Emmanuel de Madiis when the latter went to Genoa as
podestà. In 1238, he was entrusted with the captaincy of
the fortress of Gavardo, to defend it against the forces
of Emperor Frederick II in the struggle of the Lombard
League against the imperial campaign in northern Italy.
He lost, but only after a vigorous defense against an
especially vicious siege.
Albertanus was the author of three Latin didactic
treatises and fi ve “sermons”—spoken addresses de-
livered before his fellow causidici at meetings of their
lay confraternity. These works became widely—in fact,
explosively—available immediately after their creation
and are to be found all across Europe; Albertanus’s
works were read and copied until the eve of Reforma-
tion. His fi rst (and longest) work is De amore et dilec-
tione Dei et proximi et aliarum return et de forma vitae,
completed while he was imprisoned at Cremona in 1238.
Here he fi rst set out his notion that social transformation
is to be achieved through voluntary personal commit-
ment to a “rule,” an idea which would permeate all his
subsequent writing. A sermon he delivered in Genoa in
1243 provides a prototype for his De doctrina dicendi
et tacendi of 1245. Structured according to the rhetori-
cal “circumstances” of classical tradition, this treatise
examines the use of spoken discourse, especially among
the legal profession, as a means of social empowerment.
A third treatise, Liber consolationis et consilii (1246),
denounces the threat to order afforded by the urban
vendetta—the northern cities of Italy were frequently
riven by lobbyists, and street fi ghts between politi-
cally partisan groups were far from unknown. In this
work, he sees social change as to be achieved through
personal moral development. His fi nal works comprise
four more sermons, delivered to his legal confraternity
in Brescia in or about 1250. In these short sermons,
Albertanus develops and reiterates themes of his major
works, and they may be seen as refl ecting the maturity
of his thought. The last sermon, with its topic of fear of
the Lord (and perhaps also its lack of clear structure),
suggests that these sermons were his swan song. There
is no reason to believe that he wrote anything after them,
and further attributions of authorship are undoubtedly
false.
Albertano drew on familiar sources for his works,
among them Seneca, Cicero, Justinian, Cato, Godfrey
of Winchester, and the Bible. But he appears also to be
the fi rst writer to make use of the work of the Spanish
convert from Judaism, Peter Alfonsi, and may well be
the fi rst scholar to have assembled all twelve books of
Cassiodorus’s Variae. In this sense we can regard Alber-
tanus as a precursor of the Renaissance book collector.
The focus and synthesis of his writing, however, make it
wrong to dismiss him as a mere compiler. His remedies
for the social problems he met with professionally mark
him as an early and insightful social theorist. His views
on the consensual adoption of a secular rule (proposi-
tum) as a way of life and its potential as an engine of
social change make him unique for the period. That he
wrote as a layman is also remarkable. His beliefs about
the role of the legal profession as a body with responsi-
bility for social stability and development reveal an early
understanding of the signifi cance of the rise of an urban
professional class. His sermons are among the earliest
evidence we have of lay preaching and oratory.
More than 320 surviving Latin manuscripts, across
Europe, indicate that Albertanus was one of the most
widely read authors in the latter medieval period. De
doctrina in particular is well represented in manuscript,
and it also went through at least thirty-fi ve printed
editions by 1500. Among the subsequent writers who
knew and utilized these works are Brunetto Latini,
Chaucer, John Gower, the author of the Fiore di virtù,
Christine de Pizan, and (arguably) Dante. Except for his
sermons, Albertanus’s work was translated into every
major western European language, though sometimes
at quite a distance from the original context. More than
130 manuscripts and numerous early printed editions
are known of vernacular versions of his treatises; these
include English, German, Italian, French, Catalan, Cas-
tilian, Czech, and Dutch versions. More research on his
infl uence is needed.
Powell (1992) supplies a recent and authoritative
discussion of Albertanus and his works and provides
a starting point for contemporary scholars working in
English. Some discussion, especially of vernacular ver-
sions, is added by Angus Graham (1996), who extends
Powell’s bibliography. Both supply further reading.
Further literature in English is concerned largely with
Chaucer’s use of Albertanus. Details of Latin manu-
scripts are given by Navone (1994, 1998), though she
lists only 243, and supplemented by Graham (2000a,b).
The currently published Latin editions do not refl ect the
best critical edition, but adequate ones are provided by
Sundby (1884, De doctrina, app., 475–509), Romino
(1980), Fè d’Ostiani (1874), Ferrari (1955), and more
recently by Navone. Ahlquist offers a welcome fresh
edition of the four Brescian sermons (with English
translation); and Marx has translated, from Sundby, a
portion of the Liber consolationis (in Blamires et al.
1992, 237–242). All but two of the published vernacu-
lar versions are cited by Graham (1996), and there are
further discussions and vernacular manuscript listings
in Graham (2000a,b).Further Reading
Ahlquist, Gregory W. “The Four Sermons of Albertanus of Bres-
cia: An Edition.” M.A. thesis, Syracuse University, 1997.
Blamires, Alcuin, Karen Pratt, and C. W. Marx. Woman Defamed
and Woman Defended: An Anthology of Medieval Texts. Ox-
ford: Clarendon, 1992.ALBERTANUS OF BRESCIA