Cremona and Venice as Trojan Cities. Late Twelfth and Thirteenth-Century urban Historiography - Changing Narratives, Intertextual Relations, Historical Contexts

Abstract

Medieval Latin historiography belongs to textual genres in which the transmission, transformation and spreading of references to the Trojan war, the fall of Ilion and the migrations of the Trojans played an important role. In Northern Italian historiography, the emphasis on cities' Trojan origins became a fairly widespread phenomenon from the late twelfth century. In order to highlight how this trend actually mirrors very different contexts, traditions and actors, this paper analyzes and contextualizes the Trojan passages of the Cronica written by Sicard of Cremona and Martin da Canal's Les Estoires de Venise. By comparing these two cases and their diverse "success", the general question of what might be considered favorable or unfavorable circumstances for the multiform and polyfunctional references to the "knowledge" about Trojans in high Medieval communal backgrounds is also dealt with.