Plot summary
In the year of 1204, Baudolino of Alessandria enters Constantinople, unaware of the Fourth Crusade that has thrown the city into chaos. In the confusion, he meets Niketas Choniates and saves his life. Niketas is amazed by his language genius, speaking many languages he has never heard, and Baudolino begins to recount his life story to Niketas.
His story begins in 1155, when Baudolino – a highly talented Italian peasant boy – is sold to and adopted by the emperor Frederick I. At court and on the battlefield, he is educated in reading and writing Latin and learns about the power struggles and battles of northern Italy at the time. He is sent to Paris to become a scholar.
In Paris, he gains friends (such as the Archpoet, Abdul, Robert de Boron and Kyot, the purported source of Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival ) and learns about the legendary kingdom of Prester John. From this event onward, Baudolino dreams of reaching this fabled land.
The earlier parts of the story follow the general historical and geographical outlines of 12th-century Europe, with special emphasis on the Emperor Frederick's futile efforts to subdue the increasingly independent and assertive city states of Northern Italy. Baudolino, both a beloved adopted son to the Emperor and a loyal native of the newly founded and highly rebellious town of Alessandria, plays a key role in reconciliation between the Emperor and the Alessandria townspeople, who are led by Baudolino's biological father; a way is found for the Emperor to recognize Alessandria's independence without losing face. (It is no accident that Alessandria is Umberto Eco's own hometown.) During the siege, Baudolino works on the side of Frederick Barbarossa, but concocts a plan to help win the Alessandrian townspeople independence. He attempts to convince the emperor's forces that Alessandria is more prepared for a siege than them through stuffing a cow with the last of Alessandria's wheat and sends the cow out to the Emperor's forces. When the cow is cut open, it reveals a full belly of wheat. The emperor's forces are convinced that Alessandria is not worth besieging, and thus leave.
The incident of the death of Emperor Frederick, while on the Third Crusade, is a key element of the plot. This part involves an element of secret history – the book asserts that Emperor Frederick had not drowned in a river, as history records, but died mysteriously at night while hosted at the castle of a sinister Armenian noble. This part also constitutes a historical detective mystery – specifically, a historical locked room mystery – with various suspects suggested, each of whom had a clever means of killing the Emperor, and with Baudolino acting as the detective.
After the Emperor's death, Baudolino and his friends set off on a long journey, encompassing 15 years, to find the Kingdom of Prester John. From the moment when they depart eastwards, the book becomes pure fantasy – the lands which the band travels bearing no resemblance to the continent of Asia at that or any other historical time, being rather derived from the various myths which Europeans had about Asia – including the aforementioned Christian myth of the Kingdom of Prester John, as well as the Jewish myth of the Ten Lost Tribes and the River Sambation, and some earlier accounts provided by Herodotos. Baudolino meets eunuchs, unicorns, Blemmyes, skiapods and pygmies. At one point, he falls in love with a female satyr-like creature who recounts to him the full Gnostic creation myth (Gnosticism is a pervasive presence in another of Eco's novels, Foucault's Pendulum ). Philosophical debates are mixed with comedy, epic adventure and creatures drawn from medieval bestiaries.
After many disastrous adventures, the destruction of Prester John's Kingdom by the White Huns followed by a long stint of slavery at the hands of the Old Man of the Mountain, Baudolino and surviving members of his band of friends return to Constantinople undergoing the agony of the Fourth Crusade – the book's starting point. Niketas Choniates helps Baudolino discover the truth about how the Emperor Frederick died – with shattering results for Baudolino and his friends.
Characters in Baudolino
- Invented by Eco
- Other fictional or legendary beings
- Historical
Alexios V Doukas, Latinized as Alexius V Ducas, was Byzantine emperor from February to April 1204, just prior to the sack of Constantinople by the participants of the Fourth Crusade. His family name was Doukas, but he was also known by the nickname Mourtzouphlos or Murtzuphlus (Μούρτζουφλος), referring to either bushy, overhanging eyebrows or a sullen, gloomy character. He achieved power through a palace coup, killing his predecessors in the process. Though he made vigorous attempts to defend Constantinople from the crusader army, his military efforts proved ineffective. His actions won the support of the mass of the populace, but he alienated the elite of the city. Following the fall, sack, and occupation of the city, Alexios V was blinded by his father-in-law, the ex-emperor Alexios III, and later executed by the new Latin regime. He was the last Byzantine emperor to rule in Constantinople until the Byzantine recapture of Constantinople in 1261.
Andronikos I Komnenos, Latinized as Andronicus I Comnenus, was Byzantine emperor from 1183 to 1185. He was the son of Isaac Komnenos and the grandson of the emperor Alexios I. In later Byzantine historiography, Andronikos I became known under the epithet "Misophaes" in reference to the great number of enemies he had blinded.
Umberto Eco was an Italian medievalist, philosopher, semiotician, novelist, cultural critic, and political and social commentator. In English, he is best known for his popular 1980 novel The Name of the Rose, a historical mystery combining semiotics in fiction with biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory, as well as Foucault's Pendulum, his 1988 novel which touches on similar themes.
Isaac II Angelos or Angelus was Byzantine Emperor from 1185 to 1195, and co-Emperor with his son Alexios IV Angelos from 1203 to 1204. In a 1185 revolt against the Emperor Andronikos Komnenos, Isaac seized power and rose to the Byzantine throne, establishing the Angelos family as the new imperial dynasty.
