aegean islands to record the antiquities associated with the epic journeys described in Homer and Virgil.Footnote 25 He disseminated his observations in two treatises: Descriptio Insulae Cretae (c. 1417) and Liber Insularum Archipelagi (c. 1420).Footnote 26 The latter was presented to the great Roman book collector, Cardinal Giordano Orsini in a dedication manuscript lavishly illuminated with schematic maps showing the locations of classical ruins (now unfortunately lost). Illustrated redactions of this text were extremely popular and influential throughout the fifteenth century.Footnote 27 Although the reference to Butrint in the text is confined to a quotation from Virgil (see below), the illustration of Corfu also features the fortress of Butrint on the Albanian coastline (Fig. 3). Captions supplement the meagre geographical information given in the text. Alternative spellings of the city are noted, the church dedicated to Saint Blaise is highlighted, and the natural surroundings of an oak wood (‘dodona silva’) and a large river are indicated.
Fig. 3. Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Chig. F.V. 110, fol. 2v. © Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. (Reproduced courtesy of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana.)
A decade or so after Buondelmonti had toured the Aegean islands, Ciriaco d'Ancona (1391–1452) travelled in the same area.Footnote 28 On 26 December 1435 he disembarked at Butrint, made a tour of the site and copied an inscription in Latin (CIL III(1) 581) and one in Greek (CIG II 1823) from the walls before heading down the coast to Arta, the capital of the court of the Neapolitan prince of Epirus, Carlo II Tocco. As Edward Bodnar noted,
Carlo II was Duke of Leukas and Zacynthos, vassal of King Ladislao of Naples, who had seized Anatolia, Acarnania, and Aetolia in 1405 and all Epirus in 1418 after the assassination of the Albanian, Mauriskos. His title was δεσπότης ‘Ρωμαίων and his wife (the daughter of Duke Nerio I Acciaiuoli of Athens) was Βασίλισσα ‘Ρωμαίων.
His relations with Florence, presumably through family connections with the Acciaiuoli, were especially good, and Italian merchants were regularly received at his court.Footnote 29 Ciriaco toured the Levant throughout the 1440s in a semi-official capacity to confirm the loyalty of the allies in the Crusade of Varna, a last attempt to save Constantinople and the remnants of the Byzantine Empire from the Turkish advance.Footnote 30 Thus through the ‘archaeological’ travelogues of Buondelmonti and Ciriaco, the Epirote port had begun to figure in the consciousness of Renaissance Florence as an ancient site of contemporary strategic importance.
CELSAM BUTHROTI ACCEDIMUS URBEM (‘WE ARRIVED AT THE LOFTY CITY OF BUTHROTUM’) (AENEID 3.293): BUTRINT IN VIRGIL'S AENEID
More importantly, Butrint had featured significantly in the Aeneid, Virgil's great epic on the foundation of Rome.Footnote 31 In Book 3 Aeneas arrives at Buthrotum/Butrint to discover that Hector's brother Helenus has married his widowed sister-in-law Andromache and together they have recreated a new Troy, identical in all respects to the city destroyed by the Greeks.Footnote 32 At this scale-model Troy, the Trojans not only receive a welcome break from the toil and weariness of their wanderings, but, more importantly, they are reassured in their destiny and future glory. For it is at Buthrotum that the seer Helenus foretells that, although Aeneas and his companions still have far to go, their expedition to Italy eventually will be successful. The sojourn at Butrint thus not only confirms Aeneas's divine mission, but also allows the Trojans to prepare themselves both physically and mentally for the next, and more important, stage of their quest. Butrint serves a similar function in the Carlias for both Charlemagne and, by association, Charles VIII. At Butrint Charlemagne's forces rest during the long winter months. More importantly, it is from Butrint that Charlemagne ascends to Heaven to receive divine sanction for his mission, for Butrint is also a gateway to the Underworld.Footnote 33 Whereas Helenus can only prophesy in the vaguest terms to Aeneas, Charlemagne has direct confirmation of his success from the throne of God. Butrint's association with Troy also has significance for Charles VIII. For, by selecting Butrint as the first stage of the eastern crusade, the French forces have achieved an immediate success. By projecting their arrival back in a fantasy of power and triumph, they have revived past glories and retaken Troy, thereby assuring their forthcoming crusade to the Holy Land of success on an epic scale.
There is a faint echo of the classical tradition in the medieval Song of Roland (stanza 232), where the Emir assembles a Moorish army from across the Mediterranean, including a battalion of warriors from Butentrot (Butrint). Significantly, this chanson de geste was cited by Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont (1096), in his appeal to the chivalry of France to follow in the footsteps of Charlemagne and send an army against the forces of Islam. As W.S. Merwin has observed: ‘Many of the crusaders who responded to Urban's summons, and many who came later, must have been following an image of themselves which derived, at least in part, from the legendary last battle of the now transfigured Hrouland’.Footnote 34
REFERENCES TO BUTRINT IN VERINO'S CARLIAS
Strategically placed on the Albanian coastline, ‘lofty Butrint’ features at key points throughout the Carlias. It seems likely that Verino derived his information from the illustrations in Buondelmonti and Ciriaco d'Ancona's Commentaria for the period 1433–43 (now lost). In Book 1 Charlemagne and his companions, having incurred the wrath of Satan on the Aegean sea, are blown ashore at Epirus. A seer suggests that Charlemagne seek out King Justinus, descendant of the eastern empire, at Butrint:
(‘So, come, hurry to the walls and houses of Butrint and cross these hills and make for the city walls!’).
