GRAPHIA AUREAE URBIS. - From the single manuscript that has handed it down (Laurenziano LXXXIX, inf. 41, 13th century), it appears to be, rather than an organic work, a juxtaposition of texts differing in author and age.
In a first part, of a historical character, the fabulous origins of Rome find their place, from a supposed arrival of Noah in Italy to the founding of the City: this framing, while it indulges the fashion of the time, is here in part justified by the divine preordination of the city elected to the hegemony of the world, first through an irresistible military power, then through a spiritual primacy. Against this background the text of the Mirabilia finds its place, with almost negligible updates; but with a more rational arrangement of the legendary element, logically brought close to the moment to which it had clung like tenacious ivy. This new arrangement of the parts of the Mirabilia is the fruit of an anonymous collaboration, intended to make the booklet ever better suited to the purposes of a guide for visitors to the City.
From this internal description one passes ex abrupto to a third part consisting of a curious document, likewise devoid of organic unity, which Schramm entitled Libellus de caerimoniis aulae imperatoris. This begins with a reworking of an older list of seven judges, representatives of the high bureaucracy of the imperial palace. One encounters gross etymological errors on the part of a scholar little versed in Greek, and only a fleeting reference to reality opens a chink onto the chronology of the document: comes autem Caesariani Palatii dictator Tusculanensis est. And a comes sacri Lateranensis Palatii was in fact an Alberic of Tusculum between 1026-28, but, inadvertently, one passes from the imperial palace to the Lateran patriarchate.
The ceremonial that follows in the document is marked by the same confusions and incongruities, which leaves room for the supposition that the author of the list is the same as that of the ceremonial. In this no part is reserved for the clergy, and the person of the emperor is closer to a Caesar or an Octavian than to a Constantine, in whose figure the Old Testament, Christian and Roman traditions seem to converge.
Even in the three formulas that close this strange document (nomination of a patrician, of a judge, of a citizen) the reflection of the Roman imperial idea is always immanent, in an atmosphere of believers or of those deluded in the revival of a tradition still efficient and operative, if called back to life by a powerful personality. One is in the historical climate of the renovatio.