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Liber Pontificalis Ecclesiae Ravennatis:
The Book of the Bishops of Ravenna

[Do not confuse this book with the more famous and more important Liber Pontificalis, a record of the Popes of Rome, stretching over a much longer period and extended by several continuators.]

The Text on LacusCurtius

The Latin text is that of the critical edition by Oswald Holder-Egger, published in Monumenta Germaniae Historica ("Scriptores Rerum Langobardicarum et Italicarum saec. VI‑IX"), Hanover, 1878, pp265‑391.

On these pages I've reproduced the text from the facsimile of the printed edition found at Archive.Org (a 1988 reprint which we are assured is unchanged from the original). As such then, the only thing my transcription offers is convenience: but that seemed worth the trouble. I've inserted a full panoply of local anchors and links to those sources cited that I could find online, which were surprisingly many.

An html version of the bare text already existed online, an OCR it would seem, that was then not at all well proofread; so whereas I normally key the entire text of a work by hand, here, exceptionally, I primed the pump with it, then added Dr. Holder-Egger's notes (some 700 of them, very useful for untangling Agnellus' spelling, syntax, and truth be told, his general sense) and proofread it all meticulously against the printed edition. I therefore like to believe the result is entirely errorfree, so the table of contents below is shown on blue backgrounds; as elsewhere onsite, anything on a red background would indicate that the proofreading remained to be done. The header bar at the top of each webpage will remind you with the same color scheme. Should you still spot an error, please do report it, of course.

Further details on the technical aspects of the site layout follow the Table of Contents.

For background material on Agnellus and his Liber Pontificalis, I can hardly do better than Thomas Hodgkin, who devotes to them nearly twenty pages of his Italy and Her Invaders (2nd ed., 1892): "Bishops and Churches of Ravenna", Vol. I.899‑916; also, in a much less scholar­ly vein, but more accessible and better rendering the flavor of Agnellus' book, we get a very adequate and entertaining summary in American Catholic Quarterly Review, XLIV.383‑408.

Sections
Lives

Prooemium

A

de Sancto Apolenario

de Sancto Aderito

de Sancto Eleucadio

de Sancto Marciano • III

de Sancto Calocero • IIII

de Sancto Proculo • V

de Sancto Probo • VI

de Sancto Dato • VII

de Sancto Liberio • VIII

de Sancto Agapito • IX

B

de Sancto Marcellino • X

de Sancto Severo • XI

de Sancto Liberio • XII

de Sancto Probo • XIII

de Sancto Florentio • XIIII

de Sancto Liberio • XV

de Sancto Urso • XVI

de Sancto Petro • XVII

de Sancto Neone • XVIII

de Sancto Exuperantio • XVIIII

C

de Sancto Iohanne • XX

de Sancto Petro • XXI

de Sancto Aureliano • XXII

de Sancto Ecclesio • XXIII

de Sancto Ursicino • XXIIII

de Sancto Victore • XXV

de Sancto Maximiano • XXVI

de Sancto Agnello • XXVII

de Sancto Petro seniori • XXVIII

de Sancto Iohanne Romano • XXIX

D

de Sancto Mariniano • XXX

de Sancto Iohanne • XXXI

de Sancto Iohanne • XXXII

de Sancto Bono • XXXIII

de Sancto Mauro • XXXIIII

de Sancto Reparato • XXXV

de Sancto Theodoro • XXXVI

de Sancto Damiano • XXXVII

de Sancto Felice • XXXVIII

de Sancto Iohanne • XXXIX

E

de Sancto Sergio • XL

de Sancto Leone • XLI

de Sancto Iohanne • XLII

de Sancto Gratioso • XLIII

de Sancto Martino • XLVI

de Sancto Georgio • XLVIII

Each of the 46 chapters covers the life of one bishop; most are marked by Roman numerals, and no, the numbering scheme is not completely consistent, which Dr. Holder-Egger has addressed in the appropriate places. Both the chapters and the sections (small numbers) are local anchors, according to a consistent scheme; you can therefore link directly to any passage: look at the sourcecode.

Apparatus

The M. G. H. includes Holder-Egger's comprehensive apparatus criticus. For now, in view of diminishing returns in terms of its slight use to the overwhelming majority of Web users, I've decided not to reproduce it; I may change my mind. In the meantime, it can of course be found in the Archive.Org facsimile.

Translations

I haven't found any translation of the work online. The first complete English translation was published in 2004 by Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis; I haven't checked whether translations into other languages exist, or even conceivably might be online — but the Latin is by and large as easy as it is barbarous, except for the occasional spot where much better minds than mine have altogether failed to understand what the author meant, and which therefore editors and commentators have naturally turned into sources of emendation, conjecture, argument, and other scholar­ly entertainment.

[image ALT: A small image of a manuscript map of the world, in which the entire world is viewed as a circle bounded by the sea, and divided into three parts: Asia, Africa, and Europe.]

The icon I use to indicate this subsite is the monogram of Ravenna, taken from a well-known coin of Theodoric's (see for example this numismatists' talk page); the background is a simplified adaptation of the starry central vault of Galla Placidia's mausoleum.

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Site updated: 2 May 20

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