On the way to Justinus's court, the Franks are met by ambassadors:
(Then aged Polynous, born in learned Athens, and renowned for his eloquence, thus began to speak: ‘The sure salvation and glory of the world, Charles, whose right hand has bestowed upon him the glorious name of ‘Great’, whether the grim tempest of the raging sea has forced you unwillingly to the shores of Justinus or you are making for Epirus of your own accord, come freely to Butrint and enjoy our hospitality as a dear friend!')
Here Verino has imagined how Charles VIII's new crusading army would be received as they use the city as their winter base before moving on to the Holy Land. When Charlemagne and his companions enter the city, Verino describes the main square:
(While thus the youth of Butrint point out the Belgian princes to each other, they arrive at the royal palace. There was a great wide square in the middle of the city paved with marble slabs, and surrounded by evergreen box, plane trees and Daphnean laurel and far and wide birds were charming the breezes with spring songs as they flew around; in addition, bright fountains were gushing from golden spouts as though from the Hippocrine stream.
On higher ground the rays of the rising sun were illuminating the royal palace built upon marble columns; a great portico, supported by Parian marble, enclosed this on all sides, and its walls were decorated with mosaic.)
Although this description of the royal palace is an epic trope, Verino's hyperbole may have some basis in the texts he had used. Ciriaco took inscriptions from the walls, and the illustration in Buondelmonti suggests a grand edifice dominating the town in this period (Fig. 3). The Franks are royally entertained at Justinus's court. The banquet recalls eastern customs:
(Thus he spoke and gave the signal for the fine tables beneath a golden [statue of] Apollo to be decorated and the room to be filled with warm air and the halls be cleansed with incense, like the breezes from the Panchaean groves in springtime which a sailor returning from the Arabian Gulf inhales. He ordered Syrian boughs and logs to be burned and a roaring fire kindled to dispel the cold. They immediately hang gleaming torches from the painted ceilings and keep the night at bay with chandeliers; warm fragrant water is brought out and expensive perfumes are poured on their hands. Then the servants bring white bread and soft loaves of fine wheat and the sumptuous tables are weighed down and golden goblets are filled to the brim with Cretan wine. Some fill the crystal cups with sparkling water; the banquet has been procured from the ocean and all the forests. Three hundred servants ….)
In general terms, the description of the palace at Butrint and the festivities to welcome Charlemagne and his knights in Book 1 conforms to classical prototypes (usefully, though not exclusively, catalogued by Thurn).Footnote 35 Within the poem the palace also contrasts with the description of other palaces (for example, Pluto's palace in Book 6 and the description of Heaven in Book 8). An exclusively allegorical reading, which Thurn suggested, divorces the poem, and the sumptuous manuscript for Charles VIII, from its immediate historical context. Books 2–4 are recounted in flashback as Charlemagne narrates their previous adventures. In Book 5 the Franks repair their fleet during the winter months and entertain themselves by hunting in the wooded countryside around Butrint (again perhaps suggested by Buondelmonti's illustrations and Ciriaco's repeated references to Dodona):Footnote 36
(There was a wood on mount Talarus watered with a hundred streams and always bristling with flowering branches.)Footnote 37
Epic games are held in the city also. Again, Verino specifies the location at Butrint. In this case a Greek theatre (supposedly witnessed by Ciriaco, though see below):
(Meanwhile the Frankish young men and the Argive youth assembled for the games. There is a very famous place in the city which we call a ‘circus’, the Greeks call a ‘theatre’, which they have girt with Parian marble in the form of a circle.Footnote 38 They made fourteen stepped seats with a place at the top reserved for the praetors and the curule aediles to watch the games.Footnote 39 The lower part had been covered with sand. The Greek youth, covered in oil, were using that place for wrestling in the Spartan fashion, and it was not considered indecent for a girl to join in with the men, without clothes, and perform the grim battles of Mars with a crowd of people watching.Footnote 40 When the first heat was completed a victorious girl took the prizes for the competition to great applause.)
