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historical personage. Almost nothing is known of the author, who, in
twenty-six short chapters, gives the most extensive account of Timur to be
produced up to that time. Perondinus’ description of the trampling of the
maidens appears in Chapter 18, entitled De sævitia et crudelitate eius contra
victos, et supplices ‘About his savagery and cruelty towards those defeated by
him and supplicants’,25 while the questioning of his cruelty and his response
appears in Chapter 19.26 The description thus has all of the main points of
the narrative (i, ii and iii), including a comparison to Hannibal (iv) some-
what later in Chapter 21.27 Nevertheless, these details are spread out over
several chapters and with a great amount of other material intercalated,
giving an impression which is, on the whole, much further away from the
entry in Oddverjaannáll than the previously described passages in Mexia
and Münster. It is also the case that the year in which the events took place
is not given. Perondinus’ work came to be reprinted a few years later in
Conrad Clauser’s Latin translation of Laonikus Chalkokondyles’ Proofs
of History and had an influence on later portraits of Timur such as those
by Louis Le Roy (1510–1577) in his De la vicissitude ou varieté des choses en
l’univers (1576) and Philipp Lonicer in Chronica turcica (1578), but it is not
the source of the Icelandic material.28
The last to be discussed of the four potential candidates mentioned by
Cook is Pope Pius II, or Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (1405–1464) as he
was known prior to his pontificate. He was, as we have seen in the cases
of Mexia and Münster, a forerunner to many of the early modern writers
who portrayed Timur’s deeds, preceded only by Poggio Bracciolini (1380–
1459).29 Pope Pius II’s work on Asia, called Cosmographia when it was
25 Petrus Perondinus, Magni tamerlanis scytharum Imperatoris vita (Florence, 1553), 53.
26 Perondinus, Magni tamerlanis, 54.
27 Perondinus, Magni tamerlanis, 57.
28 Conrad Clauser, trans., Laonici Chalcondylæ Atheniensis, de origine et rebus gestis turcorum
Libri Decem, nuper è Graeco in Latinum conuersi (Basil: Joannes Oporinus, 1556), 235–48;
Louis Le Roy, De la vicissitude ou variété des Choses en l’Univers (Paris: Pierre l’Huilier,
1575); Philipp Lonicer, Chronica turcica (Frankfurt am Main: [Feyerabend], 1578).
29 Pope Pius II made use of Bracciolini’s account, which appeared in his De varietate fortunæ,
effectively complete by 1447 and circulating in manuscripts or piecemeal in print afterw-
ards. See the first complete printed version, Poggio Bracciolini, Historiæ de varietate fortunæ,
ed. by Dominico Giorgio (Paris: Coustelier, 1723), 36–39. Bracciolini does not mention the
trampling of the maidens.
TIMUR, ‘THE WRATH OF GODʼ