This chapter contains the annotated and translated text of The Chronicon of Thiermar of Merseburg.

This introduction provies a basic orientation and anoriginal scholarly interpretation of the text. Thecareer, mental world and writings of Regino, abbotof Prüm, were all defined by the Carolingian Empireand, more particularly, by its end. The highOttonian period of the mid-tenth century witnessed arevival of historiography, exemplified by the workof the two major authors who wrote about the rise ofthe dynasty. The first of these was Liutprand ofCremona, whose Antapodosis, a history of Europeanpolitics from 888 until around 950, and HistoriaOttonis, a focused account of events surroundingOtto's imperial coronation, were both written in theearlier 960s. The second was Adalbert, who mostprobably wrote his continuation to the Chronicle in967/968. Regino's Chronicle, dedicated to BishopAdalbero of Augsburg in the year 908, was the lastwork of its kind for several decades, and as suchits author can be regarded as the last greathistorian of the Carolingian Empire.

Enrico, more often known as Rigo, was a native of Bolzano in what is now the Italian Tyrol; his Christian name was more characteristic of a German-speaking than of an Italian-speaking region. For centuries after his death in 1315 he remained, a purely 'popular' saint in the sense that his sanctity was recognised by no authority higher than that of the bishop of Treviso, his adopted city and the place of his death. At Treviso his after-fame was marked in 1830 by the building of a neo-classical tempietto on the site of the cell where he died; it is now sacred to the soldiers of Italy. The Life of Rigo published by Daniel Papebroch in Acta sanctorum was written by Pietro da Baono, who became bishop of Treviso in 1359.

This chapter contains the translated and annotated textof Regino of Prüm’s Chronicle.

This introduction presents an overview of Bishop Thietmar of Merseburg and Ottonian Germany, including its government and society, the office of the emperor and the imperial church. Bishop Thietmar's Chronicon provides a personal testament, comparable to the medieval expressions of individuality as the autobiography of Guibert of Nogent. Piety and influence aside, Thietmar remained an imperial bishop and was intensely aware of the influence of kingship and politics on the church, his diocese, and his own career. He was especially concerned with the impact of royal power on the episcopate. The emperorship and the 'imperial church', the papacy, relations with Slavs, Italians, and with their Saxon homeland, these figured among the chief reference points for Ottonian kings and have continued to do so for modern historians who study the Ottonian Reich.

The Life of Raimondo, called 'the Palmer' (Palmario), was written by Master Rufino, a canon of the church of the Twelve Apostles adjacent to the hospital which Raimondo himself had founded in Piacenza. Although Rufino seems to have been personally acquainted with Raimondo only late in the saint's life, he claims to have drawn on the testimony of not only Raimondo's only surviving son, Gerardo, but the whole community of those who had known and worked with him. The result, as published in Acta sanctorum in 1729, has accordingly been accepted as authentic and trustworthy both by Vauchez and by Luigi Canetti in his study of the cult of the saints at Piacenza. As was the custom of Acta sanctorum, Peter Bosch divided his retranslation into long chapters, but he listed the chapter divisions which he found in the Italian translation, which were probably those of the original Latin Life.

The rather brief anonymous Life of the Sienese Andrea Gallerani was to all appearances composed with a local and immediate audience in view. The fanciful tale which immediately follows has Andrea swept up into the sky on a cloud and should have served to maintain interest. In March 1274 Bishop Bernardo of Siena granted the indulgence for visitors to the tomb on the Monday after Palm Sunday, the first landmark in Andrea's cult. A confraternity in the name of the Crucified Christ, the Virgin and the Blessed Andrea, which met in the oratory below the Preachers' dormitory, was founded in 1344 and continued to flourish. Andrea had the distinction of being commemorated in an early example of Sienese panel painting, a small altarpiece of about 1280 from San Domenico, now in the Sienese Pinacoteca.

The anonymous Life of Zita of Lucca was first published in Acta sanctorum in 1673. Daniel Papebroch prepared the text from a manuscript from the ancient Tuscan monastery of Camaldoli, which he admitted to be 'much in need of correction'. He implied that he had collated it with another in the possession of the Fatinelli family of Lucca. Early in the year 1286, eight years after Zita's death, a dispute erupted between the canons of San Frediano and the Lucchese Franciscans, which rumbled on until the canons reluctantly accepted defeat in 1291. On 27 April 1286, Zita's feast-day, a miracle was recorded by a notary at San Frediano. The record seems to survive only in the two extant English manuscripts of the Life; none of the Italian copies includes it.

Pope Innocent III proclaimed the canonisation of Homobonus of Cremona on 11 January 1199, in the bull Quia pietas. Cremona was one of many northern and central Italian cities around 1200 to be afflicted by the presence of heretics, probably Cathars. Like many Lives, Quoniam historiae tell us as much about hagiography as it does about Homobonus. That it was possible to describe his life and spirituality in a rather different style is demonstrated by the Life known as Labentibus annis. That this is absent from the Venetian manuscript which contains Cum orbita solis and Quoniam historiae has been taken to show that it must be later in date. By the late fifteenth century Labentibus annis was in liturgical use at Cremona and was printed, again with Cum orbita solis, in an incunabulum now in Cambridge University Library.

This introduction presents a brief overview of northern Italy in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It discusses the use of hagiography as a source and the particulars of the translated sources.