Politics, prophecy and cryptic text:

Atto of Vercelli's Perpendiculum

Giacomo Vignodelli

1. The Polipticum quod appellatur Perpendiculum by Atto, Bishop of Vercelli

between 924 and 960, is a well-known source for anyone who studies the

history of the Italic kingdom in the post-Carolingian period, for those studying

the history of political thought in the Middle Ages and, perhaps to an even

greater extent, for Middle-Latin philologists. However, the reasons for its fame

lie in its singular characteristics of composition, in the obscurity of its contents

and particularity of its tradition: because of its very fame of being an almost

unsolvable enigma, it has long remained on the margins of historical and

philological research.

The text is preserved in a single manuscript, which Atto himself had prepared

within the scriptorium of the cathedral in Vercelli and which can now be found

in the Apostolic Vatican Library (it is the Vaticano Latino 4322). The

manuscript, which makes up a compilation of the Bishop’s works, contains

the text of the Perpendiculum in two different versions, copied one after the

other and both preceded by Atto’s monogram: the first is a draft “coded” in the

scinderatio technique (which, as is known, consists in arbitrary shifting of

terms within the sentence so as to create an artificial order incomprehensible

on a first reading) a draft “coded”, I said, adopting the scinderatio technique

and using obsolete words, or obsolete meanings of common terms.

This first draft is followed by a second version which represents a partial de-

coding: the word order is put in place, numerous interlinear annotations

provide flat synonyms of the strange terms utilized by the Bishop and almost

as many notes on the margins provide an explanation to many obscure

points.

However, rather than the singular form given to it by its author, and only

partially de-codified in this self-commentary, it is the contents of the text

which raise the most questions: in the first half of the work the Bishop

recounts, through a long series of obscure allusions, the struggle for control

of the kingdom fought between legitimate kings, usurper kings and members

of the aristocracy of various ranks, yet without ever naming anyone or making

any specific reference. This intricate account of plots and mutual betrayals is

followed by a theoretical reflection difficult to interpret, which takes up the

second half of the work.

What complicates the picture is the existence of a preface letter, at the

beginning of both versions, which is also “coded” and has extremely

enigmatic contents; in this preface, the author dedicates his writing to an

unknown recipient. In sending this text, Atto explicitly asks the anonymous

interlocutor for an answer concerning the problem debated in this work of his.

What I would like to present today are the results of the research that I carried

out on this source: in fact, this text was the subject of my doctorate

dissertation, as well as of its re-elaboration as a monograph published by the

“Centro di Studi di Spoleto” in 2011.

The aim of my research is to answer the basic questions on this source which

are still unsolved, that is: what is the Perpendiculum? Under what

circumstances and why was it written? Why did its author write it in a cryptic

form? And finally, who is the anonymous recipient of the work, if that is

possible to determine?

2. As the questions raised by the preface letter and the particular double

version laid out by Atto appeared to be too obscure if tackled by themselves, I

felt it would be better to start simply from the text of the source: the

comprehension of the rhetorical structure chosen by the Bishop in the

composition of the work, technically of the dispositio which he wished to lend

to his writing, can in fact provide an answer to the first of our questions: what

in fact is the Perpendiculum?

If its rhetorical structure is analyzed, Atto’s work has a very clear composition:

the two halves of the written text that I have referred to, divided also

graphically into the Vatican codex, may be once again subdivided into two

parts each: thus the text is made up of four sections.

In the introduction the Bishop announces the subject and the aim of his

writing; this if followed by the “narrative” part, or that long series of allusions

to the political struggle in the kingdom. There is then a third block consisting

of a theoretical treatise

based on examples from the Bible and drawn from

ancient history followed (as a fourth part) by the exhorting conclusion

crowned by a prayer for the protection of the kings. This simple layout

corresponds perfectly to the quattuor partes orationis, the four parts of an

oratio, envisaged by the classical rhetorical precepts filtered through the High

Medieval tradition and in particular in the form of the oration suggested by

Isidore of Seville in the Etymologiae. The text by Isidore in this case not only

represents a generic source as, moreover, for all the scholarship of the High

Middle Ages, but is the precise literal source of most of the annotations

brought to the very text by Atto. So the four parts of the Perpendiculum

correspond perfectly to the exordium – narratio – argumentatio – conclusio.

And they make Atto’s writing an oration, in a technical sense, a plea written to

convince an audience and, in this case, the readers of a thesis on a political

subject, a civilis quaestio.

