The Bernabò case
2. Rhymes, tricks and dissemination

If Bernabò Visconti's funeral monument does indeed appear to be a tomb in the form of a provocation, the story that leads up to it is that of a power struggle, based on the symbolic dissemination of signs manipulated by pontifical authority. The Visconti viper's seigniorial moult thus raises the serious and age-old question of the relationship between conservative violence and violence that founds law. But if statuary fever can be traced back to its Greco-Roman origins, these also transmit the Latin epigrams of the vituperators to medieval practices of derision. The statue speaks. In analyzing the Lamento di Bernabò Visconti , we recall the importance of the development of encomiastic poetry in the Visconti entourage, as well as the tradition of eulogies. Hence the paradox: why does Franco Sachetti, who composed fierce political songs against the lord of Milan, write of him in his Trecentonovelle: "Although he was cruel, there was a great deal of justice in his cruelties"?

Contents

• Self-representation and Bildpolitik : Pope Boniface VIII and the accusation of idolatry (Agostino Paravicini-Bagliani)
• Philippe le Bel's legists, "cruel demolishers of the Middle Ages" (Michelet): the story of a symbolic dissemination
• From Pope Lucius III (d. 1185) to Archbishop Ottone Visconti of Milan (d. 1295): funerary monuments as expressions of power struggles
• "Even before the century was over, Bernabò Visconti's horse had made its way into the church" (Erwin Panofsky, Funerary Sculpture, 1992)
• We have seen you, Bernabò Visconti: lordly moult and "force of law" (Jacques Derrida, 1994)
• Violence conservatrice et violence fondatrice de droit: biffer le nom Bernabò de la généalogie des Visconti?
• Fontenelle, Dialogues des morts, 1683: Erostrate and Demetrios of Phalerus. Destroy, says one; build, says the other
• "The earth resembles large tablets where everyone wants to write his name. When these tablets are full, we have to erase the names already written on them, to add new ones. What would it be like if all the monuments of the ancients were still there?
• La fièvre statuaire de Démétrios de Phalère, le dérèglement du régime des honneurs et la ritualisation de l'outrage aux statues (Vincent Azoulay, "La gloire et l'outrage", Annales HSS, 2009)
• Les Pasquinades, or the obligatory praise of parodic dedications(Faire parler et faire taire les statues, Rome, 2017)
• The ancient tradition of Latin epigrams and communal practices of derision: histories of vituperation and vituperators (Jean-Claude Maire Vigueur)
• From Shakespeare's Julius Caesar to Hillary Clinton: governing in prose, dominating in verse
• The statue speaks: D'oro e d'argento coperto è il barone/Sur un cavallo bello e meraviglioso/E di fin oro si porta sperone/E par pur che sia vivo il valoroso (Matteo da Milano, Lamento funebre by Bernabò Visconti)
• La valorosa Vipera gentile : the development of encomiastic poetry around the Viscontis
• Why flatterers? Service of legitimation, autonomy and "critical questioning" (Pierre Bourdieu, Méditations pascaliennes, 1997)
• Baccio Bracci, Soldan di Banbilonia e ceterà : when Bernabò, unrepentant hunter, transforms himself into a werewolf(per trasmutarlo d'uomo in bestial forma)
• From the praise of Milan to the glory of the Viscontis: the Dittamondo by Fazio degli Uberti
• Giovanni Visconti come vero pastore e vera luce and Bernabò Visconti's vita salvatica
• 1385, the capture of the captivating lord
• Antonio Medin and the invention of the Lamento di Bernabò Visconti
• Complaintes, lyrisme et narration (Michael Fœssel, Le Temps de la consolation, 2015)
• Les Lamenti après les Guerres d'Italie: prosopopée populaire et culture politique italienne (Florence Alazard, Le Lamento dans l'Italie de la Renaissance, 2010)
• Still the Lamento di Bernabò Visconti : composition and codicology (Marco Limongelli)
• Strength and justice in Bernabò's "sad adventure": de maiore sangue è manifesto/fe granda iustitia, como se rexona
• A buongoverno of lordship? The precedent of Gabriele Zamorei da Parma's eulogy of Giovanni Visconti, felicis domini, magnusque potensque tyrampnus (Andrea Gamberini, "Orgogliosamente tiranni", in Andrea Zorzi dir., Tiranni e tirannide nel Trecento italiano, 2013)
• The legal requalification of the notion of tyranny after Bartolo da Sassoferrato (Diego Quaglioni)
• Should Florentines celebrate the death of Bernabò Visconti? Coluccio Salutati's dilemmas and the ambiguities of la florentina libertas
• Franco Sacchetti's fierce songs against Bernabò Visconti: Più che Nembrot superbo, e più crudele/che non fu mai Galicola o Nerone
• Nemrod, hunting power and the monstrous reverse side of pastoral power (Grégoire Chamayou, Les chasses à l'homme, 2010)
• "Although he was cruel, there was a great deal of justice in his cruelties": Franco Sacchetti and the novelization of Bernabò Visconti