When the games finish, the shade of Charlemagne's father Pepin appears to remind his son that his destiny will be explained after a visit through the Underworld, Purgatory and Paradise. With trepidation Charlemagne begins his search for the entrance to the Underworld and his descent begins:
(And not far from here sad Aornos with a Greek surname exhales dire malaria with horrid stench. Nearby the Acherusian swamp gushes forth with its pestilential waters and enters the Stygian valley and fills the dark marsh and encircles the infernal seat with many whirlpools and poisons the air with clouds of sulphur.)Footnote 41
As Charlemagne descends from Paradise at the end of Book 8, Butrint is mentioned for the last time in a line that deliberately recalls Virgil's famous description of the city:
(The king hastens his journey through the inhospitable rocks of Mount Chimaera and by dawn's early light heads towards the walls of lofty Butrint.)Footnote 42
Verino has not only recast Charles VIII's projected crusade in epic terms that recall Aeneas's divine mission and Charlemagne's real and legendary achievements, but has also, by placing particular emphasis on Butrint, suggested to the French king how the campaign can be played out in restored Angevin territory as the army proceeds across to Greece. For, by remodelling his epic with a dedication to Charles VIII, it seems that Verino, like many of his Florentine contemporaries in the circle of Savonarola, envisaged the young king's Italian adventure as the first step in a war for the salvation of Christendom. Nor was this the first time that Verino had re-presented his poem in this way. As Francesco Bausi has noted, an earlier redaction of the Carlias (dated 11 September 1481; now Bibliothèque Nationale de France Lat. 10324) was probably inspired by the fall of Otranto to the Turks in August 1480 and the Aragonese counter-offensive to retake the city.Footnote 43
BUTRINT IN 1493: BETWEEN HISTORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY (Fig. 4)
As we have noted above, Butrint's fame owed much to Virgil and the poet's association with Octavian (later the Emperor Augustus) and his circle, in particular Octavian's great general, Agrippa, who masterminded the victory over Mark Antony at Actium in 31 bc.Footnote 44 Butrint prospered because Agrippa's father-in-law, Titus Pomponius Atticus, had a large estate nearby and was himself closely associated with the fortunes of this small Epirote sanctuary-port in the late first century bc. Octavian supported Butrint's transformation into a colony, and this probably influenced Virgil's decision to reference the place in Aeneas's journey to Rome.Footnote 45 The urban footprint of this small, new colony certainly influenced the pattern of development here until the later fourth century, at which time, after suffering severe earthquakes, the port began to increase in size and wealth.Footnote 46 But after the mid-sixth century, in common with many Mediterranean ports, it shrunk to be little more than the home of a Byzantine administrator. The new medieval town owes its origin to the rise of Byzantine commercial interests in the Adriatic sea in the early eleventh century.Footnote 47 Surprisingly little of the Roman urban fabric survived because of dramatic changes in the water-table, compelling the community to raise the ground level with deep terracing. In ad 1204 the Byzantine town was conquered by members of the Fourth Crusade, which led to further renewal under, initially, the Epirote Despots, then the Angevins. By the fourteenth century the town had become vulnerable to intermittent Albanian attacks, and its commercial viability accordingly was depressed.
As we have mentioned already, in 1386, just after the death of Charles III of Anjou (king of Naples and Sicily), the Republic of Venice purchased Butrint, together with the island and fortress of Corfu, from the Angevin kings. The main concern of Venice in this transaction was safeguarding its Adriatic trade-route from the dangers posed by the rapidly expanding Ottoman Empire.Footnote 48 As to Butrint itself, a Venetian document described it as Corfu's ‘protector and right eye’ (tutela et occhio dextro),Footnote 49 or as Peter Soustal put it, ‘… the bridgehead to the mainland opposite Corfu’.Footnote 50 The Venetian territories included the ancient port and its fisheries, with a belt of other Epirote coastal places extending down to Parga. The Venetians appointed a castellanus as governor for the castro de Butrinto among the citizens of Corfu. But Butrint was not a viable town by this time. Fifty years before the sale to the Venetians, the town's bishop had moved to Glyki (100 km to the south). The main reason was the Albanian incursions, forerunners of Ottoman attacks, which were now constant. Almost at once the Venetian investment went into strengthening the old fortifications. So, within an Adriatic sea context, Butrint was probably the smallest of several enclaves on the Balkan coast that at this time comprised Ragusa (Dubrovnik) and Cattaro (Kotor).Footnote 51
Over the following century, most of the sources describe efforts to safeguard Butrint's fishing grounds by repairs to its defences, especially of the castle on the Acropolis, which was apparently in a bad condition.Footnote 52 Parallel to this increasing dereliction, paradoxically, Butrint's historical status was gaining greater currency. As we have seen, in the early fifteenth century the Florentine, Cristoforo de' Buondelmonti associated Butrint with Virgil. This association almost certainly attracted the attentions of the humanist and antiquarian, Ciriaco d'Ancona, who visited what he termed the city of Trojan Helenus in search of antiquities in December 1435 (see above, p. 208). Unfortunately, any detailed descriptions that Ciriaco may have made, like those of Buondelmonti, have been lost. Certainly at this time, Butrint was considered a frontier zone, under constant threat of attack by the Albanians and then the Ottomans. Records of repairs to the old defences exist for 1470, 1474 and 1494, in the latter two cases after damage caused by the Turks. These small-scale incursions were dwarfed by the passage of Suleiman the Magnificent's siege army, which camped at Butrint in August 1537 before crossing to Corfu. This siege, and indeed the next great Ottoman siege of Corfu in 1715, was repelled at great cost,Footnote 53 and each time the Venetians boldly returned to Butrint, to manage its lucrative fishing grounds. Indeed, it was the French, not the Ottomans, who eventually prised the Venetians from Butrint (and Corfu), following the Treaty of Campo Formio in 1797.
The texts, then, mostly concern details of Butrint's defences. Yet few places in the central Mediterranean possess a better archaeological record for this period, thanks to the large-scale excavations of the Italian Archaeological Mission led by Luigi Maria Ugolini (1928–41) and the recent programme of investigations of the Butrint Foundation (1994–2012).Footnote 54 These shed light on Verino's epic in some unexpected ways.
The archaeology of Butrint and its environs tends to confirm the historical picture of Butrint as a town falling into ruin yet defiantly resisting the Ottomans in the early Venetian period.Footnote 55 Much as Ciriaco indicated, the town was largely abandoned by this time. Only the defensive works were maintained because of the wealth of its fishing grounds. The small castle at the western end of the acropolis was enlarged and strengthened in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with additional outworks intended to resist cannon fire.Footnote 56 This was quite unlike the place Verino, for example, conveys in the Carlias. Marble columns, even reused ones, were definitely absent. The most that can be said is that the accommodation in the main tower was almost certainly improved by the insertion of a fine trifora window at this time.Footnote 57 Everywhere else the building techniques continued local traditions of earlier periods, using roughly hewn limestone of different dimensions with smaller stones and tile fragments, though cut stone was employed often for the construction of wall corners.
