This file is a single German scholarly study of Renaissance historiography. It traces the humanist image of Timur from Poggio Bracciolini through Piccolomini, Fregoso, Cambini, Giovio, Mexia, and Le Roy to its early modern correction. Voegelin’s thesis is that humanist Timur is a constructed Bild: a figure of fame, fortune, terror, charisma, and epochal transition, assembled from limited anecdotes and repeatedly reinterpreted.
Wie immer es darum im einzelnen bestellt sei, so scheint es doch im ganzen sicher, daß mit Poggio die große Traditionsreihe der humanistischen Beschäftigung mit Timur anhebt.
English translation: However matters may stand in detail, it seems on the whole certain that with Poggio the great tradition of humanist engagement with Timur begins.
Poggio inaugurates the tradition because he treats Timur as evidence against sterile antiquarian hero-worship. The conqueror’s vast deeds, recent yet already fading, prove that arms need letters; modern greatness becomes visible only when preserved by writers. But Poggio also places Timur within the problem of fortuna, and Voegelin makes this the conceptual key to the whole tradition.
Eines der wesentlichen Motive der folgenden Entwicklung ist die Auseinandersetzung zwischen der Tendenz, den großen Herrscher und Krieger um seiner selbst willen darzustellen, und der anderen, seinen Lebens- und Tatenlauf als Mittel zur Charakteristik der fortuna zu verwenden.
English translation: One of the essential motifs of the subsequent development is the tension between the tendency to depict the great ruler and warrior for his own sake, and the other tendency to use the course of his life and deeds as a means for characterizing fortuna.
The study therefore moves from Poggio’s theory of fortune to the making of a historical image. Fortuna is not merely accidental interruption but a power shaping whole lives: Timur’s fortuna secunda is paired with Bajasid’s fortuna adversa. Voegelin then turns to the author who gives the tradition its durable form.
Timurs Person und Taten wurden zum ersten Male in gemäßiger Größe von dem Mann dargestellt, der alles darstellte, was Zeit und Raum seinem unermüdlich reagierenden Geist an Stoffen zutrug, von Enea Silvio Piccolomini.
English translation: Timur's person and deeds were for the first time portrayed with measured greatness by the man who portrayed everything that time and space brought to his tirelessly reacting mind by way of subject matter: Enea Silvio Piccolomini.
Piccolomini’s Timur is not embedded in Mongol imperial history. He appears from the Mediterranean edge, like a lightning stroke through Asian and Ottoman affairs. Voegelin shows that the portrait is built from recurring elements: low origin, first companions, expansion, Ankara, Bajasid’s humiliation, military discipline, Damascus, the three tents, the “wrath of God,” Samarkand, and the missing historian. Later writers rearrange this stock rather than replace it.
Die Reihung der Elemente ist geradezu das innere Gesetz der Bilder: denn nur durch die Beschränkung des geschichtlichen Materials auf die charakterologisch bezeichnenden Elemente wird die Gesamtwirkung der Bilder erzielt.
English translation: The arrangement of the elements is virtually the inner law of these portraits: for only through the restriction of the historical material to the characterologically telling elements is the overall effect of the portraits achieved.
That technique is powerful but distorting. Strategic campaigns become sheer expansion; institutions of Mongol military order appear as personal severity; legends harden into moral signs. The humanist image is thus historical matter extracted into symbolic form. Voegelin’s major conceptual move is to read this not simply as error, but as a Renaissance mode of understanding power through exempla, character, and fate.
The Bajasid episode reveals the image’s instability: Christian satisfaction, warning against superbia, meditation on fortune, and later reinterpretation of cruelty as justice all coexist. The origin stories move from obscurity toward charismatic foundation; the shepherd-boy “king,” sworn companions, and military election present power as born from personal force. The tents and the ira Dei saying push Timur beyond ordinary humanity.
Das persönliche Charisma, die Schöpfung eines Bundes und die Steigerung der erobernden Vernichtung bis zur Idee einer Exekution des göttlichen Willens sind die innersten Sinngehalte, bis zu denen die Humanisten in ihrem Bild von Timur vordringen.
English translation: Personal charisma, the creation of a covenant, and the intensification of conquering destruction into the idea of an execution of the divine will—these are the innermost layers of meaning to which the humanists penetrate in their image of Timur.
Le Roy gives the tradition its final grand form. Writing amid French religious war yet exhilarated by discoveries, inventions, and renewed learning, he turns Timur into proof of a law of epochs: destructive military power precedes cultural florescence, as Alexander precedes Hellenism and Caesar the Roman world-empire.
Das Timurbild Le Roys ist das letzte der Art, die von Piccolomini geschaffen wurde.
English translation: Le Roy's image of Timur is the last of the kind that was created by Piccolomini.
After Le Roy, the type dissolves. Wider knowledge of Mongol history, Byzantine and Oriental sources, travel reports, and philology shift attention from mythic portrait to criticism; Silva’s Persian-derived counterimage of a humane Timur marks the change. The study’s relevance lies in showing how humanist historiography made political personality intelligible through fortune, charisma, narrative selection, and philosophy of history.
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