Editor's preface: HOW TO READ THIS BOOK

Believe me; I didn't ask for the assignment of editing this manuscript. Evidently the publisher's mother is a friend of the wife of the translator (Dr. Edgar Filbert Thomasson), or they are in a club together, or something like that. I read it; it was neither fish nor fowl. Since Dr. T. refused to let anyone verify its authenticity, it would be a scandalous disaster as an academic text. For all that I know, the whole thing is a fraud.

Although Dr. T. envisioned sales in the millions, it didn't impress me as a popular release either. For one thing, he mimicked the author's horribly antiquated style in much of the first chapter. He also inserted an ungodly number of notes, which he insisted be presented as footnotes rather than endnotes. Believe it or not, fifty-four footnotes weigh down the first two chapters alone!

Then there is the subject matter. The setting is Italy in the dark ages, and I, for one, had not heard of a single person mentioned in the book. Just getting through the first few chapters required the perseverance of Helen Keller. Needless to say, there is also no niche market for first-person historical treatises on an eleventh-century papacy. So, why read it?

And yet … My job required me to read the whole thing several times, and there is definitely something there. The plot includes sex, family conflicts, mysterious deaths, a bunch of powerful kings and emperors, and a few twists that truly surprised me. Did I mention sex?

As for style, don't expect Hemingway or Faulkner; the English version was written by a man who has spent his life making sense of obscure Latin and Greek constructions. I encouraged him to make the text more conversational, but his colleagues are all classicists, and this is how they actually converse. However, I can affirm that after eighty-five sets of revisions most of the text is now somewhat readable.

I devoted a good deal of time to documenting how a reader could enjoy the good parts of this book without slogging through the other stuff. Everyone considers Moby Dick A masterpiece, right? Nobody reads it from cover to cover. All those details of nineteenth-century whaling bore people in the internet age.

Here is my recommendation for getting the most out of this book with the least effort:

1. If you have a compulsive and unquenchable interest in the minutiae of one of the following topics—medieval European history, Church history, or the papacy:
1. Pay careful to the Translator's Notes so that you can evaluate the rest of the text.
2. Read all of the book except for #2B below, including the footnotes. You can just skim Chapter 11. Most of it recounts two hormonal young people whining to each other about not being able to do as they please.
3. Keep a laptop handy. In addition to your notes, you will probably want several spreadsheets open in order to maintain an accurate timeline and record other details. Google and Wikipedia can help.
2. If you are simply looking for an interesting story that is unlike any you have ever read:
1. Do not read the Translator's Notes.
2. Also skip the beginning of Chapter 1. Start with the paragraph that begins “My mind possesses ...”. Here is what you will have missed: The author's name is Theophylact. His family, which lives a few miles southeast of Rome in Tusculum, runs the show in both the papacy and the entire “Petrine Patrimony”, an independent country that stretches across the middle of the Italian peninsula from one coast to the other.
3. Skip the footnotes. There are only two critical pieces of information in them.
1. The translator uses the word “gorzo” because he is too polite to use a technical or slang term for male reproductive organs.
2. You are not alone; the translator does not know what a “Baldocax” is either.
4. Skip the first part of Chapter 8. Start with “I also exchanged letters with Prince Casimir.”
5. Skip the first part of Chapter 9, too. Start with “In 1044 my father ...”
6. Skip all of Chapter 12 except the last paragraph.
7. If the Catholic stuff or the Italian stuff bothers you, just pretend that the story is set in Tibet or Borneo or on a moon of Jupiter. Pick a location—real or imagined—in which the recognized religious leader is also, for whatever reason, the monarch of a small country that has no real army and no set rules for succession of its leaders.

The map of Italy in the eleventh century and especially the population graph of Rome over the centuries should be useful to anyone. .

Fair warning: You may not find the protagonist particularly appealing. Keep in mind that his life probably included more than he was willing to share with posterity. Consider this the whitewashed version.

I hope that this helps.


Audrey Phillips
Editor