Meanwhile, over the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Butrint's dilapidated outer ring of defences was also strengthened.Footnote 58 Excavations at Tower O, attached to the wall-circuit beside the Vivari channel, showed that this was now the only residence in the area of the old (late Roman) Triconch Palace. Its occupants were almost certainly cultivating small allotments within the ruins of the earlier Roman and medieval dwellings.Footnote 59 Other towers in the wall-circuit were also refurbished and reoccupied at this time, notably both of the excavated towers (A and B) in the Western Defences (Fig. 4).Footnote 60
Fig. 4. Plan of Butrint in Venetian times. (Reproduced courtesy of the Butrint Foundation.)
The most prominent addition to strengthen Butrint's defences was the construction between 1490 and 1540 of the Triangular Fortress on the south side of the Vivari channel, directly opposite the lower town. Nowadays one can still observe a small stone carving of a lion's head, probably the lion of Saint Mark and the symbol of Venice, at an apex of an arch in the interior of the Triangular Fortress.Footnote 61 With this new bulwark, both sides of the waterway connecting the Straits of Corfu to Lake Butrint and the precious fish weirs installed here were protected.
Like the defences, the early Venetian history of Butrint's churches was one of repair and make-do. The only church constructed at this time — if the apsed building recorded here in the nineteenth century was in fact a church — was immediately alongside the Triangular Fortress on the very edge of the Vivari channel.Footnote 62 In the lower town, with the departure of Butrint's bishop to Glyki in the fourteenth century, the Great Basilica, while not abandoned, was certainly not repaired.Footnote 63 As for the smaller churches within the old urban wall-circuit, most were probably maintained on a small scale, but evidence of this exists only for the church immediately to the north of the late antique Baptistery, where a bell-tower and a resurfaced atrium were added at this date.Footnote 64 A similar bell-tower, dismantled by the Italian Archaeological Mission in the 1930s, had existed close by at the ‘Gymnasium church’,Footnote 65 so this thirteenth- to fourteenth-century church may have been maintained also in Venetian times. A third church, tucked inside a postern gate located beside the well-head shrine of Junia Rufina, had fallen into disrepair, but the well-head was crudely modified and maintained, and the church remained in use until the fifteenth or sixteenth century and possibly later.Footnote 66 A comparable well-head that had been a major feature of the Hellenistic and Roman forum was still in use, but again its architectural setting was now crudely makeshift.Footnote 67 As for fountains, none of Roman date survived in operation. So while the importance of earlier shrines and the healing powers of Butrint's waters were apparently recognized, all semblance of maintenance virtually ceased by the fifteenth century.
Strikingly few dwellings occupied the slopes or lower girth of the ancient site by 1490. By this time, for example, the medieval stone dwellings in the area of the old Roman Forum and the adjacent south-facing slope of the lower town were deserted. The same situation was found beside the Vivari channel. In fact, much of this lower-lying sector of the lower town, regularly inundated with water in the winter, had been abandoned since the fourteenth century. There is no archaeological evidence of a square or piazza, or indeed roads. Two substantial buildings in the lower town, however, exist in ruins to this day. The largest and most elaborate is located on the channel side, and appears to be a Venetian house. The house comprises a half-submerged cross-vaulted cellar with an adjoining barrel-vaulted room and living quarters on the first floor.Footnote 68 (This building was interpreted as a church by Ugolini in the 1930s.)Footnote 69 The second building is located slightly to the north, adjacent to the late antique Baptistery, and appears to have been industrial rather than domestic in function. Its interior is heavily water-worn, and it is possible that it may have functioned as a mill, although how such a building would have been supplied with water is unknown.
Most of the ancient town was not visible, contra Verino's compelling account. In particular, the Hellenistic and Roman theatre long since had been covered by a deep colluvium, and its location was unknown (Fig. 5).Footnote 70 (When Ugolini began the excavations in 1928 that uncovered the theatre, he initially believed it to be a Roman bath-house.)Footnote 71 No trace of the putative amphitheatre or circus where Saint Terinus was apparently martyred during the reign of the Emperor Dacius (249–51) has been found. If it existed, it was most probably a timber construction outside Butrint, and therefore long since had disappeared by the Venetian era.
Fig. 5. View of the excavations of the theatre in 1928 showing the deep colluvium overlying the well-preserved Hellenistic and Roman seating. (Reproduced courtesy of the Institute of Archaeology, Tirana.)
In contrast to this picture of martial defiance and dereliction, the material finds (especially the pottery) from the Venetian era offer insights about the dining culture — and indeed the identity — of the town's inhabitants.Footnote 72 The ceramics from early Venetian Butrint are strikingly rich, and, along with food residues, shed light upon the culinary behaviour of its embattled citizens. The bulk of the ceramics comes from the gardens around Tower O, overlying the remains of the Triconch Palace and its medieval occupants; other material was found in Towers A and B, as well as in other small excavations on the Acropolis and in the lower town.Footnote 73
Among the imported wares in the pottery assemblages from the Triconch Palace are many fragments of blue-and-white maiolica jugs from Italy with trefoil-mouth rims and knife-trimmed disc bases with flat undersides.Footnote 74 It is clear, though, that the majority of the finds consists of fragments with a ‘ladder medallion design’ painted in blue. This type of painted decoration (medaglione a scaletta) is common on Italian maiolica jugs of the so-called stile severo from central and northern Italy (Fig. 6).Footnote 75 The fragments found at Butrint probably come from Emilia Romagna (or from Faenza in particular), and generally can be dated to the (late) fifteenth/first half of the sixteenth century.Footnote 76
Fig. 6. Butrint, Triconch Palace: fragments of blue-and-white maiolica jugs from northern Italy. (Photo: J. Vroom; reproduced courtesy of the Butrint Foundation.)