3. So what is the aim of the bishop’s complicated appeal? The thesis put

forward by Atto may be summed up as follows: causing the usurpation of a

throne already legitimately held by a king always constitutes not just a moral

wrongdoing but also a political mistake, even if the king who is going to be

ousted does not correspond fully to the ideal of a Christian king. Whoever

conspires against his own legitimate king and calls against him a foreign king

so that he may take up the crown, does not only decree his own damnation

but also inexorably determines his own political downfall. In fact, according to

the Bishop, even admitting that the subversive plot comes to fruition, the

conspirators will have to be swept away by the political consequences of the

ousting while the kingdom will fall into chaos. In order to convince the

interlocutor of his own thesis, Atto recalls in the narratio (the narrative section

of the oration), in a veiled way but one clearly recognizable to the informed

reader, the history of the Italic kingdom starting from the Twenties of the Xth

century, with the aim of showing how a first ousting, that which brought Hugh

of Provence (the real anti-hero of the text) to the Italic throne, was followed by

the elimination of the conspirators who had summoned him and who thought

that they had given themselves a puppet king. This first ousting led to the

chaos in which, according to the Bishop of Vercelli, the kingdom still found

itself in at the moment of his writing.

In fact, the correct understanding of Atto’s allusions to the Italic political

struggle enables us to recognize the events which unfolded from the

Twenties to the Fifties in the Xth century and therefore to date the

composition of the text at between the end of 952 and 960 (that is, between

the return of Berengar II to the Italic throne and Atto’s death). The possibility

of determining the Bishop’s allusive references depends on the correct

understanding of the source’s rhetorical structure, but it is made possible

above all by the furthering of our knowledge of political history of the Italic

kingdom in the Xth century which, both as regards its workings as well as its

protagonists (that is, the ranks of aristocracy), has been at the centre of a

cohesive season of investigations by Italian historiography during the last

thirty years.

The source in this context clearly shows its own direct political aim: to

forestall the second coming of Otto I to Italy, trying to convince the

interlocutor and other likely recipients of the text not to betray Berengar II, a

king who, according to Atto, was perhaps unjust, but legitimate.

The harsh criticism of the Bishop not only of the pro-Ottonian party but also of

Berengar himself and of many protagonists of Italic politics contemporary to

him, explains at least partly the need to cipher the contents of his own appeal

and to avoid outspokenly naming the characters whose wrongdoings he

analyses in the text.

However, more than the worry of not exposing himself to dangerous enmities,

it is the very layout of the narratio which requires such an attitude. In the

words of Isidore of Seville: narratio res gestas explicat: the section of the

oration called “narration” explains the facts (pertinent to the political issue

dealt with). Therefore, Atto does not refer fully to the events pertinent to the

power struggle but concentrates on explaining the dynamics which

determined them. Moreover, as the driving force of all the events is the

eternal thirst for the worldly vainglory of men, naming the protagonists of past

events does not matter much because in the future these same wrong

decisions will be followed inevitably by the same negative consequences. The

dynamics presented in the narration may refer to events which have already

happened, and in fact these are described by the Bishop in such a way that

they are easily understandable to the reader, but these same dynamics will

repeat themselves inexorably in the future if Atto’s appeal is not heard.

The analysis of the workings of the political struggle carried out by the Bishop

of Vercelli makes the source even more interesting to our eyes: not only do

we find ourselves up against one of the rarest preserved anti-Ottonian

sources, thus a text which interprets the events of the mid-Xth century in a

totally different way from other contemporaneous sources (and I am naturally

referring first and foremost to Liudprand of Cremona), but it gives us what we

could call an “inside” explanation of the workings of the power struggle: Atto

was in fact one of the political protagonists of his time (particularly during the

reign of Lothar II and Berengar himself). The Bishop concentrates particularly

on the great turnover in the ranks of the aristocracy in the kingdom which

came about in the second quarter of the Xth century, a turnover presented by

Atto as a true catastrophe and not a minor cause of the chaos which the

kingdom suffers from.

4. But why did Atto want to make his own appeal in a cryptic form? The

answer to this question goes beyond the political contingencies which

certainly discourage the author from broadcasting the contents of his own

work, even though this specific worry is witnessed by some rather patchy

annotations in the manuscript, and is in line with the traditional aim of the

scinderatio technique: that is, to make the text incomprehensible to any

unwanted readers. Moreover, despite the fact that the elocutio contorta, a

contorted arrangement of words, could be included in the highest rhetorical

forms by his contemporary Rather of Verona who defines it as optima

intelligentibus, excellent for those who can understand it, Atto’s choice of this

register does not depend on a mere stylistic necessity.

What leads us to the best explanation of the cryptic form adopted by the

Bishop is the very title that he chose for his work.

The double title of the source, Polipticum quod appellatur Perpendiculum,

may be translated more or less as Complex Treatise called the Plumb-line,

where this second term constitutes the proper name of the work, so to say.

