Features of the Records Composition in the Continuatio Prosperi Hauniensis

Abstract

This research has revealed the features of the documentation base of the anonymous compilations written in Italy (most likely, shortly after 636) and known as the Continuatio Prosperi Hauniensis; it is actually a mixture of a chronicle, duplicate excerpts from a number of consular lists of the Roman Empire, and a brief overview of the rule of the Ostrogothic and Lombard kings. This research focuses on the composition of the part of the “Continuation of Рrosper” which brings the narrative to the reign of Theodoric the Great. It has been shown that the records kept every feature of late antique chronicle. However, the document’s content features clear signs of imperfection and confused and incomplete editing, especially when it comes to the sections about the disappearance of emperor’s power in the West. Anyway, the information in this document keeps equal value disregarding the Roman, Ravenna, or Lombard origin of the facts, dates, and estimates it covers. This paper pays most of its attention to the dependency of the records covering the events in the late fourth and fifth centuries from the so-called Ravenna fasti (consularia), which formed the core of several synchronous chronicles. The main material to show the incompleteness of the editing of the chronicle in question are different variants of accounts on the events developing on the eve of and after 476 AD, and the varied dependency of the text in question of the protograph of the Fasti Vindobonensis (Vienna manuscript), the sources of Cassidorus the Senator’s Chronicle, and other similar documents.

Keywords

• источниковедение поздней античности
• позднеантичные хроники
• позднеантичные фасты
• проспер аквитанский
• fasti vindobonensis