The excavations in Butrint also yielded a lavishly coloured type of maiolica that is typical of sixteenth-century northern Italy and is known as maioliche policrome rinascimentali. Footnote 77 Of special interest among the finds of this ware are some body fragments of a jug with a painted lion as decoration on the outside (Fig. 7).Footnote 78 This could be a depiction of the lion of Saint Mark, representing the Venetian Republic, as such images of lions are known to occur quite frequently on ceramics in areas under Venetian domination in post-medieval times.Footnote 79 Undoubtedly, their purpose was to underline the extent of the authority of Venice in this period.
Fig. 7. Butrint: the image of a lion (the ‘lion of Saint Mark’?) on sherds of a maiolica jug found during excavations in the lower city. (Photo: J. Vroom; reproduced courtesy of the Butrint Foundation.)
In addition, the imported table-wares include variants of maiolica in a colourful style decorated in blue with red, green or yellow. Among these are pieces of maioliche ‘gotico-floreali’ from central Italy dating to the late fifteenth/early sixteenth century.Footnote 80 It is possible that these sherds are from vessels manufactured in Montelupo, a pottery centre near Florence, because the painted designs on the Butrint sherds look similar to those on the late fifteenth-century production of this town, some of which carry exotic names such as ‘Valencia leaf’ (alla foglia valenciana) and ‘Eye of the peacock's feather’ (occhio della penna di pavone) (Fig. 8).Footnote 81
Fig. 8. Butrint, Triconch Palace: fragment of maiolica gotico-floreale manufactured in Montelupo in central Italy. (Photo: J. Vroom; reproduced courtesy of the Butrint Foundation.)
The Triconch Palace excavations yielded many fragments of two types of monochrome glazed dishes or bowls with a ring foot, probably produced in southern Italian workshops. One type has a ribbed exterior upper part; the other type possesses an everted flanged rim. Both types are covered with a dark green or pale green lead glaze. The calcareous fabric of both types could be Apulian. In fact, the shape of the first type is very similar to late fifteenth-century dishes (the so-called bacini a ‘doppio bagno’) from Apulia — although the excavated examples from the Triconch Palace are not double dipped in glaze like the Apulian vessels.Footnote 82
Furthermore, a few fragments were found of late types of painted and sgraffito wares from southern Apulia. These include a sherd of late ‘RMR ware’ of the (late) fifteenth/sixteenth century, which is painted in pale green and brown, in a form resembling RMR ware vessels from the Basilicata region.Footnote 83 Another fragment is of the so-called ‘RMR graffita’ or ‘protograffita’ group, essentially a transitional type of RMR ware from the Salento region of Apulia, and has incised decoration as well as painted designs in red, green and brown. Dating to the (late) fifteenth century, this type is known from Lecce, Galatone, Muro Leccese, Otranto and Cutrifiano.Footnote 84 Sherds of three small bowls with a straight rim and a flat base covered with a white slip and a pale yellow glaze on the interior and upper part of the exterior also seem to be Apulian. These probably can be dated to between the late fourteenth/fifteenth and the late fifteenth centuries.
The study of these ceramics raises important issues about the culinary culture at Butrint in the early Venetian period.Footnote 85 Ceramic amphorae as well as coarse domestic wares are virtually absent in the Triconch Palace pottery assemblages. The analyses show that the proportion of coarse-wares in the early Venetian period compared to coarse-wares in the late medieval period appears to drop from about 18.7% to a mere 3.7% (Fig. 9).Footnote 86 One possible explanation for this is that from the later fourteenth century onwards there was a greater use of metal vessels (such as cauldrons) for cooking and boiling, as well as wooden barrels or casks. Written sources reveal that cooking pots made of bronze and iron (for easy cleaning) were becoming the commonest utensils in the kitchen. Furthermore, wood was suitable for barrels and casks (transport and storage), as well as for bowls, platters and spoons (food preparation), while stone was used for querns, mortars and pestles.Footnote 87
Fig. 9. Butrint, Triconch Palace: percentages of ceramic finds per function from early Byzantine to more recent times. (J. Vroom.)
Key: EMED = early medieval period; MBYZ = middle Byzantine period; LMED = late medieval period; EVEN = early Venetian period; REC = recent; AMP = amphorae; CW = coarse-ware; TW = table-ware.
By contrast, the percentages of glazed table-wares (especially open shapes) increased during the early Venetian period (later fourteenth to mid-sixteenth centuries), as can be seen in the large amounts of ceramics from the Triconch Palace and Merchant's House in Butrint (Figs 9–10). During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, for example, the inhabitants crammed inside and near Tower O were eating off polychrome sgraffito dishes and bowls with a simple or flanged rim. These were mostly imported from northern Italy (mainly from the Veneto and Emilia Romagna regions) (Fig. 11).
Fig. 10. Butrint, Triconch Palace and Merchant's House: distribution of ceramic finds per function in the early Venetian period. (J. Vroom.)
Key: AMP = amphorae; CW = coarse-ware; TW = table-ware.