The plumb-line that the Bishop stretches out has a double meaning: on one

hand, it is a positive tool to construct or reconstruct, on the correct

foundations of legitimacy, the royal institution, so that the resulting

construction is “true”, as opposed to the chaos inevitably generated by

illegitimacy and usurpation. But, more than that, the work constitutes a clear-

cut prophetic warning, a reference to Chapter 34 of the Book of Isaiah, where

the plumb line is held by God himself over Edom and represents inexorable

divine judgment.

Atto’s whole political discourse is in fact constructed on what we may define

as episcopal prophetic teachings: the Bishop of Vercelli can correctly

understand the past and future of the kingdom and indicate what he defines

as the “way to get out of the Labyrinth” because he reads reality in the correct

eschatological framework. The cause of the chaos which his contemporaries

are experiencing is the blind search for worldly vainglory instead of the true

glory of eternal salvation, and the consequences of this tragic inversion are

the damnation of the powerful and chaos in the whole kingdom, over which

looms future divine judgment.

In this sense, the Bishop’s warning constitutes an example of a prophecy

which must not come true. As with the case of Jonah’s preaching at Nineveh,

the prophet warns the people as to what would happen if his words went

unheard: his warning saves the city and the grim prediction of destruction

does not come true, which does not mean that Jonah’s prophecy is any less

“true”.

Thus, alluding to Isaiah in the title, Atto suggests that unless the Italic

magnates stop their plotting and abandon the path to vainglory, the worst

outcome being the summoning of Otto I to Italy (because for the Bishop of

Vercelli the only reason why he would be summoned would be to free the

aristocracy of the yoke of Berengar, in a foolish project of making Otto a

puppet-king or at least a king destined to be always absent from the

peninsula), in short if the Italics do not listen to his appeal to them, what will

happen is what Isaiah prophesized for the Edomites: beating down on the

kingdom, divine judgment will cause Italy to become a desolate desert

inhabited only by demons while thorns will grow in the abandoned palaces.

This suggests us the reason why the Bishop adopted a cryptic form of writing:

obscuritas/obscurity is the stylistic code of prophetic writing.

Let it be clear: the Perpendiculum is not a strictly prophetic text, but its

ciphered form does not just constitute a pure rhetorical colour or a simple

cryptographic means: the Bishop of Vercelli’s political appeal deploys all the

prophetic power of the episcopal teachings in understanding the sense of

reality past and present and in the attempt to direct future political decisions.

5. The chapter house library at Vercelli preserves a Xth century copy of the

commentary on Isaiah by Haymo of Auxerre, a codex which I found only after

completing my book: the codex contains numerous annotations which

comment on different key terms that we find in Atto’s text. And this also

includes the very title of the work: next to the passage in which Haymo

indicates the correct way to interpret the “Plumb-line” in Isaiah 34, with

Sententia Dei, Judgment of God, a note has been added Perpendiculum quid

sit: “here it is said what the Perpendicular is”.

The study of this manuscript together with other manuscripts owned by Atto

and which still lie in the chapter house at Vercelli will constitute the first phase

of the project for a critical edition of the Perpendiculum that I have just begun

at Sismel in Florence.

6. Finally, a word on the recipient of the text: in my book I added to the

conclusion a hypothesis which seems possible to me: many aspects of the

preface letter indicate, as the likely recipient of Atto’s complex appeal, Bishop

Wido of Modena and abbot of Nonantola, arch-chancellor of Berengar II, and

a key force in Italian politics in the mid Xth century. If that is the case, the text

has not produced the desired effect: Wido is one of the Italic leaders who

would gain most benefit from the coming of Otto, at least at the beginning.

Ironically, an umpteenth about face for Wido saw the end of his political

career and his exile in the kingdom of Germany, almost as if this fulfilled the

prevision provided by Atto’s writing.

7. To sum up: Bishop Atto’s Plumb-line must be considered as the

interpretation by a bishop of late Carolingian culture of the classical model of

political oration. At a time of extreme uncertainty for the future of the Italic

kingdom, in the mid-Fifties of the tenth century, the Bishop of Vercelli writes in

order to convince the Italic magnates not to summon Otto of Saxony over the

Alps, and with his own political discourse makes a full claim to his guiding role

as bishop through the labyrinth on earth, acting as a guide to lead the people

out of Chaos.

In interpreting in full the prophetic character of his own teachings, he

elaborates his personal appeal in a cryptic form. A form intended by Atto as

the summit of rhetorical technique and a sign in itself of the sheperd’s power

to understand the Truth beneath the deceptive appearance of worldly glory. A

cryptic form thus chosen because it is the most effective to take action in the

world and to guide the political decisions of his contemporaries. The

subsequent failure of the political plan upheld by the Bishop, which Atto was

not able to witness as he had already died in 961, makes his complicated

appeal an even more precious source in our eyes today.