Beobachtungen zu den Rom-Elegien Hildeberts von Lavardin

Paul the Deacon – between sacci and marsuppia

“…His distychs composed in honour of St Benedict, of which he was proud enough as to insert them in his History, are a technical play with words and motifs from Gregory the Great's Life of the saint that only a connoisseur would have been able to understand. 96 The text of the Historia Langobardorum makes some of these contradictions very apparent, for instance in the way in which Paul distances himself from the ridicula fabula about Lombard origins or in his treatment of King Grimoald. 97 In the text, he clearly strove to relieve many of these tensions by employing narrative means.…”