Fig. 11. Butrint, Triconch Palace and Merchant's House: distribution of ceramic finds per provenance (only definite) in the early Venetian period. (J. Vroom.)
Key: N_Italy = northern Italy; S_Italy = southern Italy.
Accompanying these dishes and bowls were tin-glazed (maiolica) jugs and dishes intended for small group dining.Footnote 88 These tin-glazed ceramics have a smooth, glossy opaque surface with painted colourful designs in a fashionable style, such as flowers, portraits or animals. The various shapes of maiolica imply a range of food presented to diners, with separate vessels for special dishes. In addition, the Triconch Palace pottery assemblage includes glazed small bowls/cups with a simple rim or an everted rim, which were used for serving small quantities of food or semi-liquids, and glazed jugs with a trefoil mouth-rim and a flat disc-base for serving liquids. The latter might have been used in many ways, including the fetching and carrying of water, and the keeping of other liquids such as wine or milk. However, the (often) elaborate decoration on these jugs suggests their use at a dining table rather than in food preparation in the kitchen.
A remarkable aspect of the Butrint finds is the high percentage of coloured table-wares in the early Venetian period (Fig. 12).Footnote 89 The percentage of monochrome glazed wares in one colour far exceeds those of any other period. One reason for the growing inclination to eat from monochrome glazed table utensils was the belief that the copper in the polychrome glazes gave the food a bad taste. Another explanation is that in an age when pestilence was a constant peril, the serving of food in a clear, hygienic form was considered reassuring. Another aspect of this approach to hygiene was for each diner to have a separate ceramic bowl or dish for each course.Footnote 90 Of course, this elaborate changing of plates at the dining table required more varied table services, hence perhaps the volume of broken wares in the rubbish scattered around the tower. Nevertheless, older drinking traditions continued: the Triconch Palace finds indicate that the defenders of Butrint drank a diluted wine from maiolica jugs served in delicate Venetian glasses, shared by several diners at the table (Figs 13–14). Indeed, a transparent wine-glass with a long delicate stem, which looks similar to the cristallo ones found in Butrint, can be seen in the hand of a diner or servant on a Renaissance icon from nearby Corfu (Fig. 15). He holds the glass at the base and not at the stem or cup, thus displaying a typical western drinking habit, favoured by the upper classes in this period of time.Footnote 91 The transparency of such cristallo glasses allowed the colour of the wine to be appreciated fully.
Fig. 12. Butrint, Triconch Palace: use of colour in ceramic finds from early Byzantine to more recent times. (J. Vroom.)
Key: MBYZ = middle Byzantine period; MED = medieval period; LMED = late medieval period; EVEN = early Venetian period; REC = recent.
Fig. 13. Butrint: Venetian cristallo wine-glass fragment with a moulded composite stem. (Photo by J. Barclay-Brown; reproduced courtesy of the Butrint Foundation.)
Fig. 14. Butrint: Venetian cristallo wine-glass fragments. (Photo by J. Barclay-Brown; reproduced courtesy of the Butrint Foundation.)
Fig. 15. Icon of the Life of Saint Alexios by Stefanos Tzankarolas, Antivouniotissa Museum, Corfu, post 1571. © Antivouniotissa Museum. (Reproduced courtesy of the 21st Ephorate of Byzantine Antiquities, and the Hellenic Republic Ministry of Culture and Sports.)
When we now take a second look at the banquet scene taking place in Butrint, as described in Verino's Carlias (1.361–77), it becomes obvious that the author, while trying to imagine a banquet in the era of Charlemagne, is in fact describing a contemporary dining scene. The drinking of ‘Cretan wine’ from ‘golden goblets’ and from ‘crystal cups’, and the eating of ‘soft loaves’ of ‘white bread’, for instance, only became fashionable from late medieval times onwards, when the dinner party of the upper classes gradually evolved from a rather crude eating-fest into an elaborate performance intended for the display of wealth, status and power.Footnote 92 Part of this transformation was the introduction of sophisticated luxury table items: plates and cups, which previously had been made of wood or pewter, were now manufactured of precious materials (gold, silver or crystal) for the very rich, or of lustre-painted maiolica with a ‘golden’ effect for the somewhat less wealthy. Furthermore, there evolved a growing taste for sweet and spiced wines from Greece, such as the Malvasia-based vino di Candia (modern Heraklion), which was transported by Venetians to western Europe, and was highly praised in various fourteenth- to sixteenth-century texts.Footnote 93
In addition, solid dining tables (in the Carlias described as ‘fine’ and ‘decorated’) came into fashion during the Renaissance, while before that time mainly wooden trestles with a separate table top were used.Footnote 94 It was also during this time that handwashing with ‘warm fragrant water’ and ‘expensive perfumes’ became a typical part of the dining ritual, both for the display of wealth and for the display of ‘civilized’ table manners.Footnote 95 The importance of washing hands before and after a meal was, for instance, stressed by Erasmus in his instructional treatise De Civilitate Morum Puerilium Libellus (1530). He explicitly prescribed: ‘Never sit down without having washed and without first trimming your nails lest any dirt stick to them and you are called dirty-knuckled’.Footnote 96
The faunal assemblages from this period found in the Butrint excavations also confirm a notable standard of living. Cattle, sheep, goat and pigs were butchered elsewhere and the meat was brought as joints to the community, while small numbers of wild animals, including deer, wild boar and hare, as well as, in particular, waterfowl, were consumed.Footnote 97 Not surprisingly, the diet of these tower-dwellers was supplemented by fishing.Footnote 98 Common species found in the excavations include gilthead, mussels, thorny oysters, murex, cockles, carpet shells and whelks.Footnote 99
In sum, the ceramic and faunal assemblages from Butrint, notwithstanding the hardships of frontier life, reflect access in good quantities to northeast Italian and Apulian table-ware of a high quality, as well as glassware and metal containers. The diet, of course, involved exploiting locally available resources, but overall the dining habits reveal a staunch pursuit of standards of cleanliness and taste upheld in the principle Venetian centres in Italy and elsewhere.
