Luitprand Or Liutprand
Luitprand Or Liutprand [1]
a distinguished Italian historian, is supposed to have been born at Pavia about A.D. 920, of a noble family very high in favor at the court of king Hughes. Luitprand received a very good education, and was at an early age appointed deacon of the cathedral of Pavia. He soon after became chancellor of king Berengar, by whom he was, about 946, sent on a mission to Byzantium. After his return in 950, he fell under the displeasure of the king and of queen Willa, and retired to the court of Otho I of Germany. He remained there eleven years, learned the language of the country, and became acquainted with all the most distinguished characters. In 958 he began, at the request of the bishop of Elvira, to write a history of his own age, and he continued this task until 962, when he returned to Otho in Italy. He was now at once appointed bishop of Cremona, and was in 963 sent by Otho to pope John XII, ostensibly for the purpose of assuring the latter of the emperor's good will, but in reality to incite the Roman aristocracy against the pope. Shortly after, when the pope was accused before the Synod of Rome, Luitprand spoke against him in the name of the emperor. Two years afterwards Otho sent him again to Rome, together with the bishop of Spiers, to direct the pontifical election, a duty which he performed to the emperor's entire satisfaction. In 968 Luitprand went to Constantinople to negotiate a marriage between princess Theophania and the son of Otho, but herein he failed. In 971 he was sent, with some others, to renew negotiations for the same object, Nicephorus being dead; but he died himself soon after, in the early part of 972.
His, works, which are of great value for the history of those times, are Antapodosis, begun at Frankfort-on-the-Maine in 958, concluded in Italy in 962, a historical work, in which he seeks to revenge himself for the wrongs he had suffered, especially from Berengar and Willa: — Liber de rebus gestis Ottonis Magni imperatoris, an account of events from 960 to 964, which is the more valuable from the fact that Luitprand was an eyewitness and often an actor in all the occurrences he relates: — Relatio de legatione Constantinopolitana of 968, very important for the information it contains on events and customs, and the best written of Luitprand's works. The Antapodosis and Historia Ottonis, of which the original MS., partly in Luitprand's own handwriting, is preserved in the library of Munich, were published at Antwerp (1640, fol.), and in several historical works of the Middle Ages, as in those of Reuber and Du Chesne, and in the Scriptores of Muratori, volume 2. The best edition of Luitprand's works is contained in Pertz, Monumenta, volume 3, who has also published them separately. A German translation of the Antapodosis was published by the baron of Osten-Sacken (Berlin, 1853), with an Introduction by Wattenbach. See Kopke, De Vitas et Scriptis Luitprandi (Berl. 1842, 8vo); Pertz, Afonum. 3:264; Wattenbach, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im lIittelalter (2d ed. Berl. 1866), page 209; Contzen, Geschichtschreiber d. sachsischen Kaiserzeit, etc. (Regensb. 1837); Giesebrecht, Kaiserzeit, 1:740, 742 sq.; Donniges, Otto I, page 199 sq.; Niebuhr, SS. Byz. volume 11; Martini, U. d. Geschichtschreiber Liudprand, in Denkschrift. d. Kon. Akad. d. Wissensch. of Munich, 1809, 1810; Hoefer, Nouv. Biog. Generale, 32:219; Herzog, Real-Encyklop. 8:442; Baxmann, Politik der Papste, volume 2 (see Index).
