Carmen in victoriam Pisanorum

The Carmen in victoriam Pisanorum ("Song on the occasion of the victory of the Pisans") is a poem celebrating the victory of the Italian maritime republics in the Mahdia campaign of 1087.[1] It was probably written by a Pisan cleric within months of the campaign.[2] G. H. Pertz was the first to note the historical value of the text in 1839.[3] It is an important source for the development of Christian ideas about holy war on the eve of the First Crusade (1095–99), and may have been influenced by the contemporary theology of Anselm of Lucca and his circle. It seems to have influenced the Gesta Francorum, an account of the First Crusade composed by someone in the south Italian contingent.[2] All of the later Pisan sources for the Mahdia campaign rely mainly on it: the Chronicon Pisanum only adds details about the memorial church, the Annales Pisani of Bernardo Maragone only rewords the former, and the Cronaca di Pisa of Ranieri Sardo and the Breviarium Pisanae historiae add only legendary material to the account.[4]

  1. ^ H. E. J. Cowdrey, "The Mahdia Campaign of 1087", The English Historical Review 92 (1977), 1–29, presents a critical edition of the text, with commentary. The discrepancy between 1087 and 1088 is found in primary sources, and Cowdrey discusses it on pp. 5–6.
  2. ^ a b Christopher J. Marshall, "The Crusading Motivation of the Italian City Republics in the Latin East, c. 1096–1104" Archived August 5, 2011, at the Wayback Machine, Rivista di Bizantinistica 1 (1991).
  3. ^ Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde 7 (1839), 539, cited in Cowdrey (1977).
  4. ^ Cowdrey (1977), 3–4.