CONCLUSION
In the event King Charles VIII's projected crusade came to nothing, and his success in Italy was short-lived. Indeed, the deluxe manuscript of the Carlias may never have reached the king, and, if it did, it may be doubted whether he looked beyond the magnificent title-page to read Ugolino Verino's poem. Charles entered Naples in triumph on 20 February 1495; but exactly three months later (20 May) the king began the long trek back to France, leaving a small force to defend his new kingdom. An Italian League between Rome, Venice, Milan and a number of satellite states was hastily formed to oppose the king's march north.Footnote 100 The first engagement was a skirmish between the French advance guard and the stratioti, the dreaded Albanian light cavalry, hired by the Venetians, on 1 July. Five days later, on Sunday 6 July, the two armies clashed on the banks of the river Taro near the village of Fornovo. It is perhaps ironic that the stratioti who were instrumental in the Italian ‘victory’ could perhaps have been horsemen from the hill country around Butrint. The grand French enterprise had come to nothing, and Butrint remained vulnerable. In 1499, amid rumours and even the expectation of Turkish invasion, the bailie of Corfu repaired the walls of Butrint, the better to defend his mainland charge.Footnote 101
Verino's choice of Butrint as an important point in his epic about Charlemagne has no exact place in history. Charlemagne never had any connection during his lifetime with this Epirote port. Instead, uppermost in the poet's mind, we may surmise, was the association of Charlemagne with Aeneas, the founder of Rome, and through this connection Butrint served as Troy (the latter being in Turkish hands by this time). Nevertheless, these relationships across time and space should not be idly dismissed, even if the archaeology at face value might compel one to do so. As we have seen, fifteen centuries earlier Virgil appears to have invented this story to please Agrippa, whose wife had associations with Butrint. By the fifteenth century, though, the displaced memory of this association, thanks to the works of Cristoforo de' Buondelmonti and Ciriaco d'Ancona's lost Commentaria, was taking new forms. No less significantly for Verino and his royal dedicatee, Butrint was also by this time one of several precarious Christian bulwarks on the Balkan coast. Indeed, judging from its ceramics and dietary culture, it was defiantly Italianate. The dining emphasis was upon individual consumption characteristic of Italy as opposed to the exclusively communal dining of the preceding middle Byzantine period.Footnote 102
Verino, we assume, hoped Charles VIII might embark on a reconquest of the lost Byzantine territories stretching beyond Butrint following the sale of the imperial rights to him by the exiled despot, Andreas Palaeologus. Butrint, then, symbolized a historic gateway close to Corfu in an increasingly unstable region. Fortress Butrint, we may also surmise, promised a thin thread of hope, embellished by the ultimately successful story of Aeneas, which would have resonated with contemporary audiences. Of course, it was not a new association of Aeneas and Butrint, but by this time the condition of the town was fast deteriorating. The actual status of civic life in the town almost certainly was immaterial to this narrative. As a result, perhaps precisely because his knowledge of Butrint was sketchy, Verino provided the place with a grandiosity worthy of his heroes and its ancient heritage.
Let us be more precise. It is clear that Verino knew nothing or almost nothing about Butrint as a place at the time of writing his poem. His sources, being the travelogues of Buondelmonti and Ciriaco, branded Butrint as a historical place because Virgil had described it. As we have seen, the topography of Butrint in the fifteenth century was very different from its description in the epic. There was not a royal palace supported on marble columns with a great portico supported by Parian marble columns, surrounded on all sides by walls decorated with images. In reality, the Venetian commander's tower on the Acropolis at Butrint was modest. As we have also seen, the lower town was largely deserted and its ancient monuments were sealed beneath a metre or more of colluvium, so there was no ‘great wide square in the middle of the city paved with marble slabs, and surrounded by evergreen box, plane trees and Daphnean laurel’; moreover, Butrint's ancient fountains were no longer operative, so the ‘bright fountains … gushing from golden spouts as though from the Hippocrine stream’ was an eloquent flight of pure imagination (Carlias 1.304–8). These descriptions surely convey with a certain precision the palace, square and fountains of Mistra, the Palaeogean capital in the Peloponnese ceded to the Ottomans in 1460, or even, of course, parts of Constantinople itself. Finally, there was no trace to be seen at this time of either the ancient circus or the amphitheatre. The remarkably detailed description of the latter clearly has been pasted onto Butrint, perhaps from a place closer to Verino's Florentine home. One aspect, though, is accurate, as the nineteenth-century diplomat and author, François Pouqueville later attested:Footnote 103 ‘dire malaria with horrid stench’, to cite Verino, was definitely a characteristic of Butrint, its lagoon and associated marshes, though there were no ‘whirlpools’ that ‘poisons the air with clouds of sulphur’ (Carlias 5.486–90). The latter readily might describe better places in the Colline Metallifere of western Tuscany at this time, rather than Epirus.Footnote 104
Verino's epic, of course, actively seeks to affirm the importance of Virgil's Aeneid in the story of Butrint. There can be little doubt that the medieval and Venetian port was still viewed by certain of its visitors through this prism, and this mythical status surely strengthened the will to defend it in the face of Ottoman aggression. This meant not only maintaining and improving its fortifications to a degree that far exceeded its economic and political value, but it led also to the overtly strong imported Italianate culture of its defenders, who otherwise suffered basic living conditions by Venetian standards.
