Ida Toth

The historian and Byzantine researcher Ida Toth lectures at the University of Oxford’s Faculty of History and its Faculty of Classics. Ida Toth will begin a project at FU Berlin with Jutta Eming called “The Seven Sages of Rome Revisited: Striving for an Alternative Literary History,” which focuses on The Seven Sages of Rome, a collection of over 100 manuscripts that existed in multiple versions from the Middle Ages to the 19th century and was widely distributed in Europe and the Middle East. It is thus a unique object for research in that it presents a story cycle that can be studied from a global perspective. Ida Toth and Jutta Eming are particularly interested in how the work’s core motifs – wisdom, power, and gender roles – change across various cultural adaptations and perceptions.

Photo: Badische Landesbibliothek Karlsruhe

The picture shows an illustration for the narrative Canis from the Donaueschingen manuscript 145 (c. 1452). The story tells of a ruler's faithful dog who, in an unnoticed moment, saves his master's infant son from a snake in his cradle by biting it to death. However, the overturning of the cradle and the spilling of blood give the false impression that the dog has killed the child. The dog is then killed by its master, who rushes in. Only then is the cradle lifted, the child emerges alive, and the lord realises his mistake, for which he can no longer forgive himself. He ends his life as a hermit. Stories like this, about loyal companion animals who often behave more exemplarily than the human protagonists, are typical of the Seven Sages cycle.