GRAPPIA AUREAE URBIS. — From the single manuscript that has preserved it (Laurenziano LXXXIX, inf. 41, 13th century), it appears rather to be a juxtaposition of texts by different authors and from different periods than an original work.
In a first part, of a historical character, are found the fabulous origins of Rome, from a supposed arrival of Noah in Italy to the founding of the city: this framing, while indulging the fashion of the time, is here partly justified by the divine preordination of the chosen city to world hegemony, first through irresistible military power, then by means of a spiritual primacy. Against this backdrop is placed the text of the Mirabilia, with almost negligible updates; but with a more rational arrangement of the legendary element, logically brought closer to the moment on which it had clung like tenacious ivy. This new arrangement of the parts of the Mirabilia is the result of an anonymous collaboration, intended to make the pamphlet ever more suited to the purposes of a guide for visitors to the Urbe.
From this internal description one passes abruptly to a third part consisting of a curious document, likewise lacking organic unity, which Schramm entitled Libellus de caerimoniis aulae imperatoris. It begins
with a reworking of an older list of seven judges, representatives of the high bureaucracy of the imperial palace. There are found gross errors of etymology by a scholar little versed in Greek, and only a fleeting reference to reality opens a window onto the chronology of the document: comes autem Caesariani Palatii dictator Tusculanensis est. And a comes sacri Lateranensis Palatii was indeed an Alberico 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 informed by the same confusions and incongruities, which leads to 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 (the nomination of a patrician, a judge, and a citizen) the reflection of the Roman imperial idea is ever present, in an atmosphere of belief or illusion in the revival of a tradition still effective and operative if recalled to life by a powerful personality. One is in the historical climate of the renovatio.