Verino, however, challenges his model (noble, educated) reader by creating imaginary relations not only between Aeneas and Charlemagne, but also between Butrint and other recently lost Angevin and Byzantine towns in what is now Greece.Footnote 105 In this way, Butrint was a convenient canvas on which was painted a Mediterranean material past, now reified by the Renaissance. This approach was entirely consistent with a more popular trope of Mediterranean places espousing the eternal spirit of Troy. Like its ancient model, the Aeneid, then, Carlias was an instrument with a larger political purpose. As the Turks began aggressively to lay siege to Latin Christendom, this epic poem aimed to promote the mythical status of this erstwhile Greek town to convey the compelling importance of resistance. Paradoxically, Butrint — Virgil's ‘Troy in miniature’ — was in the hands of the author's and dedicatee's nemeses, the Venetians. This detail appears not to have mattered.
Did its dedicatee, we may wonder, grasp these layers of meaning and associations? For sure, if King Charles VIII had actually disembarked at Butrint, the archaeology now shows, he would have been profoundly puzzled. However, he readily would have recognized that Verino's epic and the combination of military architecture and the culinary behaviour of Butrint's community were different components of a shared identity powerfully directed at resisting the tide of Ottoman conquest.
APPENDIX: DEDICATORY EPISTLE TO CHARLES VIII
Ugolini Verini praefatio ad Carolum christianissimum Francorum Regem
Carolus cognomento Magnus, Francorum primus imperator, a quo regiae sobolis destendit origo, religione ac magnitudine rerum cunctos omnium populorum sic reges superavit, ut adhuc illi iure nemo possit aequari. Huius sum gesta heroico carmine prosecutus, poetarum principes Homerum, Virgilium compatriotamque meum Dantem immitatus. Parentis primum tui regis invicti nostraeque civitatis hortatu tantam bellorum molem sum exorsus. Quantum vero laboris, quantum pertulerim vigiliarum, non solum magnitudo huius voluminis est testis, sed anni quatuor et viginti pene sunt decursi. Tametsi minime sum, quod volebam, assecutus, opinor tamen sacratissimo nomini Francorum fore iocundum. Idque potissimum tibi, Rex Carole, destinavi, non solum quia nomen et genus ab illo deducis, verum mores et facta emularis, ut te speremus auctore Hierosolimam rursus cum omni regione, depulso, immo sublato Maumetti foetore, indui sacrosanctam Christi veritatem augustalemque iterum dignitatem in Galliam tanquam in patriam postliminium redituram, quae non minus tuis quam Italis sit profutura. Nam nec foelicior ecclesia nec quietior permansit Italia, quam centum circiter annos aub tutela Vestrorum imperatorum. Florentia in primis non solum servata, sed restituta et aucta, quicquid hadet dignitatis, id omne debet Vestrae maiestati. Nos igitur de patria, de re publica christiana bene merito principi, licet exiguas gratias referimus, laeti tamen et memores has tibi et nominis et imperii successori lucubrationes exsolvimus.
Opus est varium, non minus poeticis distinctum figuris, quam mysteriis christianae sanctionis excultum. Toto siquidem volumine tuorum procerum clarissimis gestis depicta excurrit oratio. Proinde precor, christianissime princeps, ut poema tuo nomini dedicatum suscipias. Sic me nec laboris nec paenitebit industriae.
Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, MS 838, fol. 1r–v.
The Preface of Ugolino Verino to Charles, the Most Christian King of the Franks.
Charles surnamed Magnus, the first emperor of the Franks, from whom the origin of the royal line descends, so surpassed every king of every race in his piety and the magnitude of his empire, that deservedly no one could equal him, until now. I have examined his deeds in epic; I have imitated those princes of poets, Homer, Virgil and my compatriot Dante. I initially began this great undertaking on your invincible royal ancestor's wars at the encouragement of our state. Indeed, the size of this volume and the twenty four years that have passed bear witness to the great labour and the number of waking hours I have spent on it. Although the end result does not quite match my original intentions, however, I think that it will be pleasing to the most sacred name of the Franks. And I have dedicated it to you, most powerful King Charles, not only because you derive your name and descent from that famous name, but you also imitate his character and achievements, that we hope by your deeds, when the stench of Mohammed has been expelled, on the contrary removed from every part, Jerusalem will once again be dressed with the holy truth of Christ and the imperial dignity will once again return into France as if by right to its own fatherland, which would be no less a benefit to your people than to the Italians. For the Church was not happier, nor Italy more at peace, than when it was under your emperors' protection for almost one hundred years. In the first place Florence was not only preserved, but also restored and enlarged; whatever dignity the city now has is completely due to Your Majesty. We therefore return thanks, although humble, to a worthy prince on behalf of the fatherland, and Christendom, and we have completed these commemorative endeavours for you, his successor in both blessed name and empire.
This work is varied, no less noted for its poetic tropes, than decorated with the mysteries of the Christian religion. Indeed, this idea, exemplified in the deeds of your knights, extends through the whole volume. So I beg you, Most Christian Prince, to accept this poem which has been dedicated to you. Thus I will regret neither the labour nor the hard work.