Prester John was a legendary Christian patriarch, presbyter, and king. Stories popular in Europe in the 12th to the 17th centuries told of a Church of the East patriarch and king who was said to rule over a Christian nation lost amid the pagans and Muslims in the Orient. The accounts were often embellished with various tropes of medieval popular fantasy, depicting Prester John as a descendant of the Three Magi, ruling a kingdom full of riches, marvels, and strange creatures.
Niketas or Nicetas Choniates, whose actual surname was Akominatos (Ἀκομινάτος), was a Byzantine Greek historian and politician – like his brother Michael Akominatos, whom he accompanied to Constantinople from their birthplace Chonae. Nicetas wrote a history of the Eastern Roman Empire from 1118 to 1207.
The Archpoet, or Archipoeta, is the name given to an anonymous 12th-century author of ten medieval Latin poems, the most famous being his "Confession" found in the Carmina Burana manuscript. Along with Hugh Primas of Orléans, he is cited as the best exemplar of Goliardic poetry and one of the stellar poets of the Latin Middle Ages.
Conrad of Montferrat was a nobleman, one of the major participants in the Third Crusade. He was the de facto King of Jerusalem by virtue of his marriage to Isabella I of Jerusalem from 24 November 1190, but officially elected only in 1192, days before his death. He was also the eighth Marquess of Montferrat from 1191.
Otto of Freising was a German churchman of the Cistercian order and chronicled at least two texts which carries valuable information on the political history of his own time. He was the bishop of Freising from 1138. Otto participated in the Second Crusade; he lived through the journey and reached Jerusalem, and later returned to Bavaria in the late 1140s, living for another decade back in Europe.
Alessandria is a city and comune in Piedmont, Italy, and the capital of the Province of Alessandria. The city is sited on the alluvial plain between the Tanaro and the Bormida rivers, about 90 kilometres east of Turin.
Ivan Asen I, also known as Asen I or John Asen I, was emperor or tsar of Bulgaria from 1187/1188 to 1196 as co-ruler with his elder brother, Peter II. Hailing from the Byzantine theme of Paristrion, his exact place and date of birth are unknown. Most contemporaneous chronicles describe Asen and his brothers, Theodor (Peter) and Kaloyan, as Vlachs but they were probably of mixed Bulgarian, Cuman and Vlach ancestry.
Renier of Montferrat (1162–1183) was the fifth son of William V of Montferrat and Judith of Babenberg. He became son-in-law of the Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Komnenos and Caesar in 1180, and was later murdered in a Byzantine power-struggle.
Kyot the Provençal is claimed by Wolfram von Eschenbach to have been a Provençal poet who supplied him with the source for his Arthurian romance Parzival. Wolfram may have been referring to the northern French poet Guiot de Provins, but this identification has proven unsatisfactory. The consensus of the vast majority of scholars today is that Kyot was an invention by Wolfram, and that Wolfram's true sources were Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, the Story of the Grail and his own abundant creativity.
Guiot de Provins, also spelled Guyot, was a French poet and trouvère from the town of Provins in the Champagne area. A declining number of scholars identify him with Kyot the Provençal, the alleged writer of the source material used by Wolfram von Eschenbach for his romance Parzival, but most others consider such a source to be a literary device made up by Wolfram. At any rate, Guiot was a popular writer in his day.
Bertha of Sulzbach, also known as Irene, was a Byzantine empress by marriage to Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Komnenos.
Stephen IV was King of Hungary and Croatia, ascending to the throne between 1163 and 1165, when he usurped the crown of his nephew, Stephen III. He was the third son of Béla II of Hungary, and when his conspiracy against his brother Géza II failed, he was exiled from Hungary in the summer of 1157. He first sought refuge in the Holy Roman Empire, but received no support from Emperor Frederick I. Shortly afterwards he moved to the Byzantine Empire, where he married a niece of Emperor Manuel I Komnenos, Maria Komnene, and converted to the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Peter II, born Theodor, also known as Theodor-Peter, was the first emperor or tsar of the restored Bulgarian Empire from 1185 to 1197. He hails from the Byzantine theme of Paristrion, although his exact place and date of birth are unknown.
The Battle of Tryavna occurred in 1190, in the mountains around the contemporary town of Tryavna, central Bulgaria. The result was a Bulgarian victory over the Byzantine Empire, which secured the successes achieved since the beginning of the Rebellion of Asen and Peter in 1185.
Various species of mythical headless men were rumoured, in antiquity and later, to inhabit remote parts of the world. They are variously known as akephaloi or Blemmyes and described as lacking a head, with their facial features on their chest. These were at first described as inhabitants of ancient Libya or the Nile system (Aethiopia). Later traditions confined their habitat to a particular island in the Brisone River, or shifted it to India.
Baldwin of Antioch was a Frankish knight and general in service of the Byzantine Empire during the Byzantine–Seljuk Wars. He was the son of Princess Constance of Antioch and Raymond of Poitiers. His brother-in-law was Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Komnenos. An ally of the Emperor in his battles against the Seljuk Turks, Baldwin was one of his most trusted advisors and the only one of Manuel's senior commanders "of Western origin".
