Calendrical Time and Authority: The Imperial Visitation in Episode 57

Although Episode 57 is one of the shortest episodes in the chronicle, it contains a very high concentration of temporal markers. Measuring at just six (6) lines, it includes an equal number (6) of references to time. It describes the 1328 imperial visitation of Louis (or Ludwig) IV, who had been crowned in Rome earlier the same year. Due to the episode's brevity, we quote it in full:

The emperor Louis came with Castruccio and stayed in Pisa with his army on Sunday, the sixth day of September, 1328, and he stayed there for 38 days, and then in the middle of October on Sunday morning went to the duomo.

(L'omperadore Lodovico venne con Castruccio intorno a Pisa a oste, intorno in Domenica a di sei di Septembre MCCCXXVIII, e stetteci intorno die XXXVIII, e poi in centro d'Ottobre in Domenica mattina, e ando a Duomo [f. 33v, l. 33-f.34r, l. 4].)

Louis's coronation as emperor in the city of Rome earlier that year was hotly contested, a singular event in the much longer conflict between imperial and papal power structures that characterized Italian peninsular politics through the fourteenth century. As noted in our introduction, the Guelf-Ghibelline conflict is of central importance to the chronicle - Ghibelline Pisa's wars with the Guelfs of Tuscany are arguably the main focus of the text. Yet here, the imperial-papal conflict does not receive any attention at all. Rather, in a brief passage, the reader is assailed with several references to time; the emperor arrives on this date, he stays for this long, one morning he goes to the Duomo. 

This is not surprising, as the chronicle is a local Pisan history rather than a history of the Northern Italian conflicts writ large. The author's presentation of the emperor as a political figure can be understood in relation to his presentation of other political figures - the podestà. As noted earlier, the podestà are accompanied by the year of their accessions to the podestariate and the duration of their time in office. The text tells us neither when Louis was crowned nor how long he reigned, but we should not expect it to - the chronicle discusses the emperor within the context of the city of Pisa. If we substitute the emperor's entry into the city for a podestà's accession of and the duration of his visit for the podestà's time in office - that is, if we understand visitation/accession as entrance into the Pisan political sphere and time in the city/time in office as the duration of this political presence - we can see that the political use of time found in the podestarial lists is mirrored in the brief description of this imperial visitation. 

This demonstrates that temporal markers are not neutral here. Their use in this episode places the emperor in line with the Pisan political authorities described in the text. By documenting in great detail the emperor's comings and goings, the chronicle does more than tell the reader how long Louis stayed in the city - it presents him as a legitimate authority, precisely in a time when his authority was in question.