Dear János,
first of all, please allow me to send you my sincere congratulations and wish you a happy 80th birthday, all the best for the future, that you will stay in good health and be further on as productive and inspiring as you have ever been. The memories of my stays in Hungary are very precious to me, much and foremost because of your hospitality and generosity and last but not least the fabulous tours you conducted. I am so glad that I had the opportunity to experience Budapest and the whole region by your guiding words. If Jürgen Petersohn agrees to and declares it valuable, I intend to dedicate a paper to you which will be published in the Deutsches Archiv. It is basing on my contribution to a public panel discussion in Warsaw in February, where I had the pleasure to debate two new proposals for the identification of Gallus Anonymus with the authors. One of them, Dániel Bagi, is a disciple of Márta Font, the other one, Tomasz Jasiński, is a Polish historian.
While preparing for the discussion and reconsidering the theories of Bagi and Jasiński, I noticed a couple of details which have been overlooked so far, also by myself when I dealt with the Gallus Anonymus last time. Starting with my original assumption that he probably came from Liège – which is still perfectly thinkable – I followed an immense number of traces leading to Bamberg. In my opinion, it is highly probable that the anonymous author of the first chronicle of Poland has his origins in Bamberg, and perhaps it is even Otto of Bamberg himself. There exists, however, no conclusive evidence, only a vast amount of bits and pieces, which may be not compelling if regarded individually, but tied together they form a tight chain of arguments which I deem to be quite convincing as a whole.
I can just sum them up very briefly: in the first instance, the education of the Gallus Anonymus makes it possible that he had ties to the cathedral school of Bamberg, which was at that time an academic centre of European rank. The chronicler is very closely acquainted with the theory of the regalia which was also very well known right there. Gallus was familiar with the matters of administration and chancellery before going to Poland, but he did not have any task to fulfil and saw himself forced to leisure, to “otium”. The chronicle does not contain a single word about the wars of Bolesław Chrobry against Henry II – raging for about fifteen years! –, which is perfectly explicable if he was of Bamberg origin. The close connections of the bishopric to Poland around 1100 are testified by memorial records and a rare epistle. Out of various phrases in the chronicle one can conclude that the anonymous author was by no means a simple monk or a minor cleric: he had close ties to the chancellor of the Polish duke, perhaps also with some Polish bishops. The same can also be said of Otto of Bamberg, who knew Poland and the ducal court from his former stay in the country which lasted several years. Hungary was also not unknown to him, because he was the Queen’s and Duchess Judith’s (the wife of King Solomon) chaplain and therefore had formidable informants in both of them. Above that, he might have deepened his knowledge about Poland while partaking in Henry V’s military campaign in 1108. There are a lot more details than the few I have mentioned so far: parallels in the description of funeral ceremonies, a possible Bambergian perspective in Gallus’s account of the geographical borders of the whole Sclavinia, similarities in the cult of saints mentioned by the chronicle and practised by Otto, and so on. Most striking is a gap in Otto’s itinerary for the years around 1116/18, when he could very well have been fled to Poland form royal and papal pressure, leaving behind his bishopric in a way forbidden by canon law. This may be the reason why the chronicler is so painstakingly anxious to keep his true identity concealed. Summed up and put together, all these criteria give us a clear hint to uncover this well hidden secret; Gallus may no longer be an Anonymus.
Cordially yours
Johannes
Johannes Fried
