Satire et critique allusive dans l'Europe post-carolingienne

The imperative to 'speak the truth' even before kings, without fear of uttering the criticism necessary for the salvation of the kingdom and the soul of the rulers, may appear at odds with a specific form of criticism prominent in the works of some post-Carolingian bishops: allusiveness. The veiled and indirect attack, which strikes out allusively without naming its target, circumventing the danger structurally present in the exercise of parrhesia, may in fact appear to be the opposite of the 'frank talk' of the Christian parresiast. This study aims to show how this contradiction is only apparent and can be solved once the significance of allusive criticism in the post-Carolingian cultural context is understood and the innovative model of criticism it invoked is recognised. Thanks to a recent season of studies on the medieval reception of Persius and Juvenal, we know that between the end of the 9th and the beginning of the 10th century there was a rediscovery of classical satirical poetry: this late-Carolingian reception of satire identified allusiveness as one of the characteristics of the genre deputed to the reprehensio of the mores of the world. The reflection was set in motion by the encounter between these new readings, the imperatives of Carolingian political theology and the contingencies of contemporary political life and generated a first experimental Christian appropriation of the satirical model, which from that moment on began its own journey in Western European culture. This appropriation and reinvention of satirical criticism took its first steps in the context of the Kingdom of Italy: the study follows its first traces in the Gesta Berengarii imperatoris (915-924) and in particular in the Praeloquia (written from 935 onwards), with which bishop Rather of Verona proposed the first reflection on episcopal criticism of kings in an allusive form, invoking the model of classical satire. Rather’s proposal was taken up and developed by bishop Atto of Vercelli, with a work that constitutes a first episcopal synthesis of satire and prophetic Christian criticism, the Polipticum quod appellatur Perpendiculum (953-958).