HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

LOCAL AND INSTITUTIONAL HISTORY (300‒1000) 93also with the help of oral traditions. In the first half of the fifth centuryit was translated into Latin by a cleric from northern Italy, andit was enriched with analogous Western documents from Rome andAfrica. At that point it was attributed to Jerome, which granted itgreat authority. At the end of the sixth century this text came toAuxerre, where it was recopied and probably embellished underBishop Aunarius (561–604). All known copies of this martyrologyderive from the inventory of Auxerre.This martyrology is probably no longer local history, but it seemslikely to be a synthesis of local histories. For its editors, the hieronymianmartyrology is a general collection of primitive calendars of theEastern and Western Churches, classified according to the divisionsof the Empire in the fourth century. 9 The inventory of Auxerreadded names of the most illustrious bishops of Gaul up to the endof the sixth century, and a certain number of historical memoriesfrom Auxerre, in particular the dedication of monuments. Historicalnotes and summaries of the acts of the martyrs were added to thelaconic text of local martyrologies, then necrological notes were againinscribed in the margin of the manuscripts. The hieronymian martyrologyis the necessary starting point of all of the hagiographic traditionthat followed it.But the great era of martyrologies is the ninth century, the centuryof the ‘historical martyrologies’, new compositions that containbiographical notes of fewer saints but more details on each of them.Bede had written the first composition of this type in the eighth century.It was followed in the ninth century by Florus, Ado, HrabanusMaurus, Usuard, Notker, and a certain number of anonymous authors,without counting the different copies more or less revised. It is nolonger a piece of local history but from then on it is of general,even universal, history: it was on the basis of the martyrology ofUsuard that the official martyrology of the Roman Catholic Churchwould be established in the sixteenth century.From this examination of the history of martyrologies let us firstretain the concern of commemoration and of the celebration of martyrsand saints that illustrated the Church (both local and universal).It is fundamental to the historical démarche. Let us also retain theprocedure by which it progressively evolved from a simple list with9De Rossi and Duchesne (AS ).