Boncompagno da Signa: the History of the Siege of Ancona (review)

Boncompagno da Signa (fl. late twelfth / early thirteenthcentury Italy) was a prominent teacher and exponent of the medieval art of rhetorical composition (the ars dictaminis), producing over a dozen works in a professional career which spanned fifty years. But not all of his works were strictly didactic. Aside from short works on the nature of friendship and old age, Boncompagno also wrote an account of a little-known episode of Italian history, the 1173 siege of Ancona by the imperial legate Christian of Mainz and his Venetian allies. In this work, titled Liber de obsidione Ancone ('The Book about the Siege of Ancona'), Boncompagno depicts the siege as a great moment in the emerging Italian communes' struggle for liberty against the aggression of the German Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. This viewpoint was readily appreciated by subsequent Italian writers, and, somewhat ironically, Boncompagno's reputation for a long while rested on his status as a historian and pro-Italian apologist, rather than as the leading professional writer, or dictator, that he was. More recent scholarship has restored Boncompagno's place in the history of rhetoric, but with the result that this and Boncompagno's other non-didactic works now tend to be regarded as marginal to his main purpose.

In view of this, Andrew Stone's book is a welcome contribution to English-language scholarship on Boncompagno. The book consists of a reprinted edition (with several sound emendations) of the Latin text of the Liber, Stone's own facing English translation, and an extensive commentary. Stone's purpose in this book, he declares, is to offer 'a collation of scholarship on the siege and Boncompagno's book about it, with perhaps a little more emphasis on the value of the Greek primary sources as my own, minor, contribution' (p. ix). He is perhaps more modest than he needs to be: the selection, translation and discussion of the relevant Greek primary sources on the siege is a most worthy service to scholars interested in this event and its significance. In combining this with an English summary of the major scholarship (mainly Italian and German) on the siege, Stone has produced a valuable resource for the key events, personages and issues relating to the siege. As a result, scholars are better placed to appreciate Boncompagno's approach to writing a history and to determine the historical value of the work.

Stone is of the view that the Liber is the 'single most important source' (p. xvi) for the siege. In fact, his judgment really only applies to that portion of the text which is narrated in the third person; Stone's view of the many speeches which characterise Boncompagno's work is less positive or consistent. Stone initially raises doubts in his introduction about the authenticity of these speeches, but then justifies their historical value by endorsing the Italian scholar Garbini's view that the speeches can be seen as 'models' for participation in the political life of the commune, and the whole work as a 'manual of civil excellence' (p. xviii). Stone then points out that 'the insertion of speeches is commonly found in other medieval histories' (p. xviii), suggesting, it would seem, that such speeches may not be without historical value. However, this idea is dispelled in the commentary itself, where Stone repeatedly stresses the fictional and 'rhetorical' nature of the speeches, referring to them as, for example, 'an embellishment on the basic narrative of events' (p. 81), 'a fabrication' (p. 100), 'pure rhetorical exercise' (p. 105), and concluding that they are 'best assumed to be the rhetorical invention of the author' (p. 103). Such judgments dismiss the real possibility that Boncompagno's incorporation of speeches into his narrative reflects a distinctive style of historiography, especially in a writer who made his living by writing letters and speeches for other people. The distinction Stone thus makes between the 'historical' and 'rhetorical' in...