——. “More Poems by Philippe de Thaon?” In Anglo-Norman
Anniversary Essays, ed. Ian Short. London: Anglo-Norman
Text Society, 1993, pp. 337–59.
Studer, Paul, and Joan Evans. Anglo-Norman Lapidaries. Paris:
Champion, 1924.
Rupert T. Pickens
PIER DELLA VIGNA (c. 1190–1249)
Pier della Vigna (Petrus de Vinea) was born in Capua
of obscure parentage and became a senior bureaucrat
and offi cer of state under Emperor Frederick II. Pier
had broad and enduring infl uence as a master of Latin
documentary composition and Latin prose stylistics
more generally.
Pier’s education included the study of law and rheto-
ric, the former probably at the University of Bologna,
and the latter probably at a notarial school in Capua or
Bologna, since Bologna and Capua were centers for
this sort of instruction. He entered Frederick’s court
chancery in the early 1220s, became a high-ranking
judge, had major fi nancial responsibilities, and wrote
private letters for Frederick that did not go through the
chancery. It is thought that his superior skill as a stylist
and advocate was immediately recognized and that from
the beginning of his lifelong employment in this milieu
it fell to him to compose the most important and stylisti-
cally taxing documents. By 1243, he was protonotary of
the imperial court and logothete—a high offi cial with
the functions of chancellor—of the kingdom of Sicily.
In 1244, he and his colleague (and fellow Campanian)
Thaddeus of Sessa were authorized to decide on all
petitions presented to the emperor. Pier was a trusted
counselor to Frederick, and Frederick’s spokesman in
many of the emperor’s troubled dealings with the papacy
and with the communes of northern Italy. Throughout
Frederick’s long dispute with Pope Gregory IX, Pier
represented the emperor at the papal court and at the
courts of foreign princes; shortly before Pope Innocent
IV deposed the emperor in 1245, Pier attempted to
intervene on his sovereign’s behalf.
That Pier used his position to enrich himself and to
advance his family is not surprising. But in this regard
he does appear to have been excessively grasping and
thus to have made many enemies. For reasons that are
unclear, Frederick had him arrested in Cremona early
in 1249, and blinded a few months later, probably in the
fortress of San Miniato near Pisa. Pier’s death not long
afterward was believed in some quarters to have been a
suicide, a view shared by Dante. Pier is one of the most
memorable souls in the Divine Comedy, though he is
identifi ed only as “the man who held the double key to
Frederick’s heart” (Inferno, 13 58–59). It seems likely,
as Stephany (1982) has argued, that the portrayal and
punishment of Pier in the Divine Comedy were provoked
by Dante’s literal reading of Pier’s widely admired
Eulogy of Frederick, a composition that may have struck
Dante as blasphemous and idolatrous.
One of a pair of busts of bearded males from
Frederick’s monumental gate at Capua (the gate was
demolished in 1557 and the bust is now in the Museo
Provinciale Campano) is sometimes considered a por-
trait of Pier. But it seems unlikely that the Hohenstaufen
regime would have knowingly permitted this showpiece
of imperial iconography to retain, in close proximity to
the image of Frederick himself, the likeness of a man
stigmatized in offi cial documents of the early 1250s as
Petrus proditor (“Pier the traitor”). Pier has also been
identifi ed as one of the fi gures in a portrait (now lost)
at the emperor’s palace at Naples, which supposedly
showed him dispensing justice in Frederick’s presence;
but this too seems dubious.
Pier was famous in his lifetime as a person of high
culture and as an artist in Latin prose. His production
as a writer falls into several different categories. His
early offi cial letters match the style of the Roman curia
at the time, a style characterized by elaborate patterns
of verbal, phonic, and rhythmic ornaments and laden
with biblical citations, all intended to convey honor and
respect for the addressee and a solemn celebration of
the status quo. The same verbal musicality and allusive
citations of well-known biblical and classical texts are
evident in letters of consolation, as well as occasional
pieces such as the famous Eulogy, in which messianic
proclamations about Frederick are amplifi ed with bibli-
cal language. After 1225, when the emperor abandoned
his posture of gratitude toward the papacy and began
to focus on what he perceived as confl icts of interest
between papacy and empire, the rhetoric of Pier’s letters
shifts, in certain cases, from persuasion rooted in praise
and affection for the addressee to persuasion based on
the points of contention between the parties. The his-
torical circumstances of controversial events become
an integral part of the persuasive strategy. For nearly
thirty years, Pier would wage a polemical campaign
in defense of Frederick II in an attempt to win the sup-
port of prelates and princes throughout Latin Europe.
Ultimately, his choice of rhetorical approaches would
always depend on his perception of the intended public
and the subject matter discussed in the letter.
Although the extent of his personal contribution
remains controversial, Pier was at least partly respon-
sible for the drafting of Liber Augustalis (1231), the
Latin version of Frederick’s Constitutions of Melfi , a
massive law code asserting the absolute authority of the
prince in his kingdom. The language of its Proemium
is richly ornamented and cadenced. Just as the Eulogy
appropriates biblical language to glorify the emperor and
his court, the Proemium invokes biblical, patristic, and
Aristotelian phrases, as well as classical Roman legalPHILIPPE DE THAÜN